Announcement

Secret Network Ecosystem Update: August 2020

Secret Network

September 8, 2020

Greetings, Secret Agents!

August has been quite a month for Secret Network and its community. The following post includes content from various participants in our ecosystem. Overall, the goal of this monthly update is to reflect all the great work being done to prepare for the mainnet upgrade to enable secret contracts, which is happening September 15 🎉

Announcing the Secret Contracts Mainnet Upgrade!

Development Milestones for Secret Contracts

After years of development and two successful public testnets, we are ready to upgrade Secret Network to become the first privacy-preserving smart contract platform of its kind. This proposed upgrade would make Secret Network the first blockchain to enable general purpose private computation across a distributed system of nodes equipped with secure enclaves. Now developers can build privacy-preserving smart contracts with encrypted inputs, outputs, and state. At the same time, we’re building connections to Ethereum, Cosmos Hub, and other networks, intending to bring our capacity for “programmable privacy” to the entire blockchain universe.

Read more about the milestones along the journey to enabling Secret Contracts:

Secret Network Ecosystem Update: July 2020

For an update on the public Secret Games testnet, plus applications built in internal and external hackathons, the origins of the Keplr wallet support for Secret Network, you can read our previous ecosytem update:

Secret Games: Incentivized Testnet Program

The Secret Network community, led by Secret Foundation and Enigma, organized two phases of incentivized network testing as part of the Secret Games. During this period, node operators, developers, and community members earned rewards by helping to secure, sustain, and grow Secret Network and its overall ecosystem. Now, having completed successful testing of “Secret Contracts” (privacy-preserving smart contracts on Secret Network), Enigma’s team has proposed upgrading our mainnet to integrate this new functionality.

One of the most critical pieces of the Secret Games was the incentivized testnet. During this phase, node operators worked together to stress-test secret contract functionality on Secret Network. Operators set up their own “secret nodes” and worked to successfully complete node-related missions. They were guided and joined by existing validators on the Secret Network mainnet, including the Enigma team, Chain of Secrets, Secretnodes.org, and others.

Secret Games Phase 1 Update ~ July

Almost 400 people formally expressed interest in the invite-only Phase 1 of the Secret Games incentivized testnet. Just 15 participants (about 5% of applicants) were chosen based on their strong technical ability, demonstrated commitment to Secret Network, and proven track records of supporting proof-of-stake networks. In this blog post, we provide brief descriptions of all invited participants and our testnet stewards: Enigma, SecretNodes.org, Chain of Secrets, and Secret Foundation.

Secret Games Phase 2 Update ~ August

Some participants are actively building tools and platforms designed to help others in the community, as well as initial Secret Apps that can launch on mainnet. It has been wonderful to see all the collaboration driving progress toward exponential growth. Here is a recent blog post, including a high-level summary of what we learned from Secret Games, along with some interesting testimonials from various Phase 2 participants. Here is our favorite:

“It wasn’t until we executed our first secret contract that the gravity of what has been built here really hit us. This is going to be a big f@#cking deal, and you can quote us on that.”
— 🛹 Stake or Die! 🐝🐝🐝

🚨 Mainnet Upgrade: September 15 🚨

ICYMI: Enigma’s dev team submitted an on-chain proposal to upgrade Secret Network to become privacy-preserving, adding the compute module for Secret Contracts and implementing a Secret Foundation tax (details below).

Secret Contracts enable anyone to use their private data in decentralized applications without revealing the raw data. Data being used in computations throughout Secret Network simply can’t be public.

This momentous event – happening Tuesday, September 15 – is a culmination of years of research and development work. Enigma’s development team has worked tirelessly to bring this functionality to the Secret Network, and having conducted a series of successful testnets, it is time to bring Secret Contracts into the world. Learn more about what’s launching now and what happens next:

Secret Foundation

Following a proposal to adjust Secret Network’s inflation rate and community tax, the idea of a Secret Foundation Pool was introduced. A signaling proposal was discussed on the forum, submitted to the network, and eventually approved.

Initially, Secret Foundation was funded by a donation from Enigma MPC; however, self-sustainability is crucial. The above proposal represents our agreement to implement a module for distributing block rewards as a “Secret Foundation tax.” Essentially, it will be similar to the community pool, but funds flow to a specific address, which can be a multi-sig.

These parameters will be reconfigurable via governance proposals:

Address to which the rewards are allocated
Percentage taken from the total inflation

Following a positive response to that signaling proposal, Secret Foundation and Enigma began collaborating with Alexander Bezobchuk (a.k.a. Bez), lead engineer at Tendermint and core contributor to the Cosmos SDK. He graciously agreed to develop the necessary functionality in order to enable a Secret Foundation Pool, and he received 5000 SCRT from the community pool in exchange for this work. Next week, upon completion of the mainnet upgrade, 15 percent of inflation will be distributed to Secret Foundation. You can review the merged pull request here:

We are so excited for the Sharing Secrets video series featuring humans of the Secret Network ecosystem and beyond. The first two episodes are very special! Be sure to give them a listen, and keep an eye out for new secrets… 🕵️ In the meantime, you can relive the glory days of “Decentralize This!“

Episode 0: What is a Secret?

Episode 1: Guy Zyskind, Enigma CEO

Keplr by Chainapsis

Keplr began supporting Secret Network in July, and since then, we have seen a lot of interest in what their team can build for Secret users and SCRT holders. Recently they submitted a community-spend proposal for delivering new and important features which will empower all kinds of stakeholders. We are thrilled to have passed this proposal in order to fund Chainapsis to build support for Secret Contracts and Secret Tokens!

“We believe Secret Network is at a momentous phase as it nears the upgrade that realizes its vision of providing privacy solutions to smart contracts and blockchains. The deliverables of this proposal will provide the critical infrastructure needed to improve developer experience and user experience to allow high-value applications to be built.”
– Josh Lee of Chainapsis / Keplr

Keplr Deliverables

Ledger integration ✅
Secret Contracts integration
Secret Token transactions
SecretJS signing

Target Completion Date: October 2020

Milestone 1

Provide an experience similar to MetaMask of being able to sign interactions with secret contracts utilizing SecretJS on the Secret Network.

Milestone 2

Secret-20 transaction integration, allowing users to store and send privacy-preserving tokens issued on the Secret Network.

Secure Secrets

The Secure Secrets team has not only been operating a node but also developing content to help increase awareness and understand of Secret Network. In addition to helping improve documentation, they are doing excellent work by creating a video series, named “Community Unveiled,” featuring interviews with validators!

Episode 1: Mohammed Patla of Secure Secrets

Episode 2: Episode #2 🛹 Stake or Die! 🐝🐝🐝

Secret Network Delegation & Governance Distribution Update

In addition to launching Community Unveiled, Secure Secrets released this detailed report on the degree to which Secret Network is decentralized in terms of the distribution of voting power across validator nodes.

What does it mean to be properly decentralized? What percentage of Secret Network’s voting power should be given to the bottom half of the network?

Proper decentralization is not just about distributing governance, it is also about properly incentivizing the progression of the network with as many efficient actors as possible by properly distributing resources, control, and capital.

“If we can have a sufficiently decentralized ecosystem that maximizes value for new entrants while maximizing the impact of current participants, then we are in a healthy place.” – Tor Bair

Figment Networks: Keeping Secrets

Figment Networks, one of Secret’s top mainnet validators, published a great look at Secret Network, DeFi on Secret, and the relationship between Secret and the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem. Check it out on their blog!

Upcoming Secret Solutions

Programmable Privacy Tokens

We published a post about Secret DeFi, based on the Secret Token (Secret-20) standard, which is like ERC-20 for Ethereum, except balances and transactions are fully encrypted. Privacy is are critical for adoption of DeFi! Soon there might be a secretNFT standard like ERC-721 🤫

Staking Derivatives #secretSCRT

We’re also building a secret contract for staking derivatives, which can free up bonded SCRT for usage across the Cosmos ecosystem. Read more in this in-depth post by Enigma’s VP of Engineering, Itzik Grossman (aka Cashmaney).

… and more!

With even more products in the pipeline, you can expect September to be an extremely exciting month for Secret Network and our community.

Secret Network Committees

If you’d like to get more involved in our ecosystem, join a committee! We have five different groups working on projects related to development, infrastructure, education, awareness, and governance. All are welcome to become Secret Agents and help us advance privacy as a public good. You will get access to unique opportunities work on groundbreaking initiatives, such as our website redesign, content production, and Secret Merchandise… 🤔

You can learn more about our committees on the Secret Wiki, and we hope you will join the official Secret Chat. When you are ready, jump in our Secret Google Drive to discover projects and start collaborating with us!

Development Committee

This committee has been focused on updating our documentation and improving developer experience overall. As a result, we now have an evolving development guide, which explains how to deploy and instantiate a secret contract. It also features a demo “Secret Voting” app created by Taariq Levack:

Infrastructure Committee

A dedicated group of validators worked together identifying SGX-compatible hardware in preparation for the mainnet upgrade. This document represents painstaking efforts contacting original equipment manufacturers and virtual service providers. We are so grateful to the members of the Infrastructure Committee for all their help!

Education Committee

This committee is now led by Carter Woetzel and Mohammed Patla of Secure Secrets, and it is focused on producing content for the purpose of educating potential contributors in the Secret Network ecosystem. Our community is full of talented creators! Here is our public schedule of videos, blog posts, and more:

Awareness Committee

This committee is focused on projects involving the distribution, i.e. amplification, of content related to Secret Network. Join this committee to learn about sustainable ways to help us grow!

Governance Committee

Following this poll, there was discussion about a 1% slashing rate being too high. Previously, if a validator missed more than 2500 of 5000 blocks, their node was taken out of the active set and 1% of their bonded tokens were slashed. Now that penalty is 0.01%, as a result of this parameter-change proposal:

This committee is responsible for bringing all the committees together and coordinating members to develop an integrated roadmap, including hackathons, Secret App launches, governance proposals, and other committee projects. The Governance Committee also reviews proposals and supports anyone interested in learning more about Secret Network governance.

To Infinities and Beyond 🛸🛸🛸

To discuss Secret Network and Secret Apps, visit our community channels:
Website | Forum | Twitter | Discord | Telegram