Since the publication of the Secret 2.0 vision, Secret Network has hinted about a “constellation” of interconnected privacy solutions serving as a privacy hub for Web3.
With yesterday’s announcement by Fhenix, this vision has become a reality.
The Confidential Computing Constellation emerges by combining Secret’s battle-tested technology, applications, and developer community with Fhenix’s novel Fully Homomorphic Encryption technology, which it plans to develop into a full-fledged smart contract platform.
The goal of the Constellation is to combine a wide range of confidential-computing technologies and solutions to create a single hub for privacy and confidentiality on Web3, offering confidential computing applications on member networks and providing privacy as a service to the EVM ecosystem and beyond.
Some have asked why we need multiple privacy technologies. Wouldn’t it be better to build one all-powerful fully featured privacy solution?
The answer is a resounding “no”. It is important to understand that confidentiality is not a “one-size-fits-all” thing. Just as there are different blockchain technologies for different purposes, there are similar tradeoffs between confidentiality technologies, depending on the relative importance of security, scalability, decentralization, complexity and cost. The Constellation will allow its users to mix and match between those tradeoffs, by choosing the best technology for each task.
Alex Zaidelson, CEO of SCRT Labs, commented yesterday, “I am excited about the start of the Confidential Computing Constellation and the promise it brings to the industry. Now it’s time to work hard to fulfill that promise!”
The chart below shows the tradeoffs between privacy guarantees, computational costs and development difficulty between key confidential computing technologies, with vanilla EVM thrown in for comparison.
Our goal is for the Constellation to become the go-to place for all things related to confidentiality on blockchain, and allow developers from any web3 ecosystem to build robust privacy solutions easily and quickly.
Secret and Fhenix are the inaugural members of the Constellation. Naturally, sharing Guy Zyskind as a Founder and part of the team ties the two projects together in a special way, but the intention is to bring more networks and technologies into the fold as new projects present themselves.
The networks in the Constellation will be interconnected along several vectors, with the goal of aligning incentives and rewarding dedicated users and developers who participate in multiple branches of the constellation, such as Secret and Fhenix. The strength of each connection vector may be different in different cases, and will evolve as more networks join together.
We will be sharing more details about the economic and security connections between Secret and Fhenix further down the road, as well as thoughts on new potential candidates to join the Constellation.
Onwards and Upwards
