Over the past year, Secret Network has been steadily building out its Confidential Computing Layer with the goal of providing decentralized confidential computing (DeCC) to all of Web3, unlocking brand new use-cases for decentralized applications. This article summarizes the development progress that has been made so far, and gives a glimpse at what’s to come in the near future!
A Brief History
Secret Network went live on mainnet in September of 2020, bringing something groundbreaking to the Web3 world – smart contracts with encrypted data. This allowed developers to build things that had never been possible before, and it could only be done on Secret Network.
In June of 2023, we introduced “Privacy as a Service“, the initial concept of Secret providing other blockchains with confidential computing via cross-chain communication. At that point in time, we knew what was possible with this technology, presented a lot of ideas for what could be built, and had some basic cross-chain capabilities in place, Axelar GMP and IBC.
In August of 2023, we announced “Secret Ethereum“, an initiative to further focus our cross-chain development efforts on supporting the EVM ecosystem specifically.
Between August 2023 and early 2024, we began building out some of these cross-chain application concepts that we had presented back in June, and providing detailed documentation so that anyone could deploy it on their preferred blockchain. These applications included private voting, secure random number generation, sealed-bid auctions, and encrypted storage.
Also during this time period, we began utilizing a new cross-chain communication technology, dubbed SecretPath. This lightweight and flexible protocol could be quickly deployed on nearly any EVM-compatible blockchain, making it possible for Secret’s Confidential Computing Layer to reach more blockchains than ever before.
Present Day
Today, Secret’s Confidential Computing Layer is more capable than it’s ever been. With 10+ major EVM blockchains currently supported, solid documentation showing developers how to utilize it, and virtually any EVM and IBC chain able to be connected to it, the doors are wide open for this technology to take off. We’ve already seen Secret’s CCL being used in several recent EVM hackathons. But how will this technology gain mass adoption?
What’s Next?
Over the next several months, Secret Network will integrate its Confidential Computing Layer with many new blockchains, and announce partnerships with each of them, in order to spread awareness and provide dedicated support to their ecosystems. We aim to onboard a large amount of new developers in this process, opening their eyes to the new possibilities that confidential computing unlocks. We’ll be expanding the capabilities of these partnered blockchains, bringing new functionality to their existing ecosystems and breaking through the limitations of traditional Web3 applications. Our goal is for Secret Network to provide decentralized confidential computing (DeCC) to all of Web3!
In parallel, we’ll continue improving Secret’s CCL capabilities. We’re in the process of integrating new cross-chain messaging technologies such as Wormhole, Union, and Composable, which will enable Secret’s CCL to reach new blockchains like Solana, Aptos, and NEAR. Not only will this expand Secret’s reach, it will also give developers more options when designing their cross-chain logic. We aim to provide many different tools in order to make the development experience as easy as possible.
At the same time, we’ll continue developing new cross-chain application examples and publishing detailed documentation and tutorials for them. Some planned examples include encrypted order books for DeFi and unlockable confidential data for NFTs.
Get ready for the power of DeCC. We’re bringing decentralized confidential computing to all of Web3.
Join in on the discussion on the Secret Network community channels!
