Hello to the community! Today we look back at December 2020, as well as an entire year of incredible progress and updates – including the mainnet launch of secret contracts, secret tokens, our Ethereum bridge, and much, much, more.
As productive as 2020 was, 2021 promises to be considerably more exciting. Bringing privacy to the decentralized web unlocks massive new opportunities and value. There’s no better time to get involved with building and scaling Secret Apps. Read on to learn more!
What is Secret Network?
Secret Network is the first blockchain with privacy-preserving smart contracts, known as “secret contracts.” That means applications built on Secret can utilize encrypted data without revealing it to anyone, even the nodes in the network. For the first time, Secret Network allows developers to build powerful, permissionless, privacy-preserving applications – Secret Apps.
Blockchains are public by default. That means that all the data used in smart contracts is exposed to everyone. For blockchain technology to achieve global adoption, users and organizations need control over how their data is used – they can’t just expose it to everyone. Secret Network solves the problem of privacy, helping to secure and scale the decentralized web.
Secret Network December Ecosystem Update
We’ll start with a look back at a busy December before getting into a full look at an eventful 2020 for the Secret community!
In December alone: the Secret Ethereum bridge live on mainnet. 15+ supported ERC-20s. A podcast with Charlie Lee of the Litecoin Foundation. Secret OTC and decentralized dark pools. Dozens of community “SNIP-20” Secret Tokens. Interchain Conversations with Guy Zyskind. The first annual decentralization report. An analytics dashboard. The evolution of the Secret Network website.
And so much more.
Our push to bring privacy to public blockchains is becoming an exciting reality. See what’s been done – and how you can get involved!
In case you missed it, read last month’s ecosystem update which covered (among other things) the collaboration of Secret Network with Ocean Protocol – an important step towards unlocking the full potential of data in Web3.
Secret Network
Product and Technical Updates
On December 15th the Secret Ethereum Bridge went live on mainnet and is available for your use today. This allows holders of ETH and certain ERC-20 assets to create “secret” versions of their assets as Secret Tokens and transact with them privately. Secret Tokens are powerful – they’re programmable like ERC-20s, but private by default like Monero and similar coins.
The bridge is located at: https://bridge.scrt.network
With the bridge now live on mainnet, there is currently support for twenty different assets (including Ethereum and 19 ERC-20s):
$ETH, $YFI, $UNI, $BAND, $COMP, $LINK, $AAVE, $KNC, $SNX, $OCEAN, $MKR, $DAI, $USDT, $USDC, $TUSD, $BAC, $RSR, $SUSHI, $DPI and $WBTC.
You can now immediately create secretEth, secretUSDT, secretWBTC, and more! It’s quick, easy, and inexpensive. Want to learn more? Read the full blog post or watch the tutorial below for full details!
In addition, Secret bridge mining rewards are now live! By using the Secret Ethereum Bridge, you can begin earning your share of 500,000 SCRT. We’ve previously announced that up to 2 million SCRT will be allocated towards the launch of the Secret DeFi ecosystem. Secret DeFi is front-running resistant and privacy-preserving by design. The first phase of Secret DeFi launch is the introduction of bridge mining rewards!
Secret Network
Secret Network contributor Baedrik released a secret auction contract that demonstrates the first trustless, non-custodial and privacy preserving Over-The-Counter trade for crypto-assets. In this walkthrough, Baedrik shows the functionality for auctioning off one Secret Token (secretSCRT) and accepting bids in the form of another (secretETH). This contract is already live on the Secret Network mainnet!
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With the launch of the Secret Automated Market Maker (AMM) on the horizon, never has the need been greater for a front-running resistant decentralized exchange. Curious how front-running works and how Secret Network solves it? Check out the explanatory video below by Secure Secrets!
Combining all of the above elements – including bridges, OTC, and AMMs – we are creating a cross-chain, frontrunning-resistant, private-by-default decentralized financial ecosystem on Secret Network. We call it Secret DeFi. Take a look below at some of what’s possible!
Secret Network Milestone: 50 Active Validators!
On December 4th, Secret Network officially reached the current network maximum of 50 active validators. This is an important milestone for network security, decentralization, and node-onboarding. Along the way to this goal there was an amazing amount of collaboration between validators with a range of experience – all with the shared goal of building a network where programmable privacy is the default for Web 3.0.
Link to the full set of nodes: https://puzzle.report/secret/chains/secret-2/validators
Introducing Humanode
Humanode is a brand new project entering an alpha testing phase. The whitepaper of Humanode features “a private smart contract on Secret Network for private biometric decentralized key management. The user’s root private key is issued in the private smart contract so that nobody can get access.”
See how Paradigm is using Secret to build the future!
Humanode
Data Economy Challenge: Tom Langer & Can Kisagun, Secret Network $5,000 Hackathon Kickoff
In this video, Can Kisagun explores usability of Secret Network via smart contracts and the breadth of applications that can be built for the hackathon using Secret Vaults, Secret AMM & more, followed by a Q&A with Tom Langer.
Interchain Conversations: “Building Private Smart Contracts with CosmWasm”
The Interchain Conversations event featured 47 conversations with a swathe of high-level developers and creators in the Cosmos ecosystem. Guy Zyskind, CEO of Enigma, spoke on behalf of Secret Network. Registration is free to be able to watch the replay of this presentation.
Crowdcast, Inc.
Successful On-Chain Proposals
The Ferenginar proposal was passed on December 12th with 36.405 million SCRT voting in favor of passing this proposal. This proposal upgrades the Secret Network’s CosmWasm module. With this, the CosmWasm module will support calling contracts that were instantiated during the same transaction, which is a very common DeFi design pattern.
Link to governance proposal: https://puzzle.report/secret/chains/secret-2/governance/proposals/25
The SG-1 proposal of a community spend of 18500 SCRT to build the official Secret Tip-bot @secrettipbot app for Twitter and Telegram passed on December 19th. The application will be developed from scratch and linked to Twitter and Telegram and provide the ability for anyone to send SCRT tip transactions directly to any Twitter or Telegram handle via public tweets or in group chats. A designated Secret Network node will process all transactions and ensure maximum uptime. Over 90% of the network voted on the proposal!
Link to governance proposal:
https://puzzle.report/secret/chains/secret-2/governance/proposals/26
Puzzle & Holodeck-2
Puzzle has added support for Holodeck-2, the official Secret Network Testnet for developers, validators, and users. Learn more about Holodeck on the blog!
Laura Weindorf
Secret Network Tokenomics and Ecosystem Pool
Using benchmarks from other networks, final estimates were published for Secret Network tokenomics after the ENG/SCRT burn/swap mechanism is permanently disabled (which occurred at the beginning of January). The following are the estimates made, which include the creation of an ecosystem pool to help accelerate development of applications, community growth, and awareness.
Secret Network
Figment & DataHub Developer Sign-Ups
As of December 15th, sign-ups are officially available for developers to query the Figment DataHub funded by Secret Network governance proposal #24. Eligible developers can leverage 200,000 free transactions per day through the tendermint’s team RPC and Secret Network’s REST API. This will ensure that developer applications are always connected to Secret Network – providing a better experience for users.
Annual Decentralization Report from Secure Secrets
The monthly ecosystem report by Secure Secrets tracks the progress of decentralization using a snapshot once a month of quantitative data hosted by Secretnodes.
Carter Woetzel
Secretnodes.com Secret Token Factory
Want to create your own SNIP-20 token? You can! Secretnodes.com has created a user interface to be able to create your own token today.
https://secretnodes.com/secret/chains/secret-2/token_factory
Analytics Committee Dashboard
The Analytics Committee has put together a dashboard tracking daily transactions, daily gas used, Binance SCRT supply, secret SCRT Stats, bridge stats, number of stakers per validator, staked SCRT per validator, and TVL for the many SNIP-20s that are now available due to the Ethereum bridge. There are many exciting changes on the way to this site, so stay tuned for more info and sneak peeks!
Check it out at: https://secretanalytics.xyz/
Secret Network Committee Updates
Committees are part of the critical infrastructure of Secret Network governance. Any community member can become a “Secret Agent” and begin contributing to committees. If you are passionate about privacy and want to contribute, joining a committee is an extremely effective way to get involved.
If you’re interested in becoming a Secret Agent and joining the community of Secret Agents as well as any of the committees listed below, fill out this form!
- Development Committee (charter)
- Education Committee (forum post)
- Infrastructure Committee
- Awareness Committee (forum post)
- Website Committee (forum post)
- Analytics Committee (forum post)
- Design Committee
- Governance Committee
In December, the Governance Committee garnered support for the passing of the DeFi Readiness Network Upgrade (Codename: Ferenginar). The Awareness Committee was focused on community outreach for the Secret Network Ethereum bridge. The Education Committee was focused on creating content for December, with an emphasis on community building such as the NA and EU “Secret” happy hour. The Infrastructure Committee handled a variety of patches for nodes using certain supermicro boards, as well as preparation for Ferenginar. The Analytics Committee has been building out a dashboard that summarizes valuable information about the network, website, and bridge. The Design Committee has continued to progress the brand identity, with a potential solidified brand book in the works. Finally, the Development Committee has seen multiple developers produce tutorial content for Secret Token creation as well as building out the “secret toolkit” for contract queries.
Sharing Secrets Podcast
During December, Tor Bair of the Secret Foundation hosted Charlie Lee of the Litecoin Foundation as well as Bruce Pon from Ocean Protocol.
What secrets has Charlie Lee learned as the creator of one of the most successful cryptocurrencies in the world? What has Charlie Lee timed well – or timed poorly? How is Litecoin implementing privacy, and why was that decision made? Why is privacy important for users and for fungibility? Why does he think we’re about to see a massive surge in cryptocurrency adoption? And crucially, what will make it be sustainable?
What secrets did Bruce learn building data and blockchain-based solutions before Ocean Protocol? How did Ocean emerge from those learnings, and what are they building now? What is the importance of privacy and data for artificial intelligence? What are datatokens, and how can they revolutionize the data economy? And what is the biggest piece of advice Bruce has for people trying to enter the blockchain space for the first time today?
Select Press and Media
Bradley Keoun
Turner Wright
Benjamin Powers
December Community Visuals
Credit: @SecretTaz “Visualization of the Secret Network Ecosystem”
Credit: @SecretTaz “Secret Network Roadmap”
Credit: @infected_whale
Other community creations include the cultivation of a Secret Twitter List. Be sure to follow in order to be up to date with all of the Secret Agent contributors!
https://twitter.com/i/lists/1301903543813787649
Secret Happy Hour
On December 8th, Carter Woetzel of the Education kicked off the weekly “Secret Happy Hour” from 7:00 to 8:00 pm CST. Meeting details are set out weekly via the Secret Network community telegram. Over 10+ individuals attended, with the event coming to a close with an intense competition of Secret Network trivia. There will soon be a European Happy Hour, so stay tuned for more information!
Here’s a blog explaining the format and goals of Secret Happy Hour:
https://caw34769.medium.com/secret-happy-hour-662981a6b0db
2020 Annual Summary
That is a LOT for just one month! Now imagine an entire year of updates just like that, and you have some idea of the amount of progress we’ve been able to make just in the past twelve months. Let’s take a look back!
The Secret Network protocol and community have grown at a breathtaking rate since the mainnet launch on February 13th, 2020. Secret Network is a proof-of-stake protocol based on Cosmos SDK/Tendermint featuring the native token $SCRT. The launch of this network was assisted by 20+ validators looking to support the network. The launch represented the move towards decentralized governance, sustainability, and a critical step towards making a Layer-1 solution that would enable both scalability and programmable privacy for Web 3.0.
The next critical step in the ecosystem occurred in early June with the creation of the Secret Foundation – an organization committed to sustainably promoting the growth of the Secret Network ecosystem. The Secret Foundation does so by advancing privacy as a public good: empowering people by providing tools, technologies, education, and support necessary to preserve their freedom.
On June 19th, the Secret Games Incentivized Testnet was announced. Over the course of 56 days (starting on July 20th) there were over 100+ combined participants between the two different test phases. All of these participants played a key role in helping create the future of programmable privacy – secret contracts. In particular, the protocol needed to be stress tested by validator nodes and users in preparation for mainnet upgrade “Vulcan,” which would bring Secret Contracts to mainnet after a hard fork of the Secret Network.
On June 24th, after a series of successful governance proposals and community coordination, the ENG burn contract for SCRT was initiated. This burn contract enabled owners of ERC-20 token ENG to convert their cryptocurrency to SCRT — the native token of the Secret Network. Independently organized and executed by the Secret Network community, over 114M SCRT in total were minted via the burn. (Note: this mint function has now been permanently disabled via Proposal 27.)
An integral part of any ecosystem is the availability of wallets to store and use the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain. Crucially, Secret Network had early wallet support from both Keplr and MathWallet. Governance proposal #19 saw community pool funding support for Keplr to create a MetaMask UX equivalent for the Secret Network with long term integration and support for Secret Contracts and applications!
The Turning Point: Secret Contracts
On September 15th, 2020 at 14:00:00 UTC the Secret Network successfully hard forked and upgraded the protocol from “secret-1” to “secret-2”. This upgrade enabled Secret Contracts – the core value proposition of the Secret Network. Secret Contracts leverage Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) located in each of the individual validator nodes, and as a result are able to use encrypted inputs, outputs, and state. This is a functionality unique to Secret Network.
The possibilities of this type of technology are critical: publicly visible blockchains have no allowance for privacy, and are therefore inherently limited with the range of possible use cases. In addition, individual data sovereignty is threatened by blockchains without reservation for privacy. Any financial system of the future enabled by blockchain is scary without this functionality!
After the launch of secret contracts came the first Secret Tokens. Combining the programmability of ERC-20s with the privacy of Zcash or Monero, “Secret Tokens” unlock important use cases, create new value, and bring programmable privacy to the forefront. The first SNIP-20 token (secretSCRT) went live on mainnet on October 22nd.
Because it is an independent Layer 1 blockchain with data privacy by default, Secret Network can bridge to other networks to bring wrapped token privacy. This was achieved for the first time on December 15th with the successful launch of the Secret Ethereum Bridge. This bridge empowers users to wrap Ethereum and ERC-20s to their secret equivalent. To encourage liquidity and adoption, up to 2,000,000 SCRT are available as rewards for the launch of Secret DeFi.
On December 4th, Secret Network officially reached 50 active validators. This was an important milestone for network security, decentralization, and node-onboarding. Along the way to this goal there was an amazing amount of collaboration between validators with a range of experience – all with the shared goal of building a network where programmable privacy is the default for Web 3.0.
Since the launch of Secret Contracts, there have been exciting collaborations with other ecosystems such as Ocean Protocol. Many applications are already in the works, including the Secret AMM, Secret Auctions, Secret Access Control, Secret Tokens, Secret Poker, a variety of Secret Games, and so much more.
Since launch, Secret Network has experienced massive amounts of organic growth, with 2200+ delegators, 50 nodes, 5000+ accounts (not including exchanges), and a significant increase in developer attention since the launch of secret contracts. Secret Network remains the first and only layer-1 chain that offers privacy-preserving smart contracts.
The Secret Network community is united by a common mission: to advance privacy as a public good, empowering people by providing the tools, technologies, education, and support necessary to preserve their freedom. Fundamentally, we believe privacy is a human right. An overly centralized internet and giant data monopolies have jeopardized our privacy, our security, and our society. We must scale privacy preserving technologies that can help us confront and overcome these systemic risks. And we must continue to push for better education surrounding individuals’ right to privacy.
Today Secret Network is an exciting sandbox for creating privacy-centric and permissionless applications, permitting individuals the freedom to traverse and use Web 3.0 to its full potential while remaining secure. United by our guiding principles – usability, sustainability, impact, and empowerment – we are building a committed and collaborative community where every individual is source for meaningful change.
Are you ready for what will be built with Secret Network? Are you prepared to be part of a disruptive technology, ecosystem, and community that will transform blockchains and beyond?
We are.
2020 has come to a close. Here’s to a bright future in 2021, and many more Secrets to come!
🤫 🤫 🤫 🤫
Previous Monthly Ecosystem Updates
November: https://scrt.network/blog/secret-network-ecosystem-update-november-2020
October: https://scrt.network/blog/secret-network-ecosystem-update-october-2020
September: https://scrt.network/blog/ecosystem-update-september-2020
August: https://scrt.network/blog/ecosystem-update-august-2020
July: https://scrt.network/blog/secret-network-ecosystem-update-july-2020
June: https://scrt.network/blog/enigma-development-update-june-2020
May: https://scrt.network/blog/secret-network-development-update-may-2020
What now?
What a summary! There was almost too much progress to document. But as exciting as 2020 was, 2021 promises to bring even more growth to the Secret ecosystem as our first bridge (Ethereum) went live on mainnet!
With the introduction of bridge mining – a way for holders of ETH and ERC-20s to stake on our bridge and earn SCRT – we’ve seen massive growth in just a short time. So what other announcements and collaborations lie in store? You’ll have to wait and see what secrets 2021 brings…
Onwards and upwards!
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