Hello to the Secret community!
For the last few weeks, Secret has been on the road again—this time for Messari Mainnet in NYC and Cosmoverse in Medellín, Colombia.
We made tons of new connections, network ecosystem leaders gave inspiring talks on-stage, and we threw a couple of brilliant parties (if we may say so ourselves) —including our two-year birthday bash! Oh, and we also just launched our biggest mainnet upgrade ever…
Read on to get a rundown of all the secrets that were shared, including talks from Guy Zyskind and Tor Bair as well as pics from our b’day celebration.
Secret at Messari Mainnet 🗽
The first conference we attended was Messari Mainnet in New York City on September 21-23. Messari is known for its thorough industry research reports, and Mainnet attracts a wide variety of people from the space including investors, developers, and entrepreneurs. Some notable projects that attended include BNB chain, Injective, Akash, Agoric, and fellow privacy pioneers Zcash and Brave! 🦸
SCRT Labs, Secret Foundation, Shade Protocol, and more were all present to spread the word on why Web3 privacy matters, the use cases Secret Contracts unlock, and how Secret has been building for the last two years. It was a powerful message, and we’ve had many interesting conversations with parties ranging from institutions to auditors to developers.
As usual, our Secret swag soon started popping up everywhere, with privacy hats to be found at almost every Mainnet afterparty. They were also a big hit with the Mainnet security team!
Meanwhile: Shockwave Delta Arrives
As if we weren’t busy enough with the conference, on the morning of our first day, Secret had its most significant mainnet upgrade since last year: Shockwave Delta!
By upgrading to CosmWasm v1, Secret Contracts gained the ability to communicate across IBC, allowing Secret to become the Cosmos privacy hub. Now, other IBC chains can call on Secret Contracts, enabling (for example) a DAO contract on Juno to communicate with a vote-counting contract on Secret to perform private tallying of governance votes—e.g. “privacy-as-a-service.”
Read our Shockwave Delta blog post to get the full details on everything that’s included in the Shockwave Delta mainnet upgrade.
Upgrading our Secret Contracts to CosmWasm v1 also makes it much easier for developers from other IBC chains to start building on Secret. If you’re a developer who’s excited to explore the possibilities of private smart contracts, now’s the time to dive in!
🧑💻 Check out our Dev Resources to find everything you need to start building on Secret and our Grants page for more info on funding opportunities.
Guy speaks on why NFTs with privacy are the future
On the second day of the Mainnet conference, SCRT Labs CEO Guy Zyskind hit the stage to talk about all the ways in which NFTs can be used and how privacy can unlock these use cases.
Guy talked about why Tarantino and Kevin Smith became so excited about Secret NFTs, the value of community in educating people, and how privacy-preserving NFTs could help create a seamless UX experience for new users by creating a wallet and storing it on-chain.
The other speakers also have fascinating things to say on the topic and it’s only 20 minutes, so watch it if you have time:
There are parties, and then there are Secret parties
A conference isn’t complete without a killer Secret party! After our awesome Kevin Smith launch party at DCentral, we had big expectations to meet. We had good reason to celebrate too, as this was the 2nd anniversary of Secret’s private smart contracts going live on mainnet!
And so we did, picking out one of New York’s most unique (and secret) locations: “The Back Room” speakeasy.
John (Secret Foundation creative director) contributed with awesome designs, and Jay (Secret Foundation director of marketing) helped organize on the ground, crafting an incredible celebration that people were talking about for days afterward. You know you threw a good party when you have to kick out people at the end. Over 900 people came through the doors of our Secret speakeasy!
We’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking:
Shade kept the party vibe going till the end
As if one Secret party wasn’t enough, Shade Protocol decided to co-sponsor its own party with the Polkadot ecosystem, including our fellow privacy vanguards at Manta Network, the Moonbeam team, StellaSwap, and many more.
With a penthouse and gorgeous views of New York’s skyline, the PizzaDAO delivering mouth-watering NY pizzas, and great house music (not-so-quietly) in the background, it surely was a great way to end the conference!
Our Second Secret Stop: Cosmoverse in Medellín, Colombia 🇨🇴
After making great connections in NYC, it was time to head over to the flagship conference of the Cosmos ecosystem, aptly named Cosmoverse! This year it was organized in the exotic (albeit slightly rainy) Medellín, Colombia.
Cosmoverse was very different from Mainnet Messari but equally fun and inspiring as we got to hang out with our IBC buddies and brainstorm on the future of the Cosmos ecosystem! Secret Foundation, SCRT Labs, Bushi, and Shade ran the Secret Network booth, and we had great talks with the folks from Osmosis, Kado, Juno, and many more.
It was clear that within the Cosmos ecosystem Secret Network is getting more and more known. We didn’t have much time to relax at the booth as people kept coming up to chat, with lots of interest in further collaboration!
Cosmoverse showed us, yet again, how much is happening in the Cosmos ecosystem and that we absolutely made the right move to join. Interoperability and composability for the win 💪
Day 2 of #Cosmoverse was HUGE 💪
We met a lot of great people, and did our part to educate the masses on Web3 privacy. But we're not done. We're on to day 3 and it's going to be another amazing day. Swing by, get some swag, and let's share some secrets 🤫$SCRT #CosmoverseSCRT pic.twitter.com/qMqFSgF3Fg
— 𝕊ecret Network – Shockwave is Here ⚡🌊 (@SecretNetwork) September 28, 2022
Secret Agents showcase the dedication of our community
With Cosmoverse being a more accessible conference than Mainnet, our Secret Agents came out en masse to educate and onboard fellow Cosmonauts onto the Secret ecosystem. It reminded everyone again of how strong our community is and seeing everyone IRL is always a blast. Thank you all for joining!
We did many interviews which we’ll publish soon on our YouTube channel, so keep an eye out for that 👀
Let's Doxx these awesome agents 🕵️♂️
Awesome job recruiting agents, getting @FinaCash wallet downloads and dev leads for the @SCRT_Agency @PepeVO1 @SCRTAgent000 @EmmanuelLS24 @EdgarWeb3 & charlesgom (someone tag gom plz)
— Melch18 | SCRT Agent | SHD Spartan #19 🕵️♂️ (@Melch18_) September 28, 2022
Tor spreads more secrets at Cosmoverse
This time it was up to Tor Bair, founder of Secret Foundation, to speak. On the second day of the conference, he hit the stage to talk about the importance of privacy and the potential of Secret to bring privacy-as-a-service to the Cosmos ecosystem.
He talked about how the world is finally waking up to the importance of Web3 privacy after what happened with Tornado Cash, and explained how Secret has been striking the balance between pragmatism and idealism with its Secret Contracts + secure enclave setup.
This is a must-see for anyone who wants to understand where we’re heading and is only a 20 (ok, 21) minute watch, so check it out:
Building with privacy: SCRT Labs holds dev workshops to build a decentralized Netflix
During the second and third days of Cosmoverse, SCRT Labs hosted a special workshop where developers learned how to build a decentralized video streaming service using Secret’s privacy-preserving smart contracts. These were led by none other than SCRT Labs senior software engineer Tom Langer!
This is just one of many developer workshops and hackathons we want to organize, so if you don’t want to miss out on the next one, follow SCRT Labs on Twitter 🕊
We did it again: Secret (co-)throws a party that’s superhero-worthy 🦸
Can’t visit a conference without throwing at least one badass party. That’s why we teamed up with the Cosmonauts at Loop, Kado, Juno, and Angel Protocol to throw a party that went on until deep in the night.
And the most amazing thing about this party in our opinion? The superheroes walking around spreading the secret 🤫 Look at those outfits! Now, if that isn’t on-brand…
Are you coming to the Loop #Cosmic5 Party? 🥳
We’re getting underway, but we had to share a sneak peek 👀
We’ll see you soon!$SCRT #Cosmic5scrt pic.twitter.com/oQ66Oo6zVT
— 𝕊ecret Network – Shockwave is Here ⚡🌊 (@SecretNetwork) September 28, 2022
And now it’s back to building!
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and so does our Secret conference tour. Now it’s back to building, but keep an eye out for our next events as we have a very special Secret Summit coming up 👀
We’re also planning on organizing many more developer workshops and hackathons, so if you’re interested in building with privacy, follow us on Twitter or join our Discord!
If you want to join our quest for privacy, become a Secret Agent! You’ll learn about blockchain and privacy, work on projects with other Web3 privacy pioneers, and gain access to exclusive Secret intel and events 🤫
Onwards and upwards!
