MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

Amazing how shallowly an article can cover the specifics of something like this. The best explanation they gave was "mathematical tricks."

Wait wait what? So I can send my (locally encrypted) CC info into an Enigma-enabled CC processor, and they can deduct an amount from my account without ever actually knowing my account info?<p>Or more like I can send an encrypted list of passwords and they can tell me what the most common letter is in all the passwords without ever knowing any of the passwords?<p>If these things aren&#x27;t possible, can someone provide a useful example of this being used to solve a problem? I&#x27;m having a bit of trouble actually understanding what this is&#x2F;does.

This would be awesome as an alternative to Facebook having all your likes &#x2F; personal information and other companies tapping into that. Imagine if you stored all of that in Enigma instead and only gave it to the companies you trusted.<p>So you could store your own list of favorite music bands in the cloud and share that with say spotify or pandora to get personalized recommendations, but nobody else knows about it. Then you store your favorite authors in another location which only amazon has access to. Or your medical records could be kept in the cloud and only shared with your personal doctor, then easily transfered to another doctor if you switch.<p>This seems like a great solution for storing these small pieces of personal information in the cloud without having to give them all to a central authority like so many people do with Facebook currently.

I had a similar idea! I&#x27;m glad something like this is being implemented.<p>The most important idea imo is that companies can never claim ownership of personal data because they never have access to it. Another cool idea is that if you have a currency that can be cashed in for fractional computing power on the network you could pay tech companies in computing power, either providing it from a device you own or paying for it with the currency.<p>I look forward to the papers&#x2F;code that they release.<p>Edit: I&#x27;m not really clear on this, is there any currency component to Enigma? I was thinking there could be a currency that&#x27;s a transferrable debt of fractional computing power of the network.<p>Edit 2: Apparently it isn&#x27;t a currency and uses bitcoin for fees...

So if I am understanding correctly, this could compete with services like s3 and ec2.<p>People can earn money by attaching their machines to the network (but they have to include a security deposit). Then they will collect fees from users for each request processed as well as a set fee for storage.<p>The application developer will then use a provided scripting language (I am not sure if they actually write the application using this language or if it is just for ensuring a contract). They will need to continually pay storage fees or their data will be disabled and eventually deleted.<p>I would like to see examples of the scripting language they reference.

Oh! Is this basically a secret sharing DAO?<p>Huh, last I read something about this, it seemed like every multiplication needed multiple network messages, but I guess they solved that problem.<p>Sounds exciting! I am excited!

From what I gather this is good for privately sharing other people&#x27;s private data? Correct me if I misunderstand the idea here.

&quot;Code evaluated in our system is guaranteed not to leak any information unless a dishonest majority collude&quot;

Two things I haven&#x27;t yet seen here in the comments:<p>1) Electricity used. This scheme<p><pre><code> only multiplies the computing requirements for a calculation by less than 100 fold </code></pre> It&#x27;s bad enough that bitcoin mining itself is so energy intensive, but now we&#x27;re coming up with additional power-hungry schemes.<p>2) (Ab)use of the blockchain:<p><pre><code> Enigma stores that metadata in the bitcoin blockchain, the unforgeable record of messages copied to thousands of computers to prevent counterfeit and fraud in the bitcoin economy </code></pre> So eventually the whole world will use the one true blockchain for &quot;unforgeable records&quot; of everything? Eventually the chain will grow by what, 1 GB per hour, 1 GB per minute, 1 GB per second?