Secret Network 101: Privacy for all chains

pothu
3 min readApr 11, 2022

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At face value, crypto seems anonymous. Your crypto address isn’t connected to your irl identity. But even if the address is anonymous, it’s possible to analyze transaction histories and identify people. There are already reports of government tracking tools that analyze crypto transactions. The Secret Network aims to bridge this gap between blockchain technology and privacy.

Secret was built with Rust using Tendermint’s dPoS consensus algorithm. The Secret Network can be used to deploy private smart contracts. Secret contracts have encrypted inputs, outputs, and state transitions.

Secret contracts utilize a combination of secure enclaves, key management, and encryption protocols to preserve privacy. Data encrypted by default, but users can share data with select recipients or the public using Viewing Keys. Viewing Keys can be generated to allow third parties, including other contracts, to view an individual’s balance.

In addition to creating private smart contracts, you can create secret versions of any ERC-20 and bring privacy to existing chains. Secret Tokens are a powerful concept . They’re programmable like ERC-20s and usable in applications, but they remain private-by-default. Secret tokens can represent off-chain assets or they can be native to the Secret Network.

Anyone can create a token. They can then be transferred between wallets and used in smart contracts. Secret tokens keep all transactions and rolling balances are encrypted. This maintains anonymity and confidentiality. Individuals must generate a “viewing key” in order to reveal these values.

Secret Bridges connect the Secret Network with other chains. They make it possible to create Secret tokens. It’s already possible to move and swap several tokens between Secret and the Ethereum and Binance chains.

Secret Bridges use multisig authorisation process. 3 out of 5 bridge operators are required to approve a transaction across the bridge. These bridge operators are very reputable staking operators — Figment, Staked, B-Harvest, Citadel.one and Enigma.

Secret contracts are based on CosmWasm, written in Rust, and compiled to Wasm. As a sovereign chain, the network has more flexibility and relevance. Newer and better privacy security solutions can be implemented rapidly as they are discovered over time.

Secret Network’s mission is to become the go-to multichain interoperable privacy hub. This future includes a range of blockchains, all with specific use cases. These chains will be able to benefit from being able to use Secret’s privacy features. It makes sense that secret was built on Cosmos. It can connect to any IBC compliant chains with ease. Secret can grow alongside the Cosmos ecosystem.

$SCRT is essential to the Secret Network. It’s used to pay for gas when you mint Secret tokens. It’s also used for governance. You can stake SCRT tokens and earn 25–30% annually. It currently has a market cap of 800M and circulating supply of 165M.

As crypto becomes more mainstream, privacy will grow in importance. Blockchain is set to disrupt countless industries, like healthcare and finance. But this requires private info to stay private. Secret offers a privacy solution.

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pothu
pothu

Written by pothu

Multi-chain maxi. Follow me to learn about NFTs, DeFi, and Crypto.

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