This is epicenter episode. 425 with guest Guy is a skinned.
Welcome to epicenter the show which talks about the
Technologies projects and people driving decentralisation and the
blockchain revolution. I'm Sonia Agarwal.
And I'm here with Frederick Ernst.
And today, we're talking with guys just skinned, who is the
founder of secret Network, which is a, well, not really a new but
it's actually a quite a, you know, Around for a long time
actually, and we actually had guy on what maybe four years
ago. I think 2018 and back, then the
project was called Enigma. And so since then it's gone
through a number of evolutions and became what it is today,
called secret network, but still focus on the same mission of
bringing private smart Contracting to the Crypt averse.
So what we'll talk a lot about with guy about secret network,
but first we'd like to tell you a little bit about us.
Sponsors for the week. First one says, para Swap.
And with Power Swap, you can beat the market price every
single block, it's fast and highly liquid and just launched
their version 5, which has a new contract and new apis.
It has a more modular infrastructure with it, which is
more gas friendly and now supports free approvals using a
theorem permit messages. They also recently added support
for Avalanche polygons and PSC and you can always use Periscope
with your Ledger device right in their life.
Go to Paris op dot IO and get started.
Are your crypto assets sitting idle in your wallet.
Start earning rewards and contribute to the network
security by staking. With course one ass, taking
provider, securing over five billion dollars in assets.
Over 25, decentralized networks, including Solana Cosmos a
theorem and secret Network interested in running.
Your own branded nodes. The manage white label note as a
service offering leverages choruses ones highly available
and proven infrastructure, enabling you to participate
directly in decentralized Networks.
If you have been a loyal Solana delegator with course one, make
sure you check your wallets in the first-ever major nft drop by
any. Validator course, one will be
dropping over. 3,600 exclusive enter keys to its Salon Adela
Gators, according to their delegation profile in December
20 21, but if you missed out on this airdrop, don't worry, you
can still participate in the upcoming airdrops for Cosmos
change by simply delegating the chorus 1 notes head over now to
Coruscant. To begin your stating Journey.
So guys, welcome back onto the show, you know, as I mentioned,
you've bet you were here long time ago back in 2018.
And so, you know, hopefully, we've gained a few listeners in
that time. And so maybe for like, any of
the newer listeners who maybe didn't listen to the previous
episode, you know, can you can maybe start off with telling us
a little bit about your background and how you got
involved in crypto? Sure.
So first of all, thank you for having me.
Again. It has been a long time.
So I'm excited to be here. Epicenter is always been my
favorite podcast about myself. I've been in the crypto space
for you know, six since 2013, 2014 depends on how you count
2014 is really worried. When I dived in.
I started, I started grad school at MIT and there was just before
I started grad school. There was this.
MIT Bitcoin hackathon, which will build a cool product for
this is like pre cerium even and we want that hackathon and that
got me kind of like excited and I like what we can do with this
technology and I went to my professor and tell them.
Look, I wanna I want to focus like my research, my work on
this like emerging technology. So, you know, fast forward in.
It beat. I very quickly became Stood in,
you know, how how blockchain can have inherent privacy.
Not just in the transactional sense, not just be like the Z
cash or Minerva way or transferring assets with
privacy. But if we're thinking about
blockchain is like, you know, these these more involved like
replicated State machines more involved decentralized Cloud
computers. Then show leaders need to be a
way to handle sensitive data in those.
Web 30 applications. So I focus on that.
I focus my entire research on it.
I wrote a few papers. They got a bunch of citations
pretty, pretty substantial citations.
And that kind of led to the illegal project, which I spun
out as a company, 2016. And then in 2017, we did within
Nico and we started building that Network 2017 we did.
And And token sale for enigma with the idea of building a
network, not necessarily blockchain, but a network that
allows it to run privacy-preserving computations
and you know somewhere between 20 around 2019.
We kind of realize that it's not working the best way that was
about the same time that Cosmos was about.
I think either just released her there is decay.
I was about to release the res Decay.
I was really fascinated. I was actually very fascinated
by ten American senses. And then I looked into the SDK
and said wow, this is this is like much better.
Like we should be using that and then we pretty much a scratch
everything and then it's kind of like the between end of 2019 and
2020. Just like rebuild our
architecture around Cosmos SDK. And every 2020 released, you
know, secret Network, we use a different brand to kind of
distinguish. It, it had a new coin called
secret. And then in September 2020, we
actually launched like the, the, the Privacy capability.
So basically, in secret Network you have the ability to run
encrypted smart contracts. We're both the inputs, the
inputs, the the contract State and the outputs are many
decrypted and you can basically build end-to-end decentralized
applications with privacy and the network has been growing
substantially sense. I think one of the bigger Cosmos
that changed today and yeah, that's that's kind of like the
history from 2014 to 2020. Thank you.
That was very comprehensive and I'd like to dig into the switch
to Cosmos. So basically, you said that the
cosmos SDK was just a lot better than your previous technologies.
That can you kind of expand on that a little bit.
Yeah, I mean look our core offering our core capabilities
is like how do we build privacy into smart contracts and pre
Cosmos like like, you know, there was an option to four key
Theory or more do that. But that really didn't that
didn't really work well and we didn't want to do it.
So we started building our own P2P stack, are on some, some
kind of consensus a, it wasn't really consensus because We were
relying on the female form for consensus, but we spent like I
think 80% of our development are testing like building that
infrastructure that, you know, it was just a waste of time like
like that's not what we're going to focus on and then Cosmos gave
a great SDK truth be told at the time.
I think it improved today. But anytime the SDK was great.
The documentation was horrible, so it took us longer to get Like
fully on board than working with Kosmos, then we could have have
like today but still like all the parts are there and instead
of like focusing on building the P2P live and a consensus little,
we have that forgiven and we can just focus on the other aspects
of our technical stack. So, how whether the reactions
from the community, when you rebranded and switch, Tex Tex?
So people were confused. We were selling ourselves for a
long time as an l23. Fiery.
Mm is an L2 to other other changes.
Like, at that time, people did not believe in it in a cross
chain world. Like, everything was like, it is
smart content. That relates to Smart.
Contracts was like, no, no, no, everything has to be on the
etherium, like, what are you guys doing?
So, we got mixed reviews, but we didn't care.
Not that much. I mean, it's always better to
get good feedback. But like we just knew this was
the, this was the right approach.
And I think, you know, in the test of time, it's pretty proven
that this was the the right course of action.
We've looking back. Is there anything you would have
changed and how you how that process went?
There's one element, which I think the jury is still out on.
So, at that time, cause them wasn't was just started on, it
was still a prototype as well. We've actually helped cause and
wasn't quite a bit like one of our team members became a cult
contributor to cousin was them and I think there was a big
question like whether we are doubling down on closing walls
and webassembly or focusing, Evm, which is kind of what if
Mars is now trying to do. My gut feeling, is that, you
know, we made the right call. I do think that during the
cousin was a webassembly fruit, is the better approach.
I feel that that's what caused Moses is, consolidating around.
So I think it was the right decision, but I'm still not
sure. I think we'll know that in a
year or two. Would it be possible, you know,
to like first you could Network to support multiple VMS in the
future or is you know, is the goal really do?
Like focus on like, you know, you lose composability benefits
and stuff. Like if you start to do that.
Yeah, it gets complicated. You most likely lose
composability and we're not 100% sure like it.
Maybe it's a matter of effort. So supporting multiple VMS is a
lot of effort once you stuck with one.
Now we can do it. But you know, we are still is
fairly small team in terms of the developers.
Not the Apple system is big one in terms of code developers will
still small. So nacho that's like where we
want to put our effort in. Maybe.
And in that case. Yes, we start to run run across
problems, like composability. Other types of like
Integrations. Yeah, it becomes there will be
trade-offs for sure. So guys, I'm let's talk about
the secret Network. So that is, if I understand
correctly and there's currently 50 nodes.
So, basically, how is it determined?
How many nodes can participate, 70?
Sorry. Okay, and why is there an exact
number? Right.
So we initially we set it to 50 notes.
The reason was that, you know, in our Network, one thing.
I didn't mention that, you know, this is One requirement for
rounding. The validate, only secret
Network that other networks don't need, and that is you have
to use sgx. We use secure enclaves to
achieve privacy that combined with like security and
encryption protocols. And there is Some some costs
associated to it. So like, you know, if you run it
without sgx, it's not like orders.
It's not like, you know multiple times faster, but you do get
some some speed reduction. And so we thought that starting
with like, you know, 50 nodes basically smaller than I think
the 100 or 150 that cause most shows and other changes chose.
We felt that was the right number.
It wasn't an issue until like the last six.
Also in around six months ago, when the network was starting to
grow really fast. Like we got, a lot of people
want to become validators and that's why there was a network
vote to increase that to 70 reasons.
So you're right was 50, but recently, it was increased to 72
to a vote. And I do think we will, I think
we'll extend it over time. We've also a lot of our work for
the next scene is around improving.
Like the vam and like, you know, making that work faster and I
think as we do it, I will be easier to grow the number of
nodes guy. I think probably about more than
50% of the listenership familiar with what s GX is, but maybe for
the rest. Can you in a nutshell, explain
what? A trusted, execution environment
is and what kind of trusted execution environment sgx is
Sure. So I trusted execution
environment basically is, is kind of like a segregated piece
in like your process or your memory, which basically is
complete like completely walled out for anything else happening
in that system and no one can probe into it.
Not even the person owning that physical machine.
It's essentially a generalized how it will let you know.
How do wallet. Is essentially a piece of
Hardware where it allows you to run one computation which is to
sign from the actions, but but you can't probe into that wallet
and actually extract the sensitive data, which is the
private key. So sgx works very similarly, but
it allows you to run any kind of computation and then any data
that you push into that Enclave into that trusted execution.
Environment can't actually be seen.
By anyone not even the validator running the running the machine
just one quick note. There are different kinds of,
you know, trusted execution, environments, pretty much any
big vendor today, like like the that's building processors has a
version of it. So arm has a version.
Intel has a version It's called sgx.
That's what we're using right now and AMD has its own version.
How does the network know whether the notes?
Trust execution? Environment is legitimate.
Right. So that's one of the first
things that we did. We build a registration
protocol. So that that's where we kind of
diverge from like normal Cosmos. So when you add your when you
join us a new validator in our Network, essentially you need to
go through a registration process before you can start to
validate blocks. So what you would do is you
would run some code that we wrote inside of your trust and
execution environment. And that code basically says, it
generates like a keeper, right? A private and public key people
and then The Enclave signs it it's a process called remodeled
remote at the station. And then like the the remote at
the station, the signature over the generations.
Public key that blob of information is the posted on
chain as a proof that you're running, a genuine Enclave.
So, essentially sgx and other systems.
They basically allow you to verify externally that a
computation has happened inside of The Enclave.
It, you know, with correspond to a specific.
Perfect piece of code and it read correctly, any train on a
genuine enclave. And now that's been put on
chain. Everyone can validate that, you
know, that new validator is running a secure Enclave.
They generated this keeping inside of The Enclave.
So the private key and the well, the public is interested, but
the private key that was generated never left The
Enclave. Okay, and now The validator can
basically take that information take that the the publicly know
that this was done in a, genuine enclave, and encrypted and crypt
some kind of surgery, shared seed shared, see that all
validators share and put them Krypton seed on the on the
blockchain. Now the validator, that's right.
Registered can complete the registration by taking that
encrypted seed because we know that the private key for that
only leaves in the Arc Length. We know that the validator can
actually the crib that's it and see it.
They pull the pull it inside of their enclave and they decrypted
their and now it's you know, it's an ongoing process and in
you validate or that comes in both for the process and you get
into a system that the base, Sid.
Is shared by all enclaves. They've been vetted.
And now and now using that seed, you can derive new keys that
again, only the and playful can actually use to decrypt stuff
and I would formation coming from the outside.
You can use, you can use using those keys again, all of them
returned to the base entropy from that seed, you can use it
from the outside to encrypt stuff and then send it to the
Doris enclaves. I hope that's not too dense.
I don't know if if anything is confusing.
I mean it feel free to ask for clarifications.
I think I just follow up on this.
So just does this process. I mean, it sounds like magic
little bit. So this is p.
This is process actually work without relying on the
excitation of Intel whichever chip manufacturer you're using.
So basically can the secure Enclave prove that it's not
being watched or how exactly to you come by that at the station.
So the initial legislation part does rely on intelligence.
It's called Intel is V. I can't remember the Intel
service verification. I can remember the acronym, but
it does rely on 'i'll tell to basically.
Say look, we have like that signature that remote at the
station, which is essentially signature is from a genuine
Enclave that, you know, we manufactured.
Now, I do believe that in the next version of sgx, which we
are working on, including there's flexibility that, like
there's ways to do it without without actually going remotely
to endure servers. We have not implemented that
yet, but if As it does exist, that said the process that we
are generating that we're generating, you know, a private
key and a public key pill instead of The Enclave does mean
that we only have to do it once for every validator and then
that point the network can really kind of like self manage
yourself sovereign. Quick.
Can I follow up again on the sgx?
So basically, if I have a consumer notebook, what that
typically have an SG H, XO, what I have to buy a special computer
to actually have that included. It used to be the case.
That is actually that is actually something that, you
know, our network has an infrastructure committee, which
basically checks like at all times like water.
Disappointed, hard words, and what you need?
I think to be fair, like we can talk philosophically if that's
the right direction, but to be fair, it seems that a lot of
alligators are becoming more professionals.
So they're running they're not running notebooks.
Anyway, they're running. You know, serious server
infrastructure, again a philosophical question, but it
used to be the case that like any notebook would actually have
sgx support. But if they do, I think in the
latest chips have decided to only do that only enable that in
servers. So the answer is no no longer or
at least new notebooks to not support it.
X as far as I know, but again, I think it's less of a problem
because everyone in our sister in our Network are like most
professional validators that are running servers.
Anyway. Do you know what caused Intel
to, like sort of reverse Direction on that?
So we have pretty good ties with you tell.
I've asked that I didn't get like a fully clear answer.
Like I think that's that's something that's very internal
important for them. But my thinking is that you
know, they want to focus on high like using sgx and I'm Cliff and
confidential Computing in very, very high loads and that works
better with servers like they want companies to provide their
services. Protected by things like sgx and
enclaves less. So, originally originally the
idea of putting hgx, as far as I know with every computer was so
that, you know, let's say there's the you down like a
company gives you an agent software that you run locally
not on the server and that agent, you know, would run
inside of an autoclave locally. So you is the end user and the
customer are comfortable that you're soft.
Hasn't been tampered with. I think that that didn't become
like, that didn't pan out as a good business Direction, and it
was just costing them more money than it was, you know, giving
them. Also has a little bit of a DRM
solution. I remember that was sort of,
like, one of the things that they were pitching early on.
So only the validators need a, you know, so then I guess it's
like different classes of users. So to use secret Network, you
know, I don't need to have a xgx in my own computer to just be a
client, but so it gets because one is would if I just want to
run a full node, not As a non validator, do I still need an SG
x + 2? What kind of?
How does the security model change throughout when you're
not running? If you know, if you don't have
an SG X in your your rely relying on about it?
Like so I guess, you know, one on one side.
I feel like, you know, maybe you can even improve the like client
security model from normal because you can rely on certain
aspects of the sgx to prove that.
But on the other hand, how do ya?
I guess I'm more interesting. Is, how does the Privacy model
change then? I mean, first of all, this was
mostly for Simplicity like we thought about doing like a
hybrid model, willful notes don't I like somewhere between a
light client and a full node and don't actually have to run as
GX. It was too complicated.
I mean, it's all we can do it again.
It's a cost-benefit analysis. And so, so for now, even for
notes, need to run. Is she ex obviously end users
and clients like they don't. To, they don't need to involve.
You can check out the how the like client would work because I
know this has been a big issue in many privacy coins like in Z
cash, especially where you can't, you know, there is no
light client that exists for seek out.
So is there a like client that exists for secret?
Not really, but like, you know when it comes to let specific
things. So like like there's a concept
of you in keys and pretty much anything that's encrypted.
Like you can give a viewing key for example, to capital L.
And then like, you know, they can they can get like read-only
access to like important information.
So that's usually the way that we do be solving.
But no, there's no proper light client yet.
Yeah, so then back to the previous question.
So like what does. So, how do I like what kind of
privacy guarantees do I get when I request a when I try to use
secret Network, like, does the validator that I'm sending my
transaction, the validators, I'm carrying information from.
Can they learn about like my data?
No, they the valid ID is for sure.
Can't, you know, there's such a lemon?
Formation and sacred itself. The coin is is not private.
So there's such an information from that like in many systems.
But now when you when you send your information to a validator
and then when it's, you know, Ron and edit your blog like Dave
puts the state and the outputs, they're encrypted.
They're only being decrypted instead of The Enclave.
So like you'd like there's there's there's nothing that
yumi's end and we basically for correctness like we We'll take
all of the benefits of tender me.
Because because of the key sharing process that I because
of what I said in the beginning, when you register you get a
randomly generated seed, but then that's it is used to
pseudorandomly and deterministically.
Generate like the same set of keys for all nodes for all
computations for everything that's going on.
So consensus doesn't break like all.
All validators. Even if they don't see what they
computed, the end of the day, like the blocks that are
producing the the from the transactions, the outputs, like
all of them are the same. I guess my question is but if
I'm querying data of from the blockchain, so if I'm so, you
know, you mentioned this viewing Keys.
Like so if I'm asking a, you know, I'm querying a note
saying, hey, I want to know what my balance in my account.
Is, who can anyone see that? I guess, two things one.
Can they see that? I'm asking for a balance and
from what token. And then to can, they actually
see the balance of Itself. No, yeah, so let's say the
example of asking for query for like a token balance.
So they would see that the certain secret wallet and they
can see the address of the secret wallet is querying for a
balanced. They will not see.
They will know which token their current because each token is
its own like contract. But a, they would not be.
They would not know that you're craving for a token that we just
know that. That you're interacting with the
token contract from this secret address, and then the query
would basically, you know, which would pull the your balance from
the state, the validator won't see it.
Because like that part happens inside of The Enclave.
Then before releasing it outside of the autoclave.
I mean, there's there's kind of like for each for each query or
each transaction. There's kind of like, derived
key between the user The Enclave that only the article itself can
can see and the user can see. So what happens is the Alchemy
of uses that to encrypt the query result inside of the are
clave for the user and then release that.
So only the user, can client-side the privileged
information, the, the the other part is that there's there's a
very key. So you can you can share a view
in Key subject. For example, another selfies
could, you know, could Could get some kind of read only access
and can also be creeped, the information from a query but
those are the only parties that can actually see the results.
Either the user or whomever they gave if you in key to.
Does that make sense. Thank you.
That's super interesting. Yeah, it makes total sense.
I imagine, I imagine there are particular challenges to
building the user experience building, you know, as Fully
private chain. What are those?
So the there are actually several challenges both from a
developer and and any user from user perspective.
Right? Like whenever you're doing
something, you first have to give a view and key permission
for the wallet. Like let's say there's a new
token. So now there's a lot of Click
where you need to create a view in Key for that new token.
And then, you know, let your wallet or the application.
Use it in some, in some way, usually your wallet.
Just like another click people are not often used to it because
it's like only a secret Network, pretty much, that's something
that we're working on. And recently, we've enabled the
ability to use permits. I'm actually not even the best
person to explain those like that is even still new to me,
but they make the process much easier.
It's much more automated. Basically.
It's like you don't have to create a purely.
It's much more automated in that sense.
So, that's one challenge. The other challenge that this
creates is in many cases. You know, let's say there is a
big nft drop, right? And everyone are coming at the
same time and they want to meet their entities.
Well, they first have to like, create viewing keys to see
those. Again.
This is mostly solved with permits.
But if you're not using permits, then that that creates like a
lot of transactions immediately on the And we have seen that
create some let's say difficult stress on the network that
another Network. You don't see because you don't
have that functionality. So that's like another challenge
and the third challenge is you know, a lot of like if you look
at Tara another and other networks, a lot of them, they
cached information. So, you know, let's say your
interact with the contract. And there's a lot of the same
qualities. There's mostly reads just a few
rides, so they would cash it. Honestly on the centralized
server to kind of reduce the load, the query load from the
network but here because every user have access to only like
what robe like they're over information.
No one can see the fool like the full state it and usually each
user just queries their own row. You get a lot of again, a lot of
queries. Which you cannot cash and that
creates making optimization really, really, really hard.
I don't think there's a perfect solution that we are doing.
We're doing quite a lot of work than to improve.
But that's I think that's part of the cost of, you know, riding
with privacy enabled. How about from the developer
standpoint of view? Like can I you know, so, you
know as as we mentioned cause and walls.
Mm is like, you know, becoming sort of the standard across many
Cosmos changes like especially like Tara.
Can I just go take a Tara contract and just one click
redeploy it on to secret Network or is there sort of additional
hurdles that we developers have to like go through in order to
make their contracts design working with the Privacy models?
Very few. Hell that is most of them are
just like, because of, like, echo system tools.
So, you know, Tara. Is there a JS?
We have secant years, but it's pretty much the same thing.
We've done it. Other people have done it.
It's really simple. It's simpler than most people
think. I think that's the biggest
benefit that you know, we're all we're all converging to the
same. Like, you know model with cousin
was in words like very, very easy to cross.
Deploy, and actually one of our things that we want to do in Key
one is we want to give a very, very easy guide on if you deploy
your app on Tara, here's how to convert it to secretly.
Like, you know, five minutes. Do I what about like for like,
how do I Define this like viewing restrictions?
Right? Because you know on I'm sure on
most cause I'm awesome contracts.
Anyone can just query any part of a contract here.
Obviously, I have to add additional restrictions to say,
you know, if you're trying to carry this balance, you actually
have to be the owner of this balance.
So are there like additional sort of?
I guess in the view from the read functions of the contract.
I just have to add more a little bit more, restrictions there, or
is there anything more complicated than that?
I mean, that's again. If you want privacy if you want
to do a lot more selective access control stuff like that,
it is that you need to it. That is up to you.
I mean technically you don't have to do them, it would work
without it. But if you if you want to use
these functionalities, then you have to make slight changes.
Yes, but again, they're not big. They're usually not big.
Can I when using secret? Can I do?
I do all contracts have to execute inside the SG X.
So let's say there's some things that are just like, you know,
you know because obviously and I can maybe one thing before like
regarding that is like how does computation, you know,
expensiveness work, and relative compared to something, you know
that, you know, if all the cause I know one of the big issues
with got issues but you know, one of the restrictions that GX
is you have like You know, it's definitely slower than running
on our normals on a normal CPU. You can't do like can you do
like hyper that you know multi-threading and like you
have lesser RAM and stuff. So what can you tell us a little
bit about some of the restrictions that are
developers? Might have there.
Sure, so it's single-threaded but I think most executions in
Cosmos closing was a war Central thread.
Until recently. We are working right now on
adding multi-threaded support like that's actually almost
done. So we are going to support multi
threading it as she acts, it wasn't trivial but that's one of
the optimizations we're doing the the memory issue.
There's enough memory, but In many cases because of the way
she acts works, then you know, you have, you have a lot of like
cache misses and, you know, if you if you if you don't like,
you know, efficiently load information inside of the
enclave and outside, then that could take a really long time.
I think in our profile and we saw that like, you know, every
time we open it on Cliff, we loaded the, we reloaded the
contract that is taken in some cases.
I think like the majority. You of time, spent in running
the execution. So yes, the the considerations
Derek's not review. We are slowly improving these
resolving these amazing and I think we're in a much better
position. The Slowdown is not that bad
today, but it's going to really improve in the next year.
That's, that's one thing, the other thing, which is slightly
in issue is, you know, because of because of age, like fgx
doesn't Force Security reasons. It doesn't allow you to use like
standard libraries and stuff like that.
And so like using something like was mail, which is the go to, I
guess, interpreter or just-in-time compiler for
running wasn't code. And that's what I think cause
that's what cause there was a muse, is natively like we
couldn't use that not easily. So we replace that that took a
lot of effort, but we replace Tweed was me, which is more like
a pure interpreter and that works but that is much slower
than was Mill as well. So again, one of our, one of our
things on the to-do list is to go back.
Read the great was male in a way that is supported by GX.
So can I then like so then that case, like if there is, can I
ought to have certain contracts not run in the sgx.
We're like, let's say there is just, you know, heavy
computation functions that, you know, I have no reason to keep
private. Can I reduce my gas costs by
writing those not in the sgx? Not right now, but that's a
fantastic idea from a scalability perspective than
here. Right?
Where would you place like the limit of where like sgx
computation can go? Like, you know, you know, we
have a spectrum, you know, like, you know, like okay, how do you
think it will? Is sgx computation today?
Like is it can you do more than you can in DVM or you know, kick
it ever get to Native Cosmopolitan scale or Like even
Solana style scale. Where do you see?
Like the limits are good? Or, you know, assuming you can
get all these optimizations you want.
Where do you think it will end up Landing?
Yeah. I think that won't be an issue.
I think these are engineering challenges and I think at the
end of the day to slow down, there will be slow down.
It won't be meaningful. I think the one place was I'm
not sure he's wherever in cases where you need to access.
You know, let's say are raised. Information.
Like, you know, you want to access like like you want to run
through all of the users at the same time that that might be the
only place where I think it's going to be problematic at the
end. But everything else I think is,
you know, we can resolve it in, we will resolve it.
So, secret network is IBC and able, right.
So basically, how does how does the secret part work across
different Cosmo space blockchain?
So can you kind of, can any IBC, enabled blockchain, query smart
contract? So what, what, how does it work?
So, right now, we kind of did what Tara did and I think most
chains. Sorry.
I don't know if you remember, but you and your co-founder with
us, Moses, you gave us the tip to do these.
We we only enabled like, you know, sending native Native
assets on IBC right now between chain, two chain.
We do not support calling one contract on our chain.
And on another, I beseech, a that is Something that's going
to happen in. Let's say IB C 2.0 upgrade
upgrade which is going to happen sometime in 2022.
But so far what you can do is you can transfer assets, and you
can also do something which we are doing.
Like for example, you can take osmo or atom or luna or you see.
And you can turn something to our chain and then via ABC and
then you can wrap them as as as Can and that token gives you
privacy? So for example, if you want to
trade your awesome or privately, then you can move it to secret
Network rapid. We actually have a UI to do,
very simply and then you can transact with it.
You can, you know, split it different wallets.
You can edit to secret swab, which is our mmm, and trade
their preferred to something else.
And then you can, you know, exit back in line.
You can be unwrapped it and exit bed for IBC to whatever.
So changing IBC that you want. So those are the capabilities
that are enabled right now. And I was wondering.
So can you use the sgx to do multi-party computation?
I mean multiple, I mean technically what we're doing is
multi-party computation, but we are using this GX.
If the question is whether we can do multiply the computation,
like it's pure cryptographic form.
Then I would say that's that's a very different implementation.
We can do it. It can use sgx to simplify
something. So some element of hgx can you
know, make the NPC protocols that you use simpler?
Because you know, you can trial if you if you take An
assumption. For example, that is GX, you
know, can protect correctness and and you know, whoever's
running the code inside of an autoclave will not break
protocol. So you can use more like, what
we know is semi, but honest but curious protocols, which
basically assume participant will try to link data, but they
will not change your protocol. So again s GX can help us in
developing like these kind of Solutions in a much simpler and
more scalable way. Way, but you know, they're
they're they're another tool. They're not like it's not that
you get F PC for free. It's still a very complicated
thing to do and you know, we talked about scalability so
much. I think MPC for general-purpose
computations. Unfortunately the the cost
reduction, the, the sort of the the cost increase at the speed,
reduction would be so heavy that I doubt that a developer would
Use that unfortunately today. So, yeah, you know, I think one
of the interesting things that I, you know, how what I see
secret network is doing in, a lot of ways is, you know, I
think the sgx as a computer system like, you know, it
provides you basically like high levels of, you know, safety and
privacy but on its own, it never, it doesn't provide like
this. And so one of the things I see
it as, you know, I picked secret Network ads, when I explain it
to people, there's like, I call it like, it's like a Date sgx,
right? Where it adds liveness to, to
the to the sgx platform. And like so, you know, one thing
is like, could we start to? We also use it for things like
being a custodian for example, so, you know, I think, like, for
example, I know the Avalanche Bridge with the area was
basically running on a single sgx right now, which is kind of
crazy to me. But like, you know, partially,
it's kind of crazy mostly because, you know, if If it's a
single sgx, you know, it could have a lot of liveness issues.
We're like sure entrust, the sgx a safety properties.
But if that machine breaks down like we're in for a lot of
trouble. Right.
And so like, could we use the secret Network as a distributed
custodian? And that sort of way, I think we
can, and we actually have some G that are, you know, taking the
direction. We have it available core
developer called the soft. He just meant an interesting
tweet about how like dolls can now control like, you know,
private keys inside of the of their contracts.
And then we die PC and other things like essentially like do
stuff on other chains through the Dow, be cut because it
controls, you know, the The key is in is live - live.
This is pretty much guaranteed. So by the way, I like your
Peach. I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna
steal that if that's okay. So, here is a.
So, here's the other part that it about, you know, the big
question I have for sgx. And so, you know, you know, you
know, we've worked a lot on like, front-running resistance
related things and like mempool privacy, and I know that's like
something that the sgx also, you know, Secret at work provides in
a lot of ways, but for me, one of the biggest concerns I've had
with, like, the sgx is, you know, we see that like there
seem to be on a semi-regular basis, like, Law judge found in
the sgx and and the sgx and like people are able to find
vulnerabilities. And you know, in my opinion, how
I see it is like right now the the value in finding a
vulnerability that you know, there isn't even that high of a
benefit right now. It's been mostly like, you know,
just academic research teams that have been finding these
vulnerabilities, but you know, as there's more, and more
economic value that's happening. And, you know, if you can
extract Mev by breaking the security model, Hell of an sgx
and extract billions of dollars of Mev that that's essentially a
billion dollar bounty on Breaking the sgx.
And is that like do you think that that's the X can sustain
that level of security budget? I mean, I guess it's, you know,
I'm speaking from a position. I do believe that's the case.
I do believe for many, many use cases.
That's definitely the case. I like the idea that secret
network is, the biggest honey pot for testing secure enclaves
at scale. So far.
We didn't have problems. And, you know, any time there's
a flaw, we immediately patch it. And Through a network upgrade,
you know, you make sure that everyone is patched.
We have a very, very strict about it even stricter than most
other players. I've seen using a, she acts but
I guess it's to be seen from my perspective.
Look, as you know, my background is in cryptography and PC.
Like I'm very, very much excited in the future to include other
kinds of technologies that are you know, more cryptographic in
nature. Into secret Network.
At this point, like I'm more concerned that you know,
developers would not be willing to take the slow down and the
cost increase of using protocol for graphic Technologies and
many of them have other other issues and constraints that
people often Overlook when they when they present them.
So it was it's a it's a balancing act like we do.
Feel. This is the best solution for
the problem right now. We like the idea that it allows
us to check, you know things at scale with high value and then
you know over time hopefully that will help us to make our
system Enclave sgx specifically enclaves in general more and
more robust. But at the end of the day like
if the technology allows it, The users and developers demanded
like I would be super excited to look again at MPC and even
homomorphic encryption Solutions at least to, you know, to some
aspects. And some use cases that are
being built on our Network. And I really want to talk about
the ecosystem. But now I have to follow up
again. Damn, you sonny.
And so, basically, if I'm a node in the network, and I am, how
would I, how would I know? How would I find out about the
fact that some sgx was compromised or is being viewed
by something? That's not the sgx.
I mean, so basically, how, how would I catch on?
I mean, how is there like I say I can read The coal mine
somewhere because basically with a lot of the shielded protocols,
there's no way to actually do check sums, right?
The ones there's one stirs. So first of all, I don't want to
say that most vulnerabilities, you know, their academic
research has and they are way way way overblown.
There's been very few of them. Especially the ones in the early
days which which were I think devastating and easy to exploit
Not even or not easy, but like, you know possible to exploit not
in the laboratory setting. But putting that aside, you
know, once there's what is there's you know, and as GX
issue, then we can trigger. How'd folk.
We can ask everyone to re-register, you know, the
relationship protocol that we mention, we can trigger.
How it for about or post second Enclave, update.
And then everyone has to re-register every out for the,
that happens. Everyone has to go through the
registration protocol again. And at that point, if they are
now running the fully patched, you know, version of DirectX
interval feel well and software, then they won't be able to
register. So that's and that's how people
know like, you know, there's a half of kids network it.
Yeah. At so.
But that's only if it if it's brought to your attention,
right? That there is a vulnerability in
the sgx. So basically how would I how
would you find out that there's a vulnerability?
If it's not, you know, someone, you know, white or gray hair to
kind of makes this publicly available information.
It's your question. If someone were to fight,
affordability, it's a blackhead. They don't disclose these.
If there isn't the way of it, we're not aware of it.
Then what happened could that could have This their service.
Yes. I mean, I there's no there's no
way to protect against that, you know, very much like with the Z
cash. Like, you know, publication
there was a math, equation devil and you could have done like
pretty like you could leak the keys, if I remember correctly.
And if someone had found it and not disclose it and someone did
then they could exploit it. So, there's no way we would do
with that in that situation. Okay, there's no way to know.
Okay, quit. So, let's move onto to the
ecosystem. So, tell us about the kind of
applications that are currently running on secret Network.
Yeah, that I'm pretty excited about.
We have a few dex's that our FrontRunner resistant, the
during fairly. Okay, not.
That is great as Moses, but they are used.
I'm an avid user of the, the fraud is this resistance is
really cool. The Privacy aspect is really
cool. We have over 100 million, a fake
of assets. Maybe maybe even I mean maybe
more depends how you count. In our Network that if either or
originated by projects your network, or we've been brought
for me cereal because we have any Syrian believe, somebody
smart chain because we're everybody small chain and from
other IBC, they put networks. So a lot of use cases around
around that. Then there's we've released the
secret 10ft standard which basically allows you to You
know, launched a nasty and it's the collections and it's the the
part of me, the secret ft is that, you know, you can Define
private metadata such as Ali. The owner can actually see the
data and that owner can give viewing access to other parties.
If so, they choose and where you know, there's a there's a big
World published that we announced yesterday with credit
Tarantino that there's an auction for him.
His original screenplay of Pulp Fiction, which is something that
no one has ever seen. It's like in his hand, right?
There's a lot of things and details about the, the original
script notes to himself. Like, markups markdowns, like
like, you know, comments stuff that hasn't been in the in the
final movie and understand that is been something that he kept
private for 25 years and now we sell in those a secret.
And if T's and essentially that's going to be in an auction
in two. Weeks and only the people who
buy it would be able to see it and then, you know, they can
decide if they want to if they want to give access to other
people or not. So that's that's another use
case. There's just a slew like so many
and a few use cases right now. There's a Marketplace called
stash that launched a month ago. And there's been I think like to
thousands of nft drops and there's a new one every day and
each one of the views like the the Privacy aspect.
It's in very, very interested ways.
There are a few games building on our Network and I think what
we can provide those other networks can provide is a we can
allow you to build your games with like he did he did this
game State unchanged. So for example, if you do poker
you can do it fully or chain because you can keep the cards
themselves, you know, private for it, each participant until
the right moment. So we see a lot of that.
And we actually seen there are two defy use cases or those
private lead coming out this month by a company called Sienna
and other. There is shade which is going to
be the first privacy-preserving, stable coin algorithmic stable
quality. It's kind of a mix between a
little boost, a cow Reserve currency and a fully pegs
privacy-preserving, stable coin and They're a bit more lofty
ideas that I think are just going to be, they're going to
take time to be adopted. But I'm really excited about
them. There's data V, which is the
data is secured in a Marketplace for all kinds of like use cases.
There's a doctor tried to work on put in some form of medical
data on the blockchain and Allah.
We like Physicians to look into that.
Is a company building credit score solution so that you know
privacy-preserving credit score is so, you know, you could do
maybe like stuff like other collateralized loads on the
blockchain. So a lot of things are like
being built right now. Yeah, I think that's really
cool. You know, I think well, you
know, a lot of these use cases, makes a lot of sense.
What one thing. I do want to ask those like, you
know, for the end of T is it seems like, you know, and at
least from my social networks and stuff, you know, I've seen a
lot of people are pretty excited about like the nfc's happening
on secret Network. What wider?
And of key is really want that much privacy, you know, it seems
that usually FPS are mostly about status signaling and I
want people to know that I own the the hey check out and look
at Michael. You know vanity is what is sort
of what's driving the user demand behind like private and
of Teas. Well, first of all, you can do
really interesting things that you can do it.
Like we're just scratching the surface.
So like, you know, there's like the there, they're like now
redacted drops. They'll you know, you see you
can brag that you have data Steve see through the watermark
or low resolution or part of it is redacted.
Just like a redacted Club, but I think the eyes are redacted,
stuff like that, but then the full picture you see for
yourself. There were secret pods were
like, you know, the background was what?
Only the order could see, there's a secret skulls, which
created a really interesting economic dynamics.
That idea, was that you meet or excavate a skull and that has
its base properties. That's visible.
But now you have several times. Will you can reveal traits like
one by one that created in interesting?
Economic Dynamic where people were like, okay, maybe the
things that are worth the most you just say lead a fully heated
scallop with all the traits. Still hit it.
Oh baby, I reveal like one trait, you know, kind of like in
blackjack. I got like a really, really rare
trade, but maybe the other words are like, you know, they're
crap, but it's not really worth that much.
So, that is an interesting game theory.
Do I sell it down or do I keep opening the hopefully really
decrease the value farther. So there's a lot of interesting
things. You can do that.
You can't do it. Nobody lefties.
And if you want status, The gear you can, you can't reveal a
portion or low resolution version or you can reveal the
whole thing. That's five.
There's a dust collection which it does reveal the whole thing.
But then the private better data is you aided, your telegram
ahead and that is you to a secret chat but no one else can
know about obviated to. So, you know, it's it's, it's an
interesting experiment. I feel and with credit
Tarantino, I can tell you 100%. He's been Approach.
But a lot of Ft companies and providers and he said no to all
of them because he said, what is the point of me upload?
These something that is already public and then everyone can see
it and download it. And then why would anyone buy
that? If they can already get like,
you know, get a copy of it and the idea of like keeping it a
secret until the first person buys it that really clicked with
him and we got that feedback from better.
Of Artie's said Thursday, that we talked to.
So apparently there's a need. So Gaia, thank you so much for
coming on. Where can people learn about
secret Network and find the Dachshund?
Find the grant program and so on.
Right. So if you go to secret, does
that work? That's scrt that Network?
You should be able to find pretty much everything that you
know, you need and then you can find, there's the ad, secret
Network, a Twitter and we have a Discord and you can follow me at
Ed guys's gy Z Ys on Twitter. And if you want to apply for a
grant, You know, just hit me up on Twitter personally or come to
all this code come to the dev Channel or the general Channel.
Say, hey, we have granted, you have want to talk about it and
either myself or one of the team members will talk to you.
Perfect. Thank you guy.
Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us on this
week's episode. We release new episodes every
week. You can find And subscribe to
the show on iTunes Spotify, YouTube SoundCloud or wherever
you listen to podcast. And if you have a Google home or
Alexa device, you can tell it to listen to the latest episode of
the epicenter podcast. Go to epicenter dot TV /,
subscribe for a full list of places where you can watch and
listen, while you're there, be sure to sign up for the
newsletter. So you get new episodes in your
inbox as they're released. If you want to interact with us
guests or other podcast listeners, you can follow Oh us
on Twitter, and please leave us a review on iTunes.
It helps people find the show, and we're always happy to read
them. But thanks so much and we look
forward to being back next week.