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

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

#41

Post by faizshah »

kodablah wrote: post #37
faizshah wrote: post #26

I had a similar idea! I'm glad something like this is being implemented. 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 fo…

MaidSafe[1] is a similar scheme for data (not CPU cycles) and it does have a currency based on amount shared and a couple of other things. It is also serverless but it doesn't use a blockchain. They are doing a lot of active development in the space right now. 1 - http://maidsafe.net/ Edit: actually it does appear a goal is to share computing power though I know less about those details compared to the data distribut…

That's interesting, I'll take a look.

I have been watching http://www.zennet.sc/ which is the closest I have found but maidsafe seems pretty interesting as well.

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

#42

Post by faizshah »

kordless wrote: post #36
faizshah wrote: post #26

I had a similar idea! I'm glad something like this is being implemented. 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 fo…

There are a few of us creeping around. :) You are correct about using stored work to pay for other compute being interesting. I believe this is actually the nature of reality, not just some new fangled thing we're getting around to 'inventing'. I will note this is an opinion of a futurist, so it is what it is. At the least, compute federation is enabled with cryptocurrencies. They give you a way to pay for use (payme…

I'm not a big fan of cryptocurrencies, especially the blockchain, but if they did one thing they started up the conversation in government of how distributed electronic currencies should be regulated. So I think more experimental things like what I described should show up in the near future. :)

One of my friends informed me that the idea of currencies backed by computing power has existed for a long time in science fiction so perhaps we'll see these specific kinds of systems soon.

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

#43

Post by kodablah »

wcummings wrote: post #39
kodablah wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MaidSafe[1] is a similar scheme for data (not CPU cycles) and it does have a currency based on amount shared and a couple of other things. It is also serverless but it doesn't use a blockchain. They are doing a lot of active development in the space right now. 1 - http://maidsafe.net/ Edit: actually it does appear a goal is to share computing power though I know less about those details compared to the data distribut…

>They are doing a lot of active development in the space right now. Citation needed, the only thing I've seen maidsafe do is take peoples' money

See the forum [1], watch the sprints [2], look at GitHub [3] and watch their dev in Rust.

1 - https://forum.safenetwork.io/ 2 - https://maidsafe.atlassian.net/ 3 - https://github.com/maidsafe/

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

#44

Post by GuyZ »

zekevermillion wrote: post #35
GuyZ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Enigma here). Yes, that is possible. You can distribute a key to the nodes and make it retrievable only if some computation is satisfied (which is also done privately and leaks no information). We have some ideas on how to do it, but we're hoping gifted developers out there would use our platform to develop such highly-needed applications (that would probably be much better than what we have in mind).

This is very exciting!

Thanks! We think so too :)!

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

#45

Post by GuyZ »

michwill wrote: post #28
GuyZ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Enigma here). Yes, that is possible. You can distribute a key to the nodes and make it retrievable only if some computation is satisfied (which is also done privately and leaks no information). We have some ideas on how to do it, but we're hoping gifted developers out there would use our platform to develop such highly-needed applications (that would probably be much better than what we have in mind).

Oh wow. Do you have a github repo?)

We'll be releasing one soon!

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

#46

Post by WhitneyLand »

shasta wrote: post #31

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

What is your point? That this is not an advancement over the current state of affairs, or that you have a better idea?

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

#48

Post by EGreg »

GuyZ wrote: post #16
jgrowl wrote: post #9

So if I am understanding correctly, this could compete with services like s3 and ec2. 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. The application developer will then use a provided scripting language (I am not sure if they actually write the applicatio…

(I'm one of the creators of this project) I don't believe centralized/public clouds will disappear anytime soon. However, there simply aren't any privacy-preserving alternatives out there. We're hoping to change that. Also, your description is accurate. We'll be releasing our code and some dev-friendly documentation for the beta soon. You're welcome to sign up at http://enigma.media.mit.edu .

Sometimes I wonder what kind of operations would actually be useful to do on such data in the real world.

I mean, the way the web currently works is that I trust some server to host my data. I can have this service auth an external consumer site and display data in an iframe, say, which the consumer site can't get at. This is good enough for displaying people their personalized info (name, friends) on various services (eg directions to their house in an iframe, for a user authenticated with my chosen provider).

But to go further, what if I don't want to trust any provider?

Then I could simply encrypt the data and store encrypted data with the provider (or providers for redundancy). The authentication could be replaced with visitors holding a key to decrypt the data (because I gave it to them) and I can switch to using some other key and effectively "unfriend" those who don't get my updated key.

But all this is good enough for displaying data and files I upload. Now, why would I want to do operations on those files "in the cloud" without trusting a provider? I am already trusting my friends with the data, since they can reshare it once it's displayed to them. So why not trust a provider? One of my friends can run the provider.

I guess the only scenario I see it being useful is if all my friends can only have limited access to the data and all manipulations on the data are collaborative, and that's where the homeomorphism comes in. Perhaps no one will be able to see the whole data and it's not really about data at all, but views of some Enigmatic process running on some network (like an autonomous corporation.) is that the use case?

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

#49

Post by TimJRobinson »

This would be awesome as an alternative to Facebook having all your likes / 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.

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.

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.

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

#50

Post by shasta »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #46
shasta wrote: post #31

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

What is your point? That this is not an advancement over the current state of affairs, or that you have a better idea?

I found the original article light on explanation and so posted what I thought to be a good summary sentence that I found in another place.
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