Key takeaways
- Enya.ai focuses on making advanced cryptographic techniques like secure multi-party computation and homomorphic encryption accessible to developers building privacy-first applications.
- Public blockchains leak sensitive information such as trade order flow in DeFi, which malicious actors exploit for rent-seeking profits at users' expense.
- Enya's edge-based secure computation approach allows users to keep sensitive data on personal devices while maintaining selective control over what operations applications can perform.
- The OMG Network partnership created OMGX, an Ethereum-compatible Layer 2 that enables hybrid compute by running computationally intensive algorithms off-chain on infrastructure like AWS Lambda.
- Secure multi-party computation enables multiple parties with individual data to compute collective results without sharing underlying information with each other.
Why privacy needs more than a blockchain
Ashton Addison: Why did Enya focus on both privacy and decentralized infrastructure?▶ 01:11
Alan Chiu: Our co-founder is a Stanford professor who works at the intersection of distributed systems, data privacy, cryptography and machine learning. When we met, we saw that many problems with internet businesses trace back to users no longer controlling their own data. We asked what would happen if developers could build privacy-first applications more easily, and if users and developers had finer-grained control over who can access data. It isn't a black-and-white choice between sharing nothing and sharing everything. Selective sharing is often helpful, because we sometimes need to share some data to complete transactions. That led us to make advanced cryptographic techniques, such as secure multi-party computation and homomorphic encryption, much easier for developers to use.
Ashton: Did you see gaps in how Bitcoin, Ethereum and other layer 1 blockchains handle privacy?▶ 03:10
Alan: Decentralization brings resilience and censorship resistance, but that alone doesn't guarantee privacy. We see all kinds of information leak on public blockchains. In DeFi, for example, trade information and order flow can be manipulated by various actors in a rent-seeking way that extracts profit from ordinary users. That is a symptom of missing selective privacy controls: data users don't want exposed ends up on the blockchain, and they get taken advantage of.
Decentralization brings resilience and censorship resistance, but that alone doesn't guarantee privacy.
How Enya's privacy technology works
Ashton: What does Enya offer that Bitcoin and Ethereum don't?▶ 04:54
Alan: We've made it much easier for developers to build privacy-first applications that leave sensitive data on edge devices such as mobile phones. They use techniques like secure multi-party computation and homomorphic encryption. The user decides whether to keep the data on their phone or let an application perform a limited set of operations on it after it has been encrypted. Your sensitive information never gets out there. This edge-based approach complements decentralized infrastructure. You secure the data at the edge and let people control what can be done with it, so you don't have to worry about sensitive data sitting on a public blockchain for eternity.
Ashton: What is secure multi-party computation, and how does it benefit users?▶ 06:13
Alan: Say two or more parties each own data and want to compute a result based on everyone's information, but they don't want to share that information with each other. They could be competitors in an industry who want to look for fraud or suspicious patterns together. Secure multi-party computation computes a result on the collective data set without pulling all the data into one place.
OMGX and the future of DeFi
Ashton: What does the partnership with OMG Network to create OMGX mean for the industry?▶ 07:24
Alan: OMGX is an EVM-compatible layer 2 whose trust is rooted in Ethereum itself. Any DeFi or NFT project can migrate easily and enjoy the cost savings and fast throughput. On top of that, we're introducing extensible smart contracts and hybrid compute. A smart contract developer can write decentralized applications that trigger code running on web-scale infrastructure like AWS Lambda. That lets you move computationally intensive algorithms off-chain, including ones that are too slow or too expensive to run in Solidity. Advanced techniques like secure computation become possible inside a decentralized application.
Ashton: How do you see DeFi trends evolving, and where does privacy fit in?▶ 09:10
Alan: We're seeing a drive towards capital efficiency and user-friendliness, which makes sense as the industry matures. More efficient use of capital drives higher returns, which attracts liquidity providers. Despite DeFi's incredible growth over the past couple of years, we're still in the early days, and many user experience issues remain, including privacy. With OMGX, we expect DeFi teams to use hybrid compute to roll out more sophisticated algorithms for better capital efficiency. They can also use secure computation to protect their users' privacy. The better they serve users, the more users and liquidity they will attract.
Ashton: How are you making it easier for developers and other networks to build on Enya, especially on layer 2?▶ 11:09
Alan: From day one we've focused on making advanced technologies accessible to developers, because otherwise they get stuck in research and never become widely used. For OMGX, we're partnering with teams such as Polywrap, formerly Web3API, so developers can build client-side apps without integrating static SDKs into their web apps. We also have a dedicated team that supports developers building on the platform, and we invest heavily in keeping our documentation current and comprehensive. The technology matters for adoption, but you have to look at the whole picture, including the human element.
We should learn from the Web 2 experience and do a better job in the Web 3 world.
Roadmap and the road to private-by-default
Ashton: What milestones can we expect before the end of 2021?▶ 13:09
Alan: We launched the OMGX testnet on Rinkeby three months ago. We're fortunate to be working with a fair number of strong teams that will migrate their projects to OMGX. There are many exciting announcements coming in the next several months that I can't talk about yet. We're excited about what we'll be able to do for users and developers, and to help grow the whole Ethereum ecosystem together.
Ashton: Looking three to five years out, how do you see privacy and data management evolving across blockchains?▶ 14:25
Alan: We're still going through growing pains, and many developers are legitimately focused on scalability and cost because those constrain how fast the ecosystem can grow. Once we're past those humps, newer users dabbling in DeFi and minting their first NFTs will start asking what is happening to their personal information and what trail they're leaving on Ethereum or other chains. Cookie tracking across the web has been widely reported, and it has made consumers far more aware of data privacy than they were ten years ago. Those companies won't go away just because they're now trading on a DeFi protocol or minting NFTs. As an ecosystem, we need to anticipate these concerns and build applications with privacy controls from day one, rather than reacting to users after the fact. We should learn from the Web 2 experience and do a better job in the Web 3 world.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Recorded August 2021.
