There’s a blockchain startup company that chose to name itself Enigma. Mysterious, puzzling, difficult to understand, the reason Enigma chose this name is …well an enigma to me, but regardless less take a look at what this startup has planned.

This startup was incubated in an MIT media lab and the team listed on their website represents that.

When you hear Enigma, think data, data, data, it’s all about the data sets.

You may remember my recent video that covered Santiment
Like Santiment, Enigma is focused on providing it’s users with data that they can use to make wise investments.
Unlike Santiment however, Enigma is giving it’s users free range to create their own data sets and to be an integral part of the platform. You can build a reputation, and get paid in the native coin ENG for subscriptions. Conversely, if you are interested in purchasing data rather than curating it, you can of course do so by purchasing it with ENG coins.
They have long term goals for data encryption technology, but this is their starting point.

Enigma will use both on chain and off chain transactions. The subscriptions, rewards and penalties will all be handled on chain, and the data storage and transmission will occur off chain.

I can’t make a video that features Enigma without mentioning the incident that occurred a little over 2 weeks ago.

Unfortunately there were some eager investors that were in the slack channel and on the mailing list who were fooled into believing that an additional pre-sale was available to them. In response to this, these eager investors forked over around 1,400 ether to the address of the hacker. Enigma did have a legitimate pre sale, but it was only open for accredited investors, and they had warned previously that they would not solicit funds through the slack channel or mailing lists.

There’s one more thing that we can learn from Enigma, and that’s the healthy reminder that it’s better to be overly cautious rather than overly enthusiastic when it comes to investing in new projects.

Before you decide to give anyone your money, you’d better be educating yourself on how to:

• Find official updates
• How the ICO is organized
• Who to ask if you have any questions.

In their defense, the hacker gained their trust because they had administrative access to Enigma’s official slack channel, website and mailing list. They attained this access thanks to the lax practices regarding passwords of the Enigma team. The hacker began falsifying information and was able to take advantage of individuals who did not question the sudden change in the ICO organization.
The Enigma team has since dramatically increased their precautions with passwords and finally enabled 2 factor authentication. They ensure that the website for their token sale has not been compromised since it is on a different and more secure server.

Speaking of their ICO, it is scheduled for September 11th.

Additional Reading/Sources:

Enigma Website
ICO Info
TechCrunch Article
Wired Article
Santiment Website