I was thinking about ChainLink and how you can use it to sell your data streams to the smart contract economy.
Could you do something similar with Enigma? Let’s say I publish my real-time stream on the Enigma network. Secret contracts using my stream pays me for the data I provide. After some time, let’s say an hour, the data is made public so that the validity of the data and the contract execution can be verified.
This model differs from ChainLink in the sense that the data is verified subsequently and not managed by an oracle. But perhaps it could still be a legitimate way of monetizing a data stream?
Chainlink sends data to ethereum in a public way. So as soon as the data hits Ethereum, anyone can copy and it would be hard to create a continuous income stream
Enigma secrets contracts are stateful, like Ethereum smart contracts. You can upload data to a contract periodically and update the state. You can give addresses who subscribe to your dataset (this would be via a smart contract on Ethereum) the ability to read the secret contract state which contains your data stream.
You can reveal the data publicly after a longer time period.
This model differs from ChainLink in the sense that the data is verified subsequently and not managed by an oracle. But perhaps it could still be a legitimate way of monetizing a data stream?
Regarding the last part, I am not sure if I follow your question
Chainlink sends data to ethereum in a public way. So as soon as the data hits Ethereum, anyone can copy and it would be hard to create a continuous income stream
Yes, but I still think that a data stream could be monetized with ChainLink. Most of the data would not be written onto the blockchain; writes would only happen on special occasions when some threshold is reached. But if I can write the entire sequence of data with Enigma, it’s definitely great, and I would not have to worry about ever leaking bits of data prematurely.
Regarding the last part, I am not sure if I follow your question
I just thought of ChainLink as a data verification layer, something that aggregates data, removes anomalies and so forth, in a decentralized manner with a reputation/staking system. I thought that you could punish the ChainLink nodes if something were wrong with the data so that the contract users would have some extra insurance. Perhaps that is not within the scope of what ChainLink is trying to do. I might have misunderstood.
My question was really, would secret contracts trust me as a data source, without an elaborate system of reputation/staking? Would they be okay with not seeing the cleartext right away? Would they want me to reveal the data after some time so that they could verify? I think it could work, but it would be the most effective if there were some standardized system built around it, with incentives to provide accurate data.
But if I can write the entire sequence of data with Enigma, it’s definitely great, and I would not have to worry about ever leaking bits of data prematurely.
This is technically possible within certain limitations around data size.
My question was really, would secret contracts trust me as a data source, without an elaborate system of reputation/staking?
This is tricky and not so much a technology problem. It also depends a lot on the nature of data. You could definitely stake in your data source to show that you are confident in its accuracy. However the dispute process gets tricky if it’s subjective. If you can create a machine executable way (algorithm) to assess the accuracy of the data, then this can be achieved.
We did cover these ideas around staking to data sets and data marketplaces in the summer of 2017.