Secret Network Launches ‘Privacy Bridge’ For Ethereum Tokens

A new protocol from Secret Network aims to bring programmable privacy to Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens. The platform is also gearing up for the launch of ‘Secret DeFi’ and a new automated market maker.

Announced on Dec. 15, the Secret Ethereum Bridge has gone live on mainnet. Its new product allows holders of ETH and certain ERC-20 assets to create ‘secret’ versions of their assets in the form of ‘Secret Tokens’ to enable private transactions.

The platform compared these secret tokens to existing privacy coins such as Monero, stating that they are powerful in that they’re programmable like ERC-20s, but private by default.

“Secret is the first and only privacy-enabled blockchain, featuring smart contracts with encrypted inputs, outputs, and state.”

Secret Network added that it would initially offer privacy features to 14 ERC-20 tokens in addition to ETH. These include, YFI, UNI, BAND, COMP, LINK, AAVE, KNC, SNX, OCEAN, MKR, DAI, USDT, TUSD, and WBTC.

Bridge Mining and Token Rewards

Any new DeFi protocol launched this year would not be complete without its own governance token and liquidity mining incentives.

Following the launch of the Bridge, Secret Network intends to offer what it terms ‘bridge mining.’ This will allow users to lock their ETH and ERC-20 tokens on the ‘bridge’ in order to earn SCRT rewards.

Liquidity mining incentives are expected to launch in January, the announcement added. A ‘Secret DeFi’ suite is also in the pipeline in addition to a new automated market maker, also slated for a January 2021 launch.

The blog post states that Secret Network is expecting up to two million SCRT to be allocated to the community rewards fund to support the launch of Secret DeFi. Regarding the new token, a forum post explained;

“SecretSCRT is the first implementation of SNIP-20, a privacy token standard, based on the CW20 spec of CosmWasm and inspired by ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum.”

It allows users to deposit any amount of SCRT, which is not private by itself, in order to mint and receive the equivalent amount of the wrapped privacy version, secretSCRT.

SCRT Price Outlook

SCRT tokens have been trading since early October. Over the past 24 hours, prices have declined by 2.5% to $0.64. Token prices hit an all-time high of $0.70 on Dec. 13, so a minor correction appears to be occurring at the moment.

Over the past 30 days, SCRT has risen by 67%, likely driven by the launch of the Ethereum Secret Bridge.