The Application and Prospects of TEE Technology in the Web3 Field

Since the birth of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the cryptocurrency industry has been facing the challenge of the "impossible triangle." Although solutions such as payment channels, Rollups, and modular blockchains continue to emerge, none can achieve complete universality. Customized needs for specific scenarios, such as programmable signatures, still require support from other technological solutions.

With the development of the industry, Trusted Execution Environment ( TEE ) has gradually integrated into the Web3 ecosystem. TEE provides hardware-level data isolation and integrity protection, bringing new possibilities for cryptocurrency applications while ensuring security. This article will explore the applications of TEE in Web3, revealing its immense potential and new scenarios that may emerge in the future. TEE is expected to play an important role in MEV, underlying public chain performance expansion, and trustless signatures, occupying a place in all scenarios that require privacy protection.

Introduction to TEE

TEE is a secure area isolated within a processor or data center where programs can be executed without interference from other programs, including the operating system. TEE ensures that external entities cannot observe or access its internal data, regardless of whether it is the host operating system running the TEE or the cloud service provider, which cannot see the sensitive information within the TEE. This is a characteristic of TEE's security, providing protection for sensitive computation and data.

Another important feature of TEE is integrity, which means that the code running in the TEE executes completely according to the preset logic, with no possibility of external manipulation. The TEE hardware provides a hash value of the internal executing code along with its signature, and anyone interacting with the TEE can verify this hash value to confirm whether the program running inside the TEE is correct.

The TEE contains a root key set by the hardware manufacturer, which is used for generating signatures. Key generation methods include "key injection" and internal random generation. The newer method involves embedding a random number module within the TEE, which automatically generates the key upon first use, so even the chip manufacturer cannot know the key content.

Users can verify whether the programs executed within the TEE are consistent with the publicly available code through remote attestation (Remote Attestation). Although the TEE provides a high level of security and integrity assurances, users still need to trust that the hardware vendor has correctly implemented the entire process and that there are no backdoors in the hardware.

Typical TEE Application Scenarios in Web3

TEE-Boost: Decentralized Block Construction

In the Ethereum ecosystem, TEE is used to address the centralization issues of MEV. Currently, most nodes accessing MEV-Boost heavily rely on centralized Relay services. To solve this problem, TEE-Boost proposes a revolutionary approach that utilizes TEE to eliminate the trust assumptions on Relay while preserving all security guarantees within the MEV-Boost architecture.

TEE-Boost replaces the role of Relay, allowing Builders to run code directly in the TEE and prove the validity of the generated blocks through remote verification. Proposers connect directly with multiple Builders, selecting the block header with the highest tip and signing it, after which Builders present the complete block content. This method mitigates the risk of premature disclosure of block content.

Rollup-Boost: TEE extended Layer 2

Rollup-Boost is a Rollup construction scheme developed in collaboration by Flashbot, Uniswap Labs, and OP Labs, currently used in Unichain. It implements two scaling modules: "Flashblocks" with 250ms confirmation and verifiable priority ordering.

The core of Flashblocks is to package transactions within the TEE and broadcast block shards, which validators collect to package into complete blocks. This method improves bandwidth utilization, increases TPS, and speeds up transaction confirmation times. Since block shards are generated within the TEE, validators can save the workload of validating block data.

Verifiable priority sorting utilizes TEE features to provide trustworthy transaction sorting results, ensuring that transactions are strictly ordered according to the priority fees paid, without interference from block builders.

DeepSafe: Next Generation Trustless Threshold Signature Scheme

DeepSafe introduces TEE and ZK technologies, innovating a fully confidential lottery + signature scheme called CRVA (Cryptographic Random AI Verification Network). CRVA randomly selects verification nodes using a lottery algorithm to verify message validity and generate threshold signatures.

CRVA utilizes the privacy protection features of TEE and ZK to hide the identities of validators, preventing internal collusion or hacking attacks. The core module of the node runs within TEE, using temporary public keys and ZK proofs to protect identity privacy. Validators are randomly selected through an on-chain VRF function, forming an anonymous committee.

The core of this solution is that all important activities occur within the TEE, making it impossible for the outside world to know the specific processes, fundamentally preventing collusion and external attacks. CRVA can be applied in multiple scenarios such as multi-signature wallets, asset custody, cross-chain bridges, and oracles.

Future Applications of TEE

TEE Co-processor: Connecting Web2 and Web3

TEE coprocessors are one of the most promising applications of TEE in the future. They use provable off-chain computation to replace the costly on-chain computation, providing low-cost and private computing capabilities for smart contracts within the EVM ecosystem. For example, complex AMM algorithms can be executed within the TEE, reducing on-chain gas consumption.

In addition, TEE co-processors can also create new types of applications, such as allowing smart contracts to control social media accounts, or calling LLM APIs within TEE to implement complex conditional judgments. Currently, there is exploration of TEE-based AI oracles to provide more accurate event outcomes for prediction markets.

Encrypted Memory Pool and Privacy Transactions

A completely private transaction processing workflow can be built based on TEE. Traditional memory pools are susceptible to MEV attacks, while TEE-based encrypted memory pools can ensure that transactions remain highly confidential throughout their entire lifecycle. Users submit encrypted transactions to the TEE sequencer, and the entire process of decryption, sorting, and execution occurs within the TEE, remaining invisible to the outside.

TEE Multi-Prover System

TEE can also serve as a prover for Rollup, acting as a technological supplement beyond ZK and OP. Several well-known Rollup projects have adopted TEE provers, which are more efficient and faster than ZK, and also facilitate iteration.

Conclusion

TEE represents one of the most important technological developments in the blockchain field, providing a viable way to address the contradictions between performance, privacy, and decentralization. Through hardware-backed isolation and integrity, TEE can support new categories of applications while maintaining the trust-minimized characteristics of blockchain systems.

From the decentralized block construction of MEV-Boost to the performance enhancement of Rollup-Boost, and then to the advanced security mechanisms of DeepSafe, TEE technology demonstrates tremendous transformational potential. These applications prove that TEE can bring tangible benefits while laying the groundwork for more ambitious applications in the future.

The future of blockchain infrastructure may be a complex combination of various technologies, each optimized for specific use cases and security requirements. TEE will play a key role in this multifaceted ecosystem, providing the performance and functionality needed to bring blockchain applications to the mainstream while preserving their unique decentralized and trustless attributes.