In the current era of explosive data growth, the 402 million terabytes of sensitive data added every day have made people’s demand for data privacy and secure computing increasingly urgent. Amazon Web Services (AWS), with approximately 30% of the global cloud computing market share, has become the infrastructure that many developers rely on.
However, with the development of emerging fields such as Web3, AWS’s centralized architecture has gradually exposed many problems, which has also provided an opportunity for the rise of decentralized trusted execution environment (TEE) clouds.
The current situation of AWS and the limitations of Nitro Enclaves
As the leader in the field of cloud computing, AWS, with its rich tools and services, meets the needs of developers in multiple aspects such as computing, storage and databases. To address customers’ concerns about data security, AWS launched Nitro Enclaves, which builds a secure space within Amazon EC2 instances through a hardware-supported isolated execution environment, reducing the attack surface of sensitive workloads.
However, Nitro Enclaves are essentially still highly centralized solutions, with the entire process from creation to management controlled by the AWS infrastructure. Its centralized architecture brings many drawbacks: On the one hand, both the underlying CPU and Nitro cards have vulnerability risks; On the other hand, the memory encryption mechanism is not perfect. The characteristics of external Nitro cards make it difficult to achieve end-to-end encryption of memory data, increasing the possibility of sensitive information leakage.
At the developer usage level, the creation and configuration process is complex, involving multiple tools such as Docker, AWS CLI, Nitro Enclaves CLI, etc. It also requires an understanding of the encryption proof process, which is extremely unfriendly to developers who are not familiar with containerization. At the same time, unverifiable proofs, manually set identity and access management policies all bring internal threat risks, and they lack native support for Web3 applications and governance systems, making it difficult to meet the demands of emerging application scenarios.
The demand for TEE in the Web3 era and the birth of decentralized TEE Cloud
Web3 adheres to the concept of trustlessness. Users pursue clear guarantees and verifications of data operations, and traditional solutions such as AWS are difficult to meet this demand. Phala Network emerged as The Times required, aiming to combine the advantages of AWS with TEE security and solve existing problems through a decentralized architecture.
The decentralized TEE cloud combines TEE with the decentralized node Network. The Phala Network is composed of decentralized worker nodes equipped with TEE. After the user deploys the application, the computing tasks are executed within the node TEE to ensure data confidentiality, and the node operator cannot view or tamper with it. Phala also verifies the calculation results through cryptographic proofs to ensure network security with economic incentives.
The differences between Phala Cloud and AWS and other TEE solutions
Compared with AWS, Phala Cloud has significant advantages in deployment, security and product adaptation. In terms of deployment, the steps to set up Nitro Enclaves on AWS are cumbersome, while Phala supports “migrate and modify”, and Docker containers can be easily migrated using the Dstack SDK. In terms of security, AWS relies on manual configuration of access control, while Phala adopts a zero-trust model, and sensitive data is processed only within the TEE. In terms of product adaptation, AWS focuses on enterprise customers, while Phala is specifically designed for decentralized applications, deeply integrated into the blockchain ecosystem, and supports a variety of Web3 applications such as AI proxies and privacy-protected DApps.
Compared with other TEE solutions, Phala Network is the only completely decentralized TEE cloud. Oasis Protocol and Secret Network focus on implementing privacy smart contracts in their own blockchains. Marlin Protocol emphasizes network performance, while Phala provides an offline computing platform across networks, supports multiple TEE hardware, and is equipped with developer-friendly tools. All kinds of applications are allowed to be deployed. In addition, Phala innovatively integrates TEE with MPC to create a decentralized root of Trust (DeRoT) model, further enhancing security.
The application prospects of decentralized TEE cloud
Decentralized TEE cloud has demonstrated great application potential in multiple fields. In the field of AI, it supports the deployment of AI models within the TEE to ensure the security and autonomy of interaction with the blockchain. Traditional applications can be migrated to this platform to enhance the security level. Data analysis can be carried out on the premise of protecting user privacy. DeFi can enable confidential transactions and enhance secure computing. MEV protection can also be achieved by moving block construction into TEE.
From the limitations of AWS’s centralized architecture to the innovative breakthrough of decentralized TEE cloud, it reflects the brand-new demands for data security and trusted computing in the Web3 era. Decentralized TEE cloud platforms such as Phala Network are bringing changes to the future computing ecosystem with designs that are more in line with the Web3 concept and are expected to become the key infrastructure supporting the development of Web3 applications.
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