Are TEEs the future for AI and blockchain?

Watch this panel recording featuring folks from Oasis, iExec, Hound Base, and Phala Network at the Afternoon TEE Party side event during DevCon to find out!

The recording link is the Afternoon TEE Party side event during DevCon: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2XBQsvLVzyc

00:55 | Decentralized Confidential Computing (DeCC) on iExec
10:24 | BlockVote proof of concept overview on Oasis
31:25 | Explain TEEs to me like I am a child
39:24 | Hardware trust assumption critiques of TEEs
46:50 | AI and TEEs vs. cryptographic guarantees (e.g. ZKP)
51:35 | TEEs and ML experiments & limitations

Here are my key takeaways

Why is everyone talking about TEE? It’s simple. The hardware is easier to use now.

• The hardware capabilities for writing an application for TEE are much different today than in 2015 vs 2017 vs 2022.

• TEEs are usable now but need a combination of cryptographic guarantees for data-in-use protection (hardware + math is better)

• TEEs can provide AI with low securities guarantees today, whereas cryptographic guarantees (e.g., ZKP) are very safe but have yet to work in an actual application.

• Concerns about trusting the hardware manufacturer are still prevalent (crypto hate(d) TEEs)

• Future TEE predictions? Abstract TEE to software level and open source TEE hardware manufacturing.

BlockVote is a voting platform built on Oasis Sapphire, a privacy-focused EVM that allows encrypted transactions and storage.

BlockVote provides the option for:

• Gasless voting (eliminate the need for voters to pay gas fees), 

• Customizable voting (settings for token weighting, privacy levels, and eligible voters) and 

• Privacy options to choose how much information is revealed, from fully private to fully transparent votes.

BlockVote is a proof-of-concept private voting dApp only live on the test net.

iExec provides decentralized, blockchain-based cloud computing services. The project's core offering includes confidential computing. 

• Developers deploying applications on iExec have on-demand access to a network of TEE machines that protects data during processing.

• iExec is part of the Decentralized Confidential Computing alliance, a blockchain network coalition encompassing various encryption technologies and solutions (e.g., TEE, ZKP, MPC).