MagicBlock Private Ephemeral Rollup (PER)
MagicBlock is bringing high-performance, general-purpose Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to Solana. We call this the Private Ephemeral Rollup (PER). By using the security guarantees of Intel Trust Domain Extension (TDX) architecture combined with MagicBlock’s Ephemeral Rollup (ER) technology, we’re making it possible to run sensitive logic inside of a hardware-secured environment, while inheriting the composability and speed of Solana. For the first time, builders can design applications that are simultaneously:- Confidential: state is protected from all unauthorized parties
- Scalable: running inside an ER that can execute blocks at high throughput and low latency
- Composable: still able to interoperate with other Solana programs
- Compliant: easy-to-enforce compliance thanks to a fine-grained access control layer
Trusted Execution Environments
A trusted execution environment acts as a vault inside a CPU. Generally, when you run a program (e.g., a validator), the operating system can see and influence everything: the code, the state, and the memory. A TEE creates a hardware-secured space that prevents interference, even by the machine it’s running on. We use a TEE to protect the state of an Ephemeral Rollup. Normally, when you execute a smart contract onchain, every step of the process is visible: the program being called, the accounts, and the resulting state changes. Using the TEE, programs can selectively shield ER state.- Every account is public by default, like in Solana
- Programs can explicitly define access rules for their accounts
Why TEE
There are multiple privacy-preserving approaches used in blockchains. Each has different tradeoffs.| Solution | What is it? | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trusted Execution Environments | Hardware-secured execution within a CPU | Near-native performance, run normal code | Trust assumption in vendor hardware |
| Fully Homomorphic Encryption | Compute directly on encrypted data | Data never decrypted | Extremely slow, specialized tooling, difficult key management, bugs and vulnerabilities |
| Zero Knowledge Proofs | Prove something without revealing inputs | Efficient verification; strong for identity/compliance/correctness | Proving is heavy, bugs and vulnerabilities |
| Multi-party Computation | Split a secret across multiple parties to compute jointly | Strong cryptographic guarantees | Coordination overhead, high latency, specialized tooling, bugs and vulnerabilities |
- ZK: efficient verification, not optimized for general low-latency computation
- MPC: shared trust, higher latency and coordination
- FHE: powerful in theory, not ready for general usage today
- TEE: practical confidentiality with real-time performance and familiar developer UX on Solana
Application Unlocks
- Confidential Transfers: move assets privately without exposing balances or counterparties
- Sealed-Bid Auctions: keep bids hidden until settlement for fair price discovery
- Private Games: support games where revealing state undermines gameplay
- Enterprise and Compliance Flows: run sensitive operations with blockchain guarantees while keeping data private
- Identity-Based Access: verify group membership without revealing unnecessary account history
TEE Ephemeral Rollup DevNet endpoint: https://tee.magicblock.app/