Integrating Ethereum and SGX-TEE for Job Execution

Abstract

This work proposes an architecture that integrates Ethereum blockchain technology and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), focusing on Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX). The main motivation is to address existing challenges and limitations in on-chain job execution by smart contracts, proposing a reliable method that ensures the integrity and confidentiality of off-chain processed jobs. The proposed architecture is based on a strategic combination of the blockchain’s smart contract and the TEEs. The smart contract acts as a decentralized coordinator, responsible for job distribution, monitoring the state, and dynamically allocating resources among TEE machines. In this architecture, the SGX allows the creation of secure enclaves that serve as trusted environments where jobs can be processed in isolation, ensuring protection against external and internal attacks. A prototype implementation was developed to demonstrate the technical feasibility and potential benefits of the proposed architecture. Through experimental testing, limits and bottlenecks were observed for scenarios with varying numbers of TEE machines, revealing a direct proportional growth in response times according to the load, as well as the ability of horizontal scaling to increase system performance.