Today, the first practical deployment on the Integritee network was launched: the TEER exchange rate oracle. The use case clearly demonstrates some of the advantages of combining trusted execution environments (TEEs) with blockchain.
Using a trusted execution environment (TEE) to authenticate and connect to a third-party API via SSL, the oracle queries the exchange rate between TEER and other currencies such as USDT, DOT, and KSM. It then writes the resulting information to the Integritee chain where the exchange rate is registered. This deployment serves two primary purposes:
- It shows that the Integritee network works, and demonstrates one of its features: the ability to query and publish data from a third-party SSL server with verifiable non-repudiation.
- In addition, the oracle will also play a role in the future fee mechanism of the Integritee network, ensuring that usage fees can be charged at a stable dollar-denominated rate.
How Integritee provides non-repudiation
In computing, if you connect to a service over an SSL/TLS connection, it provides you with a number of assurances. Firstly, if the SSL server has been authenticated, you know you are connecting to the right entity. Secondly, when the connection is encrypted, you can also be confident that the data will not be intercepted by a third party or modified before it reaches you.
However, while SSL can provide privacy and data integrity as discussed above, it cannot provide non-repudiation. If a data service provides non-repudiation, it means that the sender cannot send data to the recipient and later deny that it was sent.
By leveraging the advantages of both TEEs and blockchain, Integritee solves this problem. An HTTPS client running in a TEE communicates with an authenticated SSL server via a TLS connection. In the case of oracle, it will communicate with the REST API of market data providers (such as CoinGecko and Coinmarketcap) to find out the relevant exchange rate. This information is then written to an immutable (and therefore unalterable) Integritee chain. In effect, this will provide verifiable non-repudiation of market data for users, without them needing to trust the oracle operator.
The foundation for stable fees
In addition to demonstrating some of the technical benefits of Integritee, the exchange rate oracle will also serve a practical purpose. To ensure that enterprise clients have predictable costs, Integritee fees will be adjusted to a stable rate denominated in dollars. The oracle will be used as the basis to calculate these fees.
Integritee: Underpinning the next generation of Web3 oracles
The exchange rate oracle demonstrates the potential of Integritee to serve as an invaluable bridge between blockchain ecosystems and third-party data providers. But this is just the beginning. From supply chain transactions to health, smart manufacturing, and a range of other industries — any time Web3 services need to be connected to external data sources, Integritee provides a solution.
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