Aligned: The Integrity Layer

Carlos Lira

Oct 20, 2024 — 2 min read

Aligned is designed to verify zk proofs cheaply, with high throughput and low latency. However, any existing mechanism that can guarantee computation integrity can be used in Aligned.

For example, trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) like SGX, can also provide an efficient way to guarantee a computation was done correctly. This attestation can also be verified in Aligned.

Aligned will become the integrity layer for Ethereum. Do you want to know how? Dive into the explanation.

TEEs are widely used in blockchain applications, such as Taiko and Automata Network.

Why is it so? TEEs guarantee the integrity of program execution by running the code in an isolated environment and using signatures that only the hardware can use to prove he has behaved honestly.

After doing this, another machine can verify the integrity of the computation. We call this process "Remote Attestation".

In addition to integrity, TEEs grant additional security advantages. The memory of the program is executed in an isolated environment and is protected from the rest of the programs by encryption so that its memory cannot be read nor tampered with processes from the outside

All these things in favor come with some drawbacks. TEEs do not offer the same integrity as ZK proofs do. Mathematical trust is replaced with trust in the hardware system. Not all code can be run on them easily. And while fast, they are not as fast as native code executed on the computer.

Now, even though attestations are fast to generate, their on-chain verification is more expensive than ZK proofs. To avoid this shortcoming, there are proposals to generate ZK proofs showing that the attestations are valid. But now with Aligned, we can carry out these verifications in a more cost-effective way, without additional latency, or additional zk wrappings.

TEE attestation offers an additional way of proving integrity, giving another method for multiproving. Combining TEE with ZK can help prevent bugs or errors in either mechanism, making the system more secure.

We envision a future with provable applications, that enhancing security and trust.

No matter which technologies we use, Aligned will be used to check their validity, making it the integrity layer for Ethereum.

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