At Flashbots, we’ve been exploring block building inside trusted execution environments (TEEs) since 2022. Initially focusing on Intel SGX, and most recently also Intel TDX.
Our experimental TDX builder (Illuminate Dmocrtz Dstrib Prtct) has landed several blocks on Ethererum Mainnet so far. The first TDX-built block was at slot 8970311 / block 19767105 (Apr-30-2024 09:02:35 UTC).
Compared with prior experiments, TDX appears to introduce minimal overhead relative to non-TEE builders. We will follow up in the near future with more information and data.
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Are there any industry standard benchmarks comparing TDX and SGX? Excited to see a comparison of the builders’ performance in both environments.
IIRM, one of the earlier forum posts, mentioned that the SGX machine needed a lot of RAM because the entire builder is kept in memory.
If I understand TDX well (which is very unlikely), then the hardware requirements of the TDX builder should be a lot less.
I’m not aware of any industry-standard benchmarks, perhaps @socrates1024 knows?
We are currently working on builder benchmarks and a comparison of TDX vs. SGX at Flashbots. We are collecting data right now, and we will share more soon.
Hardware requirements are an open conversation and heavily depend on the security model and required guarantees. It requires a lot of memory if you need to keep the full state in memory (~800GB). If that’s not needed, builders in TDX could run on pretty much regular instances. There is a bunch of work and research in progress, and we’d love to encourage and participate in related discourse on the forum.
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