Proof of Trusted Execution: A Consensus Paradigm for Deterministic Blockchain Finality
Kyle Habib, Vladislav Kapitsyn, Giovanni Mazzeo, Faisal Mehrban

TL;DR
This paper introduces Proof of Trusted Execution (PoTE), a novel blockchain consensus method leveraging deterministic execution within secure enclaves to achieve fast finality without forks or high energy costs.
Contribution
It proposes a new consensus paradigm using verifiable execution in TEEs, avoiding forks and reducing latency compared to traditional PoW and PoS protocols.
Findings
PoTE achieves single-round finality in blockchain consensus.
The implementation meets high throughput demands of large-scale exchanges.
PoTE eliminates common vulnerabilities like stake concentration and long-range attacks.
Abstract
Current blockchain consensus protocols -- notably, Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) -- deliver global agreement but exhibit structural constraints. PoW anchors security in heavy computation, inflating energy use and imposing high confirmation latency. PoS improves efficiency but introduces stake concentration, long-range and "nothing-at-stake" vulnerabilities, and a hard performance ceiling shaped by slot times and multi-round committee voting. In this paper, we propose Proof of Trusted Execution (PoTE), a consensus paradigm where agreement emerges from verifiable execution rather than replicated re-execution. Validators operate inside heterogeneous VM-based TEEs, each running the same canonical program whose measurement is publicly recorded, and each producing vendor-backed attestations that bind the enclave code hash to the block contents. Because the execution is…
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Taxonomy
TopicsBlockchain Technology Applications and Security · Distributed systems and fault tolerance · Security and Verification in Computing
