Dissertation Defence: Trusted Execution Environments for Improving Blockchain Performance
November 12 at 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Xiaoqing Wen, supervised by Dr. Chen Feng, will defend their dissertation titled “Trusted Execution Environments for Improving Blockchain Performance” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering.
An abstract for Xiaoqing Wen’s dissertation is included below.
Examinations are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Please email chen.feng@ubc.ca to receive the Zoom link for this exam.
Abstract
Blockchain systems have become key infrastructure for decentralized applications, yet their performance is often constrained by the overhead of replication, coordination, and on-chain verification. Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) provide hardware-protected execution with integrity and remote attestation. These properties make it possible to enforce non-equivoca-tion, produce attestable execution results, and reduce the need for large quorums or heavyweight cryptographic proofs, thereby offering a promising path to improving blockchain performance.
This thesis investigates how TEEs can be used to improve blockchain performance across the consensus and execution layers. Guided by the blockchain stack, we study three representative scenarios, each targeting a distinct performance bottleneck that TEE properties can address under realistic deployment assumptions.
First, at the consensus layer, we study TEE-assisted BFT consensus in hybrid deployment systems, where only a subset of nodes are equipped with TEEs. We analyze the theoretical fault-tolerance limits in this setting and design protocols that exploit TEE non-equivocation to reduce communication overhead and confirmation latency whenever TEEs are available, while remaining correct under arbitrary mixes of TEE-enabled and non-TEE nodes. Second, still at the consensus layer, we examine TEE-assisted BFT sharding, where TEE-enforced non-equivocation and attestable execution increase the fault tolerance of each shard. This enables smaller shard sizes without compromising safety, increasing parallelism and overall throughput. Third, at the execution layer, we explore TEE-assisted rollups, in which transactions are executed off-chain inside secure enclaves and verified on-chain through enclave-signed attestations. This approach reduces on-chain verification overhead relative to proof-based or delay-based alternatives, improving throughput and withdrawal latency.
Together, these results demonstrate that TEEs can improve blockchain performance by resolving layer-specific bottlenecks in coordination and verification. The three studies collectively provide a structured understanding of how to deploy TEE assistance across consensus and execution.
