A Deep Dive in Phala Confidential World: More Creativity and Broader Scope of Applications

The 2021 “Phala ✖️ Polkadot Encode Club Hackathon” officially ended on October 31. A total of 17 entries submitted by 12 participants passed the initial review by Phala team. According to the rules, finalists will have the opportunity to get rewards.

The final review may take 2 to 3 weeks, and the reward lists will be announced in time.

Comparing to last year, this year’s advanced challenge has new programs that are no longer limited to traditional “confidential” product ideas. The off-chain automatic auction bot combined with NFT, and the Darkpool DEX Dapp are eye-catching.

Below is a brief recap excerpted from the summary of the four advanced challenge works received this year. We hope that more creative ideas emerge from developers around the world. Enjoy!

1. PhaPass by LaurentTrk

Github Repo: https://github.com/Phala-Network/Encode-Hackathon-2021/issues/12

About PhaPass

A noncustodial and decentralized password manager on Phala.

📌 How it works

LaurentTrk has been using password managers for many years, but sometimes he has doubts about the privacy and security of the data he stores there. The existing password managers essentially require users to trust centralized service providers and believe they will not actively abuse their password data. Their code is robust and secure enough to resist hacker attacks. But they are still proprietary solutions, or users have to manage the synchronization and backup of data yourself, often using other proprietary cloud solutions. All these remains very centralized.

As a participant of the “Polkadot Hello World” hackathon last year, he believes that the Phala contract and its “decentralization + hardware encryption” characteristics may be the perfect choice to solve the centralization problem of a password manager. So this year he participated again with PhaPass.

Technically, the project is about developing a Phala contract to store and deal with user credentials, and a Chrome Browser Extension that will use this contract.

• PhaPass Confidential Contract: the contract running on the Phala blockchain.
• Background Page: this page interacts with the confidential contract using the Phala JS SDK. It serves as a ‘backend’ for the content script and the options page.
• Option Page: the unique UI of the extension. It displays a tutorial for the user vault creation, or the list of the user credentials.

• Content Script: this code is injected into the visited page, it detects manually input credentials to save to the user vault, or inject already saved credentials in visited page.

2. Darkpool DEX by gtsui

Github Repo: https://github.com/Phala-Network/Encode-Hackathon-2021/issues/16

About Darkpool DEX

A decentralized exchange based on Phala contract.

📌 Product features

Since Phala contract executes natively inside the TEE, it can make HTTP requests natively, and the request result is directly returned to the contract (as opposed to Ethereum smart contracts, which require heavyweights oracles service). Meanwhile, the consensus-computing separation architecture of Phala supports high-performance real-time computing scenarios. The above features make it possible to gtsui to build a Darkpool DEX Dapp/smart contract on top of Phala.

Phala darkpool exchange gives privacy guarantees that user orders and order sizes will be hidden from others (Usually, when traders post their bid/offer limit orders on traditional orderbook exchanges, this “leaks information” to the general market). And the decentralized darkpool model solves the “transaction fee problem” that plagues decentralized order book exchanges (Users/traders/marketmakers need to pay gas fees everytime they send/update/cancel orders).

On Phala Darkpool DEX, users don’t need to enter an order price. They wait for the trade to be executed in the “bids/asks” queues sorted by FIFO (first in, first out).

In a Darkpool DEX, users will send only three pieces of information:

1. The MARKET they intend to interact with (eg. DOTUSD, KSMUSD, ETHUSD, BTCUSD, etc)
2. The SIDE of their order (eg. BUY or SELL. Note: The convention is BUY refers to buying the first symbol of a market pair, and SELL refers to selling the first symbol of a market pair. That is, “BUY DOTUSD” means the user intends to buy DOT and sell USD. Conversely, “SELL DOTUSD” means the user intends to sell DOT and buy USD.)
3. The SIZE of their order (Note: the convention again is the SIZE refers to the size of the first symbol of a market pair. For example, assuming 1 DOT =$40, “BUY 100 DOTUSD” means the user intends to buy 100 DOTs and pay $4,000 USD. Conversely, “SELL 100 DOTUSD” means the user intends to sell 100 DOTs and receive $4,000 USD.)

3. Phala Ghost Auction by HashWarlock

Github Repo: https://github.com/Phala-Network/Encode-Hackathon-2021/issues/19

About Phala Ghost Auction

Developer HashWarlock built Phala Ghost Auction based on Phala contract. It offers a unique feature that allows the contract to access HTTP service. With this capability, He set out to build this program that would allow NFT artists to run automated auctions while not available on Singular.

📌 How to use

1. Sign the Smart Contract
2. Set Up Auctioneer Bot & Auction Settings
3. Submit Auction & Notify Telegram Group

4. SecretMD By seungjulee

Github Repo: https://github.com/Phala-Network/Encode-Hackathon-2021/issues/20

About SecretMD

Designed by seungjulee, SecretMD is a rich markdown editor which allows users to store and share any plain markdown file onto a distributed and confidential Phala blockchain in Polkadot ecosystem.

📌 When to use

Privacy

• Share a secret message to someone
• Securely save your important personal information
• A more private way than sending a PGP encryption email without any need of email or PGP keys

Storage

• Store information FOREVER on a decentralized blockchain

📌 Product features

1. End to end encryption using Polkadot wallet

• No Extra Key Required — Without any need of a separate set of encryption key like PGP, SecretMD requires only a Polkadot wallet for encryption/decryption.
• No need for password -Unlike Pastebin.com, encryption does not require a password to encrypt or decrypt a file.

2. Decentralized storage & Hardware-level end to end encryption

Unlike Pastebin.com which stores the encrypted file on a centralized server which is susceptible for lost, SecretMD stores the file on Phala blockchain.

About Phala

Phala Network tackles the issue of trust in the computation cloud.

This blockchain is a trustless computation platform that enables massive cloud processing without sacrificing data confidentiality. Built around TEE-based privacy technology already embedded into modern processors, Phala Network’s distributed computing cloud is versatile and confidential. By separating the consensus mechanism from computation, Phala ensures processing power is highly scalable but not wasteful. Together, this creates the infrastructure for a powerful, secure, and scalable trustless computing cloud.

As a member parachain of the Polkadot cross-chain ecosystem, Phala will be able to provide computing power to other blockchain applications while protecting the data layer, enabling possibilities like privacy-protected DeFi trading positions and transaction history, co-computing DID confidential data, developing light-node cross-chain bridges, and more.

On-chain services currently being developed on Phala Network include Web3 Analytics: high-performance smart contracts from Phala to enable highly concurrent mass data analytics with privacy, paving the way for an alternative to Google Analytics that inherently respects individual confidentiality.

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