What Kinds of Privacy Applications Can be Created on Phala ?

Published in

Phala Network

5 min readFeb 9, 2021

Phala is a leader in the privacy segment of the Polkadot ecosystem partly because Phala confidential smart contracts have always been practical with good usability. Ever since 2019, when Phala decided to use the Substrate framework, we have been actively communicating with the Polkadot ecosystem developers to better our developer documentation and developer experience.

Last October, as one of the sponsors of Gitcoin’s “Hello World! By Polkadot” hackathon (along with some other star projects), Phala set up two challenge prizes. In one month, we received more than 60 submissions of functioning Phala smart contract examples. Seven of them have directly developed advanced “blockchain+security” products using Phala smart confidential contracts. We’ve compiled a list of their ideas, which will inspire more Substrate developers.

Hello World! Phala task submission page: https://gitcoin.co/issue/Phala-Network/hello-world-by-polkadot/2/100023947

1. Personal Privacy Notes by Laurent

GitHub repo: https://github.com/LaurentTrk/apps-ng/tree/helloworld

Have you been worried about commonly used cloud “note” services revealing your secrets?

Whether it’s Apple’s Sticky Notes, Graphite Documents or Impression Notes, all of them upload your data to the cloud for preservation. Although these services are convenient, they also bring concerns: what if their servers are compromised, or the data is disclosed or artificially transferred years later? Your privacy could be in danger!

Fortunately, with Phala Network, you can create a cloud-based notebook that will never have privacy disclosure problems.

Laurent was the first participant to submit a product. He developed a confidential sticky note visible only to himself. This demonstrates that inhabitants of the Web3 world can now “lock” their online notes. Another developer submitted a confidential note application called “AideMemorie”, which might become a popular use of the Phala contract. :P

2.IPFS privacy cloud drive by master-davidlee

Concerned that your photos and business documents stored in a cloud drive would leak?

Consider the Guanxi Chen incident, or “revenge porn,” or search on “cloud drive leak”, and you will see countless private photos being made public on the internet, as well as private business documentation. The terrible thing about the Internet is that once data is made public, it can never be erased.

Fortunately, with the Phala Network, you can create a cloud drive that can’t violate your privacy:

GitHub repo: https://github.com/master-davidlee/hello-world-by-polkadot/blob/main/my_first_confidential_contract/README.md

Master-davidlee has created an IPFS-based “privacy cloud” by combining IPFS and Phala. Users can upload files to IPFS with the access rights reserved only to themselves.

The Phala team conducted did some research on Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Ali Cloud, and other communities, and finds there is currently no such “blockchain + private anti-censorship” privacy cloud on the market. This might be a great idea for a business in the future!

3. Privacy Base64 code by shamb0

Do you need to convert binary data to Base64 text that can be sent, but without being vulnerable to easy decoding?

GitHub repo: https://github.com/shamb0/hw-polkadot-ecosys-chg01-phala-network/blob/main/Readme-ECOSYSTEM-CHALLENGE-Advanced-Build-the-First-Confidential-Contract.md

Base64 is one of the most common encodings used on the web to transfer 8Bit bytecodes, which represent binary data based on 64 printable characters. Developer shamb0 used the Phala Secrecy Smart Contract as an encryption method to create a ciphertext version of the Base64 code.

Another developer, vinhbhn, also submitted a similar product. Phala smart contracts are capable of “encrypting” more types of code.

4. Account Password Manager by sekmet

GitHub repo: https://github.com/sekmet/Hello-World-by-Polkadot/tree/main/ecosystem/contract-phala-network

This is a great use case! We all have to track too many passwords, both in our personal lives and our teams. One concern is that data stored on centralized servers are always at risk of leaking. For a company, an accidental data leakage could be fatal.

Sekmet used Phala to build an account password manager that can store passwords with no risk of leakage. If someone wants to get the passwords, they’d have to break Phala’s TEE network, which would mean simultaneously attacking TEE miner nodes and gatekeeper nodes scattered around the world, all at once. :) This is virtually impossible.

5. Crypto Calculator by tarzan18

tarazna18 has made a simple application: a crypto calculator. You enter two values and it will multiply them. Basic? Yes, but the multiplication happens securely inside the TEE of a miner’s CPU. It’s a great learning example: how to compute in the secure Phala cloud!

Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q88JZ1tc6GY&feature=youtu.be

6. Tuna Ledger by ubinix-warun

Ubinix-warun has created an encrypted ledger for transaction records. The ledger records when and where the transfer occurred. The data recorded with PhalaNetwork is only visible to yourself, so your business practices remain your trade secrets, even though they’re recorded on a public blockchain. :)

7. Confidential GPS data collection site by shirshak55

GitHub repo: https://gist.github.com/shirshak55/bac4df4e5c0f6c793f1633ec7f01be44

Shirshak is a veteran Substrate developer who has participated in several Polkadot-related tasks on Gitcoin. He notes that GPS data, which records our daily movements, is very sensitive. With Phala’s private smart contracts, it’s possible to separate data storage and recall so that only the user can view it, and no third party can access it.

“It took me about 20 hours to complete the development of this DApp, and I encountered some /bin and /app related errors in the process. The documentation from Phala team is well written and organized, with the quality of code pretty high. Besides, I hope that you could reduce the tree files and log files though.”
— shirshak55

About Phala

Phala Network is a light, powerful, and secure confidential smart contract platform which runs contracts in trusted hardware enclaves inside processors, creating a novel privacy computing cloud with private computing and services for both users and companies.

Phala Network will be a parachain on Polkadot and a solution to our next-generation privacy needs. Member of the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC). Recipient of 2 Web3 Foundation Grants.