Phala

Phala is a developer of a blockchain technology to provide network privacy services and a cloud computing network to run decentralized applications. The company offers privacy protocol layers built for data protection and smart contracts, enabling cross-chain registries and computation. This includes a decentralized analytics system and a network privacy layer. Phala is built around the TEE-based privacy technology embedded into modern processors, which is intended to create the infrastructure for a trustless computing cloud.

Phala aims to deliver a trustless cloud computing solution for Web3. The company's solution is built on Parity's Substrate and operates in the Polkadot ecosystem on the Kusama parachain. Phala works to tackle the privacy and performance issues of legacy blockchain solutions and operates in a cloud environment by decoupling the computation from the chain to off-chain secure workers. In this schema, the blockchain is used as the canonical, or encrypted, message queue, and the attested secure workers fetch requests from the chain, verify and execute them, and write the computation results back.

To accomplish this, Phala uses two types of worker node participants that enable the network to operate. These include gatekeeper nodes, which organize interactions between Phala network users and maintain the blockchain state and consensus rules, and miner nodes, which run a CPU network and fulfill various computation responsibilities by offering a computer to the network.

The security of Phala's cloud computing solution is using the blockchain as a canonical input for the Secure Enclave, which enforces confidential and faithful execution instructed by the chain, regardless of if the worker operators are malicious or not. Attackers cannot peek at the Secure Enclave but can trick the contracts by forging transactions or replaying or reopening valid transactions. But the Phala blockchain connects to the Secure Enclave through Phala's pherry, which works as a bridge between both and ensures the transactions headed to the Secure Enclave are valid transactions and are not running an unmodified version of the Secure Enclave.

The PHA token is used on Phala's network for mining and governance reasons. Miners, or trusted computing resources, offer the computation power of the Phala network and its confidential contracts. To be a miner, one needs to have a TEE-capable CPU and needs to run a "mining client" to rent their computing power. These miners are rewarded with PHA.

Those who want to interact (exchange data or interact with compute resources) over the Phala network can utilize PHA token for transaction fees. And any users or network participants who hold the PHA token are given governance rights and are able to join the Phala DAO to participate in community governance.