Glossary
Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)
A hardware-isolated processor region (Intel SGX, AMD SEV, ARM TrustZone) where code runs shielded from the host OS — used for private MEV, oracles, and FHE accelerators.
A TEE is a CPU feature that creates an "enclave" — a region of memory and execution isolated from the operating system, the hypervisor, and even the OS administrator. Code running inside the enclave can attest to its identity to remote parties via hardware-signed quotes.
In crypto, TEEs back Flashbots SUAVE, private MEV bundles, oracle attestations (Chainlink CCIP relies on TEEs for some roles), encrypted-mempool prototypes, and several privacy-preserving consensus designs. The trade-off is trusting the chip manufacturer — historical SGX side-channel attacks have broken the enclave model multiple times.