| Project Reference: | ITP/005/22LP |
| Project Title: | Secure Enclave Assisted & Reliable Agreement in Distributed System |
| Hosting Institution: | LSCM R&D Centre (LSCM) |
| Abstract: | On early October 2021, Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) released a technical whitepaper on e-HKD, which is a retail or general-purpose Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) digitalizing Hong Kong Dollar. According to the whitepaper, two-tier rCBDC distribution model, featuring a wholesale interbank system and a retail user wallet system, is preferred because this sets a clear boundary on the roles and responsibilities of the central bank and private sector intermediaries in issuance and distribution of CBDC. In the whitepaper, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is one among the various technologies applicable to e-HKD system. At the core of DLT, consensus protocol plays an important role which ensures data is replicated in the distributed network. There are different consensus protocols, assuming different threat models, which have trade-off among performance, security, resilience, and scalability. This echoes one of the seven problem statements in the whitepaper. In response to the problem statement in the whitepaper, we propose Secure Enclave Assisted & Reliable Agreement in Distributed System. In this project, a consensus protocol utilizing trusted execution environment (TEE) will be designed. Cryptography will also be introduced to the protocol. By leveraging TEE to perform cryptography and execute part of the consensus logic, the designed protocol would have a higher security guarantee with minimal sacrifice on the performance. This would enable use-cases in DLT and blockchain which performance and security are equally valued. |
| Project Coordinator: | Dr Chung-Dak SHUM |
| Approved Funding Amount: | HK$ 2.78 M |
| Project Period: | 28 Mar 2022 - 27 Sep 2023 |
