ParaTime Layer

The ParaTimes are where smart contract execntionoccur. The decoupling of execution from consensus allows ench component to be optimized for their respective tasks. In particular,when a ParaTime uses TEEsfor confidentiality.the TEEs also provide protectionfor the computation's integrity which can translate torequiring a lower replication factor for smart contractexecution than compared with non-TEE ParaTimes.

It is likelv that we will have at least one key managerinstance per TEE type and/or per ParaTime. FotParaTimes that use TEE-based computation a keymanager is needed. because contract execution occur within the TEE environmnent.and contract state iencrypted before being stored. For ParaTimes basedon homomorphic encryption (FHE) no key manager isneeded because such ParaTime nodes operate only onencrypted data, and only the entities that applied thehomomorphic encryption to the inputs could decryptthe results from the ParaTime computation outputsSimilarlyan verification-only ParaTime would notneed to have a key manager.