The Keyless Execution Engine is a secure, enclave-based environment that manages and executes all digital asset operations and automated workflows within the Keyless platform. It serves as the critical component responsible for ensuring the integrity, authenticity, and secure execution of transactions, smart contract interactions, API interactions and other blockchain-related activities.
Keyless prioritizes security by ensuring that only cryptographically signed actions can be executed. This cryptographic stamp acts as a tamper-evident seal, verifying the authenticity and integrity of the transaction or interaction with an external service. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind, knowing that only authorized and validated actions are carried out.
Here's a breakdown of its core functions and components:
- Transaction Lifecycle Management:
- Transaction Creation: Keyless execution engine facilitates the creation of various transaction types, such as token transfers, swaps, and smart contract interactions, across multiple blockchain networks.
- Transaction Signing: It integrates with the user's chosen custody solution (e.g., Keyless Custody, Safe, Turnkey) to securely sign transactions without directly accessing or exposing private keys.
- Transaction Approval: Depending on the configured policies and governance rules, the Execution Engine facilitates the approval process for transactions, potentially involving multiple signatories or a quorum of approvers.
- Transaction Broadcasting: Once approved, it broadcasts the signed transactions to the respective blockchain networks for inclusion in the next block.
- Workflow Execution:
- Sequence Execution: The execution engine is responsible for executing each step defined within an automated workflow created through the Orchestration Engine. This includes executing actions like transfers, swaps, contract interactions, and handling conditional logic, delays, and triggers.
- State Management: It maintains the current state of each workflow execution, ensuring that the appropriate actions are taken based on the defined conditions and the current blockchain or external data state.
- Error Handling: In case of failures or exceptions during workflow execution, the Execution Engine provides robust error handling mechanisms, including retry logic, fallback actions, and notifications.
- API Integrations and Interactions:
- External Service Interactions: Keyless Execution Engine provides secure integrations with various external APIs and services, such as exchanges, DeFi protocols, on-ramp/off-ramp providers, and banking institutions in conjunction with the Connectivity Engine which will be covered very soon.
- Data Synchronization: It ensures that the required response and interaction data is synchronized and up-to-date before executing actions that depend on external data sources, such as token prices or account balances.
- Security Components:
- Cryptographic Verification: As mentioned, the Keyless execution engine operates within a secure enclave environment and verifies the cryptographic stamps on all incoming activities (transactions, workflows, API interactions) before executing them. This ensures that only authorized and unmodified actions are processed.
- Multi-Party Computation (MPC): Keyless leverages MPC technology to enable secure key management at its core and by extension securing integration API keys and authentication secrets to be used for authentication when interacting with external services. It provides a mechanism to shard and reconstruct secret values at scale.
- Hardware Security Modules (HSMs): It integrates with HSMs to provide an additional layer of security (AES) for key storage and cryptographic operations.
- Secure Enclaves: The execution environment itself is isolated and secured using secure enclaves, protecting sensitive data and computations from potential threats.
- Additional Components:
- Keyless Relayer: This component manages the broadcasting and re-broadcasting of transactions to the blockchain networks, ensuring successful inclusion and optimizing gas costs. It also handles dynamic RPC routing, allowing Keyless to dynamically route requests to the most optimal and reliable node or RPC provider for a given blockchain network, ensuring high availability and performance.
- Keyless Simulator: Before executing transactions on the live blockchain, the Simulator allows users to simulate the transactions and their expected outcomes, helping to identify and prevent potential issues or losses.
We have designed Keyless to provide a robust, secure, and efficient environment for executing digital asset operations and automated workflows at scale. By leveraging advanced security technologies, cryptographic verification, and secure enclaves, it ensures that all activities are authenticated, authorized, and executed without compromising the integrity or ownership of the underlying assets.