Privacy & Attestation

TL;DR

On Darknyx, no party, not even the operator, can see your orders, balances, or strategy. Order intent lives only inside an attested enclave; balances are sealed inside on-chain note commitments. You do not take this on trust: you verify the running engine against an expected measurement, and confirm it is the same engine that settles on-chain.

Who can see your orders?

Venue type	Who sees your orders	Risk
Centralized exchange	The operator	Can front-run, trade against you, or leak data.
On-chain order book	The sequencer / validators, and anyone indexing the chain	Reorder, censor, sandwich (MEV); the leak is permanent and public.
Off-chain dark desk	The operator	Custody and order intent both exposed to one party.
Darknyx	No party. Order intent lives only inside a hardware-isolated, attested enclave; it is never a transaction	No party can read or replay your orders; an observer of Solana learns nothing about them.

The difference from "encrypted on-chain orders" is that on Darknyx your order is never a transaction at all (see Trade Flow). What lands on Solana is the settled result, with a zero-knowledge proof, never the order.

The three privacy properties

Property	What is hidden	Mechanism
Order privacy	Side, size, limit price	Order intent exists only inside the attested enclave, never in a tx, log, or account.
Trader privacy	The link from a trade to your wallet	You sign with a trading key, not your wallet. The wallet-to-trade link exists only inside your own withdraw proof.
Position privacy	What you hold	Balances are on-chain note commitments (Poseidon hashes) that seal owner, value, and token until you spend them.
Amount privacy	The size and price of a settled trade	Settlement publishes only note commitments and a zero-knowledge proof of conservation; the traded amounts and the clearing price never appear on-chain.

Each is enforced by a separate mechanism, so a weakness in one does not collapse the others.

Privacy is a guarantee, not a promise

The point of attestation is that you do not have to believe the operator is running the honest engine. You can check. The enclave's privacy comes from hardware memory encryption keyed to a measured image, and the integrity of settlement comes from a proof the chain verifies. Both are cryptographic facts you can inspect, not terms of service.

Verifying the engine

Verification is a client-side step (the SDK ships a helper). In order, you confirm:

 1. Hardware attestation valid?
        TDX quote signature checks out; platform TCB is current.
                          │  yes
                          ▼
 2. Right code?
        measured compose_hash == the value YOU expect for a trusted build.
                          │  yes
                          ▼
 3. Same engine end-to-end?
        the quote binds the enclave's signing key, and that key == the
        on-chain settlement signer.
                          │  all three hold
                          ▼
                 trust the channel with order intent

• Step 1 is standard DCAP verification of the hardware quote.
• Step 2 is the decisive check: a different compose_hash means different code. Pin the value you trust and compare. (/info and /transparency both surface it; /attestation proves it.)
• Step 3 closes the loop: the engine you are talking to is the same engine whose key the Solana program accepts for settlement.

TLS alone is not verification

Connecting over TLS gives you a private channel to some machine. Only attestation tells you the machine runs the real engine. A client that skips the attestation check has confidentiality without integrity. Pin an expected measurement and verify it before sending orders.

What attestation does not cover

• Your own keys. Custody of your trading and spending keys is yours; losing them is on you, not the protocol.
• Liveness. Attestation proves the engine is genuine, not that the operator will keep it running. The operator can halt the venue (deny service) but cannot cheat it. See Confidential VM Architecture.
• Your client's correctness. Attestation verifies the server. That you submitted the order you intended is your client's responsibility.