Overview

Acurast separates the consensus, execution, and application layer (c.f., Fig. 1). Acurast's cloud architecture transforms the way applications are designed and deployed. The modular nature allows native settlements and universal interoperability of ecosystems, i.e., Web3 → Web3 and Web3 → Web2. Ultimately, Acurast serves as a decentralized application platform that ensures the privacy and verifiability of data, without introducing new trusted entities.

Figure 1: Acurast Architecture

Consensus Layer

The consensus layer is the permissionless foundation of Acurast, where the Orchestrator matches developer's deployments to processors, as outlined in the End-to-End flow (c.f., End-to-End Deployment Execution ). The second core part of the consensus layer is the reputation engine (c.f., ), which as sures that the reputation scores of processors are correctly updated and incentivize honest behavior.

Execution Layer

The Execution Layer has two significant components. The first one is composed of the different processor runtimes, namely the Acurast Secure Hardware Runtime (c.f., ASHR) and the Acurast Zero-Knowledge Runtime (c.f., AZKR). The second key component is the Acurast Universal Interoperability Layer, which contains multiple Modules that enable native interaction with different ecosystems.

Application Layer

The third layer is the application layer, where Web2 or Web3 applications run (\cf Sec.~\ref{sec:application_layer}). Although a host of DeFi protocols already make use of Acurast, Acurast will infuse the development of a wide range of use cases that were previously not possible to implement in a confidential and decentralized manner.

Implementation

Acurast leverages a Substrate Runtime consisting of multiple Substrate Pallets for the Acurast Protocol (c.f., GitHub ).