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What is Nautilus?

Nautilus is a verifiable offchain compute layer on Sui. It enables builders to delegate sensitive or resource-intensive tasks to a self-managed trusted execution environment (TEE) or a TEE marketplace like Marlin Oyster while preserving trust onchain through smart contract-based verification.

Nautilus supports hybrid decentralized applications that require private data handling, complex computations, or integration with external (Web2) systems. The framework ensures computations are tamper-resistant, isolated, and cryptographically verifiable.

It currently supports self-managed AWS Nitro Enclave TEEs and Dockerized deployments through Marlin. You can verify AWS-signed enclave attestations onchain using Sui smart contracts written in Move. Refer to the Github repo for the reproducible build template.

Features​

important

Nautilus is not just about running code in privacy-preserving manner in a TEE. Part of the overall value proposition is on-chain verification of computation integrity:

  1. PCRs (enclave measurements) must be registered and verified onchain
  2. Every computation result could optionally be verified onchain

A Nautilus application consists of 2 components:

  • Offchain server: Runs inside a TEE and handles computations like user input processing or scheduled tasks.

  • Onchain smart contract: Written in Move, verifies TEE attestations before executing transactions.

How it works​

  • Deploy the offchain server to a self-managed TEE, such as AWS Nitro Enclaves, or use Marlin Oyster to deploy Dockerized Nautilus apps.
danger

The provided reproducible build template is intended as a starting point for building your own enclave. It is not feature complete, has not undergone a security audit, and is offered as a modification-friendly reference licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

The template and its related documentation are provided as is without warranty of any kind for evaluation purposes only.*

You can adapt and extend it to fit your specific use case.

  • The TEE generates a cryptographic attestation that proves the integrity of the execution environment.

  • Sui smart contracts verify the attestation onchain before accepting the TEE output.

  • The integrity of the TEE is auditable and anchored by the provider's root of trust.

Refer to Nautilus design and using Nautilus for details.

Use cases​

Nautilus supports several Web3 use cases for trustworthy and verifiable offchain computation. Some examples include:

  • Trusted oracles: Process offchain data from Web2 services (weather, sports, financial data) or decentralized storage platforms like Walrus in a tamper-resistant way.

  • AI agents: Nautilus is ideal for securely running AI models for inference or to execute agentic workflows to produce actionable outcomes, while providing data and model provenance onchain.

  • DePIN solutions: DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure) can leverage Nautilus for private data computation in IoT and supply chain networks.

  • Fraud prevention in multi-party systems: Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) could use Nautilus for order matching and settlement, or layer 2 solutions could prevent collision and fraud by securely running computations between untrusted parties.

  • Identity management: Nautilus can provide solutions in the identity management space that require onchain verifiability for decentralized governance and proof of tamper resistance.

Seal​

When used together, Nautilus and Seal enable powerful privacy-preserving use cases by combining secure and verifiable computation with secure key access. A common challenge with TEEs is persisting secret keys across restarts and different machines. Seal can address this by securely storing long-term keys and granting access only to properly attested TEEs. In this model, Nautilus handles computation over the encrypted data, while Seal controls key access. Applications that require a shared encrypted state can use both tools to privately process user requests and update encrypted data on public networks.