Liveness

Blockchain liveness refers to the property of a blockchain network that guarantees continuous transaction processing and the regular addition of new blocks to the ledger. It ensures that the network remains active and responsive, enabling participants to submit transactions that will eventually be confirmed and recorded.

Liveness is critical for user trust, as it promises that all valid transactions are included in a reasonable timeframe, preventing network stagnation or block production halts. Consensus mechanisms like Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake enforce liveness by incentivizing participants to maintain the network’s operation and integrity. Together with security, liveness underpins a robust, reliable, and efficient blockchain system.

In a similar fashion, liveness in Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) refers to the ability of a TEE system to continuously process workloads, maintain availability, and respond to verification requests in a timely manner. It ensures that trusted computations remain uninterrupted, allowing applications relying on secure enclaves to function without delays or system failures.

Liveness in TEEs can be enforced inherently, but it can be done so with cryptoeconomic security, where operators are financially incentivized to maintain the continuous operation of the TEE.

To participate in a decentralized TEE system, operators first stake assets as collateral to guarantee continuous operation. One such example is EigenLayer's restaking, where slashing mechanisms penalize operators if their TEEs go offline or fail to produce required attestations within a given time window.

This discourages downtime, faulty attestations, and exit scams by ensuring economic penalties for non-performance.

Automata's Multi-Prover AVS is an example of a TEE-centric decentralized system that is built on EigenLayer.