Phala Network is a cross-chain interoperable confidential smart contract network that is specially built for decentralized apps and services which focus on privacy as the most important thing. It’s a Substrate-based cloud computing solution that completely protects your privacy. It is also the world’s first confidential smart contract that operates on the Polkadot ecosystem’s parachain. This effectively provides computational power comparable to current cloud services while safeguarding the privacy of restricted programs at the same time. Developers can therefore use the TEE-Blockchain Hybrid Architecture to construct confidential smart contracts on the Phala Network.

The TEE (Trust Execution Environment) hardware being separate from the rest of its system has its own OS, virtual machine monitor, etc. As a result, TEE has limited usefulness on its own. However, thanks to Phala, TEE and blockchain are combined to augment the benefits of both in order to create a safe and efficient distributed computing cloud.

Team Background 

Hang Yin, one out of the 4 co-founders, is also the Chief Scientist at Phala Network. A former software engineer at Google, he has also served as the co-founder and lead developer of Bitcoin Gold. In 2021, Mr Yin was also selected as one of the five official Polkadot Ambassadors from China. Phala Network also has other team members who come from prominent Internet companies like Google and Tencent. 

Marvin Tong, another co-founder, works as the CEO of Phala Network. He was a former Senior Product Manager at Tencent & Didi, where he oversaw the design of trading strategies for millions of customers. He has extensive experience in strategy design, data-driven decision-making, and business model development.

Zhe Wang and Jun Jiang are the other co-founders, and they act as COO and CTO, respectively. Wang is a serial entrepreneur who previously led Xiaohei AI Games and Haha AI Vending Machine as CEO and CTO. He was also the first owner of more than 20 patents, including three on the blockchain. Jiang was previously the webmaster of RubyChina. He is a former software architect who also served as the CTO at KnewOne.

Technology Architecture

Essentially, Phala has a distributed computing architecture that separates computation and consensus. Because of the flexibility of the TEE network, Phala gains high scalability and is therefore capable of confidential cloud computing.

Phala also follows the path of Polkadot when it comes to using the NPoS (Nominated Proof of Stake) consensus. The NPoS consensus mechanism is used to select the validator set, which can make the system safer and more efficient. No group is overrepresented or under-represented according to the Phragmén algorithm.

Given that Phala is based on Substrate, there’s no doubt that it’ll work with the Polkadot ecosystem as well. Phala Network’s heterogeneous architecture is highlighted by the fact that confidential contracts are developed with interoperability in mind.

The various use cases and applications of the Phala Network include confidential DefI, dApps, cross-chain confidentiality layer, joint risk control, etc. The confidential contracts based on Phala can also be used in the sectors of artificial intelligence and healthcare as well. 

Token Economics

PHA is the native utility token of Phala Network. It is available for trading on various exchanges such as Binance, KuCoin, Huobi, OKEx, Uniswap, 1inch, and Gate. The token has a total supply of 1 billion, and its distribution is completed on the Ethereum ERC20 standard. Currently, the supply of PHA tokens stands at 177.63 million. 

The PHA token finds its use for several purposes such as governance, security guarantee, confidential computing resources, and as a native token for confidential contracts. It can also be used for other payments for the settlement of products and services.

• Governance: Stakeholders that own a particular quantity of PHA will be able to join the Phala DAO and engage more actively in community governance.
• Security Guarantee: A certain quantity of PHA must be staked to become a Gatekeeper. If he broke Gatekeeper rules, the stake would be punished and taken.
• Other payments: Settlements for products and services like Web3 Analytics, cross-chain bridges for permissionless chains.
• Computing resources: To buy trusted computing resources, on-chain storage, off-chain storage, etc.

Investor Details

Some of the major investors and partners in Phala include Polkadot, Kusama, Parity, Acala, Mask, Plasm, Crust, Bifrost, and IOSG Venture. The fact that Phala has formed exciting strategic alliances with all of them definitely indicates how the Phala network is only growing and becoming better with each passing day. 

Milestones and Future Roadmap

Since March 2020, Phala has launched at least 4 testnets, with there being a steady increase in the number of TEE. In May 2021, Phala launched its mining pool protocol component, called the Phala Runtime Bridge. Essentially, it is an open-source development component for miners that aims to manage TEE equipment. 

Phala is also soon set to launch its pre-mainnet known as Khala Network on Kusama. The native token of Khala Network will be K-PHA. K-PHA can be replaced at a 1:1 rate with ERC20-PHA (and PHA on the future mainnet).

Price Performance History

PHA token, with its share of 0.01% of the cryptocurrency market, has a total market capitalization worth $118 million. In mid-May 2021, Phala reached its highest ever price of $1.40. The lowest price ever recorded was in 2020, when the price stood at $ 0.0614. Currently, Phala is seeing impressive growth and the price could even exceed $2 by the end of this year. 

Conclusion

With several existing strategic alliances coming up, and the launch of Khala Network, the future for Phala does have a lot in store. If you’re interested in knowing more about Phala, you can follow them on Twitter, Medium, and Telegram. You can also check out their website for more.