# The Privacy-Preserving EVM

We have forked the standard Go-Ethereum client to create the ppEVM. It retains 100% opcode compatibility with Ethereum but changes how data is handled during runtime.

#### The Encrypted Runtime

In a standard EVM, the StateDB is a clear-text database. In ppEVM:

* Encrypted State: Every value in the database is encrypted using AES-256 before being written to disk.
* Decryption-on-the-Fly: When a smart contract needs to read a variable, the TEE fetches the encrypted chunk, decrypts it in the secure CPU enclave, performs the math, and re-encrypts it before writing it back.
* Leakage Protection: If a hacker gains root access to a FOGEVM node, all they will see is meaningless ciphertext.


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