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What Is BITE?

BITE (Blockchain Interoperability and Trustless Execution) adds encryption to SKALE while keeping full EVM compatibility. Transactions stay encrypted during mempool and consensus, then are decrypted by the validator committee for execution. Once executed, transaction details are visible on-chain like any other transaction.

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Why BITE?

Public blockchains expose everything—transaction amounts, contract calls, user intent. This creates problems:
  • MEV - Bots see your transactions before they’re confirmed and front-run them
  • Privacy - Sensitive business and personal data is visible to everyone
  • Competition - Competitors can monitor your contract interactions
BITE solves these problems at the protocol layer without breaking EVM compatibility.

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How It Works

BITE extends SKALE with threshold encryption built into consensus:
  1. Encrypt - Your wallet encrypts the to and data fields using SKALE’s threshold public key
  2. Submit - Encrypted transaction goes to the BITE precompile (magic address)
  3. Finalize - Consensus finalizes the encrypted transaction without seeing contents
  4. Decrypt - After finality, the validator committee runs threshold decryption
  5. Execute - Transaction executes normally in the EVM
This is commit-then-reveal at the protocol level—inclusion happens before anyone can read the transaction.

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Key Properties

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MEV Resistance

By encrypting to and data, BITE removes the information MEV bots need:
  • No front-running (intent hidden until finality)
  • No sandwich attacks (bots can’t see swaps)
  • No censorship (validators can’t filter by content)

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Threshold Decryption

No single node can decrypt transactions. The validator committee jointly decrypts using threshold BLS—a minimum number of validators must collaborate. Keys rotate each epoch using onchain DKG.

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Zero Trust

You don’t need to trust any single party. The cryptography ensures:
  • No early decryption (requires threshold of validators)
  • No selective decryption (all or nothing per epoch)
  • No single point of failure (distributed key generation)

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EVM Compatible

BITE works with existing tooling:
  • Metamask, WalletConnect, and other wallets
  • Foundry, Hardhat, and other development frameworks
  • Ethers.js, Viem, and other web3 libraries
  • Existing Solidity contracts (no changes needed for Phase 1)

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Phases

BITE rolls out in four phases:
PhaseNameStatus
1Encrypted TransactionsLive on SKALE Base
2Conditional TransactionsSandbox
3Threshold Re-encryptionRoadmap
4Fully Homomorphic EncryptionRoadmap
See Phases of BITE for the full roadmap.

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