Don't Trust, Attest: Enclaves as a Trust-Minimization Tool for Bitcoin Apps
The rise of trust-minimized Bitcoin solutions is enhancing both the capabilities and user experience of Bitcoin, but these systems still often rely on cloud-hosted services. This creates a key requirement: ensuring those services are actually running the intended code, otherwise the model collapses back into blind trust in the operator. Secure enclaves and remote attestation directly close this gap by enabling verifiable execution, protecting sensitive key material, and shifting trust from "trust the operator" to "verify the code." I'll share my experience building an enclave framework with reproducible Nix builds, explain the architecture, and show how an MPC wallet cosigner leverages it in practice. I'll also explore how the Ark Labs Introspector intends to build on the same framework, alongside an honest discussion of the trust assumptions secure enclaves still cannot remove.