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Cipher ParaTime

Cipher is a confidential ParaTime for executing Wasm smart contracts.

As the officially supported ParaTime by the Oasis Protocol Foundation, Cipher allows for:

  • Flexibility: developer can define which data to store in a public and which data in the (more expensive) confidential storage
  • Security: the rust language primarily used for writing Wasm smart contracts is known for its strict memory management and was developed specifically to avoid memory leaks
  • Scalability: increased throughput of transactions
  • Low-cost: 99%+ lower fees than Ethereum
  • 6 second finality (1 block)
  • Cross-chain bridge to enable cross-chain interoperability (upcoming)

If you're looking for EVM-compatible ParaTimes, check out the Emerald and the confidential Sapphire paratimes.

Smart Contract Development​

Cipher implements the Oasis Contract SDK API. To learn how to write a confidential smart contract in Rust and deploy it on Cipher, read the related Oasis Contract SDK chapters:

📄️ Prerequisites

How to build your first smart contract on Oasis

📄️ Hello World

This chapter will show you how to quickly create, build and test a minimal

📄️ Confidential Hello World

Confidential smart contract execution on Oasis is assured by three mechanisms:

RPC Endpoints​

danger

The RPC endpoint is a point of trust. Beside traffic rate limiting, it can also perform censorship or even a man-in-the-middle attack. If you have security considerations, we strongly recommend that you set up your own ParaTime client node.

Cipher endpoints share the gRPC protocol with the Oasis Core. You can connect to one of the public endpoints below (in alphabetic order):

ProviderMainnet RPC URLsTestnet RPC URLs
Oasis Protocol Foundationgrpc.oasis.io:443testnet.grpc.oasis.io:443

Block Explorers​

Name/ProviderMainnet URLTestnet URLEIP-3091 compatible
Oasis Scan (Bit Cat)https://www.oasisscan.com/paratimes/000…7cbhttps://testnet.oasisscan.com/paratimes/000…000No
tip

Only rudimentary block explorer features exist for Cipher. Consider debugging the Cipher transactions using the oasis paratime show command part of the Oasis CLI.

Indexers​

Name (Provider)Mainnet URLTestnet URLDocumentation
Oasis Scan (Bit Cat)https://api.oasisscan.com/mainnet/v2https://api.oasisscan.com/testnet/v2Mainnet Runtime API, Testnet Runtime API
note

If you are running your own Cipher endpoint, a block explorer, or an indexer and wish to be added to these docs, open an issue at github.com/oasisprotocol/docs.

See also​