# Peal compared Commit-reveal, a trusted server, timelock encryption, drand tlock, trusted enclaves and threshold decryption: what each one trusts, what it costs, and when Peal is the right choice. ## The short answer Every approach below keeps a submission unreadable until some moment. They differ on three questions: who could open it early, whether a participant can refuse to reveal, and what decides the moment. approach who could open it early can someone refuse to reveal? what opens it **Commit-reveal** nobody: only a hash is posted **yes**: each participant must come back and reveal, and the one who is losing can decline each participant, one by one **A trusted server or escrow** **the operator**, who holds the key the operator can refuse or delay the operator **Timelock puzzle or VDF** nobody, until someone finishes the sequential computation no compute, not a clock; faster hardware moves the deadline **drand tlock** nobody, until the beacon publishes that round no the beacon’s round schedule; no block-height deadline **Keys in a trusted enclave (TEE)** whoever breaks the enclave, silently the enclave’s operator can withhold the enclave, at the deadline **Threshold decryption per message** a threshold of the committee no the committee, one message at a time **Peal** a threshold of the committee: any 3 of 5 operators acting together **no**: opening is the network’s job, not a participant’s a time or a block height, for a whole batch at once ## What Peal adds on top of encryption - **One opening for the whole batch.** A round’s seals open together in one threshold decryption per 64-slot batch, so a round of sixty costs what a round of one costs, and nobody reads their result before anyone else. - **Nothing leaks while it is open.** Payloads are padded to a fixed width, and how many have been sealed is withheld until the round opens; afterwards each batch is padded with decoys, so the slot count is not the participant count. - **Checkable afterwards.** A seal’s id is the SHA-256 of its ciphertext, and its proof shows the batch order was committed before the reveal, with positions derived from the ciphertext hashes rather than arrival order. - **Built to be called.** Plain HTTP with no key, account or wallet; a one-file client that encrypts in the browser or Node; a skill for coding agents; optional pay-per-call over x402. ## What Peal trusts, today Peal’s guarantee is a threshold one: fewer than three of the five operators learn nothing. The key shares are distributed among the five operators, which Peal runs during testnet, and in v1 the shares come from a distributed key generation (see the [roadmap](https://peal.network/developers/roadmap)). An independent audit comes before mainnet. [How it works](https://peal.network/developers/howitworks) says exactly what a seal’s proof proves. ## When to choose which - **Choose Peal** when losing participants must not be able to withhold, when the deadline is a time or a block height you set, when many submissions should open at once without revealing how many there were, or when agents and ordinary users must take part without a wallet. - **Choose commit-reveal** when every participant is reliably online to reveal, a reveal is cheap, and a missing reveal can simply be penalised; it needs no committee at all. - **Choose drand tlock** for a single message that should open on a public schedule, with a decentralized beacon you can rely on and no need to batch or hide counts. - **Choose a timelock puzzle** when no committee or network can be relied on at all, and a loose deadline measured in computation is acceptable. - **Choose a trusted enclave** when you already depend on that hardware vendor and want something running quickly. ## Where to go next - [Quickstart](https://peal.network/developers/quickstart): seal something and watch it open, from this page. - [The protocol](https://peal.network/protocol): the cryptography, the committee and the engine. - [Glossary](https://peal.network/developers/glossary): every term on this page, defined. --- Source: https://peal.network/developers/compare