What it does
AERKey provides threshold signatures inside attested AWS Nitro Enclaves, with CGGMP24 for ECDSA secp256k1 (the EVM chains) and FROST for Ed25519 (Solana). To produce a signature, a threshold of parties — never all of them, never any one alone — must collaborate. The private key as a single object never exists in memory anywhere, ever, including at the moment of signing.
Why it matters
This is the foundation of the chain's "validated by machine, verified by people" property. Every block on AEREDIUM is signed by a threshold of TEE-attested signers — not by a person, not by a multi-sig of people, not by a stake-weighted validator who could be coerced. The signing authority is mathematically distributed across hardware-attested code running in independent enclaves. To compromise a block signature, an attacker would need to simultaneously compromise hardware attestation across the enclaves of the signing threshold — and, as further cloud platforms qualify, across independent providers and jurisdictions — not a realistic adversary model.