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ELEMENT 31

Jobs that arrive sealed and leave sealed

Work reaches a Genie encrypted, runs without the household or the machine being able to read it, and leaves the same way. The customer can verify exactly what ran.

IN SHORT

Jobs sent to a Genie through E31 Cloud arrive encrypted, run sealed so that neither Genie nor the household can read their contents, and return results encrypted. The customer who ordered the work can verify exactly what ran. The household provides surplus power and an outbound internet connection; the content of the work never becomes theirs to see.

A business that sends work to a network of machines in strangers' homes has an obvious worry, and so does the stranger. The business wants to know its work cannot be read or tampered with. The homeowner wants to know nothing about the house travels back the other way. Genie's answer to both is the same: jobs arrive sealed, run sealed, and leave sealed.

What sealed means in practice

A job reaches a Genie over the home's ordinary internet connection, encrypted. Genie runs it without opening it in any sense the household could use. The machine has no view into what the computation is for, who it belongs to, or what the data means. The results leave encrypted, back through E31 Cloud, to the customer.

The seal holds at every stage. It is not a case of the household being asked not to look. There is nothing on the appliance for the household to look at, and nothing for Genie itself to report about the contents even if it were asked. Genie reports its own energy use and health, and nothing else.

What the household sees and does not see

The household sees the shape of the work, never the substance. The app shows energy used, work performed, work sold, and money owed. Those are facts about Genie's activity and the household's account, not facts about the customer's job.

The household does not see what the job computed, which business sent it, or what the results were. That is by design, and it is the arrangement that lets a business put real work on a machine it does not own. It is also the arrangement that protects the household: there is nothing on the appliance that could later be said to have been theirs to safeguard.

What the customer can verify

A business paying for computing wants more than a promise that its job ran. E31 Cloud is built so the customer can verify exactly what ran: that the work it sent was the work performed, on the terms it set, with the results it received. The verification belongs to the customer and does not require trusting any individual home.

This is what makes the surplus of many unrelated households into something a business can buy. The work is not merely done cheaply; it is done accountably. Without that, Genie would be a curiosity. With it, Genie is a supplier.

Why this is necessary for a home appliance

Genie is an appliance that sits in a home and talks to the outside world. The only acceptable way to do that is to make the conversation narrow and pointed outward. Genie makes only outbound connections and never accepts incoming ones. Work comes in through a connection Genie opened; results go out the same way. Nothing on the home network is visible to the job, and nothing in the job is visible to the home.

The seal on the job and the privacy of the home are the same design decision seen from either side. Element 31 treats both as rules of the machine rather than terms of service. The complete list is on the principles page, and the private-by-design rule has its own article. The glossary has a short entry on the sealed job.

Questions this raises

Can the household see what business sent the job?
No. The household sees energy used, work performed, work sold, and money owed. Who sent the job, what it computed, and what the results were are not visible on the appliance.
Can a sealed job see anything on the home network?
No. Genie makes only outbound connections, never accepts incoming ones, and does not watch the home network. The job runs inside the appliance and has no view of the house.
Why does the customer need to verify what ran?
A business paying for computing needs more than a promise. E31 Cloud is built so the customer can confirm the work it sent was the work performed, which is what makes surplus from many homes something a business can buy.

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