Signed Reads

Encrypted eth_call that proves your identity to the contract

A signed read (.read) builds a full TxSeismic just like a shielded write, but targets the eth_call endpoint instead of broadcasting a transaction. The node decrypts the calldata inside the TEE, executes the call, encrypts the result, and returns it.

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Why this matters

Any contract function that depends on msg.sender needs a signed read. A plain eth_call zeros out the from field, so the contract wouldn't know who's asking.

# This proves your identity to the contract
result = contract.read.getBalance()

# This does NOT — msg.sender will be 0x0
result = contract.tread.getBalance()

A common example: a contract with a balanceOf() that takes no arguments and uses msg.sender internally to look up the caller's balance. If you call it with .tread, the contract sees the zero address as the sender and returns its balance — which is almost certainly zero.

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What gets encrypted

Both the calldata you send and the result you get back are encrypted. An observer watching the network can see that you made a call to a particular contract address, but not what function you called or what was returned.

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Low-level API

If you need to make a signed read with raw calldata (e.g., pre-encoded or non-ABI interactions):

from hexbytes import HexBytes

result = w3.seismic.signed_call(
    to="0x...",
    data=HexBytes("0x..."),
    gas=30_000_000,
)

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Async

Signed reads work identically with the async client — just await the call:

result = await contract.read.getBalance()