> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.near.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Off-chain Compute > Learn how NEAR smart contracts can delegate heavy or impossible-on-chain work to verifiable off-chain computation running inside Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). Smart contracts run inside a deterministic VM and pay gas for every instruction. That makes some workloads impractical (heavy cryptography, ML inference) and others outright impossible (HTTP requests, accessing API keys, generating true randomness). **Off-chain compute** moves these workloads outside the chain while keeping cryptographic proof that the right code ran on the right inputs. On NEAR, this is typically achieved with **Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs)** — secure enclaves (e.g. Intel TDX) that produce signed attestations of execution. A TEE attestation proves three things: the **code** that ran (hash of the binary), the **inputs** it received, and the **output** it produced — all signed by hardware the operator cannot tamper with. *** ## What it unlocks * **HTTP requests** — fetch from any Web2 API directly from contract logic. * **Secrets management** — encrypted API keys and private keys, only decrypted inside the enclave. * **Verifiable randomness (VRF)** — provably-fair random numbers signed with Ed25519. * **AI integration** — call LLMs and ML models with a proof the result is genuine. * **Cross-chain reads** — query Ethereum or other chains without a bridge contract. * **Heavy cryptography** — zero-knowledge proofs, MPC, custom signature schemes. *** ## How it integrates with NEAR A contract calls into the off-chain layer using NEAR's **`yield`/`resume`** mechanism: the contract pauses, the off-chain worker executes the code in a TEE, then resolves the promise with the result and its attestation — all within a single logical transaction. For workloads that don't need a contract at all, the same compute can also be triggered via direct HTTPS, which is useful for Web2 backends or frontends. *** ## Platforms A verifiable off-chain compute platform for NEAR by FastNEAR. Code runs in Intel TDX enclaves with built-in support for VRF, secrets, MPC vaults, and payment keys.