Trusted Execution Environment is a method like Homomorphic Encryption, to perform operations on data in a form of encrypted state, this form is quite different though. TEE’s work by taking in encrypted data and decrypting it into an encrypted trusted area (called an enclave with Intel SGX) where operations can be performed on the data behind encryption for privacy. The trust in this setup comes from having the data in a decrypted state and having to rely on the surrounding “enclave” to be secure. If you did not create this area, if it is proprietary, then you are trusting it is secure.
BLOG: Dero Homomorphic Encryption v Cryptonote Obfuscation for Privacy in Blockchain – TheOA
The Cryptonote protocol used by Monero, Zano, Haven and a lot of other projects quite often seems to get conflated with encryption when Cryptonote uses sender/receiver obfuscation as key images and stealth addresses. This is partly due to the UTXO model not lending itself to encryption as well as an account model does.