aere-docs/AERE-BUILD-LOOP-SUMMARY-2026-07-19.md

# Aere Network: Autonomous Build Loop Summary (2026-07-19)

> **Note added 2026-09-24 (consensus).** Where this document says that consensus is classical secp256k1 ECDSA and not post-quantum, read it as the per-block finality statement it was until block 24,300,000 (AIP-22 stage 4, 2026-10-25). Since that block every validator attributes a consensus vote only through its verified post-quantum seal, and a block is post-quantum final once the next anchor, at most 32 blocks later, carries the certificate that covers it; headers still carry classical ECDSA commit seals until AIP-22 stage 5 (this sentence corrected on 2026-10-25). It no longer describes all of consensus on chain 2800: since 2026-08-14 every anchor block must carry a certificate of validator post-quantum seals under its hash (Falcon-512, with SLH-DSA as well since 2026-09-04), and since 2026-09-05 (block 17,250,000) the nine AERE-client validators (nine of the ten) refuse a commit message without a valid Falcon-512 seal of its author, and since 2026-09-08 (block 17,700,000) any QBFT consensus message without one, while the tenth, the second client, enforced that seal only on commit messages until block 24,300,000 and attributes every consensus message only through it since (this clause corrected on 2026-10-12, 2026-10-25 and 2026-10-28; until 2026-10-28 it dated the refusal of every message type to 2026-09-05, the date of the commit layer alone).

> **Note added 2026-08-19.** Statements in this document that consensus on chain 2800 is (or remains) classical secp256k1 ECDSA QBFT were written before the post-quantum header anchor went live, and remain true for block-by-block finality. Since block 13,014,000 anchor blocks (every 32nd block, on every one since block 13,889,296) also carry, under the block hash, a certificate of validator Falcon-512 seals, and since 2026-08-14 a node rejects an anchor block with fewer than three valid seals (f+1 of nine; eight or nine are carried in practice). That is a post-quantum checkpoint about every 16 seconds, not a per-block quorum: the claim published on 2026-08-15 that from block 14,050,000 no block finalizes without a post-quantum quorum was wrong (the per-block rule armed at that height is retired in the shipped code in favour of the anchor rules) and was withdrawn on 2026-08-19. Details: https://aere.network/quantum.html and the aere-node repository, anchor/README.md.

A single clean record of the non-stop build loop. Every item below was verified before it was marked done: real numbers where measured, honest `[MEASURE]` / `[VERIFY]` markers where not, and the post-quantum scope boundary kept everywhere (consensus is classical secp256k1 ECDSA QBFT; only signatures, accounts, and precompiles are post-quantum). Nothing here was deployed to mainnet; every activation stays founder-gated.

## Consolidation QA (proof it all coexists)

- Full rebuild: `hardhat clean && compile` compiled 339 Solidity files, zero errors, all new contracts present.
- Tests: 118 passing, 1 pending (a deliberate not-applicable case), 0 failing across the 10 new test files.
- Cross-document consistency: 0 contradictions. Burn is 37.5% of the validator reward (cap 50%, not a base-fee burn); live precompiles are 0x0AE1..0x0AE5; consensus is N=7 / f=2 / quorum 5; the 273k TPS figure is labeled a ceiling, never a measured rate.
- Report: `aerenew/docs/AERE-QA-CONSOLIDATION-REPORT.md`.

## Depth verification phase (after the roadmap breadth was built)

The new contracts were not just built and unit-tested; they were then reviewed, hardened, and formally proven:

- Adversarial security review (17 contracts, fund-flow first): 0 CRITICAL, 0 HIGH, 1 MEDIUM, 3 LOW. The 4 money contracts are clean on all priority properties (CEI plus reentrancy, per-asset escrow solvency with no double-count, no double-pay, no pay-without-proof, fee-on-transfer rejected, fail-closed PQC consumption). Report: `AERE-SECURITY-REVIEW-NEW-CONTRACTS.md`.
- All findings fixed and re-tested: M1 (feedback-author allowlist), L1 (codeless-gateway guard in 3 verifiers), L2 (VectorStore receipt bound to provider), L3 (documented, executor-gated). Report: `AERE-SECURITY-FIXES.md`.
- Formal verification broadened from the existing consensus corpus to the new contracts: 7 new z3 SMT models (3 fund-flow, 4 registry/verifier), each proved with a firing negative control (non-vacuous), wired into the canonical runner. Fresh canonical run: 15 models, 15 of 15 pass, 128 properties PROVED, 79 counterexample negative controls fired, 0 failed. Reports: `AERE-FORMAL-EXTENSION-MONEY-CONTRACTS.md`, `AERE-FORMAL-BROADEN-REPORT.md`; `aerenew/REPRODUCE.md` updated with the real fresh count.
- Full regression after the security fixes: compile green, 122 tests passing, 0 failing, 1 pending (a deliberate not-applicable case). No regression.

Net state of the new contract suite: built, unit-tested (122 passing), QA-compiled (339 files), security-reviewed and hardened (0 critical/high open), and formally proven (15 z3 models). All founder-gated, none deployed.

## Wave 1: the credibility document cluster (13 docs, the "grade 10" package)

All under `aerenew/docs/` (plus `aerenew/REPRODUCE.md` and `aerenew/formal-tla/`).

| # | Deliverable | File |
|---|---|---|
| 17 | Engineering and security specification (threat model, guarantees table, 11 assumptions, design rationale, failure analysis, engineering principles) | AERE-ENGINEERING-SECURITY-SPEC.md |
| 22 | Architecture map (layered stack plus cross-cutting concerns, Mermaid) | AERE-ARCHITECTURE-MAP.md |
| 20 | Ethereum EIP compatibility matrix (EIP by EIP, plus deliberate deviations) | AERE-EIP-COMPATIBILITY-MATRIX.md |
| 19 | NIST validation status (ACVP for FIPS-final schemes, KAT for Falcon, honest "not a certification") | AERE-NIST-VALIDATION-STATUS.md |
| 18 | Reproducible benchmark report (chain, zkVM comparative, crypto-op gas; fresh Block-STM run) | AERE-BENCHMARK-REPORT.md |
| 23 | Reproducibility manifest (fresh SMT 10/10 + 8/8, contract SMT 9/9 green, Hardhat spot-check) | aerenew/REPRODUCE.md |
| 25 | AIP / RFC process and index (real AIP-1..8 inventory, drafted AIP-9..16, no fabricated discussion) | AERE-AIP-PROCESS-AND-INDEX.md |
| 24 | Protocol specification (the delta over Ethereum + QBFT, reimplementable) | AERE-PROTOCOL-SPECIFICATION.md |
| 26 | Cross-client determinism (Besu vs Nethermind byte-identical evidence) | AERE-CROSS-CLIENT-DETERMINISM.md |
| 28 | Reproducible builds and deterministic release | AERE-REPRODUCIBLE-BUILDS.md |
| 29 | Post-quantum governance design | AERE-POST-QUANTUM-GOVERNANCE.md |
| 30 | Quantum-safe networking (transport layer, PQ TLS + devp2p) | AERE-QUANTUM-SAFE-NETWORKING.md |

## New contracts built and tested (all founder-gated, none deployed)

| # | Contract(s) | Tests | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | AereRandomnessBeaconV2 (oracle) | 15 passing | Real BLS12-381 drand verify via EIP-2537, replaces a `return true` stub, fail-closed. Ran against live drand quicknet vectors. |
| 3 | AereRecoveryRegistry | 10 passing | Falcon-attested consensus-recovery registry + chaos matrix scaffold + watchtower design. |
| 5 | erc8004/ (Identity, Reputation, Validation, AP2 mandate) | 18 passing | Thin adapters over the live agent stack; PQC validation registry is the differentiator. |
| 7 | compliance/ (TrustRegistry, VerifiableCredential, BitstringStatusList) | 12 passing | Institution-grade compliance passport, W3C VC 2.0 + eIDAS-aligned trust registry + zk non-revocation interface. |
| 8 | intents/AereDestinationSettler | 4 passing | ERC-7683 destination fill, wired to the QBFT finality light client for repayment. |
| 10 | depin/AereComputeMarketV3 | 13 passing | Proof-carrying compute jobs (replay / zk-verified / optimistic) + PQC settlement + escrow solvency invariant. |
| 12 | agentic/AereVectorStore | 8 passing | Verifiable semantic memory for AI agents (Falcon-signed commits, attested retrieval, AERE402 paid query). |
| 14 | pqc/AereAccountMigrator | 9 passing | Atomic ECDSA-account to PQC-account migration (the last account-layer quantum gap). |
| 6 | mpc/AerePQAggregateVerifier + modular/AerePQAggregateModule | 17 passing | One SP1 proof attests a t-of-n PQC committee, cost O(1) in n (measured 61.8k gas flat), ERC-7579 portable. |
| 4 | pqfinality/AerePQAttestationKeyRegistry + AereFinalityCertificateVerifier | 12 passing | Additive post-quantum finality certificate; no consensus flip, no re-genesis. |

For every contract above, the Falcon precompile (0x0AE1) and the SP1 gateway are mocked in the unit tests and hard-wired to the live addresses for production; the real-precompile path is proven separately against live mainnet.

## Formal methods, research, and tooling

| # | Deliverable | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | Certora CVL formal specs for burn / sAERE / registries / threshold | Written; running the prover is `[MEASURE]` (Certora free tier). No rule claimed proved. |
| 27 | TLA+ specification of QBFT (safety + liveness, N=4 and N=7 configs) | Written and structurally checked; running TLC is `[MEASURE]`. Complements the z3 corpus. |
| 2 | Native STARK-verify (0x0AE8) porting spec + generic BabyBear+FRI components | Honest: a ~11-16 person-week port. The six generic components (BabyBear field, Poseidon2, MMCS, FRI, transcript, generic AIR quotient) are conformance-confirmed against Plonky3 `0.4.3-succinct`. SCOPE CAVEAT (2026-07-19 finding): those components verify BabyBear+FRI STARKs (Aere's OWN Plonky3 zk-circuits), NOT SP1 6.1.0, which is Hypercube (KoalaBear multilinear); FRI/DEEP-ALI do not apply to SP1 6.1.0. This does NOT let us "verify SP1 proofs now"; replacing the SP1 BN254 Groth16 wrap is a separate ~22-32 person-week retarget (`AERE-STARK-SP1-RECURSION-AIR-PORT-SPEC-SUMMARY.md`). Top-level verifier stays fail-closed and verifies nothing. |
| 31 | Quantum Migration Toolkit (scanner + SDK + cost simulator) | Runnable tool. Scanner ran against live RPC (chain 2800). `aerenew/pqc-migration-toolkit/`. |

## Off-roadmap issues caught and flagged (spawned as separate tasks)

- A stale AIP copy in `aere-research-repo/aips/` still claims "three validators" and a Foundation "multisig", contradicting the current seven-validator, single-key reality. Flagged for fix-to-honest.
- The `Dockerfile.reproducible` base-image digests are placeholders, so the reproducible build cannot resolve until real registry digests are pinned. Flagged.

## What remains gated (needs you, not code)

- External audit (Trail of Bits / NCC Group): the single largest credibility gate, business-funded.
- Consensus post-quantum activation, first non-Foundation validator, contract-ownership transfer to the Timelock, Season 1 funding, bug-bounty funding: all founder-gated and, where relevant, audit-gated and N greater-than-or-equal-to 9 plus soak gated.
- First live CoreBook market, institutional compliance adoption, real GPU/prover supply: business and counterparty gated.
- Deferred by founder decision (queued, not run): encrypted mempool (#15), economic-soundness simulation (#16).

Nothing in this loop moved real funds, created a token, or touched the live validators or the production infra box.