A from-genesis sync of a patches-only build stopped at block 9,189,161, the
futureEipsTime activation, with a stateroot mismatch. Two causes, one patch:
upstream bases futureEips on the unreleased amsterdam definition while chain
2800 isolates it on Osaka, and the fleet activates EIP-2935 history storage in
the same fork, one system state write per block that a build without this
patch never performs. With 0005 applied the same node, same data directory,
crossed the activation and keeps importing. The fleet's optional Block-STM
wiring is deliberately omitted and the omission is stated in the patch header.
Pristine d2032017, plain git apply of 0001+0003+0004, installDist exit 0 on
JDK 21, besu/v26.8-develop-d203201. Stated next to what it does not prove:
the import proof against the live chain is still owed.
The licence-note edits had normalized whitespace inside hunks, so the recipe
this repository tells its reader to run failed at step one with 'patch does
not apply'; only --ignore-whitespace passed, and the README nowhere says to
use it. Each patch was re-applied to pristine d2032017 with whitespace
tolerance, then regenerated from the resulting tree with its prose header
kept, and the full sequence 0001, 0003, 0004 was applied with PLAIN git
apply on a fresh pristine checkout before this commit was made.
A Windows checkout was silently rewriting genesis.json to CRLF, so the
working-copy hash stopped matching the published and fleet hash, and the
package gate went red on a file whose bytes in git were correct. bd4f8b4
fixed this once by re-adding the file; this pins the rule so no checkout
can undo it again.
The table carried the hash of an earlier derived export; the published file
has been the fleet's byte-for-byte genesis since the registry-binding commit.
The line-ending caveat is written next to it because that is exactly how the
wrong hash survives review on a Windows checkout.
The published line delivered the anchor (source and patch 0003) but had lost
the chain configuration: no genesis, no run recipe. The unpublished local line
had genesis.json, RUN-A-NODE.md and the measured claims, but predated the
anchor. This commit carries the package files onto the anchor line:
- genesis.json restored, byte for byte as the running nodes hold it
- RUN-A-NODE.md restored; the basefee-floor patch returns as 0004; the anchor
section states plainly that a build without patch 0003 has not been shown to
import headers past block 13,014,000, and that an import proof for a
patches-only build is the next thing this repository owes its reader
- bootnodes are deliberately NOT published: today's entry points are consensus
or origin hosts, and this project does not print its machines' addresses; a
dedicated bootnode host is the planned replacement, an enode is available by
mail until then
We went and read the field instead of asserting into it, and two things in the
README were saying more than the literature supports.
The attack has a name we were not using. It is posterior corruption, also called
the founders' attack, long-range attack, history revision or costless simulation.
Tas, Tse, Gai, Kannan, Maddah-Ali and Yu (arXiv 2207.08392) survey the four known
mitigations: social consensus, key-evolving signatures, verifiable delay
functions, and timestamping onto a proof-of-work chain.
That paper proves an impossibility, and the previous wording here would have read
as if we had stepped around it. We had not, because it says something narrower
than it first appears: slashable safety, which is safety plus the ability to
punish the attacker, needs an external trusted source. Plain safety against
posterior corruption does not, and key-evolving signatures are shown to give it
under an honest majority. This anchor does not claim slashable safety and the
README now says so.
What it does claim is now stated where it is actually strong. Key-evolving
signatures rest on an old key being gone once deleted. A quantum adversary does
not need it to have been kept: QBFT headers carry addresses, but every seal is an
ECDSA signature from which the public key is recoverable, and from that the
private one. Deleting the key buys nothing when the chain reconstructs it. The
certificate under the block hash still has to be forged, and that needs a secret
no amount of computation derives from the chain.
So this is the post-quantum analogue of what key-evolving signatures give
classically, in the setting where their central assumption is void. Narrower than
checkpointing, and borrowing nothing from another chain. Both true at once.
Sources opened and checked, not recalled: arXiv 2207.08392, eprint 2019/1440,
arXiv 2208.05408.
We cite Azouvi, Danezis and Nikolaenko's "Winkle" for the threat this anchor
addresses. Today we opened the paper instead of repeating the citation, and two
things need saying, because a reader who opens it will notice both.
Winkle does not mention quantum adversaries anywhere. It treats old validator
keys becoming compromised, by any means. The quantum framing is ours.
And Winkle's defence is not this one. It adds a secondary layer of client-based
validation in which clients sign a hash of the previously sequenced block. The
same authors' later work, Pikachu, checkpoints into Bitcoin instead. Both are
established answers to this threat, and a reader weighing our design deserves to
be pointed at them rather than left to find them.
So the README now says it plainly: the threat has peer-reviewed grounding, the
defence in this repository is ours, and the honest difference from checkpointing
is that checkpointing borrows security from another chain while this borrows
nothing.
Citations verified at source, not from memory: eprint.iacr.org/2019/1440, AFT
2020 pp. 189-201; arXiv 2208.05408, 2022.
Caught by our own licence gate the minute the anchor went up, which is the only
reason this is a same-day correction rather than something a reader finds first.
Two separate requirements, both real:
- section 4(b): the twenty upstream files this overlay modifies must carry a
prominent notice that we changed them. They did not. They do now, placed after
the upstream copyright header rather than over it, because 4(c) requires that
header to survive untouched. It does: eighteen still read "Copyright ConsenSys
AG.", two "Copyright contributors to Besu."
- section 4(d): NOTICE must carry the attribution notices of the work this
derives from. It named Hyperledger Besu only, while the files themselves carry
three distinct notices. All three are now reproduced. Naming one of three was a
smaller truth than the files tell.
The patch is regenerated from the corrected files and re-verified end to end, not
assumed: git apply --check and git apply both 0 on a pristine d2032017 checkout,
the resulting tree byte-identical to anchor/ (75 files compared, 0 differences),
and 605 tests with 0 failures across consensus:common and consensus:qbft.
This repository argues, in its own README, that a patch against a named upstream
commit is the honest way to publish a contribution to a million-line project: the
diff is the contribution, the reader fetches the rest from upstream, and a patch
fails loudly when upstream moves while a whole file overwrites in silence.
The anchor was published as whole files only, which contradicted that argument.
It is now both: patches/0003 to apply, anchor/ to read.
Verified on a pristine d2032017 checkout rather than assumed:
- git apply --check and git apply both returned 0
- the resulting tree is byte-identical to anchor/: 75 files compared, 0 differences
- :consensus:common:test and :consensus:qbft:test returned 605 tests, 0 failures,
the same count class by class as the same tree built from the files
The README also said "no build file changes are required" in a place that now
reads as if it covered all three patches. It covered the first two. Patch 0003
changes one build file by one line, and that line is named.
This is the code that puts a post-quantum validator certificate under the block
hash. It is the thing this project exists to do, and it is published so that the
claim can be checked rather than believed.
What it is. In QBFT the block hash is computed over a re-encoding of the decoded
extraData with the seals removed, so anything the decoder does not know about is
dropped before hashing. Appending a certificate as a new element gives you a
certificate that is stored, gossiped, and entirely absent from the hash. The
design that works instead puts a 32-byte digest of the certificate into
vanityData, which is already under keccak. anchor/README.md sets out the four
designs that died before this one and why.
Scope, stated in the README and repeated here because it matters: consensus on
chain 2800 is classical secp256k1 ECDSA. This binds a post-quantum certificate to
the block hash. It does not make consensus post-quantum and is never described as
such.
What is here: the anchor, the validation rules, the wiring, and the tests,
including the negative controls. Applied to upstream d2032017bb, the pinned base
named in anchor/BASE.txt. One build file changes, by one line, and the README says
which and why. No cryptography is implemented here; Falcon verification calls
Bouncy Castle.
What is not here: no keys, no fleet configuration, and nothing about what is armed
on any running network.
Measured before publishing, on upstream d2032017bb with this overlay applied:
consensus:common and consensus:qbft, 605 tests, 0 failures, identical to the same
tree before this work, class by class.
Three things were found while preparing it, and all three are fixed here:
- the code spoke Romanian in 134 comment lines and 43 strings, 37 of them on
production paths, which is to say in the messages a node prints when it refuses
to start. An auditor given the code to check the guards could not read the
guards.
- ten test classes carried internal issue numbers in their names. They now say
what they test.
- the suite was green partly by ordering luck. One class cleared its system
properties but not the configuration PqAnchorProducer remembers, so it left the
anchor armed for whichever class ran next. Renaming the classes changed the
order and four tests began failing on a guard that was firing correctly. Fixed
where it leaks, with the negative control measured: remove the line and the
pair goes red, restore it and it goes green.
- Apache 2.0 section 4(b): the patches modify files that are the work of
Hyperledger Besu and now say so, with the notice inside the modified files,
which is what the licence asks for and what applying the patch produces.
- patches/ and precompiles/ now carry the staged versions rather than an older
export. The two had drifted in both directions; the only thing the published
copy had that the staged one lacked was the word "audited" in front of Bouncy
Castle, which we cannot evidence and which the staged version had dropped.
- the brand was spelled two ways in the same repository, 62 times one way and 23
the other. It is Aere Network; AERE is the ticker. The 96 AERE_* code
identifiers are untouched.
Every source file in this repository carries SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0,
and the README has always said Apache 2.0. The LICENSE file said MIT. It was the
only thing in the repository that disagreed, and it was wrong.
This code derives from Hyperledger Besu, which is Apache 2.0. Several files sit in
Besu's own packages because that is where the client loads them from. Publishing
that under MIT was not a choice we were free to make, and it is not one we made
knowingly.
The LICENSE file now contains the Apache 2.0 text as published by the Apache
Software Foundation, byte for byte (sha256 cfc7749b96f63bd31c3c42b5c471bf756814053e847c10f3eb003417bc523d30).
NOTICE records the derivation from Besu.
Nothing about the terms these files were offered under has changed: the file
headers governed before this commit and govern after it. The correction is
recorded in the README rather than made silently, because a licence is the one
thing in a repository a reader should not have to verify.
Aere Network public source. Everything here can be checked against the live
chain (chain id 2800, https://rpc.aere.network).
Scope note, stated up front rather than buried: consensus on chain 2800 is
classical secp256k1 ECDSA QBFT. The post-quantum work in this repository is at
the signature, precompile, account and transport layers. Nothing here makes the
consensus post-quantum, and no document in it should be read as claiming so.
