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.
