README, SPEC, RUN-A-NODE, SECURITY, AUDITS and anchor/README now state the live rules: at least seven of
ten seals per scheme from block 20,715,632 (stage 1), Falcon-512 at every 32nd block and SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s
at every 128th from block 20,746,736 (stage 2), post-quantum validator ids in the header and in
qbft_getValidatorsByBlockNumber from block 20,836,228 (stage 3). Stages 4 and 5 are not active on chain 2800.
tools/verify-anchor.mjs: the FINALIZED line said on every chain that a header between anchors carries only
its proposer's seal, which is true only where AIP-22 stage 5 is active (testnet 28001). It now reports what
it measured: on chain 2800 headers between anchors carry the validators' classical ECDSA commit seals.
Checked on both chains on 2026-10-01: chain 2800, 4/4 anchors verified, ECDSA branch printed; testnet 28001,
2/2 anchors and 20/20 proposer seals verified, stage-5 branch printed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- AerePqFinalityTags: eth_getBlockByNumber("finalized"/"safe") answers the parent of the last canonical anchor that carries a
post-quantum certificate (v1 Falcon list or v2 scheme-tagged); monotonic, never moved back by a reorg. Fork choice, validity
and import are untouched.
- PqTipAdoptionGate / PropagatedBlockAdoptionGate: from the header-seal stage, a validator does not adopt a propagated block at
its own consensus tip without a post-quantum commit quorum for that exact hash, re-verified against the anchored registry.
Inert below that stage; readers and the sync path are not gated.
- ParallelSigning: SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s signing spreads the message-independent work (the hypertree layers' authentication paths
and the FORS trees) over the available cores; the output is byte-identical to Bouncy Castle 1.80 (SlhDsaParallelSigningTest
compares against the original for several keys and message lengths and counts the tasks that ran on the pool). Kill switch:
-Daere.pq.slhdsa.parallel=false. The engine files are regenerated from the pinned Bouncy Castle sources; the MIT licence stays
alongside them.
- Header-seal stage: a block re-proposed in a later round carries the seal of that round's proposer; the QBFT codec requires a
32-byte vanity field at every height. Comments translated to English throughout.
BlockTimer.java carried a Romanian one-liner explaining why the anchor
proposal-delay configuration is loaded at construction rather than lazily. The
explanation matters and is kept in full, in English: a lazily-loaded consensus
setting turned an unreadable file into 125 seconds of halted chain on 2026-09-03,
while every configuration gate stayed green because the files existed.
Production strings and comments are read by people who do not speak Romanian.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The network layer authenticates peers by their secp256k1 node key, and consensus
messages are routed by the address derived from it. An adversary who recovers a
validator's ECDSA key therefore gets everything the transport can give: it completes
the handshake as that validator and signs syntactically perfect messages that recover
to its address. This test models exactly that adversary - full ECDSA compromise, no
Falcon key - and requires all four hot-path messages to be refused while the
post-quantum enforcement is armed, with a harvested seal replayed across message
kinds, blocks, heights, rounds, chains, and from another validator entirely.
The honest form of the claim: the transport is not post-quantum, and breaking it
does not buy a break of safety. It says nothing about liveness.
One shared harness for both surfaces (the twin-class lesson applied in advance):
a seal made with SLH-DSA passes through the same untouched consensus code, and a
Falcon seal against an SLH-DSA registry is refused on both surfaces. The Falcon
nail sits only in the production wiring, for all three message enforcements.
Twelve test classes existed twice, under a neutral name and under an internal
inventory name, ~4,600 duplicated lines. Two copies of the same proof diverge
silently: one receives a repair and the other does not - which is exactly what
happened once, and what the cache-hygiene test below documents. The neutral
names survive; per pair the test counts are identical, and the only code
difference (a warm-up window constant) exercises the same path and the same
assertion. The cache-hygiene reproduction now runs the surviving class's
lifecycle, unchanged in what it asserts.
The last hot-path QBFT message under the same pattern as prepare and proposal:
its own domain AERE-PQ-ROUNDCHANGE-1 over (chainId, height, targetRound, prepared
metadata - so a bare 'move on' seal cannot be replayed as 'move on and re-propose
THIS block'), a separate emission gate (aere.pq.roundChangePq.attachBlock), a
separate enforcement height (aere.pq.roundChangePq.forkBlock) self-wired into the
payload validator so it also judges round-changes inside proposal justifications,
and byte-for-byte upstream encoding when no seal is present. The seal is signed
once and the same object goes on the wire; Falcon signatures are randomised, so
a re-signing would put a different message on the wire than the one handled
locally.
The first witness run caught a real gap: the proposal was signed twice - once for the
local copy, once for the wire - and only the local copy carried the proposer's Falcon
seal. Locally sealed, unsealed on the wire: with enforcement armed, the fleet stopped at
the enforcement height even though every node was emitting. Falcon signatures are
randomised, so the fix is structural rather than cosmetic: the proposal is built once,
seal included, and the transmitter sends that same object - two signings would produce
two valid and different proposals from the same proposer.
A new plumbing test refuses the defect's return: it fails if the transmitter's wire path
ever builds its own payload again. On the test network after the fix: emission covered
seven of seven proposers, each sealing exactly its first proposal past the gate; with
enforcement armed and emission on, the chain crossed the enforcement height with zero
refusals; with emission off it stopped exactly one block short of the height, every
refusal logged; and one unarmed node could not keep the chain alive.
Still armed nowhere: the properties are unset, and unset means never.
The remaining hot-path gap, stated precisely because the imprecise version oversells: with
PREPARE enforcement armed, an ECDSA-breaking adversary cannot finalize anything, since
"prepared" needs a full quorum of PREPAREs. What forged proposals could still do is OPEN
rounds and waste them. With proposal enforcement armed, a proposal without a valid Falcon
seal from its own proposer does not open a round.
Same pattern as the PREPARE layer, deliberately: an optional fifth payload element that
leaves the unsealed encoding byte-identical to upstream; a third, separate emission gate;
enforcement self-wired in the payload validator so no refactor can drop it silently; its
own domain over (chainId, height, round, digest), tested in both directions so an honest
offer seal cannot be replayed as a vote nor a vote seal as an offer.
Nothing is armed anywhere: the properties are unset, and unset means never. The armed-
layers table in the README says so, and says what stays classical: the ROUND-CHANGE
message itself and node-level devp2p authentication.
1,042 tests, 0 failures, counted from the XML. The enforcement's negative control ran at
5 of 5: four planted defects each turned the suite red, the untouched source stayed green.
D140FleetRestartArmingTest did not clear the aere.pq.* properties and the per-JVM anchor
config cache in setUp, while its twin PqFleetRestartArmingTest has done so since 20 August
2026. Without it the class is green on its own and red inside the full suite, on identical
sources, because a neighbouring class leaves an armed anchor config cached.
That is the concrete cost of keeping two copies of a test: a repair lands in one and not
the other, and nothing fails to say so.
1,012 tests, 0 failures.
The first publication of this directory, on 11 August 2026, was staged by hand and was
never refreshed. Measured on 29 August: of the 78 files published here, only 14 were still
identical to the tree we run, 63 had changed, and 50 files had never been published at all.
Nobody was hiding anything; there was simply no tool that could redo the selection, so
nobody redid it. There is one now, and it derives this directory from the authoritative
overlay rather than from anyone's memory.
Two things in here contradicted themselves, and both are fixed rather than trimmed.
The README withdrew, in one section, a claim that the source next to it still made: that
from block 14,050,000 a per-block 2f+1 Falcon quorum was required for a block to finalize.
The rule that property arms is retired at the anchor block, so it was inert on arrival.
Three places in the code said otherwise and now carry the correction with its date. The
old text is kept, not deleted: the rule is real code and can be armed on a chain that never
reached an anchor block. What was missing was that on chain 2800 it does not apply.
The terminology section said the certificate is signed by f+1 validators and "not by a
quorum", and invited the reader to count. Since 14,961,456 the enforced minimum is six of
nine, which is a quorum, and the paragraph had not been revised. It now says so, with the
date it changed, and adds the two things that make the claim defensible: the word applies
only at anchor heights, and the higher threshold costs liveness margin.
New in this directory: the post-quantum seal on PREPARE, the hybrid Falcon + SLH-DSA scheme
layer, and the test suites for both. Neither is armed on any network, and the README now
carries a table saying which layers are armed on chain 2800 and which are only present.
They are disarmed by absence rather than by a flag: the properties that arm them are unset,
and unset means never.
Not published, and it is the same three files every time: the negative-control harnesses.
They plant a defect on purpose to prove a guard can fail, which makes them a recipe for
disabling a guard rather than a description of one. What they prove is stated in the README.
Per-file SHA-256 in MANIFEST-sha256.txt. 1,012 tests, 0 failures, counted from the XML.
Line 23 stated the enforced minimum is six of nine, a full 2f+1 quorum. Line 192 stated
the certificate is signed by f+1 validators, not by a quorum, and that we do not call it
one - inviting the reader to count. The terminology paragraph was written when the
threshold was three, where it was true, and was not revised when the threshold was raised
on 21 August 2026. A document that asks to be counted and does not survive the count loses
more than the paragraph.
Corrected without deleting the distinction, and with the two things that were missing and
without which the claim is not defensible: the word quorum applies only at anchor heights,
about every 32nd block, and the blocks between them carry no Falcon seals at all; and the
higher threshold costs liveness margin, since at six of nine three late validators stall an
anchor block where three of nine tolerated six.
Not pushed. Publishing is the founder's decision.
