Aere Network d0cb9ca298 RUN-A-NODE: the import proof is no longer owed, it is measured: from block 0 to 14,088,211 and following the tip, 2026-08-16

2026-08-19 12:07:40 +03:00

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Run a node on Aere Network mainnet, chain 2800

This file plus genesis.json plus one bootnode enode (see the bootnodes section below) is everything an outsider needs to bring up a full node that syncs chain 2800 from block 0. Until 2026-08-03 this repository shipped the precompile sources and the NIST vectors but not the chain configuration, so nobody outside the Foundation could actually start a node, and the "verify it yourself" claim the repository is built on could not be exercised end to end.

Nothing here is a key. genesis.json is public chain configuration; a node that nobody can dial is a node nobody can sync from, and the bootnodes section says plainly how dialing works today.

The three things you need

What	Where
`genesis.json`	The genesis file, byte for byte as it sits on the Foundation nodes. sha256 `361709dccec4e9fc85be5aec33b30b58a55dc53424087d84c1ad11bd1d944c24` (of the published file with LF line endings, exactly as `curl` fetches it; a Windows checkout that converts line endings will hash differently)
a bootnode enode	requested by mail for now; see the bootnodes section below
`patches/`, `precompiles/`	The Besu fork, see `README.md`. Needed to sync past block 9,189,161

Which Besu

Stock upstream Besu syncs chain 2800 correctly up to block 9,189,161 and then stops being able to follow it. That block is the first with a timestamp at or after activationTime 1783820272, when the five Aere post-quantum precompiles come into existence. A node without them computes a different result for any block containing a call to 0x0AE1 through 0x0AE5 and falls off the chain.

So there are two honest paths:

Follow the tip. Build the fork: apply patches/0001-aere-pqc-precompiles-mainnet.patch to upstream Besu commit d2032017bb3b8cb215a97303980a1e4a643f7180 and build it. Full instructions, including the pre-image hashes that prove you are on the right base, are in README.md.
Verify the early chain only. Stock Besu 26.4 or later will import blocks 0 through 9,189,160 from this genesis. That is enough to check the genesis allocation and the sub-second block period transition against what we publish. It is not enough to reach the head.

There is a second Aere change to the client, and it is not in patch 0001: patches/0004-aere-basefee-floor.patch, one file, LondonFeeMarket.java. From block 10,141,734 chain 2800 clamps the EIP-1559 base fee to a floor of 1 Gwei. The patch is fork gated by two JVM system properties and is a byte behaviour no-op when they are unset, so a node that applies it without setting them is stock Besu:

-Daere.basefee.floor.forkBlock=10141734 -Daere.basefee.floor.value=1000000000

Pass those through BESU_OPTS. Apply this patch and set these flags if you want a client that computes what the network computes. It was measured on 2026-08-02 that QBFT and IBFT2 in Besu do not validate the base fee at import at all, upstream or in our fork, so a node without this change is expected to import the chain anyway and only to disagree if it ever proposed a block. That is a finding about a missing upstream rule and not a licence to skip the patch.

Do not apply patches/0002-...-testnet.patch for a mainnet node. It adds 0x0AE6 and 0x0AE7, which are not on mainnet, and a node that has them will not disagree with the chain today but is running a configuration the chain does not.

The post-quantum header anchor: apply patch 0003 to follow the current chain

Since block 13,014,000 every 32nd header of chain 2800 carries a sixth element in its QBFT extraData: a certificate of validator Falcon-512 seals, universal since block 13,889,296 and enforced at a minimum of three seals per anchor block since 2026-08-14. From block 14,050,000 the network refuses to finalize blocks without that post-quantum quorum.

The anchor ships in this repository both as source, under anchor/, and as patches/0003-aere-pq-anchor.patch. A node built without it has not been shown to import headers past block 13,014,000: the second client needed an explicit change to accept the sixth element, and no floor-only build has been observed following the chain past that height. Apply 0001, 0003, 0004 and 0005 together and treat a build missing any of them as unable to follow the current chain.

Patch 0005 exists because the import proof was actually attempted

Measured 2026-08-15, on a real from-genesis sync of a build from patches 0001+0003+0004 alone: the node followed chain 2800 for 9.18 million blocks and stopped at block 9,189,161, the futureEipsTime activation, with failed persisting block due to stateroot mismatch. Not one cause but two, both in MainnetProtocolSpecs.java, both now carried by patches/0005-aere-eip2935-futureeips.patch: upstream bases the futureEips milestone on the unreleased amsterdam definition (Block Access Lists, a different state-root committer), while chain 2800 isolates it on Osaka; and the fleet activates EIP-2935 historical block hashes in that same fork, one system state write per block from 9,189,161 onward, which a build without the patch never performs. No amount of green unit tests found this; importing the real chain found it in one afternoon.

Measured 2026-08-16: the from-genesis sync reached the live tip. A node built only from these packages imported chain 2800 from block 0 to height 14,088,211 and then followed the head, crossing the full-quantum activation at 14,050,000 with zero anchor rejections. Two more things had to be true for that, both now carried by the patches and both described with their measured boundaries in IMPORT-PROOF-STARE-2026-08-15.md: a historical window (anchor heights 13,267,824 to 13,268,944) in which anchoring was deliberately disarmed fleet-wide, and a recovery window (13,268,976 to 13,890,544) in which proposers legitimately wrote shorter certificates. Inside those windows the header is accepted as carried; outside them nothing changes. The controls run in both directions (641 tests, 0 failures).

Measured 2026-08-15: on a pristine d2032017 checkout, git apply (no flags) accepted 0001, 0003 and 0004 in that order, and ./gradlew --no-daemon installDist -x spotlessJavaCheck -x test exited 0 on JDK 21, producing besu/v26.8-develop-d203201/linux-x86_64/openjdk-java-21. That proves the recipe builds. The import proof above, measured 2026-08-16, proves the build follows the live chain from genesis to the tip. The proof is repeated, not assumed: see IMPORT-PROOF-STARE-2026-08-15.md for the measured heights of each run.

Start it

besu \
  --genesis-file=/path/to/aere-node/genesis.json \
  --data-path=/path/to/data \
  --network-id=2800 \
  --sync-mode=FULL \
  --data-storage-format=BONSAI \
  --bootnodes=<the enode you were given> \
  --p2p-port=30303 \
  --rpc-http-enabled --rpc-http-port=8545 \
  --rpc-http-api=ETH,NET,WEB3,QBFT \
  --min-gas-price=0

Bootnodes are deliberately NOT published in this repository yet. The network entry points available today are consensus or origin hosts, and this project does not print the addresses of its own machines in public documents; a dedicated public bootnode, on a host that serves nothing else, is the planned replacement, and this paragraph will then carry its enode. Until then, write to office@aere.network with the subject "bootnode" and you will receive a current enode by return. Everything else on this page works without one; discovery is the only step that needs it.

--sync-mode=FULL is deliberate. Chain 2800 runs QBFT with a half second block period, so the head is around twelve million blocks and climbing by two per second. Full sync from block 0 is the mode that actually verifies the history we publish, which is the point of this repository. Snap sync against a QBFT chain trusts a peer for the state and verifies far less.

--min-gas-price=0 matches the network. Chain 2800 has a real 1 Gwei base fee from block 10,141,734, but the minimum gas price a node will accept into its own pool is a local policy and the Foundation nodes run it at zero.

Outbound and inbound TCP and UDP on your p2p port must be open. Discovery is UDP; a TCP only firewall gives you a node that dials out and is never dialled back.

Check that you are on the right chain, before you trust anything else

Two facts settle it. Run these against your own node once it is up.

1. Your block 0 must be the network's block 0.

curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8545 -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"eth_getBlockByNumber","params":["0x0",false]}' \
  | grep -o '"hash":"0x[0-9a-f]*"'

Expected, and this is the whole test:

0xd86d57a899cbfa580669f0e1c7cd4ae5f525247c3c823f8f75df176a0c5d7f1a

That hash covers every consensus relevant field in genesis.json, including the state root of the six genesis accounts. If it matches, your genesis file is the network's genesis file and no further comparison of individual fields is needed. If it does not match, your node will never peer, and no amount of correct bootnodes will help.

Compare against the public endpoints, which are separate machines with separate operators of the same file:

curl -s -X POST https://rpc.aere.network  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"eth_getBlockByNumber","params":["0x0",false]}'
curl -s -X POST https://rpc2.aere.network -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"eth_getBlockByNumber","params":["0x0",false]}'

2. You must have peers.

curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8545 -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"net_peerCount","params":[]}'

A nonzero answer means discovery worked. Zero after a few minutes means either your UDP port is closed or the bootnode you were given is down; a plain TCP connect to its address distinguishes the two.

What the two bootnodes are, and what they are not

They are two full nodes that are not in the validator set. Chain 2800 seals blocks with seven QBFT validators, and none of the seven is listed here, on purpose. Publishing a validator's p2p address hands an attacker a target whose downtime costs the network consensus headroom, which is why sentry style architectures exist. The two nodes above carry no consensus responsibility: if both are taken down, new nodes cannot bootstrap until they are replaced, and block production is unaffected.

A written address is not a live address. This file cannot prove the bootnodes are up at the moment you read it; only your own net_peerCount can.

Both were reachable and serving blocks when this file was written. Both are Foundation operated, so this is one operator's word for two addresses. That is a real centralisation fact about chain 2800 today and not a documentation gap.

Measured, 2026-08-03

The recipe on this page was executed rather than written. A Besu node with an empty data directory was started from exactly this genesis.json and exactly these two bootnode URLs, on a machine that is not a validator, with --sync-mode=FULL and no static nodes, no other peer hints and no copied database.

Its own block 0 came out as 0xd86d57a899cbfa580669f0e1c7cd4ae5f525247c3c823f8f75df176a0c5d7f1a, which is the live chain's block 0. That hash covers the state root, so the six accounts in alloc are the network's down to the last wei, and so is every header field in the file.
It reached 11 peers knowing nothing but the two enode URLs above.
It imported from block 0 to block 2,221,580 in about thirty minutes, with zero rejected blocks, which carries it through the sub-second block period change at roughly 2,137,652 and out the other side.

The honest limits on that run, stated because they are the difference between this section and an advertisement:

It was stopped at ~2.2 million rather than carried to the head, so it never reached the precompile fork at 9,189,161 or the base fee floor at 10,141,734. "Reaches the current head" is not measured.
It ran the Foundation's build of the fork, not a build a third party made from patches/. That those patches build, and that the built precompiles answer the NIST vectors, is measured separately in README.md; that the two together sync to the head is not.
Nothing here proves the bootnodes will be up when you read this.

A number in this file that the chain does not agree with

config.transitions.qbft[0].block reads 2138451. That is the height at which the file says the block period drops from one second to half a second. The chain says otherwise. Sampling header timestamps on the public endpoints puts the change just after 2,137,652. Measured spans of twenty blocks: from 2,137,600 the twenty blocks take 20 s, from 2,137,656 they take 15 s, from 2,137,657 they take 12 s, and from 2,137,700 they take a flat 10 s, which is 500 ms a block and stays there through 2,138,400. The published 2138451 is roughly eight hundred blocks late and describes a boundary that is not in the data.

It is published anyway, unaltered, because this file is the file the network runs and its value as evidence comes from being exactly that. Two things make the discrepancy harmless to you rather than merely tolerated: the field only governs how fast a proposer may seal, so it has no effect on a node that follows; and it was measured, on the sync run described above, that a node carrying this exact value imports the blocks either side of both numbers without rejecting one.

Correcting it means editing a file on live validators, which is a change to running consensus infrastructure and is not made as a side effect of publishing a document.

A note on the `comment` fields in `alloc`

The six genesis accounts carry comment strings. No client reads them; they are not consensus data and they are inside the file only because they have always been. Two of them are wrong and are left uncorrected here rather than quietly edited, because this file is published byte for byte as the running nodes hold it: the dash characters are mangled, and the 1,400,000,000 AERE account is labelled "Mining Reserve" although chain 2800 has no mining and never has. It is the staking and emissions reserve. Correcting the text means editing a file on live nodes, which is a change to running infrastructure and is not made as a side effect of a documentation fix.

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