aere-research/aips/README.md
Aere Network 4a0b48588c Initial public release
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.
2026-07-20 01:02:30 +03:00

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# AERE Improvement Proposals (AIPs)
An AIP (AERE Improvement Proposal) is a design document that describes a change
to the AERE Network (chain ID 2800), its contracts, its consensus parameters, or
its processes. An AIP records the motivation for a change, the exact mechanism,
the rationale for the design, and, when the change is already live, the on-chain
addresses and transactions that prove it exists.
AIPs are AERE's equivalent of Ethereum's EIP/ERC process. They exist so that any
reader, human or machine, can reconstruct why the chain works the way it does
from a single canonical, plain-text source instead of from marketing pages.
This directory is a local, self-contained scaffold. It is not published anywhere
and is not wired into any build or deployment. It is intended to be the seed of a
public AIP repository once the process is stable.
## What belongs in an AIP
- A protocol or consensus change (block time, fee routing, precompiles).
- A new contract standard or interface that other builders are expected to
integrate against.
- A token-standard or account-standard convention (ARC).
- A process or governance change (Meta).
Things that do not belong in an AIP: bug-fix redeploys that preserve an existing
interface (those are tracked in `sdk-js/src/addresses.ts` deprecation notes),
routine parameter tuning inside an already-ratified bound, and pure documentation.
## Lifecycle
An AIP moves through a small number of statuses. The happy path is
`Draft -> Review -> Last Call -> Final`. Standards that are never "done" (for
example a registry that keeps growing) settle in `Living` instead of `Final`.
| Status | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| Draft | The proposal is written and formatted correctly and has an author. It may still change substantially. |
| Review | The author has marked it ready for wider scrutiny. Open questions are being resolved. |
| Last Call | Final review window. A fixed review period is stated. If no blocking issue is raised, it advances. |
| Final | Accepted and, for already-shipped work, live on chain 2800. The mechanism is now stable and should not change in a breaking way. |
| Living | Accepted and expected to keep being updated (for example an index or a registry-style standard). |
| Withdrawn | The author or the editors abandoned the proposal. Terminal. |
| Stagnant | Inactive in Draft or Review for an extended period. Can be revived. |
Retro-filed AIPs (documents written after the change already shipped) enter
directly at `Final` or `Living` and carry a note that they are backfilling
history. AIP-2 through AIP-7 in this scaffold are retro-filed.
## Categories and types
Every Standards Track AIP names one category:
- **Core**: consensus, block production, fee/burn accounting, precompiles, and
anything that changes how the chain itself behaves. Requires a client or
genesis/config change.
- **Networking**: peer-to-peer protocol, sync, and node-to-node messaging.
- **Interface**: contract-level interfaces, ABIs, RPC conventions, and
verification surfaces that builders integrate against.
- **ARC (token standards)**: AERE Request for Comment. Application and token
standards, for example ERC-20/4626 receipt tokens and ERC-4337 account
conventions, as adopted on AERE.
- **Meta**: process, governance, and the AIP process itself.
Types: Standards Track (Core, Networking, Interface, ARC), Meta, and
Informational. Informational AIPs give guidance and do not mandate anything.
## Honest governance note (read this)
AERE is not yet trustlessly governed. Today the network runs seven validators
under a single operator, one client (Hyperledger Besu QBFT), no external security
audit, and thin real usage. In that reality an AIP is not ratified by an on-chain
vote of independent stakeholders. It is **Foundation-ratified**: the AERE
Foundation account (`0x0243A4f47D44b40b65D33f20329dE20D00c6f3C3`, a single-key
Foundation-controlled account, not a deployed multisig) is the final editor and
approver.
Every AIP that predates validator and client decentralization carries the label
**"Foundation-ratified (pre-decentralization)"** so no reader mistakes editorial
ratification for trustless governance. As the validator set opens up and a second
client and independent stakers come online, the process is expected to migrate to
stake-weighted or validator-weighted ratification. That migration will itself be a
Meta AIP. Until then, the honest description of AERE governance is: a Foundation
publishes proposals, ships them, and records them here for public audit.
## How to file an AIP
1. Copy `aip-template.md` to `AIP-N.md`, where N is the next free integer.
2. Fill in every required section. Do not delete a section header; if a section
does not apply, write "None" under it.
3. Cite on-chain addresses verbatim from `sdk-js/src/addresses.ts`. Never invent
an address, a transaction hash, or a gas number. If a number has not been
measured, write "to be measured" rather than guessing.
4. Add a row to the index below.
5. Open it for editorial review. Until decentralization, the editor is the
Foundation.
## Index
| AIP | Title | Type / Category | Status | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [1](./AIP-1.md) | AIP Purpose and Process | Meta | Living | The process itself |
| [2](./AIP-2.md) | Coinbase Fee-Burn Routing (37.5%) | Standards Track / Core | Final | Foundation-ratified (pre-decentralization) |
| [3](./AIP-3.md) | Sub-Second Block Period (500 ms QBFT) | Standards Track / Core | Final | Foundation-ratified (pre-decentralization) |
| [4](./AIP-4.md) | On-Chain Post-Quantum Signature Verification Suite | Standards Track / Interface | Final | Foundation-ratified (pre-decentralization) |
| [5](./AIP-5.md) | sAERE Receipt Token and AereSink Immutable Flywheel | Standards Track / ARC | Final | Foundation-ratified (pre-decentralization) |
| [6](./AIP-6.md) | ERC-4337 Passkey and Gasless Onboarding Stack | Standards Track / ARC | Final | Foundation-ratified (pre-decentralization) |
| [7](./AIP-7.md) | AerePQC Hard-Fork Activation (Native PQC Precompiles and Extended EIP-2935 Lookback) | Standards Track / Core | Final | Foundation-ratified (pre-decentralization) |
## Conventions
- Files are named `AIP-N.md`.
- One AIP per change. If a change has a Core part and an application part, either
file two AIPs or state clearly which layer each section addresses.
- Addresses, transaction hashes, gas figures, and block numbers must be
reproducible from the chain or from a repo fixture. Marketing numbers (for
example a design-ceiling throughput) are never presented as measured results.
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