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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
..
scripts Initial public release 2026-07-20 01:02:30 +03:00
xmss-verify-core Initial public release 2026-07-20 01:02:30 +03:00
README.md Initial public release 2026-07-20 01:02:30 +03:00

README.md

pq-finality-circuit

The off-chain research core of the Aere Network Post-Quantum Finality Certificate (research item #4).

What is here

xmss-verify-core/ is the IMPLEMENTED and TESTED per-validator VERIFICATION CORE: an RFC 8391 XMSS-SHA2_10_256 hash-based signature verifier (WOTS+ one-time signature plus the XMSS Merkle authentication-path check that recovers the root public key). It is the exact inner computation the aggregation zkVM guest runs for each validator. It is no_std, allocation-free, float-free, hash-only, deterministic, and has ZERO external dependencies, so it tests fully offline.

It is validated against the OFFICIAL github.com/XMSS/xmss-reference known-answer vector committed at ../../contracts/test/fixtures/xmss-sha2_10_256-kat.json, the same vector the deployed on-chain AereXmssVerifier.sol uses.

Run the test

cd xmss-verify-core
cargo test --offline

Expected: 12 tests pass. The genuine official signature verifies (recovers the official root); every tamper (WOTS+ value, checksum chain, auth node, message, leaf index, claimed root, R randomizer) fails; and the bundled SHA-256 matches FIPS 180-4.

Regenerate the test vector

node scripts/gen_vectors.mjs

Reads the committed official KAT JSON and rewrites xmss-verify-core/src/vectors.rs, so the Rust vector is provably derived from the official fixture with no hand transcription.

Honest scope

  • IMPLEMENTED and TESTED: the verification core (this crate).
  • NOT implemented, [MEASURE], multi-week specialist work: the full zkVM aggregation guest, the SP1 proving pipeline, and the end-to-end certificate.
  • UNCHANGED and fail-closed: the on-chain verifier and registry under ../../contracts/contracts/pqfinality/.

This is the ADDITIVE post-quantum finality-attestation read path. Aere consensus stays classical ECDSA QBFT. Post-quantum finality is NOT live end to end.

Full design and effort estimate: ../../docs/AERE-XMSS-AGGREGATION-CIRCUIT.md.