Every day, the chain's figures are checked by people the Foundation knows by name

AEREDIUM's blocks are validated by attested software under a trusted environment, and verified by people. The two words are not the same, and the difference is the whole of this design. A validator checks a transaction before it is written: it decides whether the transaction is admitted, and in what order. A verifier checks after it is written: it reads what the chain has published and confirms, or denies, that the record is right.

On AEREDIUM no person validates. The chain's own consensus, attested software under a trusted environment, admits and orders every transaction, in seconds, with no proof of stake, no vote and nobody in the path. The verifier nodes come after. By the time a verifier looks, the transaction is already written, so the verifier holds no power over it; and that is exactly why the verifier can be trusted with the final word on the record.

Why verification comes after the transaction

A chain whose validators are people carries a risk the chain itself cannot see: the people can agree among themselves. AEREDIUM has removed that risk at its source. Nothing that admits, orders or delays a transaction on this chain is a person, so there is nobody to agree with before a transaction is written.

After the transaction there is nothing left to agree on. The block is written, its hash is fixed and its figures are published. A verifier can confirm the record or dispute it; it cannot change it, delay it, hide it or re-order it. A thousand verifiers agreeing that a wrong figure is right would be contradicted by the published record itself, which anyone may read. Verification after the transaction therefore carries no collusion risk, and that is why AEREDIUM entrusts it to people: known people, since a verification is worth exactly as much as the name behind it.

Who verifies

Every verifier node, Partner or Contributor, is a verifier, and every verifier is known to AEREDIUM. The holder passes AerKYC onboarding before the node is allotted or sold, the Foundation holds the identity, and the node is published on the Node Register. There is no anonymous verification on AEREDIUM: a verification signed by nobody is not a verification.

The verifier signs in to the control panel with its own passkey. The passkey is the verifier's identity: nothing is typed, nothing is remembered, nothing can be lent, and nobody else can sign in as that verifier. Everything the verifier confirms is signed with it, and the chain knows, for every verification it holds, who gave it.

What a verifier verifies

Once a day the control panel presents the verifier with the day's figures, prepared from the chain's own published record. The verifier is asked for a tick, not a calculation: the calculation is the chain's, and the tick is the verifier's. Every figure is shown with the chain height at which it was read, and beside every figure is a link to the place where the verifier can read it for itself, the Bitcoin transaction, the published measurement, the round totals, so that no verifier has to take the chain's word for anything. Five things are verified.

• The Bitcoin attestation. Once a day the chain writes its state to Bitcoin. The verifier confirms that the day's attestation was written, at the height it names, and that what it carries is the chain's state.
• The published measurements. The verifier confirms that the measurements the chain published over the last twenty-four hours are the ones the chain holds, none missing and none altered.
• The rounds. A round closes every ten minutes and the day holds one hundred and forty-four of them. The verifier confirms that the day's minting stayed within the year's ceiling, that every round was divided forty-five, forty-five and ten as the tokenomics states, that what was burned equals the fees collected, and that nothing was minted to any wallet that is not an AERKey threshold-signature wallet.
• The fee and its index. The verifier confirms that the fee charged on the day is the published fee per megabyte and, on the one day a year the fee is re-set, that the three published cloud prices and the computation that moved it are the ones shown.
• The Node Register. The verifier confirms that every wallet credited in the day's rounds stood on the Node Register, as an AERKey wallet, before the round that paid it, and that no other wallet received a mint.

The chain height is recorded with every verification, so that every confirmation names the exact state of the chain it was given against.

How a day is attested

There is no fixed number of verifiers for a day and no quorum to reach. Every verifier who signs in and verifies that day is counted, and when a majority of them have confirmed the same figures, the day's attestation is ticked and published on the chain. The figures are objective: a Bitcoin transaction exists at a height or it does not, a round minted a number or it did not, a wallet stood on the register or it did not. Two verifiers reading the same record return the same answer, and a majority of named verifiers returning it is the attestation.

The verifications are held in the verification database, and the chain reads that database to attest the finality of its blocks. A block whose day has been attested is final, and the attestation that made it so was given by people whose names are known. Until a majority has confirmed the day, the day is not attested; what a verifier declines to confirm is recorded with its name against it, exactly as a confirmation is.

Verifying is a duty, not an option. A verifier who holds a node must attest on at least ten days in each calendar month. A node whose verifier has attested on fewer than ten days in a month receives nothing from the rounds of the following month: the whole of that month's mint is lost to it, and from the month after, provided it has attested on ten days again, it is paid as before. This is what keeps the turnout high every day of the year, and it is the only condition attached to a node.

The control panel

The control panel is the Foundation's own software, provided to every node holder. The verifier signs in with its passkey and sees the day: five figures, each pre-filled, each with its chain height, each with its link to the source. The verifier reads, follows a link where it wishes, and ticks each figure it confirms. The confirmations are signed with the passkey and written to the verification database with the verifier's name, the chain height and the time. The whole of it takes a few minutes a day.

The control panel does nothing else. It holds no AERX, signs no transaction, and cannot touch the chain. A verifier can confirm the record or decline to; it cannot act on the chain, and nothing on the chain waits for any single verifier.

What this gives the chain

Verification is what a verifier node does for the chain, and the rounds are what the chain pays it for doing so. A chain validated by attested software under a trusted environment and verified by named people has no human in front of a transaction and a named human behind every published figure: nobody can bend the record before it is written, and nobody can deny it after. That is the promise of the verifier nodes, and it is kept every day, at a height the verifier records, by people the Foundation knows by name.

AERX Tokenomics 4.01 sets out what the verifier nodes are paid.