68e057209c
Lock alpha scope, tracker auth, TOPLOC fraud verification, and deferred multi-tracker money-path work; supersede legacy fraud issues with ADR-0018. Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Alpha hardening — planning index
Pre-release alpha audit + grilling (2026-07-04). Research complete; planning complete; Bucket 1 blockers next.
Locked scope: one settlement tracker, open node join, devnet mock-USDT, reputation carries forward → fraud must be bounded. See ADR-0016.
Artifacts
| Path | Status |
|---|---|
| research-verifiable-inference.md | Complete — SOTA research, §8 layered scheme, TOPLOC adopt |
| handoff.md | Session handoff — locked decisions, env notes |
| docs/adr/0016–0019 | Alpha scope, auth, fraud, multi-tracker design |
| issues/ | 22 work items (Buckets 1–3) |
ADRs (this feature)
| ADR | Title |
|---|---|
| 0016 | Alpha scope & known limitations |
| 0017 | Tracker authentication & authorization |
| 0018 | Fraud detection, verification & reputation (flagship) |
| 0019 | Money-path consistency — design accepted, impl deferred |
| 0002 | Amended — settlement superseded by 0015 |
| 0010 | Amended — TLS alpha reality (relay only) |
Recommended implementation order
Implement Bucket 1 first. Fraud arc depends on auth (01–02, 20) and persistence (05).
Phase 1 — Trust boundary (alpha blockers)
| Order | Issue | ID | Depends on |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unified auth + gossip auth + C1 gossip + Validator service token | A2, C1, — | — |
| 2 | Persist strike/ban/reputation | A1/A5 | 02 |
| 3 | Starting credit 0 + spend cap | C5, M1 | 02 |
| 4 | Tracker-authoritative accounting | H2 | 02 |
| 5 | Wallet binding proof | C6 | 02, 03 |
Phase 2 — Fraud arc (after Phase 1)
| Order | Issue | Depends on |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | TOPLOC integration | 05 |
| 7 | Commitment + bisection blame | 06 |
| 8 | Reputation model | 05, 07 |
| 9 | Routing + adaptive audit | 08 |
| 10 | Penalty calibration wiring | 07, 08, 02 |
Prod gate: 21 honest-noise calibration corpus must complete before enabling production TOPLOC audit thresholds (issues 09–10 in prod). Dev/staging TOPLOC wiring (06–08) may proceed in parallel.
Phase 3 — Bucket 2 (post-alpha, design tracked)
| Issue | ADR |
|---|---|
| 12 C2 on-chain idempotency | 0019 §1 |
| 13 C3/C4 consensus-gated settlement | 0019 §2 |
| 14 A3 durable Raft term/vote | 0019 §3 |
| 15 H1 commutative forfeit | 0019 §4 |
Phase 4 — Doc hygiene (parallel anytime)
First 3 to implement
- 01 + 02 + 20 — Gossip auth + unified auth boundary + validator service token (unblocks financial endpoints)
- 05 — Persist strike/ban/reputation (penalties must survive restart)
- 03 — Starting credit 0 + funded-account gate (closes free-credit faucet)
Research anchor
Fraud design cites .scratch/alpha-hardening/research-verifiable-inference.md:
- ADOPT TOPLOC (§8–9, build-vs-adopt table)
- On-demand commitments, not every request (§8 layer 1 footnote; ADR-0018 §3)
- 5% audit budget as target, not cap (§1.1, §6)
- 19× deterrence via full pending forfeiture (§1.1)
- Hop bisection blame pattern (§1.2, §8 layer 3)
- Honest-noise corpus before prod thresholds (§8 layer 3; issue 21)
- Roadmap-only: zkML, TEE, Gensyn RepOps (§9)