igneum/sim/horizon/frontier/out.md

frontier_model.py output (Horizon lane 7), run on 2026-10-06

Inputs and labels:

Key	Label	Value	Source
rtx5090_mhs_v3	measured	136.1	docs/analysis/chip-model-v3.md 5.1 (bench-log Counter ASIC 2.0)
rtx5090_w_v3	measured	326.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.1 (peak with prover on; 290 W in the app, 350 W bench)
rtx5090_uj_per_hash	measured	2.4	chip-model-v3.md 5.1
rtx5090_reads_per_s	measured	17500000000.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.1 (CUDA wall)
gddr7_ceiling_reads	approximate	21300000000.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.3 activate-bound ceiling, 16 devices
hbm3_ceiling_reads_per_stack	approximate	10700000000.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.3 (8 activates per 12 ns per channel, 16 channels)
hbm4_channels_per_stack	cited	32	JEDEC JESD270-4 via allaboutcircuits.com: channels 16 to 32, each with two pseudo-channels
hbm3_channels_per_stack	cited	16	chip-model-v3.md 5.1 (Synopsys HBM3 glossary)
gddr7_read_nj	approximate	2.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.3
hbm3_read_nj	approximate	1.2	chip-model-v3.md 5.3
hbm4_read_nj	approximate	1.0	estimate: 15 percent under HBM3 on a shorter interposer path; unsourced
hbm3_stack_usd	approximate	200.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.1 (siliconanalysts, 24 GB factory gate)
hbm4_stack_usd	approximate	550.0	siliconanalysts.com/data/hbm-pricing, 36 GB 12-high, October 2026
gddr7_2gb_usd	cited	20.0	TrendForce 24 Sep 2026 via chip-model-v3.md 5.1
gddr6_8gb_usd_2023	cited	27.0	Tom's Hardware 'GDDR6 VRAM prices plummet' (2023)
gddr6_usd_per_gb_2025	cited	2.5	TechSpot 'AI is eating all the DRAM' (2026)
gddr6_usd_per_gb_2026	cited	3.3	TechSpot, same article
rtx5090_msrp	cited	1999.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.1
rtx5090_street_2026	cited	3695.0	localaimaster.com GPU price-per-GB table, 2026
shadow_N	measured	100000	class v4 candidate mx8+sh256x27, counter-asic-3-status.md section 4
shadow_chip_core_w_at_k1	approximate	150.0	latency-shadow-2026-10-06.md via counter-asic-3-status.md section 4 (14,000-lane array, N5)
card_w_at_N100k	approximate	401.0	chip-model-v3.md 5.7 (linear toward 575 W TGP)
card_uj_at_N100k	approximate	2.95	chip-model-v3.md 5.7
ethproofs_usd_per_block_jan2025	cited	1.69	HackMD 'Ethproofs 2025 review' (willcorcoran), secondary
ethproofs_usd_per_block_sep2026	cited	0.005	ethproofs via the Sept 2026 comparative analysis (GitHub Ricosworks1), secondary; 'under 4 cents' by Dec 2025 per HackMD
eth_blocks_per_day	cited	7200	12-s slots
emission_ign_per_block	designed	31.688	sim/economy assumptions, spec 2.5, 1 block/s, pre-halving
rented_usd_per_gh_hour	measured	11.69	docs/bench-log.md line 2582, Rental cost of hash, 6 October 2026: 1,748 MH/s for USD 20.44 per hour on RunPod community pods, USD 0.0117 per MH/s-hour; the live devnet 1.16 GH/s
base_fee_full_block_ign	designed	3.0	spec 5.11: a full block burns 3 IGN at the floor
base_fee_full_day_ign	designed	259200.0	spec 5.11
vast_take	approximate	0.15	secondary comparisons (spheron, miningboard) say about 15 percent; Vast's own June 2024 update says the host fee was removed and replaced by a surcharge it does not publish
runpod_take	approximate	0.07	secondary (miningboard): hosts keep 93 percent
rtx5090_rent_usd_h	cited	0.44	Vast.ai on-demand, getdeploying.com 6 Oct 2026; RunPod secure cloud 0.99
rtx4090_rent_usd_h	cited	0.31	Vast.ai low, gpuperhour/runcrate 2026
plain_transfer_ign	designed	0.0051	spec 5.11
vdf_10min_s	measured	600	spec 04 epoch VDF; 4.47 ms verify, 516 B proof
drand_quicknet_period_s	cited	3	docs.drand.love quicknet, unchained
checkpoint_period_s	designed	30	spec 03

1. Predictions to 2030

1.1 Flagship consumer VRAM (approximate: generations from memory, the 5090 cited)

Year	Card	GB	Years since 2016	GB growth per year (compound)
2016	GTX 1080	8	0
2018	RTX 2080 Ti	11	2	1.173
2020	RTX 3090	24	4	1.316
2022	RTX 4090	24	6	1.201
2025	RTX 5090	32	9	1.167

Compound growth 2016 to 2025: 1.167 per year (4x in 9 years). Extrapolated: 2028 51 GB, 2030 69 GB (approximate). Module arithmetic: a 512-bit board is 16 devices; 2 GB devices give 32 GB, 3 GB devices 48 GB (Micron ends 2 GB GDDR7, TrendForce Sep 2026), 4 GB devices 64 GB. So the 2028 flagship is 48 GB if the RTX 60 series (Rubin GR20x, rumoured 2028, kopite7kimi via videocardz) ships 3 GB GDDR7, and 64 GB is the 2030 shape.

1.2 Memory dollars per GB (consumer GDDR)

Point	USD per GB	Source label
2023 GDDR6	3.38	cited
2025 GDDR6	2.50	cited
2026 GDDR6	3.30	cited
Sep 2026 GDDR7 2 GB device	10.00	cited
Sep 2026 GDDR7 3 GB device	21.67	cited (60 to 70 USD per device)

Direction: GB per dollar fell in 2026 for the first time in a decade (DRAM shortage, forecast tight through 2027). The chip model's f = 1 chip pays the same device price the GPU does, so the ratio of chip memory cost to GPU memory cost is unchanged; what changes is the share of each bill of materials that is memory.

1.3 Random-read ceilings per memory system (reads per second; the lottery is latency-bound, so this is the number that matters, not GB/s)

Memory system	Reads/s ceiling	Scaling rule	Label
GDDR7, 16 devices, 512-bit (RTX 5090 board)	21.3 G	activates per tFAW per channel x 64 channels; pin rate irrelevant (28 Gbps = 48 Gbps)	approximate
RTX 5090 measured	17.5 G	82 percent of the ceiling	measured
HBM3 or HBM3E, one stack	10.7 G	16 channels	approximate
HBM4, one stack	21.4 G	32 channels (JEDEC): 2x the activate parallelism per stack if tFAW per channel holds	approximate, derived
A 48 GB GDDR7 board (16 x 3 GB)	21.3 G	same channel count; capacity does not add channels	approximate

1.4 The stored-dataset (f = 1) chip in 2028 on HBM4, bare and under the latency shadow

Chip	MH/s per chip	W	uJ per hash	Gain per joule vs 5090 at 2.40 uJ	Gain per joule vs 5090 under the shadow (2.95 uJ at N = 100k)	Memory USD
GDDR7 f=1 (today's model row)	166	78 (bare) / 228 (with a 150 W shadow core at k = 1)	0.47 / 1.37	5.1x	2.2x	320
HBM3 one stack f=1	84	27 (bare) / 177 (with a 150 W shadow core at k = 1)	0.32 / 2.12	7.5x	1.4x	400
HBM4 one stack f=1 (2028)	167	36 (bare) / 186 (with a 150 W shadow core at k = 1)	0.22 / 1.11	11.0x	2.6x	750

Reading: HBM4's doubled channel count doubles the chip's rate per stack at about the same watts, so the bare per-joule edge rises from about 7x to about 11x, and under the class v4 shadow (N = 100,000, k = 1) from about 2.3x to about 2.7x (approximate; every chip figure is arithmetic). The lever that answers it is N: the chip's shadow core scales with N while the card's spare ALU budget is 330,000 ops per hash on the 5090. Verifier cost is N x 32 ops per warp: 3.2 M ops at N = 100k (about 1 ms on one M5 Max core, measured class), 10 M at N = 330k (about 3 ms), inside the 10 ms gate; the 2019-class core is unmeasured.

• N = 100,000: card 401 W, 2.95 uJ; HBM4 chip 186 W, 1.11 uJ; gain 2.65x at k = 1
• N = 200,000: card 477 W, 3.50 uJ; HBM4 chip 336 W, 2.01 uJ; gain 1.74x at k = 1
• N = 330,000: card 575 W, 4.22 uJ; HBM4 chip 531 W, 3.18 uJ; gain 1.33x at k = 1 So the schedule for N should be written into the era draw at genesis (a doubling per era is the candidate), because the memory generation it answers arrives every two to three years and the verifier has 10x of headroom.

1.5 Chip fabrication cost curve (mask sets, cited; project totals approximate)

Node	Mask set USD	Source	What it means for Igneum
28 nm	1 to 3 M	TubeTime (3 M), VBsemi (over 1 M)	The f = 1 memory-controller chip lives here: no mixer on the die. Project 5 to 30 M (history 2.5)
7 nm	10 to 15 M	VBsemi, HN thread	The f = 0 recompute chip with the 256 MiB cache on die. Project 50 to 75 M
5 nm	6.5 M (2026 data) to 30 M (2023 estimate)	siliconanalysts, HN	The shadow core at N5 (30 mm^2 at N = 100k) pushes the f = 1 chip from a 28 nm project to a 5 nm one, or to a reticle-class 28 nm die
3 nm	15 to 22 M (Q4 2025), up to 40 M (older estimate)	siliconanalysts, semianalysis	Not relevant to a chip whose cost is memory

The curve is falling at a given node (5 nm masks quoted at 30 M in 2023 and 6.5 M in 2026) while the leading node's cost rises. Consequence: the shadow lever's economic teeth (forcing an advanced-node core onto a memory-controller chip) weaken by about 4x in mask cost over three years; the rate and joule arithmetic above, not the fab bill, is what holds in 2030.

1.6 zkVM proving cost per Ethereum block (public tracker, secondary sources, approximate)

Point	USD per Ethereum block proof	Hardware named
Jan 2025	1.69	about 160 RTX 4090s for 90 percent real-time (Succinct, May 2025 estimate)
Dec 2025	under 0.04	16 x RTX 5090 (SP1 Hypercube 99.7 percent under 12 s); Pico Prism 16 GPUs
Sep 2026	0.005	ZisK 4 x RTX 5090 p99 9.62 s (Aug 2026); Cysic Venus 7.4 s on 24 GPUs (Apr 2026)

The 20-month ratio is 338x, which is 33x per year. That rate cannot hold (it is software catching up with hardware), so the table below uses 1.5x, 3x and 10x per year from today's measured Igneum shard times.

1.7 Which card tier proves a v1 shard in under 10 s in 2028 (measured 6 Oct 2026 times, prover-tiers-real-cards.md, divided by two years of software gain)

Card	Beside the miner today, s	Alone today, s	2028 at 1.5x/yr (beside / alone)	2028 at 3x/yr	2028 at 10x/yr	Under 10 s beside the miner in 2028?
RTX 3060 12 GB	37.5	14.4	16.7 / 6.4	4.2 / 1.6	0.4 / 0.1	yes at 3x or more
RTX 4060 8 GB (core-only beside, alone)	22.1	18.4	9.8 / 8.2	2.5 / 2.0	0.2 / 0.2	yes even at 1.5x
RTX 4070 12 GB	27.3	12.1	12.1 / 5.4	3.0 / 1.3	0.3 / 0.1	yes at 3x or more
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB	34.6	11.6	15.4 / 5.2	3.8 / 1.3	0.3 / 0.1	yes at 3x or more
RTX 3080 10 GB	25.6	7.1	11.4 / 3.2	2.8 / 0.8	0.3 / 0.1	yes at 3x or more
RTX 3090 24 GB	19.9	14.9	8.8 / 6.6	2.2 / 1.7	0.2 / 0.1	yes even at 1.5x
RTX 4090 24 GB	26.1	6.3	11.6 / 2.8	2.9 / 0.7	0.3 / 0.1	yes at 3x or more
RTX 5070 12 GB	37.2	4.8	16.5 / 2.1	4.1 / 0.5	0.4 / 0.0	yes at 3x or more
RTX 5090 32 GB	10.7	6.3	4.8 / 2.8	1.2 / 0.7	0.1 / 0.1	yes even at 1.5x

Consequence per tier: at the floor rate (1.5x a year) only the 32 GB card mines and proves inside 10 s in 2028, so a 10-s proof lag at launch is a 24 GB and 32 GB story; at 3x a year every card from the 3060 up does it, and the 8 GB card alone proves in 2 s. The block-proof target (under 10 s behind the tip) should be written as a function of the measured fleet median, re-read each era, not as a date.

2. Idea 1: the reward rule that prices rented hash out

Rule modelled: m = clamp(W30 / H_now, m_min, 1) where W30 is the 30-day work-weighted hash (the finality window's blue blocks per DAA second, which every node already computes for W2) and H_now the DAA-window estimate. The block subsidy paid to the producer is m x the schedule; the remainder (1 - m) x subsidy goes to the proving pool escrow of that block (not to incumbents, to avoid the cartel transfer; see the Monero attack in the text). Fees are untouched.

Network hash	Attacker adds	H_now / W30	m	Attacker's share of blocks	Attacker IGN per hour, no rule	With rule	Rent USD per hour	Break-even IGN price, no rule	With rule	To the pool per hour, IGN
1 GH/s	1 GH/s	2.0	0.50	0.50	57,038	28,519	12	0.00020	0.00041	57,038
1 GH/s	2 GH/s	3.0	0.33	0.67	76,051	25,350	23	0.00031	0.00092	76,051
1 GH/s	5 GH/s	6.0	0.25	0.83	95,064	23,766	58	0.00061	0.00246	85,558
10 GH/s	10 GH/s	2.0	0.50	0.50	57,038	28,519	117	0.00205	0.00410	57,038
10 GH/s	20 GH/s	3.0	0.33	0.67	76,051	25,350	234	0.00307	0.00922	76,051
10 GH/s	50 GH/s	6.0	0.25	0.83	95,064	23,766	584	0.00615	0.02459	85,558
100 GH/s	100 GH/s	2.0	0.50	0.50	57,038	28,519	1,169	0.02049	0.04099	57,038
100 GH/s	200 GH/s	3.0	0.33	0.67	76,051	25,350	2,338	0.03074	0.09223	76,051
100 GH/s	500 GH/s	6.0	0.25	0.83	95,064	23,766	5,845	0.06148	0.24594	85,558
1000 GH/s	1000 GH/s	2.0	0.50	0.50	57,038	28,519	11,690	0.20495	0.40990	57,038
1000 GH/s	2000 GH/s	3.0	0.33	0.67	76,051	25,350	23,380	0.30742	0.92227	76,051
1000 GH/s	5000 GH/s	6.0	0.25	0.83	95,064	23,766	58,450	0.61485	2.45940	85,558

Honest-growth cost: a listing that doubles honest hash overnight halves every miner's subsidy per block (not per hash: difficulty halves the per-hash rate anyway; the rule halves it again) until W30 catches up, which is the 30-day ramp of ledger C7 (0.9x on day 28 to 31). With the floor m_min = 0.25 the worst case is a 4x cut, and the money is not lost to the chain: it reaches the provers of the same block, who are the same population. Per tier: a home miner's monthly income during a doubling month falls 50 percent under the rule against 50 percent already from difficulty (so 25 percent of the pre-event figure); a pool user sees the same through PPLNS; a prover with weight gains the diverted share. The gate: in the economy simulator (sim/economy/sim.py scenario f, a pool with the network's hash arriving on day 10) the incumbents' income under the rule must stay above the no-rule row for the 30 days and the newcomers' under; and in the fast-time harness a timestamp-manipulated H_now (headers inside the 132-s tolerance) must move m by under 2 percent.

3. Idea 2: work-stake, vote weight as the external-job bond

A key that claims an external job and delivers late or wrong loses s of its 30-day weight for 30 days (as equivocation strips 100 percent, spec 3.6). Weight is blue blocks; it cannot be bought, only mined. Arithmetic: what a stripped key forgoes.

Key's hash share	Blocks per 30 days at 1 bps	Weight share	Shard sortition income per 30 days (20 percent pool, pro rata), IGN	Stripped at s = 25 percent: lost pool income over 30 days, IGN	Stripped at s = 100 percent	IGN bond that would match (design 4.6: maxPgas x f_p x 1.5 for a 1 B-cycle job at the floor)
0.01 percent	259	0.01 percent	1,643	411	1,643	0.0015 IGN
0.10 percent	2,592	0.10 percent	16,427	4,107	16,427	0.0015 IGN
1.00 percent	25,920	1.00 percent	164,271	41,068	164,271	0.0015 IGN
10.00 percent	259,200	10.00 percent	1,642,706	410,676	1,642,706	0.0015 IGN

Reading: for every key above dust the 30-day pool income at risk is many orders above the designed IGN bond for one job, so weight is a far larger bond than coins, and it is a bond nobody can buy on a market. It also strips the key's vote for 30 days, which is the sentence the finality rule already hands out for equivocation. The cost: a false positive (a partition that makes an honest proof late) strips an honest voter; so the rule must use DAA time, a long deadline (the 120-s claim timeout of P9 decision, or longer), and a one-strike grace per 30 days. Per tier: a solo 8 GB miner below dust has no weight and so cannot take external jobs at all under this rule (it can still prove shards, which carry no bond); a pool user's jobs are the pool's and the pool's weight is at risk, which is what a pool operator wants priced. Gate: on the phase 4 devnet, 1,000 jobs with a 10 percent injected late rate: every injected fault stripped, zero honest keys stripped across a 60-s partition.

4. Idea 6: audits paid from the burn, by 60 percent signal, no standing address

Chain traffic (fraction of full blocks)	Base fee burned per day, IGN	7-day redirect, IGN	30-day redirect, IGN	USD at 0.02 (7 d / 30 d)	USD at 0.10 (7 d / 30 d)
0.01	2,592	18,144	77,760	363 / 1,555	1,814 / 7,776
0.10	25,920	181,440	777,600	3,629 / 15,552	18,144 / 77,760
0.50	129,600	907,200	3,888,000	18,144 / 77,760	90,720 / 388,800
1.00	259,200	1,814,400	7,776,000	36,288 / 155,520	181,440 / 777,600

Reading: at launch traffic (1 to 10 percent of full blocks) a 30-day redirect is USD 1,600 to 16,000 at 0.02 per IGN, under one Code4rena contest (base pricing from USD 6,500 before the 2025 zero-fee change; Immunefi's standard pays 10 percent of funds at risk). At half-full blocks it reaches a serious bounty (USD 78,000 for 30 days at 0.02). So the burn can fund audits only once the chain is used; before that the only money is the client's 1 percent dev fee and the founders' mined coins (litepaper: grants from founders' mined coins). The text gives the attack: this is a dev fund with a 60 percent veto and a per-event payee, which is exactly the switch spec 5.5 removed.

5. Idea 10: Igneum as the settlement layer for GPU rental

Card	Vast.ai on-demand USD/h (cited)	Platform take modelled	Host loses USD per card-year	Igneum settlement cost per rental (2 transfers at the floor), IGN	At 0.02 and 0.10 USD per IGN	Hours of rental to pay 1 USD of chain fees at 0.02
RTX 5090	0.44	Vast about 15 percent	579	0.0102	0.00020 / 0.0010	4,902 rentals
RTX 5090	0.44	RunPod about 7 percent	270	0.0102	0.00020 / 0.0010	4,902 rentals
RTX 4090	0.31	Vast about 15 percent	408	0.0102	0.00020 / 0.0010	4,902 rentals
RTX 4090	0.31	RunPod about 7 percent	190	0.0102	0.00020 / 0.0010	4,902 rentals

Reading: the chain's fee is three to five orders of magnitude under the platform take. The platform's take pays for what the chain cannot do: matching, trust, dispute, image hosting, and the verification of delivered work. The honest problem is the last one: a rented hour of general compute is unverifiable, so an on-chain escrow without a verifier is a trust-me payment with lower fees. What is verifiable on this chain today: ZK proving jobs (the precompile); what is verifiable with sampling: deterministic recompute checked on a sampled fraction (SPEX, arXiv 2503.18899; Render's result-quorum, approximate); what needs hardware the fleet does not have: TEE attestation (NVIDIA confidential computing is H100 and H200 class, phala.com; no consumer card has it).

6. Idea 12: a randomness beacon from the checkpoint VDF

Beacon	Period	Latency to a value	Unbiasability argument	Verify cost	Who runs it
drand quicknet (League of Entropy)	3 s	about 3 s	threshold BLS over H(round) with a 2/3 threshold of about 20 named organisations; unbiasable while under 1/3 collude; unchained	one BLS verify	a league, trusted set
Igneum epoch seed today	3,600 s	600 s (10-min VDF)	a certified checkpoint 10 minutes before use; the VDF makes the last block producer's choice useless because it cannot see the output in time	4.47 ms (516 B)	nobody: any node evaluates
Proposed: a per-checkpoint VDF beacon	30 s	30 to 60 s (a 30-s VDF of each certified checkpoint hash)	the checkpoint is locked by 2/3 of 30-day weight before the VDF starts, so no single party chooses the input; a last-block grind costs a block's subsidy per try and buys one bit of influence only if the attacker can evaluate the VDF faster than the chain, which is the class-group ASIC question (Chia timelords)	4.47 ms per value, 2,880 values a day	nobody: the epoch pipeline already exists

Reading: the chain already produces an unbiasable value once an hour with a 10-minute delay. A 30-s beacon is the same code at 120x the cadence, and its honest limit is the one Chia carries: the fastest class-group squarer sets the floor on 'delay', so a timelord-class ASIC owner can learn the value earlier than everyone else (Chia docs: timelords are software or ASIC). That earlier knowledge is a front-running edge, not a bias. The product: PREVRANDAO per block already comes from this pipeline (spec 7.1); the beacon makes it a 30-s value usable off-chain (lotteries, shuffles, timelock encryption as drand does).

7. Idea 14: proving other chains as the main income by 2030

Income line	USD per day	Basis
Proving every Ethereum L1 block at the Sep 2026 tracker cost	36	0.005 USD x 7,200 blocks; the price a buyer pays is above cost, call it 10x: 360
The same at the Dec 2025 cost (under 0.04)	288	secondary
Igneum year-1 emission at 0.005 USD per IGN	13,689	31.688 IGN per block x 86,400
Igneum year-1 emission at 0.02 USD per IGN	54,757	31.688 IGN per block x 86,400
Igneum year-1 emission at 0.1 USD per IGN	273,784	31.688 IGN per block x 86,400
Rollup proving spend, all rollups (customer brief)	8,219 to 27,397	low millions a year, approximate
Boundless trailing day in the explorer (4 Oct 2026)	2	8.4 T cycles at a 0.21 USD per B-cycle median, developer-adoption.md 2b, approximate

Reading: the whole public proving market is three to four orders of magnitude under year-1 emission at any price input. For proving to be the main income by 2030, demand must grow about 1,000x while cost per proof keeps falling 3x to 30x a year, which pushes dollars per proof down as fast as volume rises. The arithmetic says never by 2030 for 'main income'; it says 'yes' for 'a second income that keeps cards on after the subsidy fades' (spec 5.10.2), which is the design's own claim.