igneum/CLAUDE.md

Igneum

A GPU-mined layer 1 whose miners are also the ZK provers for its own zkEVM and for other chains. Josh Malone's project, started 3 October 2026. Named Igneum (Latin: fiery, proven by fire) on 3 October 2026. Repo, Vercel project and Neon database are all "igneum".

Source of truth

The design document (Claude Doc "Igneum", formerly "GPU Prover Network") plus the public litepaper (https://claude.ai/code/artifact/edcf47f6-e918-48c7-95c3-b98e0d65583f) and the brand canvas (https://claude.ai/artifact/CPixnvctTKbrwBwWck3iFj): https://claude.ai/code/artifact/08fa9e06-9240-4964-96f4-76ff1d2f796c Read it with the docs tools before any design discussion. Decisions already taken live there (hard cap 4 billion halving every two years, 80/20 lottery/proving split, NO emission treasury, dev fund from 5% of gas + 5% of external job fees under 60% miner signalling, no stake, miner-only self-contained finality (NO Bitcoin anchoring), 1 block/s at launch, SP1 behind a swappable proving interface, Taiko as first proving customer, 30-day launch ramp).

The design in one paragraph

Leader election by a random-program GPU hash (RandomX idea rebuilt for GPUs, new kernel each ~1h epoch, era parameters drawn automatically every 6 months from chain state inside rules fixed at genesis, NO scheduled human releases; dataset grows on a genesis-fixed schedule and instruction families unlock by height from a genesis reserve (automatic anti-ASIC escalators); only writing new code is human, via 90% miner signalling, never required; warp-unit CPU-verifiable). Ordering by a GHOSTDAG BlockDAG forked from rusty-kaspa. Execution by a zkEVM. Every block ZK-proven by miners in chunks, aggregated 20 to 60 s behind the tip at launch (target under 10 s as provers improve). Finality is miner-only and self-contained: FINALITY RULE V2 (review round 2, 3 Oct 2026): vote weight = blue blocks per BLS vote key (in header) over a flat 30-day DAA window, no damping (the 2x cap was Sybil-void), dust threshold 100 blocks; every voter signs every 30-s checkpoint (VRF picks 8 aggregators only); lock = 2/3 of ACTIVE weight (participation factor over a 2-hour presence window, so silent keys drop out); equivocation evidence strips weight 30 days; fork choice = GHOSTDAG among tips through all certified checkpoints under Kaspa merge-depth 3,600 s; NO hidden-block n^2 penalty (removed, breaks DAG determinism); epoch seed = 10-min class-group VDF of a certified checkpoint, era draw = 1-h VDF; dataset = 256 MB RandomX-style cache, 8 dependent reads per item (not closed-form, not 64 MB); fees: base fee burned in full, priority fee 65/15/15/5 with dev share per call frame. Headline: 10 days of 100% hashrate to reach 1/3 of weight, 20 days for 2/3; 51% never reaches 2/3 while honest miners stay. NO stake and NO other chain anywhere in consensus (Bitcoin anchoring was considered on 3 Oct 2026 and REJECTED by Josh: no reliance on Bitcoin). The same prover network sells proofs to rollups and bridges, priced in dollars, settled in the token. The lottery and the proving are kept separate on purpose (Aleo lesson).

The team, as agents

Each role from the design doc's build plan is an agent in .claude/agents/. Ask them by name.

• cryptographer: lottery hash, chunked proving protocol, proof systems, finality on a DAG. Owns gates 1 and 3.
• consensus-engineer: Rust, rusty-kaspa fork, GHOSTDAG, difficulty, P2P, the hash swap. Owns gate 2.
• execution-engineer: Rust, Ethereum clients, zkEVM integration, SP1, the proving interface, external job market.
• miner-community-lead: miner software, pools, launch ramp, what GPU miners will and will not accept. Owns gate 4. They review each other's work. A claim about another chain must cite the repo and file, or be labelled approximate.

Rules that apply to every agent and every file here

• Josh's copy law: no em dashes, no two-beat antithesis, no aphorisms. Short sentences. Numbers in tables.
• Figures from memory are labelled approximate. Figures from a source cite the source.
• The project is Igneum. Never claim an ASIC gain, a proving time or a market size without a measurement or a citation.
• Vendor source lives in vendor/ (git clones of rusty-kaspa, RandomX, SP1, decred dcrd, etc.). Read real code before describing it.
• Nothing here is a token sale and nothing should become one.

Infrastructure (no URLs yet, by Josh's instruction)

• GitHub: https://github.com/joshmalone117/igneum (private, branch master). Commit as Josh Malone josh@thrsty.com. Push only when Josh asks.
• Vercel project: igneum in the vivanmn team, because Vercel refuses the personal account as a scope. Move it to its own team when the venture is named. For the site, explorer and job-market API later.
• Neon database: igneum, id soft-voice-31914738, London (aws-eu-west-2), Postgres 17. Connection string in ~/.config/igneum/env, never in the repo.

Domains (purchased by Josh, 3 October 2026, registrar with "Full Protection"; nothing pointed yet)

igneum.net, igneum.io, igneum.network, igneum.info, igneum.store, igneum.online, igneum.app, igneum.co.uk, igneum.xyz. Also bought 3 Oct 2026 (Josh: "bought all the other domains"): igneum.org and igneum.com, so the full set is held. Proposed map (not yet applied): igneum.network = primary site, explorer and RPC; igneum.io = docs and developers; igneum.app = wallet and the one-click miner app; every other domain redirects to igneum.network.