PoA Consensus
OmbraChain v1 uses permissioned Proof-of-Authority (PoA): a known allowlist of authorized miners take turns proposing blocks, round-robin. The chosen proposer for a given height self-signs its block (quorum 1) and broadcasts it. This is the same family as Ethereum's Clique / Aura.
OmbraChain v1 is a permissioned PoA network: an allowlist of authorized miners take turns proposing blocks. The chosen proposer self-signs (quorum 1) — no fragile cross-node round-trips, so it never stalls when only a few are online.
Each winning miner earns the block reward + 4 KB of mined storage. Future: Proof-of-AI-Work weighting (more validated AI work → more turns).
Why quorum 1 (and not BFT 2/3)?
A full BFT quorum (⌊2/3·N⌋+1 attestations per block) is the right model for a large trustless validator set. But for a small, permissioned set — especially with members behind NAT — requiring every proposer to collect cross-node attestations stalls the chain the moment one node can't be reached.
So v1 takes the pragmatic path:
- The proposer is chosen deterministically per
(prevHash, height, round)from the online allowlist. - The proposer self-attests → the block finalizes immediately. No fragile round-trips, never stalls.
- Other miners' attestations are still collected as a bonus — they prove who's online and keep the rolling "active set" fresh, so newcomers can join and offline nodes drop out within a short window.
Liveness rules
| Rule | Value |
|---|---|
| Block spacing (min) | ~15s |
| Round fallback | if the round-0 proposer is silent, the next candidate proposes |
| Online window | a miner must have produced/attested recently to stay in the committee |
| Production gate | a node only produces when it has at least one peer (no solo forks) |
Becoming a producer
Run a node, register as a miner, and get your ox address added to the allowlist. Then you take your turn
in the rotation and earn the block reward + 4 KB of mined storage per block. See
Run a Node.