Consensus protocol

OmbraChain combines three independent reward mechanisms that together form the consensus:

Mechanism	Reward subject	Trigger	Section
PoATU	Miner that produced AI inference	TASK_REWARD per task	PoATU
PoTU	Block proposer	Every block (burn-based)	PoTU
Validator Attestation	Validators that signed last block	Fixed reward at proposal	Attestation

Plus universal rules:

• All txs are Ed25519-signed and canonically hashed
• Block production is deterministic per proposer slot
• Fee splits and burn rates depend on fork height (see Forks)

Flow per block

1. Mempool collects signed txs
   ↓
2. Proposer slot opens (round-robin via attestation list)
   ↓
3. Proposer assembles block:
   - Selects pending txs ordered by fee desc, then arrival
   - Computes block hash = sha256(canonicalJson(blockHeader))
   - Signs block with Ed25519
   ↓
4. Validators receive block, verify:
   - Block hash matches re-computed hash
   - Proposer signature valid
   - Every tx signature valid
   - Every tx state-transition valid
   ↓
5. Validators broadcast ATTESTATION (signed block hash)
   ↓
6. Once attestation quorum reached, block is final
   ↓
7. Rewards applied:
   - TASK_REWARD txs in block → PoATU to miners
   - Proposer earns block burn floor (PoTU)
   - Validators that attested → ATTESTATION_REWARD

Comparison

Feature	PoW (Bitcoin)	PoS (Ethereum)	PoATU (OmbraChain)
Energy use	High (hash brute force)	Low (stake-weighted)	Medium (AI inference)
Work outcome	Discarded hashes	None — pure attestation	Usable AI output (chat, images, code)
Reward source	Coinbase + fees	Fees + issuance	Task fees + thinking tokens
Hardware lock-in	ASIC-friendly	Any node	GPU-friendly (LLM inference)
Sybil resistance	Hash power cost	Stake size	Provable AI work + attestation

Determinism

Two independent nodes that replay the same block sequence MUST reach byte-identical state. This requires:

• Canonical JSON — insertion-order serialization, no whitespace, BigInteger fields stringified
• Sorted iteration — any map iteration in state transitions uses sorted keys
• No system time — txs carry their own timestamps, never use Date.now() in apply logic
• Bounded numeric — all amounts in BigInt micro-OMBRA, never floats

Cross-language SDKs (TS, Python, Java, C#, C++, Rust, Go) all produce bit-exact tx hashes from the same input.

Next: PoATU →