Mbongo Chain

A deterministic verification layer for off-chain AI inference receipts.

Mbongo Chain verifies cryptographic receipts from off-chain AI inference. It does not execute AI models on-chain. Validators verify receipts deterministically and settle economic outcomes. Execution is off-chain; the chain provides trust and settlement.

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Current Status

Tag: v0.2-devnet-stable
Branch: All development targets dev. PRs must target dev.

Implemented Now

• Block and transaction data structures (SCALE-encoded, BLAKE3 hashing)
• Account model (balance, nonce)
• Transfer execution and validation (signature, nonce, balance, replay protection)
• Persistent storage (RocksDB, atomic WriteBatch)
• Multi-node devnet: 1 producer + N followers over libp2p
• Block sync: bootstrap from genesis, height-based request/response, block announcement
• Timed block production (--producer, --block-time)
• JSON-RPC 2.0 and REST API
• Deterministic replay harness and devnet convergence harness

Explicitly NOT in Scope for v0.2 / v1

• Proof of Stake, Proof of Useful Work, PoX consensus
• AIDA regulator
• GPU marketplace, compute provider runtime, Docker/WASM execution
• TEE attestation, ZK-ML proofs
• On-chain AI model execution
• Block rewards (no economics in v0.2)
• Smart contracts, gas metering
• REST compute job submission

See VISION_v1.md and tokenomics.md.

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Technology Stack (v0.2-devnet-stable)

Core Language:

• Rust (stable toolchain)

Networking:

• libp2p (gossipsub, request/response)

Storage:

• RocksDB (persistent state)
• Atomic WriteBatch

Serialization:

• SCALE encoding

Cryptography:

• Ed25519 signatures
• BLAKE3 hashing

APIs:

• JSON-RPC 2.0
• REST API

Testing:

• Deterministic replay harness
• Devnet convergence harness

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Quick Start (Windows PowerShell)

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.75+ (install via rustup)
• Git

Clone, Build, Test

git clone https://github.com/MbongoChain/mbongo-chain.git
cd mbongo-chain
git checkout dev

cargo build --workspace
cargo test --workspace

Run Producer + Follower (Two Terminals)

Terminal 1 — Producer:

cargo run --bin mbongo-node -- --producer --block-time 5 --rpc-port 9944 --rest-port 8080 --p2p-port 30333 --data-dir data_producer

Terminal 2 — Follower:

cargo run --bin mbongo-node -- --bootnodes /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/30333 --rpc-port 9945 --rest-port 8081 --p2p-port 30334 --data-dir data_follower

Run Validation Harnesses

cargo run -p mbongo-node --bin devnet_harness
cargo run -p mbongo-node --bin replay_harness

Or: .\scripts\devnet_test.ps1 and .\scripts\replay_test.ps1

See DEV_ONBOARDING.md for full CLI reference.

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Documentation

Document	Purpose
DEVNET_STABILITY_REPORT.md	Freeze documentation, test matrix
DEV_ONBOARDING.md	Quick start, CLI reference, devnet commands
ARCHITECTURE_OVERVIEW_FOR_NEW_DEVS.md	Layer separation and block flow
PROTOCOL_LOCK_v0.2.md	Frozen surfaces, versioning rules
COMPUTE_INTERFACE_v0.1.md	Future receipt spec (no implementation in v0.2)
VISION_v1.md	Verification layer scope
tokenomics.md	v1 vs v2+ economics
CONTRIBUTION_TIERS.md	Tier 0/1/2 change rules
RFC_PROCESS.md	How to propose changes to locked surfaces

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Contributing

• PRs target the dev branch. main is reserved for audited milestones.
• Tier labels: Changes to locked surfaces (block format, RPC, P2P, storage) require an RFC and version bump. See CONTRIBUTION_TIERS.md and PROTOCOL_LOCK_v0.2.md.
• Good first issues: GitHub Issues with labels tier-2 or good-first-issue.

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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Roadmap

Version	Milestone	Scope
v0.2	Devnet stable	Multi-node devnet, single producer, block sync. FROZEN.
v0.3	PoS minimal + receipt prototype	Stake-weighted validator set. Reserved RPC stubs. Receipt verification prototype.
v0.4+	Compute verification expansion	Canonical receipt format, challenge mechanism, SDK.
v1.0	Verified inference primitive	Receipt verification live. No on-chain AI execution.
v2+	Optional PoUW	On-chain execution as opt-in extension. PoUW, TEE, ZK-ML are future — not current.

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License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.