The meter reads honestly, including about itself.
Every receipt on the chain carries a tier stamp naming the enforcer on duty, bound into its payload so that it cannot be relabelled without breaking the tip. This page is the ladder that stamp climbs, where the instrument stands today, and the list of results that would prove it wrong.
Where it stands, in one paragraph
A software version of the chain has been running in public since 2026 and holds more than 146,000 receipts. Its tips are anchored into Bitcoin every morning. Every receipt is stamped csprng-512: the witness is computational, the guarantees that hold are the arithmetic ones, and the receipt says so. The physical instrument, a sealed box with a physical noise source whose witness is born after the inputs lock and sensed dead before the box speaks, exists as a design, as four patent applications, and as a bench being built now. Its first measurements are scheduled for the week of 21 September 2026, under a public preregistration whose fingerprint is sealed on the chain and anchored in Bitcoin. Nothing at a lower rung is ever relabelled upward. The transition of the chain from one tier to the next is itself a witnessed tick.
One field, its values, what each rung earns.
| Tier stamp | Enforcer on duty | The word it earns | Status today |
|---|---|---|---|
| csprng-512 | Host random source; a database lock in place of the on-chip word | computational | live · 146,000+ receipts |
| qcp-avalanche-v0 | Stage 1 bench: avalanche diode, FPGA state machine, external FRAM, sensed discharge | physical | after bench tests T1 to T8 pass · from the week of 21 September 2026 |
| attested-512 | The bench, plus entropy validation with a stochastic model by a metrology laboratory, plus a side-channel budget, plus an attested instance | quantum in origin, physical in class | after the laboratory campaign |
| Stage 2A | One die: an attenuated emitter with a monitor photodiode, two independent single-photon detectors, and a per-block certificate of the witness’s entropy under one measured assumption | certified per block, under one measured assumption | tape-out |
| Stage 2B | Silicon photonics: certified randomness with an untrusted detector | certified per block, with an untrusted detector | roadmap |
| Stage 3 | The unit’s own body enters the gate as its identity | self-enforcing anatomy | design |
The Q in Quantum Settlement names the origin of the witness, never a certification class. The name is earned at attested-512 and above. It is a promise at the bench tier and not yet earned at the software tier, and the stamp enforces which.
What happens next, in the order it happens.
- now
The software chain, anchored
Public stream, offline verification, a daily anchor into Bitcoin through OpenTimestamps. The operator can switch the chain off. The operator cannot make it lie.
live - 09 · 26
Stage 1 · the bench
Unit A takes its first measurements the week of 21 September 2026. Tests T1 to T8: loop integrity, chain continuity, rollback refusal, discharge before receipt, no export, entropy health, order trace, side channels.
bench being built - 09–10 · 26
The Twin Test
Two instruments built as identically as engineering allows, asked the same question at the same instant, one million trials per rung, five rungs down to one instrument restarted into the same state. The hypotheses, thresholds and falsifiers were fixed before the first measurement and anchored in Bitcoin. Unit B is built in October; a second laboratory repeats the ladder with its own hands.
preregistered · read the preregistration - next
The laboratory campaign
Entropy validation under NIST SP 800-90B with a stochastic model, by a national metrology laboratory. The number it produces is the one the receipts will carry.
outreach under way - then
Stage 2 · the die
The witness domain power-gated and sensed on silicon; a per-block certificate of the witness’s entropy; the walls of the package wired into the gate, so that a breached wall is a refusal, never a receipt.
tape-out - later
Stage 3 · the body
The unit’s own physical identity enters the gate. One body, one chain, one worldline.
design
- The receipt formula is frozen:
new_tip = SHA-256(prev_tip ‖ fingerprint ‖ payload_hash ‖ timestamp_ns) - Anyone recomputes a receipt in five lines, offline, without an account
- Every receipt carries the tip before it; every later receipt carries its tip
- A rewrite is visible to everyone holding a receipt, a mirror or an anchor
- The content never leaves your machine; only the fingerprint does
- The tier is stamped, bound, and cannot be relabelled
- Truth. A receipt proves that something was said and when, never that it was true.
- Self-proving receipts. A lone receipt proves consistency. Membership in the witnessed chain is the proof.
- Erasure everywhere. The instrument attests that its own copy of the witness died before a sensor. It says nothing about copies it never held.
- Availability. The past cannot be forged, but copies of the chain can be lost or withheld. Integrity is arithmetic; durability is engineering.
- The word quantum, before measurement. The instrument will not call itself quantum before a laboratory has measured the birth of its bits.