Skip to main content

Bearer envelopes

A bearer envelope is an envelope you can carry. Instead of a coin that only exists as a row on a server, you export it into a portable file — and that file proves its own history. Anyone who holds it can verify where it's been and that it's genuine offline, from the file alone, without calling back to whoever issued it. It's a bearer instrument in the plain sense: possession of the verified file is possession of the value.

This is deliberately not a distributed ledger. There's no global record everyone votes on and no consensus to wait for. A bearer envelope is a self-contained, self-verifying object, and its single-spend is settled at one place — its home node — not by a network.

What's inside the file​

A bearer envelope carries its own custody trail: an append-only, hash-linked list of every hand-off, built from the framework's existing primitives.

Hash-linked hops

Each hand-off entry links to the previous by SHA-256, and the first entry is pinned to the envelope's own hash — so the trail is tamper-evident and can't be grafted onto a different envelope.

Signed by each node

Every hop is Ed25519-signed by the node that served it, with the public key inline — so the whole path verifies offline, with no call home.

Clock-stamped & sequenced

Each entry carries a Zeqond and a pinned spend sequence, giving temporal order and replay protection.

And the whole file is HITE-sealed — AES-256-GCM with Argon2id and de-identified — so a bearer envelope at rest reveals nothing about who holds it or what it is until it's opened with its PIN.

Offline verification, home settlement​

The two properties that make a bearer envelope useful pull in opposite directions, and the framework gives you both:

verify the trail offline⏟signed hops, inline keys+settle single-spend at home⏟home node  +  spend sequence\underbrace{\text{verify the trail offline}}_{\text{signed hops, inline keys}} \qquad + \qquad \underbrace{\text{settle single-spend at home}}_{\text{home node} \; + \; \text{spend sequence}}

You can verify an envelope anywhere, disconnected, from what's in the file. When it's time to spend it, the pinned home node and spend sequence settle it exactly once — the envelope can be moved hand to hand offline, and the moment it re-touches its home it can't be double-spent. Export takes the envelope live in exactly one place — the bearer file — and redeeming it brings it back.

  • Envelopes — the value primitive a bearer file carries.
  • HITE encryption — what seals a bearer envelope at rest.
  • Proofs — the signing and hash-linking the trail is built from.

The export and redeem endpoints are in the economy reference.