Keryx Hardfork — DAA 15,550,000Estimated activation: Thursday, May 28, 2026 — ~14:00 UTC
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Why This HardforkWhile monitoring the live network following the integration of DeepSeek-R1-8B alongside TinyLlama, we identified a consensus-level vulnerability.
Miners who haven't updated their software are still attempting to answer DeepSeek queries using incorrect or mismatched models. The results they submit are not verifiable as coming from the declared model. We cannot rely on miners voluntarily updating — economic incentives alone are insufficient when bad data can still earn rewards.
The only clean, permanent fix is to enforce model capabilities strictly at the consensus level, with model identity cryptographically tied to the actual weight files. This requires a mandatory hardfork.
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Why We're Launching NowWe are aware this delays exchange listings by a few days. We made that call deliberately.
Shipping a hardfork after listing creates far more friction — coordinating node operators, miners, and exchanges simultaneously under time pressure. Doing it now, while the network is growing but not yet listed, gives everyone a clean runway. A few days of delay is a reasonable price for a solid, trustworthy consensus from day one.
Network integrity comes first. Always.---
Inference Rewards — Real KRX Utility Every AiRequest transaction carries a fee in $KRX set by the requester. When a miner answers the request and the result passes the challenge window unchallenged, that fee is released to the miner.
Protocol inference prices:
- TinyLlama-1.1B — 0.5 KRX + 0.3 KRX network fee = 0.8 KRX minimum,
- DeepSeek-R1-8B — 2.0 KRX + 0.3 KRX network fee = 2.3 KRX minimum,
Requesters can set a higher inference fee to prioritize their request — miners will naturally serve the highest-paying requests first.
Miners earn $KRX in two ways:
- Block reward — standard PoW coinbase, same as before,
- Inference fee — paid per completed AiRequest, released after the challenge window,
This is real utility for $KRX: it is the currency you pay to run AI on the network. Not speculation — demand for inference creates direct, measurable buy pressure. Every agent, every dApp, every user that calls an AI on Keryx spends $KRX.
With this hardfork, the AiResponse tx formally links the miner's identity, the committed result, and the reward claim in a single verifiable chain of transactions:
AiRequest tx → AiResponse tx → challenge window → fee released
(fee locked) (miner commits) (1000 blocks) (to miner)
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What Changes AiResponse as a Dedicated Transaction,
Miners no longer embed results in the coinbase. Instead, after completing an inference, they submit a standalone AiResponse transaction (subnetwork 0x04) with a fixed 78-byte payload:
[request_hash : 32 bytes] — links back to the AiRequest tx
[challenge_window_end : 8] — DAA after which the result is final
[response_ipfs_cid : 34] — IPFS CIDv0 of the result content
[response_length : 4] — token count
Results Live on IPFS,
The actual text is uploaded to IPFS. Only the 34-byte CID is committed on-chain:
- Unlimited response length — no on-chain size constraint,
- Content-addressed — the CID cryptographically proves the content,
- Decentralized — any IPFS node can serve the result,
Model Identity Tied to Weight Files,
model_id is now sha2-256(primary_weight_file), extracted directly from the IPFS CID of the model weights. Anyone can verify:
download the CID from IPFS → sha256sum the file → compare to model_id
A miner cannot claim to run TinyLlama or DeepSeek-R1-8B with an arbitrary model_id. The identifier is now a cryptographic fact about the actual files.
OPoI Commitment Updated,
The on-chain commitment for fraud proofs is now response_ipfs_cid[2..34] — the SHA2-256 digest of the IPFS content. Challengers can point to exactly what content hash was committed.
Auto-managed IPFS Daemon,
Miners don't need to manually install IPFS. The miner binary automatically downloads kubo and starts it on first run. One new flag: --ipfs-url (default
http://127.0.0.1:5001/).
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What Miners Need to Do1. Update to the new miner and node binaries before DAA block 15,550,000
2. Nothing else — kubo installs and starts automatically on first run,
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What Doesn't Change- Block structure, PoW, GHOSTDAG — untouched,
- Escrow / OPoI Phase 1–2 — fully compatible,
- All existing AiRequest transactions — still valid,
- Pre-hardfork blocks — still indexed correctly,
The updated binaries for both the node and the miner will be available on GitHub starting tomorrow.
