Validator

A validator is a node with the right and the duty to take part in consensus. It proposes new blocks, checks blocks proposed by others against the protocol rules, and signs the ones it accepts. On a proof-of-authority chain like this one, the validator set is a known list of identified signers rather than an open mining or staking market, so agreement comes from counted signatures, not from computational work.

Chain 2800 runs QBFT consensus with nine validators and a block roughly every 500 ms. A block is committed only when six of the nine validators sign it; that commit is what gives the chain its finality, since a committed block is not replaced by a competing branch. These consensus signatures are classical ECDSA secp256k1. The chain does not claim post-quantum consensus.

Each validator also holds a Falcon-512 key, one of the 9 entries in the on-chain signer registry. Since block 13,014,000, every 32nd block header carries a seal certificate of validator Falcon-512 signatures over the parent block, at least 3 per certificate and in practice 5, the configured cap, and a 32-byte digest of that certificate sits inside the data covered by the block hash. That mechanism is the post-quantum anchor.

The chain is also validated by a second, independently implemented client running alongside the producing one, so no single codebase decides on its own what the chain is. See client diversity.