Monaco, August 15, 2026. At block 14,050,000, Aere Network, a public EVM-compatible Layer-1 (Chain ID 2800), activated hybrid post-quantum consensus on its live mainnet: from that height, no block finalizes without a quorum of Falcon-512 post-quantum validator signatures, verified against a signer registry bound on chain, with classical ECDSA retained alongside. The chain did not stop for the transition; block production continued at its normal half-second rhythm through the activation height.
To our knowledge, no other public network has demonstrated a consensus that refuses to finalize blocks without post-quantum cryptography in a form that outside parties can verify independently, from public endpoints, without trusting the operator. That verifiability is the claim this release stands on, and it is checkable today: a single-file verifier recomputes, from raw header bytes, that every anchor block carries a certificate of Falcon-512 seals bound under the block hash, and a downloadable toolkit of thirty-five checks measures the network's post-quantum precompiles against official NIST vectors, read-only, against a public RPC endpoint.
Aere's five NIST post-quantum verifier precompiles (Falcon-512, Falcon-1024, ML-DSA-44, SLH-DSA-128s, SHAKE256) have been live at the application layer since block 9,189,161. Since block 13,014,000, every 32nd block header additionally carries a certificate of validator Falcon-512 seals bound under the block hash, enforced at a minimum of three seals per anchor since August 14. Block 14,050,000 completed the arc: the post-quantum quorum became consensus-blocking, so a block without it does not finalize at all. Classical ECDSA signatures are retained alongside, a deliberate hybrid: if a weakness were ever found in either signature family, the other still stands between the network and a forged block.
Run node verify-anchor.mjs from aere.network/tools to check the latest anchor certificates, or download the full toolkit at verifica-lantul.tar.gz: it installs nothing, talks only to a public endpoint, and begins with a self-test that plants twenty-one deliberate defects and must catch every one before any green result means anything. A machine-generated conformance report is published at aere.network/tools/sample-conformance-report.html.
In keeping with the project's practice of publishing capabilities and limits in the same place: all nine validators are operated by the Aere Foundation today, so the chain is not yet decentralized, and an independent-operator program is in development. No completed third-party security audit exists yet; one is on the roadmap. Aere publishes no throughput figures; deterministic sub-second finality is the performance claim it stands behind.
Aere Network is a public, EVM-compatible Layer-1 settlement network (Chain ID 2800) built to outlast today's cryptography: half-second deterministic finality, a fixed token supply of 2.8 billion AERE set at genesis, native NIST post-quantum signature verification, and, from block 14,050,000, hybrid post-quantum consensus. Documentation, research and source code: aere.network/papers.html.
Chain ID 2800. Activation height: block 14,050,000, August 15, 2026. Anchor certificates: every 32nd header since block 13,014,000, minimum three Falcon-512 seals. Precompiles live since block 9,189,161, validated against official NIST test vectors. Media: [email protected]. Full media kit at the Press and Media Center.