Nano-Band is a post-quantum signing setup for micropayments that matches the crypto to the payment size. A tiny payment doesn't need a 3,309-byte ML-DSA-65 signature. A $25 payment does, plus a witness quorum. The payment amount decides the band. The random seed comes from the NIST Randomness Beacon v2.0. Patent Pending · Filed 2026-05-08
A receipt that costs less than a thousandth of a cent shouldn't pay for the same signature as a $25 payout. Nano-Band spreads ML-DSA-65 across batches at the bottom, pays per payment in the middle, and adds a witness quorum at the top.
The server hands back the band policy directly. Every /v1/nano/mint response carries the band it landed in, the leaf hash, and any per-payment signatures that band needs.
| Band | Range | Per-payment | Batch ratio | Cost amortization |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B0 dust | < $0.001 | none | 1 / 10,000 | ~0.00033 of a PQ sig per payment |
| B1 micro | $0.001 to $0.10 | Ed25519 | 1 / 1,000 | ~0.001 of a PQ sig + classical sig |
| B2 milli | $0.10 to $10 | hybrid | 1 / 1 | full hybrid per payment |
| B3 macro | > $10 | hybrid + STH + 2-of-3 | 1 / 1 | full hybrid + log inclusion + quorum |
Each Nano-Band batch root locks in the latest NIST Beacon pulse, a chained, RSA-signed randomness source that updates every 60 seconds. The batch can't have been signed before that pulse came out. The time is locked in. The batch is locked in. Every leaf inside the batch inherits both.
Anyone, anywhere, with nothing but the receipt and the operator's public keys, can check a Nano-Band payment offline.
A 3,309-byte ML-DSA-65 signature is about 150 times bigger than the Ed25519 signature it replaces. Paying that on every micropayment would eat your margin. Nano-Band batches things up when the leaf is cheap and pays in full when the leaf is real money.
B3 macro payments carry the full sovereign-tier setup: hybrid signature, public log inclusion, and a 2-of-3 witness quorum. That's self-authenticating evidence under FRE 902(13) to (14).
The classifier maps the amount to a band, the band to a signature policy, and the signature policy to a verification recipe, all in one envelope. Patent Pending · Filed 2026-05-08 Steve Rotzin / Hive Civilization, Inc.