Nano-Band is the value-banded post-quantum substrate for micropayments. A dust payment doesn't pay for a 3,309-byte ML-DSA-65 signature. A $25 payment does, plus a witness quorum. The band is decided by the payment itself. Entropy is sourced from the NIST Randomness Beacon v2.0. Patent Pending · Filed 2026-05-08
A receipt that costs less than a thousandth of a cent does not pay for the same signature as a $25 payout. Nano-Band amortizes ML-DSA-65 across batches at the bottom, pays per-payment in the middle, and adds a witness quorum at the top.
The server returns the band policy directly. Every /v1/nano/mint response carries the classified band, the leaf hash, and any per-payment signatures the band requires.
| 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 – $0.10 | Ed25519 | 1 / 1,000 | ~0.001 of a PQ sig + classical sig |
| B2 milli | $0.10 – $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 commits to the latest NIST Beacon pulse — a chained, RSA-signed, 60-second-cadence randomness source. The batch cannot have been signed before that pulse was published. Time is anchored. The batch is anchored. Every leaf inside the batch inherits both anchors.
Anyone, anywhere, with nothing but the receipt and the operator's public keys, can verify a Nano-Band payment offline.
A 3,309-byte ML-DSA-65 signature is ~150x larger than the Ed25519 it replaces. Paying that on every micropayment burns the margin. Nano-Band batches when the leaf is cheap and pays in full when the leaf is real money.
B3 macro payments carry the full sovereign-tier surface — hybrid signature, public log inclusion, and a 2-of-3 witness quorum. Self-authenticating evidence under FRE 902(13)–(14).
The classifier maps amount to band, band to signature policy, signature policy to verification recipe — all in one envelope. Patent Pending · Filed 2026-05-08 Steve Rotzin / Hive Civilization, Inc.