Hive · Protocol

What Hive actually runs on.

The receipt is what you see. SIU, MNKA, and the verifier rules are what make it work underneath. Every Hive receipt comes down to a unit, an envelope, and a chain anyone can check on their own computer. These are real payment rails, not mock or simulated ones.

Units

SIU: Signed Inference Unit.

This is one AI action you can check is real. A request comes in as a SIU. A receipt goes out as a SIU, with a signature, an anchor, and a paper trail. Every Hive building block, whether that's AFIR, AFiR-S, AFiR-RC, AFiR-Stream, GiTM, or MaR, ends with a SIU receipt.

Wire format
hive-vcr-1: deterministic JSON, encoded the same way every time, signed twice with ML-DSA-65 and Ed25519.
Verification
Works offline. All you need is the public key and the receipt. Hive doesn't hold an escrow key.
Anchor
A Merkle root gets posted to Base, the chain we settle USDC on. There's an optional Solana mirror if you need finality in under a second.
Throughput
Signing takes under 7ms on the AFIR tier. Stream signing runs alongside it and only adds 28µs to the hot path.
Settlement

MNKA: the settlement layer.

MNKA is what keeps Hive's money honest. Signed receipts come in, USDC goes out, all on real public rails. There's no private settlement token and no internal credit system. The receipt is what you can cash in. USDC on Base is what it's worth.

RAIL

USDC on Base.

This is a contract Circle issues, not Hive. We don't run it. Receipts settle through it. It's public, audited, and instant.

MIRROR

Solana (optional).

For cases where you need finality in under a second, like live voice settlements or micropayments. Same receipt envelope, just a second anchor running alongside it.

DISCIPLINE

No private chain.

Hive puts out facts anyone can check on their own. The other side of a deal verifies against public rails. What Hive says never outranks what the math proves.

Envelope

The receipt envelope.

Every receipt uses the same envelope, whether it's for one inference call, a multi-part voice stream, or an agent rollback. It builds the same way every time, you can carry it anywhere, and only a verifier can check it.

Header
Profile (Nano, Standard, PQ, MAX, Stream, RC), tier, jurisdiction, model, and timestamp.
Payload
A hash of the input and output, how material it is, and any boundary flags like PCI, HIPAA, or PHI.
Signatures
Ed25519 for now, plus ML-DSA-65 for the post-quantum world. Both check out offline.
Anchor
A Merkle inclusion proof plus the Base anchor transaction ID.
Architecture → Assurance tiers Pricing Verify a receipt →
Inference Receipts · Verifiable Provenance · Third-Party Verified · Hive

Certified third-party receipts

This work is independently verified by Hive

Every receipt on this page is signed by Hive as an independent third party, and you can check it offline against one published key. The mark shows the proof came from outside your own stack, and you can put it on your own site too.

Verify a receipt → ML-DSA-65 · NIST FIPS 204 Offline-verifiable
Put this on your site
<a href="https://thehiveryiq.com/verify/" rel="noopener">
  <img src="https://thehiveryiq.com/assets/hive-receipt-badge.jpg"
       alt="Third-party verified inference receipts by Hive"
       width="120" height="120" loading="lazy">
</a>