Hive · Protocol

The substrate Hive settles on.

Receipts are the surface. SIU, MNKA, and the verifier discipline are the substrate. Every Hive receipt resolves to a unit, an envelope, and a chain that anyone can verify offline. Real rails only — no mock, no simulated.

Units

SIU — Signed Inference Unit.

One verifiable AI action. Request enters as a SIU; receipt exits as a SIU with a signature, anchor, and audit trail. Every Hive primitive — AFIR, AFiR-S, AFiR-RC, AFiR-Stream, GiTM, MaR — terminates in a SIU receipt.

Wire format
hive-vcr-1 — deterministic JSON, canonical encoding, ML-DSA-65 over Ed25519 dual-signed.
Verification
Offline. Public key + receipt is sufficient. Hive holds no escrow key.
Anchor
Merkle root posted to Base (USDC settlement chain). Optional Solana mirror for sub-second finality.
Throughput
Sub-7ms signing on the AFIR tier. Stream signing is sidecar — 28µs hot-path overhead.
Settlement

MNKA — the settlement layer.

MNKA is the discipline that keeps Hive’s economics honest: signed receipts in, USDC out, all on real public rails. No private settlement token. No internal credit. The receipt is the bearer instrument; USDC on Base is the unit of account.

RAIL

USDC on Base.

Circle-issued contract. Hive does not operate it. Receipts settle through it. Public, audited, instant.

MIRROR

Solana (optional).

For sub-second finality use cases (live voice settlements, micropayments). Same receipt envelope, parallel anchor.

DISCIPLINE

No private chain.

Hive emits independent facts. Counterparties verify against public rails. The platform’s word is never above the cryptography.

Envelope

The receipt envelope.

Every receipt — whether for a single inference call, a multi-segment voice stream, or an agent rollback — uses the same envelope. Deterministic. Portable. Verifier-only.

Header
Profile (Nano, Standard, PQ, MAX, Stream, RC), tier, jurisdiction, model, timestamp.
Payload
Hash of input + output, materiality class, boundary flags (PCI/HIPAA/PHI).
Signatures
Ed25519 (live) + ML-DSA-65 (post-quantum). Both verifiable offline.
Anchor
Merkle inclusion proof + Base anchor txid.
Architecture → Assurance tiers Pricing Verify a receipt →