Pre-mainnet — ire-1 is a public testnet with one validator. Do not put real value on it.

Architecture

Architecture

Why IRE is built on Cosmos SDK and CometBFT, how the modules are composed, what validator hardware actually costs, and which risks this design does not remove.

Why Cosmos SDK + CometBFT

Concern Cosmos SDK / CometBFT Forked Geth (PoW) From scratch
Low-power validation Native — PoS voting, no hashing Needs a custom PoW algo (RandomX-style) to be CPU-friendly at all You build consensus from zero — highest risk of subtle bugs
Time to a running testnet Weeks Weeks–months (consensus rewrite) Months–years
Audited primitives Yes — IBC, staking, slashing, gov all battle-tested across hundreds of live chains Ethereum's own code is audited, but PoW retrofitting isn't None
Smart contracts CosmWasm (Rust, sandboxed, no reentrancy-by-default class of bugs) Solidity/EVM (mature but reentrancy, unbounded gas footguns are well-known attack classes) Your choice — but you're now also maintaining a VM
Sovereign control over supply/consensus Full Full Full

CometBFT gives you instant finality (a block is final the moment it's committed — no "wait 6 confirmations" ambiguity like Bitcoin/Ethereum PoW), which is also a genuine safety improvement: no reorg risk once a block lands.

Module layout (Cosmos SDK apps are composed of modules)

  • x/auth — accounts (stock Cosmos SDK)
  • x/bank — token transfers (stock)
  • x/staking — validator bonding/unbonding (stock)
  • x/slashing — penalizes double-signing/downtime (stock)
  • x/gov — on-chain governance for parameter changes (stock — but supply cap itself is NOT a governable param, see TOKENOMICS.md)
  • x/mint — stock mint module is in the running ired binary, with a no-op begin-blocker so inflation stays 0. It remains for state/query compatibility and does not issue new coins.
  • x/ire-mint — documented custom mint replacement (see x/ire-mint/README.md). It is not wired into this running binary.
  • CosmWasm contracts live in contracts/ in this repository. x/wasm is not in the running binary yet (LCD /cosmwasm → Not Implemented; no wasm in app_state).

Validator hardware reality

CometBFT validators for a moderate-throughput chain run comfortably on:

  • 2-4 CPU cores, 4-8GB RAM, SSD storage
  • No GPU, no ASIC

This is why "CPU/mobile" framing works for validating — it does not mean someone mines blocks by burning phone battery on hash puzzles (that model, used by projects like Pi Network, generally isn't real PoW; it's usually a centralized ledger with a mining-themed UI). Full validating nodes on Cosmos chains have run on Raspberry Pi hardware in testnets.

What this design does NOT solve

Being honest about limits, since "fixing everything wrong with crypto" isn't a real technical target:

  • Bridge/exchange risk — most stolen funds in crypto history come from bridge and exchange hacks, not base-layer consensus flaws. This architecture doesn't make a future bridge automatically safe.
  • Key management — a fixed-supply, immutable-contract chain still loses user funds the moment a private key leaks or a seed phrase is phished.
  • Validator decentralization — the protocol can be perfectly designed and still end up with 3 validators controlling 90% of stake if nobody else bothers running a node. Decentralization is a social/economic outcome, not just code. ire-1 currently has one validator.