The author's decision of 7 October 2026. A release saved next to a capsule
cannot exist when the capsule is made, and once the date comes the capsule
can be opened: such a file only opens it again and does not cover the real
case, someone opening it decades later when drand is gone and nobody saved
anything. Long-term recovery rests instead on archives and cache services
that keep the releases of all rounds; a reader asks for its round and
verifies the signature against the pinned key.
Spec: the .dkr extension (section 20, back to v0.14), sections 1, 4, 8, 45,
47.1, 49, 50 (rewritten), 53, 62.1 (rule 28 removed, rule 26 reworded),
63, 70, 73, 74 (the datekeys.release .dkk extension dropped too), 76
(the v0.15 block, with the discarded design) and the annex 79. The
release object, the chain hash at step 10, step 9.c option B and the
archive format stay.
Code: decrypt -save-release and the command datekeys release are gone,
with writeRelease and their tests; decrypt -release FILE stays. The
release objects of testdata/releases are now <round>.cbor, and
TestVectorFilesAreCurrent fails on a file the generator no longer writes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The release of a round becomes a file, .dkr: a release object in
deterministic CBOR, {0: "datekeys-release", 1: 1, 2: chain_hash, 3: round,
4: signature}, which provider.EncodeRelease writes and DecodeRelease reads
with its layers (size, type and version, schema). provider.ParseRelease
also reads drand's JSON as the input of the caller. Verify checks the chain
hash a release names before its round and its signature, with
ERR_PROFILE_MISMATCH. provider.Archive reads a local release archive, the
informative format of the draft.
capsule.OpenOptions.Release takes a release in hand, a provider.Supplier,
exclusive with Source: Open does not compare it with the clock (step 9.c,
option B) and reports a clock behind it in Opened.ClockBehind; a network
source is still never asked before the round time. The CLI gains
decrypt -release FILE (.dkr, drand's JSON or a local archive),
decrypt -save-release FILE.dkr and the command release, which fetches,
verifies and saves the .dkr without opening the capsule.
Test data: vectors/release.json, releases/<round>.dkr for rounds 1000,
1001, 1004 and 2000, and a local archive of rounds 1000 to 1004. In
mutations.json every case says its source, "supplied" or "network"; the
case "round not reached yet", a release in hand, now opens, and four cases
are added: the same with a network source, a release of another round from
a network source, and two release objects of another chain. SpecVersion
stays 0.14 until the author approves the draft.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The draft writes down what the completeness review of 6 October 2026 found
missing, and changes no format and no verdict: what the protocol does not
guarantee, the provider and the states of a profile, signatures and seals
against a quantum adversary, the web client, the entropy of a key of words,
and errata of section 76. Steps 10 and 11 of section 63 now give the root
of trust byte for byte, as the three implementations apply it: the message
a Quicknet round signs, its hash to G1 with its DST, and H2, H3 and H4 of
the tlock IBE. testdata/vectors/tlock_steps.json gives every intermediate
value for four published rounds, checked against drand, kyber and tlock.
SpecVersion stays 0.13 until the author approves the draft.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
On an IPv6-only network with DNS64, a name that has only IPv4 addresses
resolves to an address of NAT64, which spec v0.12, section 44.1, always
rejected: a reader on such a network, as many mobile ones, could not
download the rest of an envelope. The draft v0.13 counts an address of
64:ff9b::/96, or of the NAT64 prefix of the network, by the IPv4 address it
holds (RFC 6052). An address of NAT64 written in a locator is still
rejected. Section 76 records the change with its case.
locator.CheckResolvedIP implements it for the readers that download, and
testdata/vectors/resolved_ip.json gives 42 cases. SpecVersion stays 0.12
until the author approves the draft.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Spec section 64 of v0.11 asks for the vectors of the key of words, which
were only in the tests of package wordkey. The file has the words of 45
texts, among them each space of section 38.1 and three that are not; what a
writer does with 20 texts, with the text of the error of wordkey.Check; and
6 identities with their recipients, the vector of section 38.1 first. It is
regenerated by genfixtures and checked by TestVectorFilesAreCurrent.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The review found no vector of the public note in testdata (D3). note.json
gives the data of datekeys.note and what the rules of 24.1 make of it, the
result and the exact text of the rule it breaks: notes that pass, from one
byte to 1024, with letters that are not ASCII and an emoji with VS16; and
notes that a writer refuses and a reader does not show, empty, of 1025
bytes, with a tab, a line feed, a space at an end, a bidi control, an
ignorable, a byte order mark, bytes that are not UTF-8, the UTF-8 of a lone
surrogate and a noncharacter.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The review found that security.json said spec 0.11 and still gave the
verdicts of a reader of v0.10, evaluated without context, contrary to what
section 76 announced (D1).
- security.json carries the context of a capsule, its commitments and the
time of its round, and each case its verdicts and the lines of the
official SDK in it: a signature of alg 1 that does not verify is F2, a
token of seal_type 2 that is not DER is S2, and new cases give a valid
signature of alg 1 (F4) and alg and seal_type 4294967295 (F1, S1).
- mutations.json: the signature of alg 1 that does not verify (F2) is a
case of 64, and the seal that opens with S1 uses seal_type 4294967295,
not seal_type 1, which a later version may define.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
internal/ed25519strict verifies the author signature of alg 1 with the
strict profile of the spec v0.11 draft (29.9): A canonical and not of
small order, checked with an encoding check and the table of the eight
points of small order, then crypto/ed25519 for S, R and the equation
without the cofactor. No arithmetic on points and no new module.
testdata/vectors/ed25519_strict.json has 18 signatures after the cases of
«Taming the many EdDSAs», built by testkit with arithmetic on the curve in
math/big, only for the vectors, which also checks the table of small
order. crypto/ed25519 accepts 11 of them that the profile rejects: the
eight points of small order and the non-canonical keys as A.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The mutation corpus of spec 64 gains format 3: 209 cases, 169 of the
spec.
- The 33 mutations of the first two lists on format3_single and
format3_time_and_key_portable, named "format 3: ...", with a sibling
written by EncryptFiles and built capsules that hold a BODY.
- The list of format 3, 47 cases: one for each value of a line with
several (AREA_LEN 0, 511, 513 and 66048; SECURITY_LEN 0 and 513;
HEAD_LEN 0 and 2^24 + 1), and the three that open without a code,
with the verdicts X, F1 and S1. VERSION 4 is "format 3: version
changed", as in format 2. Each seals BODY again with FK_PAYLOAD and
the nonce of its fixture, and the control with the new L when L
changes; the two that need a head followed by another STREAM chunk
derive from format3_tree, whose comment takes the bytes the path
loses so that only the head and its chunk change.
- Further cases: format 3 relabeled 1, and time_and_key relabeled 2
with the identity and with the .dkk.
- A mutation may expect the capsule to open with its verdicts; the
exported case records them, with the result ok at step 0.
- Splice gives an edit for each run of changed bytes, runs closer than
16 bytes merged, and one more for what one side has beyond the
other: a head sealed again changes its bytes and the tag of its
chunk, 64 KiB apart. Earlier cases are written with more edits and
give the same capsules. The corpus is 706 KB, 476 KB of them the
capsule of 65536 implicit folders, whose head is 235 KB.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The vector files of spec 67 for format 3, generated with the result
each case is written for, so that the generator fails when the
implementation or the tables change:
- paths.json: 83 paths with the result of the rules of one entry, the
violation worded as every implementation must word it, and 16 trees,
the paths of a head and the result of decoding it: U+00A0, accepted,
and U+3000, R6c, at both ends of a segment; best-fit, full-width
forms, U+00B4 of cp1253; 8.3 aliases with ~1; Cn; U+206A to U+206F,
tags and other ignorables; a dot and ZWJ, and ZWJ alone; 127 and 85
times U+0390; U+F03A; .datekeys-x at two levels; U+FF5E and U+1F600
in both orders; ab with and without ZWNJ; U+00BF, U+00A7 and U+2665,
accepted; VS16 after U+2764 and after a; ZWJ at the start, at the end
and twice; the rainbow flag and the flag of Scotland; b/.. and a.
- path_fold.json: 22 segments with their NFD and their key of R7,
among them the entries F of CaseFolding, the dotless i, the Kelvin
and Angstrom signs, Cherokee, Hangul and the whitelist dropped
before NFD.
- head_schema.json: 63 heads through layers 2, 3 and 4, in key order,
with the violation of each ERR_HEAD_INVALID; they add comments with
tags and with loose variation selectors.
- security.json: 21 areas with their verdicts, X, F0, F1, S0, S1 and
S2, among them key 2 that is not a byte string, a key 4, a byte more,
alg 0, an empty key with the seal intact, and a seal that breaks its
schema with an unknown seal_type.
- cbor.json gains the control of schema version 3.
A test replays every committed vector through the implementation, and
another checks that the files are current.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The reference moves to the DateKeys Protocol Specification v0.9, approved
by its author on 29 September 2026. Encrypt writes capsule format 2 only;
Open and Inspect read formats 1 and 2, and a format 1 capsule keeps the
verdict v0.8.2 gave it.
Format 2 (spec §22, §29.1, §31, §39):
- VERSION in the PRELUDE is the capsule format, capsule.Format; any other
value is ERR_UNSUPPORTED_VERSION at step 2.
- CONTROL_CBOR has the schema version of its format. Version 2 adds key 6,
payload_length (8 bytes, big-endian, at most L_MAX = 2^53 - 2^46), and
key 7, padding (1 bloque256, 2 reforzado); it is 103 bytes without
extensions, whatever L.
- The payload is the content padded with zeros to P = rule(L). Step 17
checks the length and the zeros, and Open writes only the first L bytes.
- INNER_ACCESS_AGE holds exactly 16 X25519 stanzas: 1 to 16 credentials,
and a dummy in each slot left, in a uniformly random order.
Writer rules (spec §62.1): EncryptOptions.Length is required and the
source must deliver exactly that many bytes; recipients that are not
canonical or of low order are rejected (agewrap.CheckX25519Recipient);
self-checks of the header, the control, INNER_ACCESS_AGE and PAYLOAD_AGE.
The CLI measures its input, takes -padding and reports the format.
Test data: seven format 2 fixtures, padding vectors checked against
math/big, format 2 CBOR vectors, and the mutation corpus in both formats
with the 22 cases of the third list of spec §64, built without randomness
by sealing the fixtures again with their known keys and nonces. The
format 1 fixtures are kept byte for byte and never regenerated; the
differential corpus keeps its 1825 cases and adds a block per format 2
fixture. The spec copy loses its "to be implemented" markers, and the
READMEs, CHANGELOG, traceability and testdata/README.md follow v0.9.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Amendment of the unreleased v0.8.2, recorded in §76 with its case: the
second implementation's phase-2 research found that tlock-js over
@noble/curves 1.9.7 accepts U re-encoded as c0 + p and a signature
x + p and returns the same file key, while the reference rejects both
(noble 1.9.7 differed from kilic on 5,615 of 41,686 encodings), and the
spec did not say which encodings are valid.
- §12.2 defines the canonical encoding of a BLS12-381 point (drand's
compressed ZCash form) and requires decoders to reject every other
byte string; §12.1 applies it to public_key.
- §63 step 10 applies it to the release signature (ERR_RELEASE_INVALID)
and step 11 defines the tlock stanza body U || V || W (96 + 16 + 16
bytes for Quicknet) with a canonical, non-infinity U (ERR_INTEGRITY).
- §64 gains ten mutations, exported to mutations.json (65 cases). The
signature x + p case uses published Quicknet round 1004, the first
after 1000 whose x allows x + p < 2^381. The reference already gave
every stated code and step.
Errors no longer copy text from tlock, kyber, age, drand or
kyber-bls12381. kyber's IBE error carried the candidate plaintext and r,
and with one bit of W flipped the message disclosed the real tlock file
key with that bit flipped. Every such place now uses a fixed reason with
its normative sentinel; TestTlockFailureDiagnosticsCarryNoSecrets fails
with the old wrapping.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Step 2b: package codec is rewritten without reflection or struct tags. A
strict Decoder accepts only the spec §58 profile, Unmarshal decodes,
re-encodes and compares, Peek reads the type tag and version, and Walk is a
bounded iterative helper for vectors and fuzzing. Every schema has its own
hand-written encoder and decoder that checks all CDDL rules before the
fields with their own error codes. github.com/fxamacker/cbor/v2 and
github.com/x448/float16 are gone; nothing replaces them. Valid objects
encode and decode exactly as before (1.34 million differential verdicts);
the invalid-input differences are documented in CHANGELOG and
traceability decision 12. A review found and fixed an access_policy check
that truncated to uint8.
Step 3: testdata gains vectors/cbor.json (generic and per-schema CBOR
vectors), vectors/mutations.json (the 55-case mutation corpus, replayable
offline), vectors/inspect_differential.json (1,825 fixed-seed mutations
with the Go verdict) and one inspect -json golden per fixture, all
regenerated byte-identically by genfixtures and documented in
testdata/README.md for second implementations.
Gate green with 90 s of fuzzing per target on all 15 targets; codec at
100 % coverage; pre-existing testdata byte-identical.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
dev