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 draft writes down the long-term recovery of capsules with the eight
decisions the author took on 6 October 2026. Section 47.1, new, defines
the release object, the content of a .dkr file: deterministic CBOR
without a frame, the chain identified by its chain_hash, from 1 to 1024
bytes, with drand's JSON still accepted as input. Step 10 checks its
layers and its chain hash before the round and the signature, with no new
code. Step 9.c applies only before a network request: a release in hand,
from a .dkr, drand's JSON or a local archive, is not compared with the
clock. Section 45 keeps the Release API with the object as its answer and
its HTTP form informative; section 50 makes the .dkr next to the .dkc the
main path and describes the release archive as an informative format;
sections 53 and 62.1 say what the writer and the SDK keep; section 79, an
informative annex, opens a capsule without DateKeys software. Section 74
drops the two items now covered, and section 76 records six changes with
their cases. datekeys.cddl adds the rule release. SpecVersion stays 0.14.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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