Development
Timeline

GENESIS BLOCK — 2026-03-15 18:00:00 UTC. ConvergenceX Proof-of-Work chain live. Solo mining begins with C++ reference miner. Constitutional rules encoded at genesis. Chain starts. The genesis block is self-sufficient: it requires only a miner and a timestamp.

PUBLIC LAUNCH. BTCTalk ANN thread. CEX listing request submitted. C++ miner released. GitHub repository public. Community mining begins. C++ miner released. GitHub repository public. Community mining begins.

V13 hard fork. Block 12,000: cASERT equalizer E7-H35 active, DTD lottery cooldown 5 → 6, future-timestamp drift cap 60 s → 30 s, Beacon Phase II-A / II-B / III (advisory-only). Block 12,100: DTD cadence flips from 2-of-3 bootstrap to 1-of-3 permanent (automatic) and the anti-dominance gate activates — any address with ≥ 10 % share of the previous 288 blocks is excluded from the DTD lottery until its rolling share drops below 10 % (eligibility also requires an SbPoW-signed block, most recent block at height ≥ 7,100). Dominant miners keep their 50 % miner share. See docs/V13_DTD_DOMINANCE_GATE.md.

V14 hard fork. Phase I governance + automation block. Activates: Gold Vault Phase I (90 % miner threshold, +10 % quality boost or single-signer veto from developer/genesis, silence = accept, 67 + 10 block sequential window, 1,000 SOST per spend, 5,000 SOST per rolling week, single destination = genesis miner); PoPC Model A chain-state migration (out of popc_registry.json, into deterministic UTXO/chain-state); PoPC Model A auto-audit + auto-slash + auto-settlement (initial grace period 1,000 blocks); DTD-PoPC eligibility gate flips to true (from V14_HEIGHT, DTD lottery requires holding at least one ACTIVE canonical PoPC contract); Beacon II-A real operator pubkey (replaces fail-closed placeholder); threshold sync 95 % → 90 %. Conditional in V14: atomic swap HTLC activates only if the libwally-core sprint and testnet pass before block 15,000; PoPC Model B "supervised mode" (manual operator verification of user-declared Ethereum contracts until V15 brings the Ethereum event-listener automation). Atomic swap full audit deferred to V15. Block 15,000 is an internal target — retractable without public drama if testnet fails.

DTD emergency pause/resume — designed, consensus-deferred. A consensus-safe emergency brake for the DTD lottery is designed and unit-tested but ships inactive (no consensus change). It is a signed control signal (SOST_DTD_CONTROL_V1) verified by every node against the Beacon 3-of-5 operator custody — never a local password, VPS or admin toggle. When active it can only pause DTD redistribution (blocks revert to the normal 50 % miner / 25 % Gold Vault / 25 % PoPC split) and later resume it. It cannot mint coins, change Proof-of-Work, alter the miner's 50 % reward, or move balances. Activation is a single-constant flip under a future announced fork, after the DTD coinbase is consensus-wired. See docs/DTD_EMERGENCY_PAUSE_RESUME_DESIGN.md.

V15 hard fork — ACTIVE. DTD Jackpot is live (first V15 jackpot drawn at #25,290). The Gold-Vault / PoPC emission ended: the per-block split is now 50 % miner / 50 % DTD. Gold Vault and PoPC are paused / legacy, superseded by the DTD / DTD Jackpot architecture.

#30,000 — automatic by height. Activates DTD Jackpot V2 (first V2 draw #30,186) plus the native-asset layer, four tokenization modalities, and a SOST-layer DEX. All of these ship admin-gated at consensus (S14 RESTRICTED DEVELOPER MODE) with public access disabled.

Gold purchases begin (no earlier than 8 months after public launch, per rule G4). First XAUT/PAXG acquired via TWAP pipeline. Reserve Vault deployed on Ethereum mainnet. Subject to sufficient SOST market liquidity.

PoPC — single native-SOST bond model, paused / legacy. PoPC was redesigned to a single native-SOST bond (the old Model A / Model B gold-custody design is historical). It is superseded by DTD / DTD Jackpot and is not required for any DTD eligibility — this is not a future launch.

Physical gold extension. Mobile app for audit challenges. Verifier network operational. Users commit custody of physical bars, coins, and ingots.

Post-quantum migration research (ML-DSA). SOST maintains a documented research track on a possible future post-quantum signature migration. It is not a feature and not active: production cryptography on mainnet is and remains ECDSA over secp256k1 (canonical LOW-S) for transaction and account signatures, with BIP-340 Schnorr used only for SbPoW block-identity binding. The research covers cryptographic agility, ML-DSA (FIPS 204) authorization, a hybrid ECDSA and ML-DSA spending condition, variable-length witnesses and a wallet-migration path — all in an isolated prototype not compiled into the node or miner, with no activation height or date. Any future deployment is contingent on independent external cryptographic review and a separate, publicly announced consensus upgrade — SOST does not claim quantum-resistance today. Public research: draft PR #38.

Zero-Knowledge research initiative. Physical proof system R&D. This technology will only be deployed if and when the required cryptographic primitives reach production-grade maturity and demonstrate provable security guarantees under formal verification. Physical custody verification without identity disclosure remains an open research problem — SOST commits to pursuing it without compromising participant safety or deploying partial solutions.

ZK physical custody proofs. Full privacy-preserving audit system. Extends to platinum, palladium, rhodium. No identity, location, or quantity on-chain. Subject to successful completion of ZK R&D milestones. Deployment contingent on achieving zero-knowledge proofs that meet SOST’s non-negotiable security requirements for physical custody verification. Timeline is aspirational and will not be accelerated at the expense of cryptographic rigor.

Heritage Reserve. Gold sealed by default. Emergency dual-gate if needed. Chain runs on fees after emission approaches zero. Protocol operates perpetually under constitutional rules encoded at genesis.