Shadownet is the first public execution environment for the integrated Laser protocol. It is a resettable test network in which independently running nodes exchange blocks, validate account state, verify ML-DSA-65 signatures, evaluate PhotonHash work, select the greatest-valid-work history, and expose a read-only representation of the resulting chain.
The objective is operational evidence. Unit tests establish whether isolated functions satisfy their specifications. Shadownet tests whether those functions remain coherent when they are connected through process boundaries, persistent storage, public networking, heterogeneous mining hardware, wallet activity, restarts, and chain synchronization.
Execution surface
The network consists of five cooperating paths. Laser Core applies consensus rules and maintains authoritative state. Wallets create ML-DSA-65 key material, derive scheme-bound addresses, construct transactions, and authorize them under network-specific signing domains. Seed services introduce peers. Miners request candidate work and return valid nonces. The explorer indexes a read-only projection of accepted blocks, accounts, activity, issuance, and chain work.
These paths do not share authority equally. Nodes determine validity. Wallets and miners propose state changes. Seeds provide discovery rather than consensus. The explorer observes accepted state and can be discarded or rebuilt without changing the chain.
wallet ── transaction ──→ node
│
seed ── peer discovery ──→ node ←── candidate work ── miner
│
├── persistent account and block state
└── read-only index ──→ explorerPost-quantum authorization
Laser uses ML-DSA-65, standardized by NIST in FIPS 204, for native account authorization. The signature scheme is part of the address interpretation rather than an auxiliary migration field. Signing domains include the network context so an authorization prepared for one Laser environment is not interpreted as authorization in another.
Ledger quantities are integers. The photon is the atomic unit, and one displayed LASER equals 10⁹ photons. Balances, transfers, transaction fees, block rewards, and aggregate issuance are evaluated without floating-point arithmetic. The current monetary rule set bounds issuance at 137,000,000 LASER and targets a ten-second block interval.
Proof-of-work execution
Shadownet consensus currently uses PhotonHash v0.2.2. A parent block fixes the matrix context. Candidate material derives nonce-dependent vectors. The portable CPU implementation defines the exact integer result and therefore the consensus behavior.
Mining may run entirely on the CPU or use the optional CUDA helper. The helper accelerates the matrix evaluation path and returns candidate work to Laser Core. The node re-evaluates submitted work through the CPU reference path before block submission. GPU execution is therefore an optimization boundary, not a second definition of validity.
Consensus is the exact integer function. Hardware acceleration is correct only when it reproduces that function bit for bit.
PhotonHash v0.2.2 and LF2-K8 have distinct roles. v0.2.2 is the active Shadownet consensus profile. LF2-K8 is a feed-forward candidate under read-only shadow instrumentation. Shadow evaluation records candidate behavior without accepting, rejecting, reordering, or reorganizing blocks.
Chain selection and persistence
Each node first validates the block header, proof of work, transaction authorization, account transitions, rewards, and issuance. Independently valid histories are then compared by accumulated proof of work. Height alone does not determine the selected history.
Persistent state allows a node to stop, restart, recover its local chain, reconnect to peers, and reconcile new work. Shadownet exercises this path under normal restarts and peer churn. Recovery behavior is part of network qualification because a consensus implementation that agrees only during uninterrupted execution is incomplete.
Live Shadownet snapshot
Read from the public explorer API. Refreshed every 15 seconds.
What the public network measures
Shadownet converts several implementation assumptions into observable behavior:
- whether independently running nodes converge on the same greatest-valid-work history;
- whether ML-DSA-65 transactions remain valid across wallet and node implementations;
- whether CPU and CUDA miners submit work accepted by the same reference verifier;
- whether peer discovery, block propagation, persistence, and restart recovery remain stable;
- whether supply, rewards, fees, balances, and account nonces remain internally consistent;
- whether the explorer can reconstruct public state from node data without becoming a consensus dependency; and
- whether shadow instrumentation can evaluate a candidate work function without influencing block acceptance.
The test environment is intentionally resettable. Reset capability permits incompatible protocol changes, state migrations, failure injection, and clean replay of launch procedures. Shadownet units are test-state quantities rather than production monetary instruments.
Qualification before consensus promotion
The existence of a running network does not complete protocol qualification. LF2-K8 remains outside consensus while the following work proceeds:
- an independently written implementation and frozen cross-implementation vectors;
- malformed-input and future-dimension boundary coverage;
- pass-omission, approximation, precomputation, fusion, batching, and matrix-bank amortization analysis;
- cross-hardware measurements covering additional GPUs, CPUs, FPGA models, and plausible ASIC designs; and
- sustained shadow agreement across upgrades, restarts, peer churn, and heterogeneous miners.
Photonic evaluation is a separate complete-system measurement. It includes matrix execution, modulation, detection, conversion, control, calibration, hashing, recheck, and exact-output yield. Electronic matrix share identifies accelerable headroom; it does not by itself establish an end-to-end energy advantage.
Result
Shadownet establishes a public execution baseline for Laser. The system now has an observable chain, post-quantum account authorization, exact monetary accounting, CPU and CUDA mining, public peer discovery, durable node state, read-only exploration, and a bounded path for evaluating a successor PhotonHash profile.
The next result is longitudinal: whether those components continue to agree as implementations diversify, the network is interrupted and upgraded, adversarial cases accumulate, and LF2-K8 shadow evidence becomes sufficient for an explicit launch-readiness decision.