Chain 3961 · the record
How Ferminux confirms blocks
What the consensus mechanism is, who operates it, what it replaced and why, and what it costs. Every claim here is checkable on-chain, and the live figures below are read from the chain as you load the page.
1. What it is
Ferminux uses authority consensus (Clique proof-of-authority). A set of authorised signers confirms a block every 7 seconds, in rotation. Signers are authorised by the on-chain signer set and carry no bond, so there is nothing to slash: what stands behind each signer is the foundation's operation of it. The foundation operates every signer, so block production rests on trust in the foundation as operator. FMX staking is a yield programme funded from the ecosystem allocation, separate from consensus: producing blocks belongs to the signer set alone.
The foundation operates the signer set today, and an open validator programme is being built: anyone who deposits 2,000 FMX per seat will be able to run a validator node on a Windows PC or a Linux server, check every block and sign a checkpoint about every 23 minutes. Those validator nodes check blocks; producing them stays with the authorised signers. Community block-signing seats would come later, as a separately announced upgrade. The programme is in development: become a validator.
Concretely: each block has a signer whose turn it is, in rotation; when that signer is unavailable another authorised signer confirms the block instead. An empty block is confirmed whether or not anyone is transacting. With N signers authorised, a signer may confirm at most one block in any ⌊N/2⌋ + 1 in a row, so production needs more than half of the authorised signers confirming — a majority of them. With fewer, the chain stops until a signer returns. How many more can stop before that happens depends on how many are confirming, which section 2 reads live.
2. Right now
Reading the signer set from rpc.ferminux.net…
Read live from clique_getSigners and clique_status (the blocks each signer confirmed over the last 64), with the gateway's /api/status as a fallback. Run the same calls yourself: section 7.
3. Why it changed
Ferminux launched as a proof-of-work chain. On 21 August 2026 it stopped producing blocks for four hours and thirty-six minutes, and did not recover for nine — blocks 20,570 to 20,577 took nine hours between them. Rented GPU capacity had set the difficulty to a level the remaining producers could not meet, and the old rule only lowered difficulty when a block was found — so the chain sat at a target nobody could reach. Nothing downstream could work: the bridge could not confirm transfers and the explorer froze.
That failure is structural to a small proof-of-work chain: whoever brings the most capacity sets a difficulty only they can sustain, and when they leave the chain halts. Authority consensus removes that dependency entirely. It does so at a cost, stated in section 6. The switch took effect at block 160,000, on 5 September 2026 at 12:11 UTC.
4. The signers
| # | Signer address | Operator | Last 64 blocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reading the authorised signer set from rpc.ferminux.net… | |||
Every signer is operated by one party, on separate machines. Production continues only while more than half of them are confirming, and section 2 shows how much margin that leaves right now — a signer with no blocks in the last 64 is not confirming. The signer set can change two ways, and the second one matters more than the first. Normally it takes an in-band vote by a majority of current signers, recorded in block headers and visible to anyone. But a break-glass path also exists: two of three foundation-held owner keys can replace the signer set outright, with no signer vote at all. It is there so the chain can be recovered if signer keys are lost, and every use of it is a block anyone can see — but it means the honest statement is that the same party which runs every signer can also replace all of them at will.
5. What changed at block 160,000
| If you… | Then… |
|---|---|
| hold FMX, AZNT or USDF | Nothing changed. Same chain ID (3961), same addresses, same balances, same contracts. Blocks arrive more regularly. |
| use the bridge, DEX, wallet or launchpad | Nothing changed in how you use them. The bridge additionally waits for a signed checkpoint before it releases funds — see Security for its current state. |
| run a node | Software older than release v1.1.0-posa stopped at block 160,000 and cannot follow the chain. The one-line installer on the docs page fetches the current release. |
| produced blocks with proof-of-work | That ended at block 160,000; there is no proof-of-work after it. The upgrade record, fork.html, sets out the compensation rule announced for addresses outside the foundation. |
6. What it costs
- One operator runs every signer. Producing blocks is open only to the authorised signers, all of them operated by the foundation. Proof-of-work, whatever its faults, let anyone with hardware take part in producing blocks; authority consensus gives that up. The first step of the validator programme now in development keeps it that way: validator nodes check blocks, and producing them stays with the signers.
- History is secured by keys, not by work. A majority of signers could rewrite recent history at no cost. The bridge is defended against this with signed checkpoints and a reorganisation-depth limit in every node, not by the consensus rule itself.
- Losing the majority halts the chain. If enough signer keys or machines are lost at once that no more than half of the authorised signers can confirm, block production stops until the foundation restores them. Recovery is a known procedure, and it is still a halt. Section 2 says how close to that line the chain is right now.
- Staking is a yield programme, separate from consensus. The staking programme pays FMX from a funded pool to holders who lock FMX. It has no vote and no part in producing blocks, so it can neither halt nor split the chain. Its published pool balance and depletion date are the only promises it makes.
7. Verify it yourself
The signer that confirmed any block is recoverable from the block header's seal (clique_getSigner with the block number). The current signer set, pending votes and recent activity are readable from any node:
curl -s https://rpc.ferminux.net -H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"clique_getSigners","params":[]}'
curl -s https://rpc.ferminux.net -H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"clique_status","params":[]}'
The switch block, 160,000, is built into the node's chain configuration and listed at startup; the release checksums are in the upgrade record.
This page describes the system as deployed. Where it and the node software disagree, the software is authoritative.