§ About · what Adamant is & why

A Layer 1 protocol,
built to outlive the people who built it.

Adamant is a base-layer settlement chain. Privacy by default, post-quantum cryptography, sub-second finality. No foundation, no premine, no admin keys, no on-chain governance.

Seven properties Four participation tiers Seven design principles Plain-English framings What Adamant is not

§ 01 / Seven properties

The seven properties.

Adamant is the conjunction of seven properties. Most chains satisfy two or three. The argument for Adamant is the gap.

Item

Property

BTC

ETH

XMR

ZEC

MINA

As Adamant defines it

ADM

P.01

Privacy Privacy by default

○

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Halo 2 zero-knowledge proofs. Selective disclosure via view keys.

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P.02

Post-quantum PQ secure

○

ML-DSA + Ed25519 hybrid signatures. ML-KEM-768 key agreement.

●

P.03

Throughput ≥50 000 TPS floor

○

DAG-BFT consensus, Mysticeti-shaped.

●

P.04

Finality Sub-second

○

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Average 412–487ms at security tier II–III.

●

P.05

Mempool integrity Encrypted by default

○

Threshold encryption + time-lock VDF, two regimes.

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P.06

Verifiability Phone-verifiable

○

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Recursive proofs allow client-side full verification.

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P.07

Decentralisation Residential-fibre

○

Validators run from home connections at launch. No data-centre requirement.

●

§ 02 / Participation

Four ways to participate.

Two staked roles secure the chain. Two permissionless markets serve it. Anyone can join either market without permission and without stake; anyone can take a staked role by meeting the floor.

T.01 Staked

Node Runner

Consensus participant

Stake floor: 1 000 ADM
Hardware: 16 GB RAM · 2 TB NVMe · 100 Mbit symmetric
Compensation: Block rewards (validator pool) + fee dimension share
Set size: 7–75

T.02 Staked

Node Watcher

Attestation, DA sampling, fraud detection

Stake floor: 100 ADM
Hardware: 8 GB RAM · 500 GB SSD · 25 Mbit
Compensation: Issuance share (~5%) + fee slice
Set size: uncapped

T.03 Permissionless

Prover

Recursive proof generation

Stake floor: —
Hardware: GPU recommended (proof-rate competitive)
Compensation: Per-proof bounty (open market)
Set size: permissionless

T.04 Permissionless

Service Node

Light-client infrastructure

Stake floor: —
Hardware: Reliable connectivity; modest compute
Compensation: Per-query payment channels
Set size: permissionless

§ 03 / Principles

Seven design principles.

These principles preceded the protocol. Every design decision in the whitepaper is referenced back to one of them. If a feature does not serve a principle, it is not in the protocol.

Decentralisation as default

If a feature requires trust in any single party — including the project's authors — it is not in the protocol.

Privacy as default

Transactions are shielded unless the user opts to reveal them. View keys, not court orders, control disclosure.

Verifiability over assertion

Every claim the protocol makes about itself is a checkable proof a phone can verify.

No foundation, no premine

There is no entity that owns Adamant and no allocation that bypasses burn-to-mint.

Permanence over fashion

The protocol is built to outlive the people who built it. Decisions are taken on a 50-year horizon.

Plain language

If a property cannot be explained without jargon, the property is not yet correctly stated.

Operational honesty

Pre-launch is pre-launch. Specification is specification. No promise is made about features that don't yet exist.

§ 04 / Framings

In plain English.

Adamant compared to systems you may already know.

vs. retail banking

Same asYou hold the keys. No bank can freeze, debit, or close your account.

Different inThe ledger is public, but your activity is not. Selective disclosure is yours, not the bank's.

vs. Bitcoin

Same asSame scarcity discipline (no premine, no foundation). 100M genesis pool plus a fixed-schedule issuance regime.

Different inAdds privacy by default and post-quantum security. Same monetary posture; updated cryptography.

vs. Ethereum

Same asAdamant is a settlement chain, not a smart-contract platform — focused, narrow.

Different inNo on-chain governance, no upgrades, no admin keys. Hard-fork is the only protocol-change mechanism.

vs. Monero / Zcash

Same asPrivacy by default like Monero. Selective disclosure like Zcash. Halo 2 proofs, no trusted setup.

Different inAdds post-quantum signatures and DAG-BFT throughput. Same privacy primitive class; modernised.

§ 05 / Negation

What Adamant is not.

Negation is part of the specification. Misreadings here cost time.

N.01 A token launch — there is no premine, no foundation allocation, no investor round.
N.02 A general-purpose world computer — Move contracts pay gas; shielded functions carry proofs. The VM is narrow on purpose.
N.03 A governance system — there is no on-chain governance and no admin key.
N.04 A scaling layer — Adamant is a base layer, not a rollup or sidechain.
N.05 A privacy add-on — privacy is structural, not an opt-in module.
N.06 A novel-cryptography research project — primitives are standard, peer-reviewed, audited.

Adamant is infrastructure, not a product. There is no team to follow, no roadmap to stake belief in, no foundation that can change its mind. The protocol exists only on its terms — the same ones described above.

— Whitepaper v0.1, §00 · Posture