Core concepts

Five primitives make up the protocol. Understanding how they nest is enough to read the rest of the docs.

Nodes

A node (arxOS) is an off-chain operator that performs MPC. Each node registers an identity in the NodeRegistry — a BLS public key (for the eventual aggregate-signature path), an X25519 public key (for input decryption), a hardware-attestation hash, and a jurisdiction. Nodes stake CONFIDE through the StakingManager to become eligible.

Clusters

A cluster is a set of nodes that jointly hold one distributed key. During formation the members run a DKG; the combined X25519 public key is published on-chain via ClusterManager.activateCluster, gated by a threshold of member signatures. Clients encrypt to this cluster key; no single node can decrypt alone.

A cluster has a threshold t — the minimum number of members that must sign a result for it to be accepted on-chain.

Computation definitions

A computation definition (compDefId) is a compiled circuit registered in the ComputationRegistry. It carries the circuit bytecode (or an IPFS pointer), an estimated gate count used for fee and deadline pricing, and an input arity. This is what the Arcis compiler produces.

MXEs

An MXE (MPC Execution Environment) binds a cluster to a set of allowed computation definitions. Think of it as a deployment target: it says "this cluster will run these circuits." Clients commission against an mxeId; the Coordinator resolves it to the backing cluster and snapshots that cluster's members and threshold at commission time.

Computations

A computation is one commissioned job. Its lifecycle:

• commission — the requester deposits a fee and submits encrypted inputs. The Coordinator snapshots the cluster's participants and threshold and assigns a unique computationId.
• submitResult — a threshold of nodes submits the sealed result plus their signatures; the contract verifies them against the snapshot and fires the requester's callback.
• slashTimedOut — if the deadline passes with no result, the assigned participants are slashed and the fee is refunded.

Node ─stakes→ Cluster ─backs→ MXE ─runs→ Computation Definition
                                   │
                            Computation (a job)

Continue to the architecture for how the contracts wire these together, or the lifecycle for the end-to-end flow.