> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.fluxpointstudios.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.fluxpointstudios.com/materios-partner-chain/witness-network.md).

# Witness Network

TEE-attested distributed uptime + probe network on consumer Android phones

The **Materios Witness Network** is a decentralized network of consumer Android phones that produce TEE-rooted attestations of off-chain facts — uptime probes, URL availability, certificate validity, version drift — and anchor every observation to the Materios chain.

Every observation is signed inside the phone's hardware-isolated secure element (Android KeyMint / StrongBox). The signing key's attestation challenge cryptographically commits to the observation payload, so the on-chain signature is **un-forgeable proof that this specific result came out of this specific device at this specific moment**.

It is the first public network where a $200 phone is a load-bearing piece of cryptographic infrastructure.

***

## Why This Exists

Centralized uptime monitoring (Pingdom, UptimeRobot, StatusCake) has three structural problems:

1. **A single operator decides what "up" means.** If their probes see a 200 and yours don't, the operator wins.
2. **No cryptographic provenance.** A status page screenshot is unfalsifiable in either direction.
3. **No skin in the game.** A monitor that misreports has no economic consequence.

The Witness Network inverts all three:

| Problem                  | Centralized monitor | Materios Witness Network                                     |
| ------------------------ | ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Who decides "up"?        | The operator        | M-of-N independent phones                                    |
| Cryptographic provenance | None                | Android Key Attestation chain rooted at Google's hardware CA |
| Skin in the game         | None                | Slashable MATRA bond per attestor (v2)                       |

The same Android Key Attestation chain that banks use to gate sensitive operations is what gates a Witness Network attestor. A divergent attestation is provable on chain, in real time, by anyone.

***

## How It Works

```
Real-world event (URL probe, cert check, version fetch)
    │
    ▼
Phone's WitnessWorker executes the probe
    │ (HTTPS GET / DNS lookup / TLS handshake)
    ▼
Result + timestamp committed as Android KeyMint attestation challenge
    │ (KeyMint generates a fresh key whose attestation cert chain
    │  includes the challenge bytes — proof the result is bound to
    │  this exact key, which is bound to this exact device)
    ▼
Result + cert chain POSTed to Materios blob gateway
    │
    ▼
Gateway verifies the Android Key Attestation chain → Materios
    │ (root CA: Google; leaf: this device's KeyMint key)
    ▼
On-chain event: TeeAttestation::EvidenceVerified
    │ (binds the probe result to the device's attest_key_hash)
    ▼
Periodically anchored to Cardano L1 via the Materios checkpoint cadence
    │
    ▼
Anyone can verify, no trusted intermediary
```

***

## Live Status

The Witness Network is live on Materios preprod as of **2026-05-13**. Current state:

| Component                            | Status                                                                                                              |
| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| First TEE-attested probe on chain    | Block **#179467** (Pixel StrongBox), block **#180364** + #180370 + #180371 (Moto G TEE)                             |
| KeyMint signing algorithms supported | sr25519 (envelope), ed25519, **secp256r1 (KeyMint native, P-256, live 2026-05-14)**                                 |
| APK pairing                          | Self-registration via Android attestation cert chain; zero-touch onboarding                                         |
| Probe targets (today)                | `materios.fluxpointstudios.com`, `github.com`, `cardano.org` — configurable via gateway `/witness/targets` endpoint |
| Witness landing + dashboard          | <https://fluxpointstudios.com/materios/witness>                                                                     |
| Pallet on chain                      | `pallet-tee-attestation`, kill-switch OFF, multi-arch verifier (ARM TrustZone + AMD/Intel SGX stubs)                |

### What "live on chain" actually means

For the Moto G witness (`attest_key_hash = 0x0c4c6f81…`) the event chain in `IntentSettlement` storage looks like this:

```
TeeAttestation::EvidenceVerified {
  attestor: <Moto G's sr25519 envelope key>,
  attest_key_hash: 0x0c4c6f81…,
  evidence_type: arm_trustzone,
  composite_trust_score: 1,
}
```

And in `pallet-tee-attestation::CompositeTrustScores`:

```
CompositeTrustScores[0x0c4c6f81…] = 1
```

That's the on-chain proof that the device is a real ARM TrustZone phone, anchored to Google's root attestation CA, with no human-introduced trust. Any wallet, any explorer, any reader can verify.

***

## Cryptographic Chain of Custody

The thing that makes a Witness attestation un-spoofable is the chain that ties the probe result back to silicon. There are four links:

```
1. Google root attestation CA  (baked into every Android device at factory)
        │
        ▼
2. KeyMint TEE root key  (per-device, sealed in hardware, never leaves the SE)
        │
        ▼
3. Per-attestation leaf key  (freshly generated for THIS probe)
        │   ← attestation challenge bytes = blake2_256(probe_result || timestamp)
        ▼
4. Signature on the probe payload  (signed by the leaf key)
```

Every level is verifiable on chain. The Materios `pallet-tee-attestation` vendors the Acurast verifier and walks the cert chain to the Google root.

If any link is broken — counterfeit device, tampered KeyMint, replaying old attestations, or signing a payload the challenge doesn't commit to — the verifier rejects.

***

## How to Become a Witness

Witness onboarding is intentionally frictionless. You need:

* A modern Android phone with hardware-backed KeyMint (any device shipped after 2018 with API level ≥ 28)
* The Witness APK (download link on <https://fluxpointstudios.com/materios/witness>)
* An internet connection

### Install + self-register

1. **Scan the QR code at fluxpointstudios.com/materios/witness.** This deep-links the APK and pre-fills the gateway URL.
2. **Open the app, tap "Become a Witness".** The phone:
   * Generates a fresh KeyMint key for the device's witness identity
   * Builds an Android Key Attestation cert chain over it
   * POSTs the chain + a self-generated sr25519 envelope key to `https://materios.fluxpointstudios.com/preprod-blobs/v2/attestor_registration`
3. **Gateway verifies the cert chain** (Google root → device → KeyMint → leaf), creates the on-chain `pallet-tee-attestation::register_attestor` call, and the device is live.

End-to-end install-to-first-probe takes under 60 seconds in practice on a clean phone with no prior witness state.

### What the app does in the background

* Tick interval is configurable on the gateway side (currently 60s).
* Each tick fetches `/witness/targets` and runs every probe in that list.
* For each probe result, the app **generates a fresh KeyMint key** with an attestation challenge equal to `blake2_256(target_url || result || timestamp)`.
* Posts the result + cert chain to the gateway via the `attestation_evidence` route. The gateway accepts polyalg signatures (sr25519, ed25519, secp256r1 KeyMint-native).
* The on-chain event commits the result to chain state.

### Compensation

v1 ships in observe-only mode. v2 (Q3 2026) introduces:

* **MATRA reward emission** per attested probe
* **Slashable bond** for divergent attestations
* **Heat-map dashboard** ranking attestors by uptime + agreement

***

## What Else This Network Can Do

URL uptime is the first probe class. The architecture is general — anything a phone can observe and commit inside KeyMint is a viable Witness Network probe:

| Probe class                                        | Use case                                                       | Status    |
| -------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | --------- |
| HTTPS availability                                 | DEX frontend monitoring, infra SLAs                            | **LIVE**  |
| TLS certificate transparency                       | Detect cert-misissuance against your domain in real time       | Q3 2026   |
| Wallet RPC liveness                                | Independent monitoring of public Cardano + Materios RPCs       | Q3 2026   |
| Software version drift                             | Verify a specific git SHA is what's actually served at a URL   | Q4 2026   |
| Geographic latency probes                          | Edge-network performance baselines                             | Q4 2026   |
| Compliance auditing (jurisdiction-anchored attest) | Prove a piece of content was unavailable in region X at time T | Exploring |

***

## Network Effects

Every new Witness multiplies the network's value to the others:

* **More witnesses → more URLs covered → better-grained uptime maps.** Adding a phone in Manila doesn't dilute the network — it adds an observation point the others can't replicate.
* **More witnesses → harder to corrupt a result.** An adversary controlling 10% of witnesses can't move the threshold M-of-N reading. The cost of attack scales with N.
* **More witnesses → more MATRA demand.** v2 rewards scale with total network capacity, sized to keep marginal-witness incentives positive.

The network is permissionless. We don't gatekeep on country, carrier, device model, or operator identity. The TEE attestation is the gate.

***

## Architecture Deep Dive

### Pallets

* **`pallet-tee-attestation`** ([materios main, commit 1623de7](https://github.com/Flux-Point-Studios/materios/tree/main/pallets/tee-attestation)) — vendored Acurast verifier; ARM TrustZone path is the only path enabled in v1, AMD SEV-SNP / Intel TDX / build-attestation / ZK paths are stubs gated by Phase 2.5 onboarding.
* **`pallet-orinq-receipts`** (existing) — provides the M-of-N committee + cert chain for the on-chain registry of witnesses. Reused, not forked.
* **`pallet-intent-settlement`** (existing, post-spec-221) — same chain; settlement of attestation-class disputes ride on this.

### Off-chain services

* **Blob Gateway** (TypeScript, `services/blob-gateway`) — `/v2/attestor_registration` for onboarding, `/v2/attestation_evidence` for tick submission, `/witness/targets` for tick-time probe list, polyalg signature verification (sr25519 + ed25519 + secp256r1 KeyMint).
* **WitnessWorker APK** (Kotlin) — Android-side prober. KeyMint key generation, attestation cert chain construction, probe execution, gateway POST.
* **Cert daemon committee** — the same operator-kit committee that attests AvailabilityCert + ClaimSettlement; signs `TeeAttestation::EvidenceVerified` calls.

### Cross-chain

Periodic Materios checkpoints anchor to Cardano L1 via metadata-label-2222. A Witness probe at block #194467 is durably anchored to Cardano via the next Materios → Cardano anchor (typically within 5 minutes).

***

## Roadmap

| Phase                          | Quarter | Deliverable                                                                                                |
| ------------------------------ | ------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **v1: Live**                   | Q2 2026 | TEE-attested URL probe, multi-arch verifier, APK self-registration, on-chain anchoring (DONE)              |
| **v2: Rewards + slashing**     | Q3 2026 | MATRA reward emission, slashable bond, divergent-attestation auto-dispute                                  |
| **v3: Probe diversity**        | Q4 2026 | TLS-CT, RPC liveness, version-drift, geographic-latency probes                                             |
| **v4: Subscriber API**         | Q1 2027 | Pay-per-query gateway over the witness dataset (consume from any chain via x402 or Cardano metadata)       |
| **v5: Federated sub-networks** | Q2 2027 | Domain-scoped witness pools (e.g. "all Manila witnesses", "all Pixel 9+ witnesses") for SLO-shaped queries |

***

## Getting Involved

| You are a…                                        | Next step                                                                                                                              |
| ------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Android user with a spare phone                   | <https://fluxpointstudios.com/materios/witness> — scan + install the APK                                                               |
| Cardano project worried about an infra dependency | Open an issue at <https://github.com/Flux-Point-Studios/materios> proposing a probe class; we'll wire your URL into `/witness/targets` |
| Developer who wants to consume witness data       | The gateway's `/witness/observations` API is open + permissionless; pay-per-query lands in v4                                          |
| Investor / partner                                | <hello@fluxpointstudios.com> — the witness fleet is dual-use: same APK ships TEE-attested billing AND TEE-attested distributed QA      |

The Witness Network is one of the few places in Web3 where running unbalanced consumer hardware is a load-bearing role, not a tourist task. If you have a phone, you have a job.