How Ferminux produces blocks

This page says exactly what the consensus mechanism is, who operates it, what it replaced and why, and what it is not. Every claim here is checkable on-chain.

1. What it is

Ferminux uses authority consensus. A fixed set of five signers produces blocks in rotation every 7 seconds. They are not bonded: no stake backs them and there is nothing to slash, so the only thing standing behind a signer is the foundation's operation of it. The signer set is operated by the foundation. This is not trustless proof of stake and we do not claim it is. FMX staking is a yield programme funded from the ecosystem allocation; it does not secure the chain.

Concretely: block n is sealed by signer n mod 5, with a fallback so that a single unavailable signer does not stop production. An empty block is sealed whether or not anyone is transacting. Production continues as long as at least three of the five signer processes are running.

2. Why it changed

Ferminux launched as an Ethash 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 hashrate had set the difficulty to a level that the remaining miners could not meet, and Ethash only lowers difficulty when a block is 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 hashrate sets a difficulty that only they can sustain, and when they leave the chain halts. Authority consensus removes the dependency on hashrate entirely. It does so at a cost, stated in §5.

3. The signers

#	Signer address	Operator
1	`0x3322f60aCEA9f88658665E83BeB30a516036187D`	Ferminux foundation
2	`0xA46A721F25771BB2Be312a63A5D891539fF1de23`	Ferminux foundation
3	`0x1538249E04c767dFfC50845068C19F633341bB0f`	Ferminux foundation
4	`0x71377E0F553a5B0CB847443ab6648235977919b0`	Ferminux foundation
5	`0x8e97f419F388c20E745dFF826587f359C31EF693`	Ferminux foundation

All five are operated by one party. They run on separate machines with separate hosting providers, so no single outage stops block production — but they answer to the same operator. 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 all five signers can also replace all five at will.

4. What changes for you

If you…	Then…
hold FMX, AZNT or USDF	Nothing changes. Same chain ID (3961), same addresses, same balances, same contracts. Blocks arrive more regularly.
use the bridge, DEX, wallet or launchpad	Nothing changes in how you use them. The bridge additionally waits for a signed checkpoint before releasing funds — see Security.
run a node	You must upgrade before the fork block. A node on the old binary will stop at the fork and not follow the chain. The upgrade is the same one-line installer.
mine FMX	Mining ends at the fork block. There is no proof-of-work after it. The public pool closes. Addresses that mined blocks in the 30 days before the announcement are eligible for the compensation described in the fork notice.

5. What we are not claiming

It is not decentralised. Five signers, one operator. Proof-of-work, whatever its faults, let anyone with hardware participate in producing blocks. This does not.
History is secured by keys, not by work. Under proof-of-work, rewriting the chain cost real electricity. Under authority consensus a majority of signers could rewrite it at no cost. The bridge is defended against this with signed checkpoints and a reorg-depth limit in every node, not by the consensus rule itself.
Three lost signers halt the chain. If three of the five signer keys or machines are lost at once, block production stops until the foundation restores them from escrow. This is a known, rehearsed recovery, and it is still a halt.
Staking does not secure anything. The staking programme pays FMX from a funded pool to holders who lock FMX. It votes on nothing and can neither halt nor split the chain. Its published pool balance and depletion date are the only promises it makes.

6. Verify it yourself

The signer that sealed any block is recoverable from the block header's seal. The current signer set and any pending votes are readable from any node's clique_getSigners and clique_getSnapshot RPC methods. The fork block, once set, is published in the node's built-in chain configuration and in the release notes with checksums.