A-Network
Technical Whitepaper

Abstract

A-Network v1.0.3 defines the Web2 mining backend as a hardened, production-grade proof-of-time system. Users do not mine ANET directly at session completion. They mine ANTS, the smallest accounting unit of ANET, during validated 6-hour sessions. ANET becomes claimable only after a miner reaches the eligibility threshold of 1,000 completed sessions.

The native currency is $ANET, capped at a hard maximum of 21,000,000 ANET. The smallest indivisible unit is one Ant, where 1 ANET = 100,000,000 Ants. Web2 mining therefore uses ANTS as the operating ledger unit and ANET as the delayed settlement unit. This avoids precision loss, supports future fee economics, and keeps the supply engine compatible with long-term Layer 1 settlement.

The network reward schedule follows a Bitcoin-style halving direction: the session reward starts at 0.048828125 ANET per session and halves as the network's total completed session count reaches global milestones. Halving is not triggered by registration count, referrals, or wallet balance. It is triggered only by total verified sessions across the network.

A-Network deliberately excludes referral reward amplification. The live backend supports F1 tracking plus a narrow activation credit: when a referred user completes their first successful mining session, the referrer receives exactly +1 credited session once. There are no coin bonuses, no percentage commissions, and no multi-level trees. This preserves a merit-based ledger while still rewarding real user activation.

Introduction — The Problem

The Failure of Web2

Web2 — the internet most users interact with today — is a closed-loop value extraction machine. Corporations harvest user data, attention, and behavioral signals, converting them into advertising revenue. Users are the product. They generate enormous value and receive nothing. Facebook, Google, and TikTok collectively extract hundreds of billions of dollars annually from unpaid human attention.

Web2 platforms have no scarcity model, no exit rights for participants, and no on-chain verifiability. Users cannot own their data, cannot monetize their contributions, and have no stake in the infrastructure they build with their time.

The Partial Solution of Web3

Web3 introduced ownership through tokenization and smart contracts — a monumental step forward. However, most Web3 systems suffer from speculative tokenomics, Sybil attacks via referral farming, and technical complexity that excludes billions of potential participants who do not own crypto wallets, understand gas fees, or can afford hardware mining equipment.

Web3 says "You are the owner" — but the entry barrier often ensures the same early-capital advantage that Web2 companies enjoy.

The A-Network Proposal

A-Network proposes a complete stack: beginning with a zero-cost, smartphone-accessible mining phase (Web2 App), transitioning through BNB Chain token infrastructure (Web3), graduating to a community-built Layer 1 blockchain that rewards every registered miner with transaction fees (Web4), and ultimately culminating in ANET Core — a self-sovereign, AI-augmented identity and application layer (Web5).

In this model: You are the value creator. Every action — every 6-hour session completed — contributes to a shared ledger that will persist across all future phases of the network.

The Vision

A-Network is not a short-term token project. It is a multi-decade infrastructure commitment. The roadmap is designed to grow with the technology landscape, from today's mobile app to a fully sovereign blockchain with its own consensus mechanism, validator economy, and application ecosystem.

Web2 vs Web3 vs Web4 vs ANET Core

Tokenomics — $ANET

The ANET token is the universal currency across all four ecosystem phases. It is not pre-mined, not VC-allocated, and not team-reserved. Every single ANET in existence has been or will be earned through real mining activity by real participants.

⚡ Ants — The Smallest Unit of ANET

In Bitcoin, the smallest indivisible unit is called a Satoshi (or Sat), where 1 BTC = 100,000,000 Satoshis. A-Network adopts the identical precision model but with its own cultural identity.

Supply Exhaustion & Hard Cap Enforcement

The MAX_SUPPLY constant is hardcoded in the mining engine at exactly 21,000,000 ANET. Session completion adds only ANTS to the user ledger. Supply protection becomes critical during claim, where a user's convertible ANET is capped so that totalANETClaimed can never exceed 21,000,000.

Web2 Phase — Time-Based Mobile Mining

The Web2 phase is the entry point into the A-Network ecosystem. It requires only a smartphone and internet access. There is no GPU mining, no staking capital, and no specialized hardware. In v1.0.3, the Web2 backend acts as a server-validated ledger that records time-based contribution, ANTS accumulation, eligibility progress, delayed ANET conversion, wallet continuity controls, and migration-ready account state.

The 6-Hour Session Model

Mining in A-Network is structured around fixed 6-hour sessions. Each session is a discrete unit of validated participation. A user initiates a session, waits 6 hours, and completes it. On completion, the ledger credits ANTS rather than immediately issuing ANET. The session duration cannot be shortened, and instant completion attempts are rejected.

Session Capacity Rules

Prerequisites for Mining

Session Halving — The v1.0.3 Reward Formula

A-Network v1.0.3 uses a Bitcoin-style halving schedule at the application ledger layer. The reward starts at 0.048828125 ANET per completed 6-hour session and halves each time the network reaches another 500,000 total completed sessions. The trigger is not user count. The trigger is network activity.

This design makes the reward curve predictable, analytics-friendly, and resistant to vanity metrics. A user cannot unlock a higher reward tier through referrals, token purchases, or wallet size. The only driver is aggregated proof-of-time from the network as a whole.

Dashboard interpretation: current mining output can be displayed in ANTS because ANTS is the smallest live accounting unit of ANET. Users may also see an estimated ANET equivalent, but the ledger source of truth during Web2 remains ANTS accumulation until claim eligibility is reached.

The Halving Level Formula

Important metric distinction: Eligibility and halving are now separate concepts. A user becomes eligible to convert after 1,000 sessions, but halving progression is driven only by totalSessions at the network level.

Threshold Milestones to the Next Halving Stage

Complete Reward Table

The v1.0.2 reward table is intentionally compact and predictable. There are four stages, from Stage 0 to Stage 3, with each stage halving the session reward. This allows a clean public API, simpler frontend interpretation, and easier data warehousing for analytics.

Sessions Required to Exhaust Supply

Anti-Gaming & Security Rules

Mining apps are high-value targets for automation abuse. A-Network implements multiple overlapping defenses:

Web3 Phase — BNB Chain Integration

Web3 is the visibility bridge between the A-Network mining economy and the decentralized financial world. In the current product, Web2 remains the source of truth for session mining and ANTS accumulation, while the BNB Chain presence provides public token visibility, wallet references, and ecosystem discovery.

ANET Token Contract

Wallet Identity & Migration Address

Each account can create a unique ANET wallet identity in-app. This wallet is linked to the miner profile and is used to display the user's currently claimed ANET while also preserving tracked ANTS for migration visibility.

Users can also save a separate migration wallet address for future Web4 Layer 1 migration. This allows migration planning ahead of chain launch while preserving mining continuity and future identity portability.

In the current release, wallet custody is protected by layered controls: an optional wallet PIN, encrypted server-side seed storage, email OTP verification before seed reveal, and backward-compatible local fallback support for older users whose legacy seed was never migrated to encrypted storage.

Web4 Phase — ANET Layer 1 Blockchain

When the 21,000,000 ANET maximum supply is fully mined in the Web2 phase, A-Network activates its most transformative milestone: the launch of the ANET Layer 1 blockchain — a purpose-built distributed ledger that extends the time-based mining concept into a full Proof-of-Work consensus system, while migrating every Web2 miner's ledger balance on-chain.

This is not a token swap. This is a ledger synchronization and chain genesis. Every ANET balance, every completed session, and every wallet address recorded in the Web2 database becomes part of the genesis block of the Web4 chain.

Time-Based Proof-of-Work (TPoW)

Traditional Proof-of-Work (Bitcoin) requires computational work — hash calculations demanding specialized hardware (ASICs). This concentrates mining power with wealthy hardware operators and excludes the majority of Earth's population.

A-Network's Time-Based Proof-of-Work (TPoW) replaces computational work with committed time. The "work" is a verified 6-hour active node participation window. This preserves Bitcoin's core properties — permissionless participation, verifiable contribution, block-reward issuance — while democratizing access to any participant with a mobile device.

Block Structure on ANET Layer 1

Each block on the ANET Layer 1 chain represents a 6-hour epoch. All miners who completed their session within that epoch are credited as the block's contributors. The block contains:

Transaction Fees — Paid in Ants

After the max supply of 21,000,000 ANET is reached, no new ANET is created. The network transitions from a block-reward model to a fee-only model — identical to Bitcoin's long-term economic design. This is where the Ant denomination becomes critical.

In the application dashboard, ANET supply and ANTS supply can both be shown side by side. This gives users a clear view of whole-token economics and smallest-unit accounting at the same time.

Web2 → Web4 Migration Specification

The migration from the Web2 PostgreSQL ledger to the Web4 Layer 1 blockchain is the most critical operation in A-Network's history. It must be transparent, verifiable, and zero-loss. Every wallet identity, migration wallet, ANTS balance, claimed ANET total, and session count must be preserved exactly.

Ledger Re-Organization — Last Miner First

The genesis state of the Web4 chain can be populated from the Web2 database using a recent-activity-first synchronization order. This favors the latest verified state while minimizing downtime for miners who remain active near migration.

ANET Core — Web5 Layer

ANET Core is the fifth and final phase of the A-Network ecosystem. Where Web4 built the infrastructure (the chain), Web5 builds the intelligence and identity layer on top of it. ANET Core is not simply a product — it is a protocol for self-sovereign identity, decentralized AI services, and community governance.

The codename "ANET Core" reflects its role: the nucleus of the A-Network universe. All other phases — mining, token, chain — converge here.

Core Features

AI Integration Layer

ANET Core includes a protocol-level AI layer that enables:

• Personal AI agents — owned by the user, not a corporation. AI models run on the user's data without exporting it to centralized servers.
• Federated learning — AI models improve from participant contributions without centralizing training data.
• On-chain AI inference market — Participants can offer AI compute services and earn Ants for processing inference requests.
• ANET Support Bot — An initial AI assistant built on the ANET Core identity layer, accessible to all miners for ecosystem guidance.

F1 Referral System — Tracking First, Activation Credit Only

A-Network includes a single-level (F1) referral system primarily for network growth transparency. The live backend does not implement pyramid rewards, commissions, or multi-level earnings. It does, however, grant one narrow activation credit: when a referred miner completes their first successful session, the referrer receives exactly +1 credited session once.

Why this design? Because A-Network believes that fake growth is worse than slow growth. A one-time first-session credit rewards real activation without opening the door to exponential referral farming. The system recognizes successful onboarding, but the ledger still depends overwhelmingly on the miner's own verified session history.

Security Model

Authentication Architecture

• JWT Tokens: All API endpoints require Bearer token authentication. Tokens expire and are refreshed on session activity.
• Email OTP (Registration): Account activation requires OTP verification during registration — one-time ownership confirmation that works globally without SMS cost.
• Smart Login OTP (v1.0.3): On every login attempt, the server evaluates risk signals — unrecognized device_id, new IP address, or is_trusted_device = FALSE. If any risk factor is detected, a 6-digit OTP is sent to the user's email and the login is held pending OTP verification via POST /auth/verify-login-otp. Successful verification marks the device as trusted for future logins.
• Trusted Device Management (v1.0.3): Each device is flagged as trusted after first successful OTP verification. Subsequent logins from the same device bypass OTP unless a new IP is detected. OTP attempts are capped at 5 per token; exceeded attempts lock the OTP and require re-login.
• One-Time Account Restore: If an account is in the scheduled-deletion state, the owner can request an email OTP through POST /auth/account-restore/request and confirm it through POST /auth/account-restore/confirm. This recovery path is intentionally single-use.
• Rate Limiting: Global baseline 100 requests per 15 minutes per IP, with additional route-specific throttles for auth/mining actions.
• IP Logging: Last IP recorded per user for anomaly detection (not persisted in history, only current).
• Multilingual Responses (v1.0.3): All API error and success messages are localized to the user's preferred_language. English (en) and Filipino (tl) are the launch locales. Users can update their language preference via POST /auth/set-language.

Database Security

• Passwords stored as bcrypt hashes (minimum 10 rounds) — plaintext never stored.
• Wallet identity is generated and linked at account level with server-validated uniqueness constraints.
• Wallet PIN values are stored only as bcrypt hashes; plaintext PINs are never stored.
• Seed phrase vault data is stored encrypted at rest using encrypted seed, IV, and authentication tag fields; legacy plaintext seed values are migrated on-demand and then removed.
• Seed reveal requires both the wallet PIN and a time-limited email OTP, with retry caps enforced server-side.
• Seed phrase should still be stored offline by the account owner after initial backup; server-assisted recovery is a continuity control, not a substitute for self-custody discipline.
• PostgreSQL with parameterized queries throughout — SQL injection surface is zero.

Ledger Integrity

• DECIMAL(20,8) balance type for legacy ant_balance field; v1.0.3 introduces parallel ants_balance stored as BIGINT for precision-safe integer arithmetic using BigInt literals.
• All session claim operations are wrapped in a database transaction with row-level locking (SELECT ... FOR UPDATE) to prevent concurrent double-credit of ANTS from parallel API calls.
• Backward-compatible ledger repair: on login and migration, ants_balance is set to GREATEST(existing, sessions × 4888) — never reduced, never overwritten unsafely.
• Database-level triggers ensure updated_at is always accurate.
• Cascade delete protections on mining session foreign keys.
• All balance changes are atomic SQL transactions — partial credit is impossible.

Session Lifecycle (v1.0.3)

• Session End Time: Every session claim sets session_end_time = NOW() + 6h for the next session window, enabling exact grace-period enforcement.
• Grace Period: 2-hour grace window after the 6h session window closes. Claims received between 6h and 8h are accepted. Claims after 8h are flagged as missed sessions.
• Notification Worker: A 60-second server interval worker polls for users whose session_end_time ≤ NOW() and notification_sent = FALSE, triggering completion push notifications and dashboard failsafe updates.

Roadmap

Legal Disclaimer

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