multi-vlad

Verifiable Long-Lived Address (VLAD) implementation: a combined Multisig whose message holds the WASM first-lock bytecode and whose signature is by an ephemeral key pair.

A Vlad is a newtype over a combined Multisig. The Multisig message field holds the binary WASM of a first-lock script. The signature is over that script, signed by an ephemeral key pair. The Vlad validates that the inner Multisig is combined (non-empty message) and that the message begins with the \0asm WASM magic bytes.

The goal is to avoid the anti-pattern of using public keys as identifiers. Public keys are subject to compromise and rotation, so identifiers derived from key material become invalid when keys change. A Vlad replaces the public-key identifier with a random identifier (the signature bytes) plus a cryptographic commitment to a validation function (the WASM script).

This crate contains only the Vlad half of the former bs-multicid workspace crate. The Cid half lives in the standalone multi-cid crate. The split lets a downstream crate depend on only the type it needs: multi-vlad depends on multi-key and multi-sig but not on multi-hash, which was only required by Cid.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Install
• Usage
• Feature Flags
• The Split from bs-multicid
• Testing
• Maintainers
• Contribute
• License

Features

• Vlad newtype over a combined Multisig.
• Builder pattern for Vlad from a signing key and a WASM message.
• WASM validation: rejects messages that do not begin with the \0asm magic bytes.
• Combined-signature validation: rejects detached signatures (empty message).
• verify() against the signing key via multi-key and multi-sig.
• Multibase encoding via multi-base and multi-util. EncodedVlad detects the encoding on decode and always encodes to Base32Lower.
• Serde integration under the serde feature. Human-readable formats give a struct with a multisig field; binary formats give the raw bytes.
• DAG-CBOR support under the dag_cbor feature via multi-cbor.

Install

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
multi-vlad = "0.1"

MSRV: Rust 1.95 (required by multi-key).

Usage

use multi_vlad::Builder;
use multi_key::EncodedMultikey;

let mk = EncodedMultikey::try_from(
    "fba2480260874657374206b657901012064e58adf88f85cbec6a0448a0803f9d28cf9231a7141be413f83cf6aa883cd04"
).unwrap().to_inner();
let msg = vec![0x00, 0x61, 0x73, 0x6d, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00]; // WASM magic + version

let vlad = Builder::default()
    .with_signing_key(&mk)
    .with_message(&msg)
    .try_build()
    .unwrap();

// verify the Vlad against the signing key
vlad.verify(&mk).unwrap();

// round-trip through bytes
let bytes: Vec<u8> = vlad.clone().into();
let decoded = multi_vlad::Vlad::try_from(&bytes[..]).unwrap();
assert_eq!(vlad, decoded);

Feature Flags

Feature	Default	Effect
serde	yes	Enables serde serialization for Vlad.
dag_cbor	yes	Enables CBOR support for Vlad via multi-cbor.
xmss	yes	Enables XMSS post-quantum signature support via multi-key.

Examples

• examples/ed25519.rs — Build and verify a Vlad with a random Ed25519 ephemeral key pair. Runnable:

  cargo run --example ed25519

• examples/xmss.rs — Build and verify a Vlad with an XMSS-SHA2_10_256 post-quantum ephemeral key pair. XMSS is a stateful hash-based scheme: a single key can sign a bounded number of messages (2^h for height h), which is necessary for a Vlad because the same ephemeral key must sign both the Vlad and the first provenance-log entry. Runnable:

  cargo run --example xmss

The Split from bs-multicid

The former bs-multicid workspace crate contained two types: Cid and Vlad. These types do not import from each other. They have disjoint dependency sets:

• Cid needs multi-hash for the Multihash field.
• Vlad needs multi-key and multi-sig for the inner Multisig.

Splitting the crate lets a downstream crate depend on only the type it needs. For example, wacc needs Cid but not Vlad, so wacc does not pull in multi-key or multi-sig.

The multi-vlad crate is the Vlad half. The multi-cid crate is the Cid half. Vlad does not depend on wacc or multi-hash. The WASM is opaque bytes; the code validates it only by the \0asm magic header. The Script type lives in provenance-log, not wacc.

Testing

cargo test --all-features
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo doc --all-features --no-deps

Maintainers

• Dave Grantham dwg@linuxprogrammer.org

Contribute

Pull requests go to the cryptidtech/multi-vlad repository. Sign commits with GPG. Use Conventional Commits messages.

License

Licensed under Apache-2.0.

See LICENSE for the full text.