Q-day and the canary
QuantArk reads a public on-chain canary: a flag that flips when someone demonstrates they can break Ed25519. On devnet it is the canary bounty run by Qanary, an independent project. Its tripped flag is one byte at offset 8 of a known account.
The latch
Section titled “The latch”freeze_on_canary is permissionless. Once the canary reads tripped, anyone can call it, and QuantArk sets a latch in its config that can never be cleared. Even before anyone latches it, every guarded instruction checks the live canary byte itself.
What freezes
Section titled “What freezes”Press the button to see what the guard does when the canary byte flips.
| Instruction | Authorised by | State |
|---|---|---|
mint_q2 | Ed25519 user | WorksFrozen |
redeem_q2 | Ed25519 user | WorksFrozen |
register_lifeboat | Ed25519 holder | WorksFrozen |
post_snapshot | Ed25519 admin | WorksFrozen |
set_pause / set_canary | Ed25519 admin | WorksFrozen |
pq_withdraw | LM-OTS signature | WorksFrozen |
init_pq_vault | anyone | WorksFrozen |
The rule is simple. Anything an Ed25519 signature authorises could be forged after the break, so it stops. Treasury withdrawals are authorised by LM-OTS, so they continue.
Pause is separate
Section titled “Pause is separate”The admin can pause minting, redeeming and boarding with set_pause. Pause is reversible. The Q-day latch is not, and pause cannot override it.
What the canary cannot reach
Section titled “What the canary cannot reach”Trading happens in Meteora’s DBC and DAMM v2 programs. QuantArk cannot freeze them. After Q-day, coins may keep trading on those pools even though QuantArk’s own actions are frozen. See Security model.
The app shows the canary status in a strip at the top of every page.