Core Technology
Core Technology
Every chain has a clock. Almost none of them can prove it. Roko is a Substrate chain with full Frontier EVM compatibility that treats time as something the network measures — validators run a peer-to-peer time mesh, every transaction receives a signed temporal receipt with a nanosecond timestamp, and the network's agreed clock is readable from Solidity and JSON-RPC without a third-party oracle.
This section explains how that works, layer by layer: the time mesh under the chain, the consensus rules on top of it, and the data types and enforcement mechanics builders actually touch.
In This Section
Temporal Infrastructure
The PTP Squared validator time mesh: how nodes probe each other over libp2p, score peers statistically, converge on a shared clock, and classify their own time sources into quality tiers.
Consensus Mechanism
BABE block production and GRANDPA finality, with Proof of Accurate Time (PoAT) as a consensus modifier: on-chain time-quality tracking that is designed to influence validator eligibility and rewards.
Temporal Transactions
Signed temporal receipts, the 15-second inclusion deadline enforced at block import, and the fee-priority timestamping queue that assigns canonical timestamps.
NanoMoment
The u128 nanosecond timestamp type used across receipts, block metadata, RPCs, and the EVM temporal precompile.
Related pages
MEV Prevention covers what deterministic ordering does and does not remove. Network Architecture and Validator Requirements cover topology and what it takes to run a node.
Technical Specifications
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Base stack | Polkadot SDK `release-polkadot-v1.13.0` + Frontier EVM (ChainSupport fork) |
| Consensus | BABE (block production) + GRANDPA (finality), PoAT time mesh as modifier |
| Block time | Testnet dev chain: 2 s today; 6 s is the production-testnet target (M-19). Mainnet runtime: 3 s |
| Timestamp type | NanoMoment — u128 nanoseconds since the Unix epoch |
| Inclusion deadline | 15 s default per receipted transaction, enforced at block import |
| Time mesh | libp2p notification protocol `/roko/timesync/1` |
| EVM Chain ID | 442 (testnet); mainnet TBD |
| Native token | ROKO, 18 decimals, Ethereum-style 20-byte accounts |
Current Status
The network is in a gated testnet phase. A mainnet runtime exists in the codebase, but no production mainnet genesis has been cut and the mainnet EVM chain ID is not yet assigned. Time-quality offences are detected and recorded on-chain, but slashing enforcement is currently disabled in both compiled runtimes — a deliberate testnet posture you should know about before relying on enforcement guarantees.