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Research

Key rotation and robot jobs need independent records

Changing credentials and commissioning physical work create different verification duties.

An autonomous warehouse cart rests in a marked bay beside a low charging dock.
Technical illustration

The NEAR upgrade discussion emphasizes command-line rotation of post-quantum keys ahead of wider wallet support, alongside dynamic resharding. Rotation preserves the possibility of changing cryptography without abandoning an account’s assets and history; resharding changes capacity allocation while the accepted state must remain consistent. The distinctive implementation issue is how existing credentials and records survive each transition.

The Unibase-referenced machine-commerce discussion adds agents discovering, hiring and paying robots. A job needs a capability, an availability signal, a completion measure and an agreed record controlling payment. Formal verification offers a parallel separation for generated code: one system may produce a proof while another checks it. Independent checking matters when an incorrect instruction can produce a physical action rather than merely an inaccurate answer.

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