# Nova Pilot Consumer — Blockchain Stock Exchange

> **Milestone:** v1.26 — Live Pilot Estate Activation
> **Git:** https://git.cloudinit.dev/continuous-intelligence/nova-blockchain-exchange
> **Local clone:** /root/nova-blockchain-exchange
> **Role:** The first real consumer estate. A stock exchange built on a
> homegrown blockchain, offering equities trading (pilot scope). The
> consumer repo owns the app code + `contract.yaml`; the Nova platform
> (`acdl` repo) provides the deploy workflow, policy engine, and
> attestation gates.

---

## Vision / Core Value

A self-contained securities-trading exchange where every order, match,
and settlement is recorded as an immutable transaction on a homegrown
Proof-of-Authority (PoA) blockchain. The pilot demonstrates that Nova's
autonomous infrastructure can take a real consumer estate from contract
to production — apply, attest, record — without an operator in the loop
of normal operations.

## North Star Alignment

- **Strategic Objective #1** (production-grade zero-touch operations):
  this estate is the first real consumer; the pilot activates the
  autonomy claim beyond internal demos.
- **Strategic Objective #2** (provable trust): every apply decision +
  attestation lands in the Decision Ledger; the settlement-finality
  kyverno-json policy (IDEATE) makes trust a policy artifact.
- **Strategic Objective #3** (compounding ROI): unblocks the three
  Post-Pilot targets (Touchless Resolution ≥99%, Human Escalation
  <0.1%, AI Decision Accuracy ≥99.5%) — the denominators activate when
  this estate runs.

## Domain Boundaries

- **This repo owns:** the blockchain (consensus, blocks, transactions),
  the order-matching engine, the settlement service, the `contract.yaml`
  that declares the infrastructure, and the consumer-side deploy workflow
  invocation (`uses: acdl/.github/workflows/deploy.yml@v1.25`).
- **The platform (`acdl`) repo owns:** the deploy workflow, the policy
  engine (kyverno-json), the contract resolver, the adapter, the
  confidence signal, the HITL gates, and the Decision Ledger.

## Scope: v1.26 Pilot

- **Equities only** (bonds, derivatives, options deferred to future
  milestones — different settlement models).
- **Minimal PoA ledger** — append-only blocks, single validator (pilot),
  T+1 settlement finality = block commit. No multi-validator BFT.
- **Homegrown chain** — authored as part of this repo, not deployed on
  Ethereum/Solana/Hyperledger.

## Anti-Goals (v1.26)

1. Not a general-purpose blockchain platform — purpose-built for
   securities settlement in the pilot.
2. Not multi-validator consensus — single validator for the pilot.
3. Not bonds/derivatives/options — equities only this milestone.
4. Not a replacement for the Nova platform — this is a *consumer* of
   Nova, not a fork.

## Key Decisions (v1.26 — established in SPECIFY, refined in CLARIFY)

| ID | Decision | Rationale | Affects |
|---|---|---|---|
| D-200 | Pilot scope = equities only | Bonds/derivatives/options have very different settlement models; equities (T+1) is the simplest to demonstrate the Nova platform's policy gates over a real estate. | Phase count; requirement scope. |
| D-201 | Homegrown PoA ledger (single validator) | Minimal viable chain for a pilot; settlement finality = block commit. Multi-validator BFT is a future milestone. | Blockchain core design. |
| D-202 | Consumer repo = `nova-blockchain-exchange` (Gitea) | New repo under `continuous-intelligence` org; tracked as 2nd CIAgent project. | Multi-project config. |
| D-203 | AWS account = 581513795199 (existing) | Reuse the bootstrapped account; state bucket + outbox table created in pre-run Workstream A3. | Env JSON binding. |
| D-204 | D-083 (S3 Object Lock/JWS) stays deferred | The SQLite hash-chain + DynamoDB outbox is the pilot's audit record. Tamper-evidence is a future milestone. | Audit ledger scope. |
| D-205 | Cold-only metrics sufficient (D-126) | No hot ops dashboard in the pilot; cold SQLite store + PowerBI export. | Metrics pipeline. |

## Constraints

- The consumer repo's deploy MUST go through `deploy.yml@v1.25` (the
  reusable workflow) — no direct `terraform apply` bypassing the
  platform's policy + attestation gates.
- The `contract.yaml` MUST validate against
  `schemas/contract.schema.json`.
- The homegrown blockchain MUST be deterministic (same inputs → same
  block) — it is automation, not AI (NORTH_STAR Objective #2 tenet).

## Context

- The Nova platform (`acdl` repo) completed v1.25 (kyverno-json Unified
  Policy Engine). The swappable `PolicyEngine` adapter is in place.
- The AWS bootstrap (S3 state bucket + DynamoDB outbox) was re-run in
  the pre-run (Workstream A3) — the platform components exist.
- The consumer repo was created on Gitea (Workstream A4) and cloned to
  `/root/nova-blockchain-exchange`.