Ark is a sovereign Cosmos SDK blockchain that converts its native asset, NOAH, into stablecoins and back at oracle prices, with a governed capital structure standing behind the stablecoin liability.
- Whitepaper, Money as Shared Infrastructure: why the design is what it is.
- Manifesto, The Revolution Begins Within: the founding statement, the purpose that design serves.
Ark is built using the Cosmos SDK and compiled to a binary called arkd (Ark
Daemon). Validators also run pricefeed, a separate off-chain sidecar that supplies the prices their nodes report in
vote extensions. Ark runs CosmWasm contracts and has no IBC.
What sets Ark apart is its economic model. There is no routine NOAH issuance: no mint module, no staking inflation, and no seigniorage. NOAH is minted and burned only inside stablecoin conversion, and three funds stand behind the stablecoins: a Redemption Buffer that recycles retained NOAH into redemptions, a strategic Reserve that governance can commit and a committee can deploy under a bounded mandate, and Insurance that pays covered losses through recorded claims. Validators and the oracle are funded from a fixed transfer tax and a genesis-seeded subsidy pool. Governance holds every unbounded power; committees hold bounded, time-scoped mandates. To understand how funds and authority move, read the economic design.
Documentation lives in this repository. Start at the documentation index, which arranges the guides by reading path: understanding the chain, launching a network, operating and monitoring services, governing and responding, integrating clients, and future direction. Each subsystem's README owns its own behaviour, design, and development guidance; the repository map links them.
For node operators: Node operations covers deploying arkd by role,
configuring it, joining a network, running a validator, keys and backups, upgrades, relaunch, and troubleshooting.
Process monitoring covers scraping the node and sidecar, and protocol
monitoring covers chain-state signals and alert calibration.
For validators: Each validator reports prices through vote extensions, so it runs a pricefeed sidecar beside its
node. Pricefeed operations covers deploying the sidecar, its providers and
routes, linking it to the node, following feed changes, and troubleshooting; the oracle module
explains attendance and reward settlement. Every validator also follows the upgrade binary
policy: cosmovisor never downloads binaries.
For delegators: Ark pays no staking inflation. Validator rewards come from the transfer tax and the subsidy pool, so read validator and Oracle funding before delegating.
For governance participants and committees: Governance runbook covers proposals, upgrades, appointments, and governance's procedures for each module. The committee runbook covers what each appointed committee does, how it submits, and the grants programme.
For client integrators: Client fee construction explains signed fee declarations, simulation, and failure handling for external transaction builders.
| Directory | Entry point |
|---|---|
| app | Application wiring, transaction hooks, mempool, Wasm, and upgrades. |
| abci | Oracle vote extensions, proposal envelope, preblock, and aggregation implementation. |
| pricefeed | Node-side cached client and off-chain sidecar/provider pipeline. |
| cmd/arkd, cmd/pricefeed | Binary startup and CLI ownership. |
| pkg | Shared arithmetic, encoding, transport, mandates, and telemetry. |
| proto | Handwritten schemas and dual generation. api/ contains generated runtime API code. |
| tests | Test map, integration fixtures, simulations, and CI. |
| contrib | Images, localnet, probes, and operational rehearsals. |
On-chain modules: Asset, Claims, Disbursement, Market, Oracle, Reserve, Security, and Treasury.
go.mod records the SDK version; mise.toml pins the development tools. From the repository root, with the pinned Go toolchain and the native dependencies required by Wasm available:
make build
make build-pricefeed
./build/arkd --help
./build/pricefeed --helpUntil a public network launches, run one locally. The Docker localnet wires validators and their sidecars together; install Docker with Compose and run:
make localnet-start
make localnet-liveness
make localnet-stoplocalnet-start rebuilds and recreates the localnet homes, replacing the previous localnet state. Read the
localnet guide for topology, data paths, ports, state sync, and rehearsals. For a single
validator on the host without Docker, or a testnet assembled by several developers, follow the
disposable host testnet and
manual assembly sections of node operations. A
shared testnet starts from the curated artefact app/genesis/testnet.json, the launch genesis
with its windows compressed (genesis §13).
Ark launches from a clean genesis as ark-1. The curated launch artefact is
app/genesis/genesis.json; Genesis records each setting, its
status, and the decision behind it. Do not treat arkd init defaults as the launch policy. A relaunch takes a new chain
ID and starts from arkd export, which is a continuation export: heights stay absolute and the exported genesis starts
at the next height, so every height-anchored record resumes as it is. Zero-height export is refused on purpose. See
relaunch.
For questions, feedback, or collaboration:
- Twitter / X:
@Chitpole0 - Email:
chitpole@proton.me
For security vulnerabilities, follow the security policy to report privately.
AGENTS.md holds the repository guidelines: Cosmos SDK conventions, arithmetic rules, proto generation, collections patterns, and testing conventions. Start verification with the affected package tests; tests/README.md maps each kind of change to its checks, and contrib holds the images, localnet, probes, and rehearsals. Documentation follows the placement rule: one authoritative home per subject, linked from everywhere else.
Ark-authored source is licensed under Apache 2.0. The node also links third-party code under LGPL 2.1 and 3 and the Business Source License 1.1, whose production-use terms operators should read. Licensing and corresponding source explains component licences, attribution, source downloads, and the release verification procedure.
The chain releases from vX.Y.Z; the sidecar releases independently from pricefeed/vX.Y.Z.
The release workflow prepares signed drafts from reviewed tags. A suffix such as -rc1
marks the draft as a pre-release. Maintainers review and publish through GitHub; only stable chain releases should be
marked latest. The release runbook covers dispatch, review, and local packaging;
release verification covers consumer checks.