The Share Chain
Bitcoin checks settlements. It does not make them. Someone has to gather contributions, prove the batch and send the transaction. Cheshire’s answer is: nobody in particular. There is no settler, no sequencer and no leader. There are provers and software.
| who | does | trusts |
|---|---|---|
| a wallet | proves its own contribution and hands it to a node | no one |
| a prover | proves jobs, publishes shares, is paid in notes by the settlement’s proof | no one |
| every node | follows Bitcoin and the share chain, works out each batch and its jobs, builds and sends the settlement | Bitcoin and the proofs |
A prover is simply a node with “contribute” switched on.
Shares
Section titled “Shares”The share chain is a small chain of messages between nodes, like P2Pool’s. A share:
- points to the share before it;
- names the Bitcoin block its author’s node saw as the tip;
- lists new contributions it is the first to reference;
- carries results of proving jobs, each tied to the one-time pay key of the prover that did it;
- carries a random nonce, and no author.
Rules:
- Data availability. A node builds on a share only if it holds the full data of every contribution the share references. A share whose data is withheld dies as an orphan.
- Work is proving. A share must carry at least one new, valid job result. A job counts once, for the first share that carries it.
- Fork choice. The heaviest chain wins: the most job results (a tree job counts 1, the final job 4). Ties go to the lower hash.
- Finality. A share is final when 12 shares are built on it, about a minute at full load.
The share chain holds no value, issues no token and finalizes nothing on Bitcoin. It only decides which valid settlement happens next and who gets paid for proving it. Seed recovery never reads it.
Rounds and jobs
Section titled “Rounds and jobs”Once per Bitcoin block, every node reads the final shares and derives the same batch and the same list of proving jobs. Provers claim jobs, prove them, and publish the results in shares. See rounds, batches and jobs, and for failures and attacks, when things go wrong.
The transaction
Section titled “The transaction”When the final proof appears in the chain, every node builds the settlement transaction. It has no funding input, no fee output, and a fixed rule for its one ground value, so every node builds the same bytes (the transaction). Sending it is not a race. A node that is behind sees it confirmed and catches up from the chain.
Status
Section titled “Status”Three nodes on one Mac, with real proofs, one job at a time: 9 settlements in about five hours, the same txids on every node, every wallet recovered from its seed and the chain, the supply check passing throughout (2026-10-29, and again 2026-11-04). Not yet run: several settlements proving at once, more than one machine, nodes joining late, batches above 20 contributions with real proofs. Those runs predate the 2026-11-07 re-pin.