9Chain Testnet A1
A sovereign fork of avalanchego. The consensus
engine, the VMs and the P/X/C chain architecture are Ava Labs' work and are left untouched. What
9Chain-A1 replaces is the identity layer: network id, network name, address prefix, token,
economic parameters, upgrade schedule.
⚠️ This is a TEST network. LOVE9 has no monetary value. Do not buy it, do not sell it, do
not accept it as payment. Test networks are rebuilt; when that happens every balance goes to
zero and we say so beforehand.
Where to start
Vietnamese: README.vi.md. This English file is the source; translate from it.
Identity
| |
|---|
| Node client | 9chaingo |
| Token | LOVE9 |
| Address prefix (P/X) | P-love9… / X-love9… |
| L1 EVM VM id | love9evm |
C-Chain chainId | 9000000009 — fixed across every generation |
| Network id | derived, see below |
Generations — the network id is derived, never typed
A1 re-generates its genesis from time to time. Each re-genesis is a generation, counted by a
single integer A1Gen (utils/constants/network_ids.go). Everything else follows from it:
networkID = A1IDGoc − A1Gen (A1IDGoc = 999999999)
networkName = "9chain-a1-g{A1Gen}"
L1 chainId block = 9_000_000_000 + A1Gen × 1_000_000 + 10 … +999_999
Generation g1 therefore runs on networkID 999999998, name 9chain-a1-g1.
Two safety properties hold at every generation, and both are deliberate:
- The drill band can never handshake with the real one. Rehearsal networks are generated from
A1IDGocTap = 899999999, a separate band. A node from a drill cannot join the public network by
accident, whatever anyone types.
- Each generation owns a disjoint block of L1 chainIds. A chain from a retired generation
cannot silently point at a new user's L1, and a signature from one cannot replay on the other
(EIP-155 binds signatures to
chainId).
🔴 A1Gen is written in two languages — Go (A1Gen) and JavaScript
(local-net/lib/chainid.mjs → A1_GEN). Bump one and forget the other and nothing raises an
error: the chain-creation console would hand out chainIds from a different generation's block, and
those numbers reach users' wallets through an immutable genesis. node scripts/check-consistency.mjs
is the gate that compares the two.
Economics
| |
|---|
| Announced total supply | 9,000,000,000 LOVE9 |
SupplyCap compiled into the binary | 7,900,000,001 LOVE9 |
| Issued at genesis | 5,400,000,000 (60%) |
| Allocation | Staking 40 · Community 30 · Foundation 12 · Private Sale 9 · Team 9 |
| Validators | 9 nodes, self-bond 999,999 LOVE9 each |
🔴 SupplyCap is NOT the total supply, and reconciling the two would mint 1.1 billion tokens.
SupplyCap bounds currentSupply on the P-Chain, and currentSupply does not count the
C-Chain allocation. The invariant netgen enforces (mustFitSupplyCap()) is:
SupplyCap (7,900,000,001) + Σ bucket.CChain (1,099,999,999) == 9,000,000,000
⚠️ LOVE9 has 9 decimals on P/X-Chain and 18 on the C-Chain. Both are correct — one coin, two
scales. See docs/TOKENOMICS.md §0.
🔴 SupplyCap is compiled into the binary, not read from genesis.json. Changing it means
rebuilding the node image, not just regenerating genesis.
Reproducing the fork
You are not asked to trust a binary. The sovereignty layer is distributed as a patch series that
replays onto a clean upstream checkout and must land on a known tree hash.
git clone https://github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego.git && cd avalanchego
git checkout 1cf1fc3
git am --keep-cr /path/to/9chain-a1/patches/*.patch
git rev-parse HEAD^{tree} # 387238778dda96d58cabe6f9ddd7097e208b69e9
--keep-cr is not optional: without it line endings shift and the tree hash will not match.
Counter-check — do this too. Applying 26 of the 27 patches must yield a different,
also-published tree: 60a61707f7974a0f1853b8bf78df7d0fdc1ef863. One anchor only proves the patch
set agrees with a number we printed in our own documentation; two anchors with independent origins
say something. Full walkthrough in docs/RUN-A-VALIDATOR.md.
What the identity layer actually changes
| Touch point | File | From | To |
|---|
| Client / node name | version/constants.go | avalanchego | 9chaingo |
| Token name | genesis/genesis.go | Avalanche | LOVE9 Coin |
| Token symbol | genesis/genesis.go | AVAX | LOVE9 |
| Address HRP | utils/constants/network_ids.go | custom | love9 |
| L1 EVM VM id | graft/subnet-evm/scripts/constants.sh | subnetevm | love9evm |
| Economic parameters | genesis/genesis_9chain_a1.go | LocalParams | A1Params |
| Network id | utils/constants/network_ids.go (A1ID) | 12345 | A1IDGoc − A1Gen |
| Network name | utils/constants/network_ids.go (A1Name) | local | 9chain-a1-g{N} |
| C-Chain chainId | 9chain-a1-tools/netgen/main.go | 43112 | 9000000009 |
| Upgrade schedule | upgrade/upgrade.go (A1) | Ava Labs' Default | A1 |
Untouched: snow/ (consensus), vms/ (virtual machines), chains/. That is the core, and it
stays upstream's.
The asset alias is LOVE9, and only LOVE9. Asking the X-Chain for AVAX returns an error
that says so in full. That error is the feature, not an oversight.
Repository layout
9Chain-A1/
├── patches/ # 27 patches replaying the sovereignty layer onto 1cf1fc3
├── upstream/avalanchego/ # the fork itself (separate repository, not tracked here)
│ └── 9chain-a1-tools/ # sovereignty overlay — does not touch core
│ ├── netgen/ # generate keys + genesis + an N-node compose file
│ ├── engrave-verify/ # read the genesis engraving back, from file AND from chain
│ ├── 9chain-a1-cli/ # L1 factory CLI
│ └── xp-wallet/ # X/P wallet
├── local-net/
│ ├── console/ # chain-creation service (sign-in with Ethereum)
│ ├── faucet/ # faucet API
│ ├── chains/ # public L1 directory
│ ├── deploy/ # Caddyfile + deployment scripts
│ └── gen-network.sh # one command, a real N-node network
├── scripts/ # the gates — see below
├── 9chain-a1-config/
│ └── l1-evm-genesis.json # SHAPE of an L1 EVM genesis, not a usable one (see note)
├── web/ # public site (Next, static export)
└── docs/
⚠️ local-net/net*/ holds private keys (keys.txt, faucet.env). It is git-ignored and must
never be committed.
⚠️ 9chain-a1-config/l1-evm-genesis.json is a template, not a usable genesis: it declares a
chainId that is already taken in the public registry and grants the whole supply to the ewoq
key, which is published in the avalanchego repository. Every path that creates an L1 builds a real
genesis through scripts/make-l1-genesis.mjs instead. Handing the template to the CLI as-is is a
mistake the tooling now refuses to make for you.
Gates
This project's most expensive class of failure is measuring the wrong quantity — every check
green because all of them measured the same wrong thing. The gates exist against that, and each
one carries a counter-check that must have been seen red for the right reason.
node scripts/gday-preflight.mjs # the whole gate set in one command, plus the manual tasks it cannot automate
node scripts/check-consistency.mjs # tokenomics arithmetic, read straight out of the Go source
node scripts/check-single-source.mjs # one constant, declared in exactly one place
node scripts/check-net-dirs.mjs # which local network directory belongs to which generation
node scripts/watch-network.mjs # measured on the RUNNING node, not on the repository
Exit codes are uniform across the set: 0 pass · 1 red · 2 could not measure. A 2 is
never a pass.
Running a network locally
Requires Docker. avalanchego does not build natively on Windows, so everything goes through a
container.
NETWORK_ID=899999999 bash local-net/gen-network.sh 5
🔴 NETWORK_ID is mandatory. There used to be a default and it was a dead generation. Choosing
a band is a decision, so the tool makes you make it. Use the drill band (899999999 and down)
for anything local; it can never handshake with the public network.
🔴 Measure the binary, not the network. A node boots cleanly on the wrong binary — a genesis of
5.4 billion loads onto a binary compiled for a different supply without complaint, and the
divergence only surfaces in staking rewards days later. Also, netgen hardcodes the image tag into
the compose file it writes, and no environment variable overrides it:
grep image: <net>/docker-compose.multinode.yml # BEFORE `up`
docker exec 9chain-a1-node-1 ./avalanchego --version # then measure the binary
Genesis engraving
A1's genesis carries text: on the P-Chain Message field (the root surface) and, for the English
documents, as contract code at a fixed C-Chain address. See docs/engrave/ for the
canon — id, sha256, byte count for each document — and docs/GDAY-ENGRAVING.md for the mechanism.
🔴 0x9000000000000000000000000000000000000009 is nobody's wallet. It holds the engraved text
as contract code with a zero balance, and no private key for it exists — deriving one is a 2^160
problem, so not even we can touch that text. That is the point. But it is also a short, memorable,
all-digit address on a chain whose parent chainId is 9000000009, which is exactly the shape
somebody mistakes for a treasury: anything sent there is burned, permanently.
Licence
Project code: BSD-3-Clause — see LICENSE.
🔴 Third-party components keep their own licences: avalanchego (BSD-3-Clause, Ava Labs) —
including the avalanchego code carried inside patches/ — and coreth / subnet-evm
(LGPL-3.0, derived from go-ethereum). Anyone redistributing a node image must meet the LGPL
obligations. Full list: NOTICE.
"Avalanche" and "AvalancheGo" are trademarks of Ava Labs, Inc. 9Chain-A1 does not use them as
branding; where they appear it is to state the software's origin accurately. This is an independent
project, not affiliated with Ava Labs.
