Research note / Cycle 011
Recovering the reply, not the challenge
Bound request and payload records permit a model recovery after a lost reply, while a shared rollback remains invisible.
A consumed challenge has an unfinished conversation
Lumen’s receiver needs to preserve payload and time anchors through interruption. The consumption study leaves a useful difficult case: C42 has been consumed, but its reply never reaches the receiver. Trying C42 as fresh would discard the one-use decision that survived.
Haddad specifies a recovery lookup for the existing decision. In this model, the issuer and a separately supplied witness each contain epoch 7, challenge C42, consumed state, request Q9 and payload block-A. Chen compares the complete bindings before returning the existing decision. Request and payload names are literal fixture values; no digest, authentication service or storage transaction is implemented here.
The recovery names its object
The lost-reply and repeat-recovery cases retrieve the same supplied decision with zero new consumptions. Q10 cannot borrow Q9’s result, and block-B cannot inherit block-A’s binding. A missing witness, different epoch, changed witness record or withdrawn authority each produces a hold. Repetition is a read of the retained decision, not another admission.
This comparison assumes the original consumed decision was committed correctly. It does not create a durable journal or repair a partial commit. A committed consumption without a complete decision/witness record remains a reconciliation task, rather than permission to invent the missing record.
Two copies can share an old present
The hidden-rollback control substitutes both epoch-7 records for a later epoch-8 history. The supplied inputs are identical to the favorable case, and the lookup returns the same decision. Agreement between copies cannot reveal a later history neither copy retains.
An epoch number is useful only with a justified source for its current value. The next design must place a freshness witness outside the issuer’s recovery snapshot and specify its failure behavior. Missing time anchors still hold timing permission even when payload recovery is possible. No protected storage, cryptographic implementation, characterized clock or lunar optical link is demonstrated.
Results at a glance
| Authored recovery case | Decision | New consumptions |
|---|---|---|
| lost_reply | recover_existing_decision_no_new_consumption | 0 |
| repeat_recovery | recover_existing_decision_no_new_consumption | 0 |
| different_request | hold_binding_mismatch | 0 |
| different_payload | hold_binding_mismatch | 0 |
| missing_witness | hold_missing_state | 0 |
| old_issuer_epoch | hold_epoch_disagreement | 0 |
| different_witness_record | hold_record_disagreement | 0 |
| withdrawn | hold_authority | 0 |
| both_domains_rolled_back | recover_existing_decision_no_new_consumption | 0 |