Remote Attestation and State Commitments

Establishing Trusted Execution Contexts and Publicly Verifiable State Anchors in Distributed Governance Environments

4.7.1 The Purpose of Remote Attestation in NSF

In decentralized governance, execution must occur on infrastructure:

• Not physically controlled by stakeholders

• Running in heterogeneous jurisdictions

• Performing policy-critical actions

NSF uses Remote Attestation to ensure that clause execution environments:

• Are cryptographically identifiable

• Can be independently verified as secure

• Operate only under certified configurations

• Bind their output to verifiable state commitments

This creates a distributed but trust-verifiable execution substrate for smart governance.

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4.7.2 What Is Remote Attestation?

Remote attestation allows a node (e.g., a TEE or secure runtime) to generate a cryptographically signed proof of:

• The software and configuration it is running

• The hardware identity and trust root

• The active execution scope (clause, DAO, jurisdiction)

• The code measurement (hash of clause logic)

• The runtime state at launch

This is verifiable remotely by any validator, auditor, or DAO—establishing provable trust before execution begins.

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4.7.3 NSF Remote Attestation Lifecycle

1. A node starts an enclave or secure runtime

2. It generates a measurement report (e.g., SGX quote, SEV evidence, Enarx attestation)

3. The enclave signs:

   • Clause ID

   • Governance scope

   • Input hash

   • Runtime hash

   • Node identity

4. The attestation is sent to the NSF Attestation Registry

5. Verified parties can:

   • Confirm execution validity

   • Accept or reject CACs

   • Audit execution trust boundaries

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4.7.4 Required Fields in Attestation Statements

NSF-compliant attestations must include:

{
  "runtime_type": "TEE",
  "enclave_type": "SGX",
  "measurement_hash": "0xabc123...",
  "runtime_hash": "0xdef456...",
  "signer_did": "did:nsf:TEEExecutor#node27",
  "jurisdiction": "ZAF",
  "dao_scope": "AgriReliefDAO",
  "execution_policy": "static",
  "timestamp": "2025-04-30T18:32Z",
  "signature": "0xDEADBEEF..."
}

These are included in:

• CAC metadata

• TEE registration proofs

• Rollup signing

• Credential issuance justification (VC evidence fields)

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4.7.5 Verification of Attestation Statements

Validators, DAOs, and downstream systems verify:

• Runtime hashes match approved clause interpreters

• Measurement hashes are whitelisted by NSF Governance Registry

• Signer DIDs are linked to approved enclave operators

• DAO scope matches clause permissions

• Timestamp falls within acceptable execution window

If any component is invalid, CAC output is rejected or disputed.

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4.7.6 Anchoring Attestation and CAC State Commitments

Each enclave’s state is represented as:

state_commitment = hash(runtime_state + inputs + clause_hash + DAO + jurisdiction)

This is:

• Signed by the enclave

• Optionally:

  • Aggregated with other CACs into a Rollup root

  • Anchored on-chain (e.g., Ethereum, Filecoin, sovereign chain)

  • Published to treaty or UN governance channels

This guarantees the execution occurred as claimed, under a publicly verifiable state lineage.

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4.7.7 Aggregated Attestations and Multisig Signatures

For mission-critical or cross-border clauses:

• Multiple enclave nodes may execute the same clause

• All attestations are collected and compared

• A threshold (e.g., ⅔ majority) is used to approve execution

• A multisignature aggregate is added to CAC or Rollup

This ensures:

• Higher execution fidelity

• Censorship resistance

• Hardware diversity

• Cross-jurisdictional trust validation

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4.7.8 Attestation Slashing and Revocation

If a node:

• Produces invalid attestations

• Violates jurisdictional governance rules

• Runs compromised runtime environments

• Is found to forge CACs

It can be:

• Slashed from NSF validator sets

• Revoked via TEERevocationVC

• Blocklisted from the Registry Layer

• Publicly reported through governance audit dashboards

Attestation accountability is baked into NSF’s fault-resilient trust model.

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4.7.9 Audit Layer Integration

All verified attestations are:

• Logged in the Audit Layer

• Linked to CACs, VCs, and DAO decisions

• Queryable by:

  • Clause ID

  • Node ID

  • Time window

  • Jurisdiction

  • Risk classification

Example query:

find all attestations from nodes in jurisdiction = "IDN"  
for clauses matching "WaterSafetyClause@*"

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4.7.10 Remote Attestation as the Gateway to Trust

In NSF, no execution is trusted unless it’s attested.

Remote attestation enables:

• Zero-trust governance

• Execution provenance

• Jurisdictional enforcement

• Public observability

• Interoperability between enclaves, validators, and DAOs

It is the cryptographic handshake between governance intent and compute action.

No clause runs without proving it can be trusted—first.