Asentum uses Tendermint-style BFT proof-of-stake. Each epoch, a rotating committee of roughly 100 validators is selected by stake-weighted lottery. Anyone who bonds the minimum stake is eligible — the protocol is permissionless after genesis. ASE holders who don't run hardware can delegate their stake to a validator they trust, sharing in both rewards and slashing risk.

When you send a transaction, it enters the mempool where validators pick it up, verify it (signature, nonce, balance, gas), and include it in the next proposed block. The committee runs Tendermint's two-phase commit (pre-vote, then pre-commit). As soon as 2/3 of committee voting power has signed off, the block is final — near-instant finality, no chain reorgs.

Every signature in this process is post-quantum: NIST FIPS 204 ML-DSA-65 (Dilithium3). The 100-validator committee size is the load-bearing design choice that makes post-quantum signatures fit inside a residential bandwidth budget. Validators are tuned for the median consumer PC, with a Raspberry Pi 4 as the supported floor — meaning thousands of people across the globe can participate from home.

Most blockchain networks concentrate validation in expensive datacenters. When only wealthy operators can participate, you get a different kind of centralization — not the decentralization that blockchain promised.

Asentum is designed around the median consumer PC — a normal home machine with 8–16 GB of RAM, an SSD, and residential broadband. That's where most validators will run. The Raspberry Pi 4 sits underneath that as the supported floor: a $80 device that can still run a validator, just with less headroom. The Pi isn't the primary target — it's the contract we keep with anyone who wants to participate from anywhere. If a Pi can do it, no operator can claim they can't.

More validators in more locations means greater censorship resistance, better uptime, and real fault tolerance. Asentum makes it economically viable for anyone, anywhere to help secure the network — and that's what real decentralization looks like.

Getting started as an Asentum validator is straightforward. The recommended setup is a normal consumer PC — 4-core CPU, 8–16 GB RAM, an SSD, and residential broadband. A Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB and a USB SSD also works as the supported floor. Install the node binary with a single CLI command, bond the minimum stake in ASE, and join the candidate set.

Once selected for an active epoch, validators earn a share of block rewards plus priority tips from the EIP-1559 fee market. You can also accept delegations from other ASE holders and earn a commission (capped at 20%). The local validator dashboard tracks blocks proposed, rewards earned, peer health, and uptime.

If you prefer a zero-setup experience, the Asentum Node Pro — a pre-configured, plug-and-play validator device — is on the way after public testnet. Or grab a Pi and follow the setup guide for the supported floor build.