FAQ

Twenty-seven questions — nine groups of three. The first version had eighty-one; more than half only gave a short answer and pointed elsewhere, so they were cut. What remains are the questions with content that is nowhere else, and the questions whose honest answer is "not yet".

The answers use the four labels from Before you read — RUNNING · PROPOSED · LEFT BLANK · ENGRAVED — plus one recurring phrase: it is a gate, meaning a condition not yet met rather than a task forgotten.

Figure 35 — Nine groups arranged by four kinds of reader.

Group 1 · Basics

1. What is 9Chain? Is it a blockchain? Yes. 9Chain is a blockchain: the project's public network, native token LOVE9, that is, a Layer 1. But the name also refers to two other things. The 9Chain platform — the machine producing chains for customers — is not a blockchain but the thing that produces blockchains, which is the Layer 0 position. And each chain produced for a customer is a private blockchain, also Layer 1. The shortest form: a multi-chain blockchain network belonging to everyone — many private chains, one shared network so they can trust each other. At the level of meaning: 9Chain makes having a ledger of your own, that nobody can switch off and nobody can quietly alter, something anyone can reach. The full comparison table is in Context.

2. Is 9Chain a Layer 0? How is it different from raising a Cosmos chain myself? Under the prevailing classification, its position is Layer 0 — the tier that produces and connects chains. But it is the Cosmos style, not the Polkadot style: each chain keeps its own validator set, with no shared security. What differs from raising a Cosmos chain yourself: here the whole lifecycle is encoded — key generation, genesis assembly, deployment, self-healing, teardown — and each chain arrives with a compliance gate inside consensus rather than bolted on with a contract. Why this document does not use "Layer 0" as its definition: see Context.

3. What does the number 9 mean? It is an identifying motif, and it also shapes some proposed parameters: total supply 9² billion, validator ceiling 81, a release rhythm of 0.09% per day, 9% of fees back to the endowment and 9% burned. To be clear: those are opening proposals, not inviolable constants, and the community can vote on them.

Group 2 · LOVE9 and distribution

1. How much do the team and investors hold? No share at all. No premine, no sale to anyone — and you do not have to take our word for it: it is readable in each period's genesis file. The current constitution no longer engraves this as permanent law; like everything else beyond the three memorial blocks, it belongs to the community's vote — meaning that to change it, someone must win a public vote, in front of you.

2. So how does one receive LOVE9? The receiving mechanism has not been designed. The current proposal states who receives — verified real human beings, one share each — with two constraints: it must be measurable on chain, and settled by vote; the minimal constitution leaves even that to the community. Until a receiving mechanism has passed a vote, the endowment cannot open — a structured blank, not an empty promise.

3. Where is the token listed, and at what price? The project does not sell, does not list, does not support the price and does not promise returns. Anyone promising returns in 9Chain's name does not represent the project.

Group 3 · Running nodes and validators

1. Do I have to buy or hold tokens to be a validator? No. The network's security comes from identity, contracts and several independent parties, not from an asset's price. See The 9Chain platform.

2. At which level can outsiders run nodes? At the Open to outsiders level, and that level has its own full set of gates: participation artefacts, a public image, a community channel, a security reporting address, and anti-abuse at every public write path. Applications and users states plainly that this leaves two audiences unable to use it.

3. Are more validators always safer? Not necessarily. Fault tolerance comes from the number of independent failure domains — different machine, different region, different provider — not from the number of processes. Many processes on one cluster tolerate exactly one machine. The countable threshold is in The 9Chain platform: no machine may hold a third or more of the validators, and one machine leaving the cluster is not enough to move the measurement.

Group 4 · Security and risk

1. Has there been an independent audit? An independent audit is a mandatory gate of the Real assets level — so if the project is not at that level, you know the answer. Internal review does not substitute for a third party's assessment.

2. What is the largest technical risk? The maturity of the EVM base in use — it is still pre-stable. Mitigated by pinning versions, keeping load low and leaving an upgrade path. The document ranks it as the largest risk rather than burying it at the end of a list.

3. Can the chain be captured? In theory any consensus network can be captured if one party gathers more than two thirds of voting power. Two things aim to stand against it here: a high self-bond threshold, and the rule that no party holds more than a third. Both are gates not yet passed rather than protections already switched on — the genesis file says plainly that the self-bond floor is not yet enforced in consensus.

Group 5 · Compliance and legal

1. Is KYC data written on chain? No. Only a reference hash is on chain. Personally identifying data is never written there.

2. Does 9Chain have a licence? Jurisdiction and legal entity are gates of the Real assets level: they determine the entire licensing regime, so until they are settled there is no licence to speak of.

3. Is this a token offering? No. No sale, no listing, no promise of returns. This document is not an investment solicitation.

Group 6 · For organisations

1. Is my chain private from 9Chain itself? This needs a direct answer: in fully platform-run mode, no — whoever runs the nodes sees the data. To reduce that, choose mixed or multi-party mode, where you and an auditor run nodes yourselves. That is exactly why the default mode always has at least one node outside the operating team.

2. What if I want to leave? You keep the data, because the chain is yours and you can run a node yourself. The real barrier is not data but operations: leaving means carrying the load the platform is carrying.

3. What happens to my chain if 9Chain stops operating? This is the most worthwhile question in this group. The honest answer has two halves: your chain technically keeps running if enough independent nodes are running it; but if every node is run by the platform, that is only a promise. The second half is why the default mode always includes an outside node.

Group 7 · For developers

1. Can I use familiar EVM tooling? Yes — the chains produced are EVM appchains, so familiar wallets, libraries and deployment pipelines all carry over.

2. Is there somewhere to try it? Yes, but read Check the network yourself first: builds for testing carry exactly the official network's identity, and the only way to tell them apart is the time of the first block.

3. How does interoperability work? Assets arrive through gated middleware; if the recipient is not approved, the packet returns an error and funds are refunded to source. One detail worth remembering when writing an indexer: the event for a rejected packet is re-emitted with a different prefix, and if you do not match it you will undercount exactly the packets that were blocked.

Group 8 · Governance and community

1. What about everything beyond those four? Everything else can be voted on, including the release rhythm, the ratio of the three parts, and how a human receives their share — and under the minimal constitution, in principle so can those four: the only things outside the vote are the three memorial blocks and the rule that everything belongs to the community. The difference is the path: changing those four must win a public on-chain vote — nobody can change them quietly.

2. Where are the community channels? Two addresses, both receiving feedback, criticism and security reports: contact@9chain.org and t.me/LOVE_9Chain. This door is open; the closed ones are listed directly in Conclusion.

3. What if the community wants to change the project's direction? That is what the voting mechanism exists to allow — and under the minimal constitution the scope is nearly total: only the three memorial blocks stand outside. A project claiming to be community-decided without a path for the community to change direction is only talking well.

Group 9 · Status and trust

1. How do I know whether I am looking at the real network or a build for testing? Compare the time of the first block with the announced birth moment. Matching means the official network; differing means another build. The chain's name is not enough.

2. Across the testnet periods and into mainnet, what happens to my share? Two halves, and both must be read. First: contribution history is preserved — mainnet is defined as Testnet 1 + Testnet 2 + Testnet 3 + Mainnet, so what you did in a test period is not erased when the next begins. Second, no less important: no period promises a one-for-one balance. What that history converts into — or whether it converts at all — is LEFT BLANK, for the community to vote on at mainnet. Anyone guaranteeing you a conversion rate is putting words in the project's mouth — nobody has decided that.

3. Could this document be quietly altered? Its content is hashed and anchored to Bitcoin. The Verify this document page gives you all three artefacts to reconcile with independent tools, without taking anyone's word.

In short: count how many of the twenty-seven answers above are "not yet" or "not designed yet". That number is not the document's weakness — it is what makes the "already running" answers worth believing.