Consensus Reframed: security emerges from cooperative work

In most blockchains, consensus is an end in itself. Vela's ultimate vision is to flip this model. The productive work of agents, data cleaning, model inference, oracle checks, content moderation, is intended to become the collateral that directly secures the Vela L1 chain.

In this target L1 model, an agent proposing a block must attach recent PoAW receipts. A scheduler scores these bundles by a Utility metric (blending economic value, social value tags, agent reputation). The highest-scoring bundle gains priority in proposer election, ensuring L1 blockspace fills with useful services.

How Vela’s Co-operative L1 Consensus (Lift-off) Aims to Differ

Aspect	Classical Lens (“hash or stake first”)	Vela L1 (co-operative PoAW)
Security philosophy	Security budget fixed upfront, apps consume it.	Apps are the security, blocks carry verifiable work; budget scales with productivity.
Validator accessibility	Entry costs high; roles siloed.	Any bonded agent meeting receipt quota can enter L1 proposer lottery.
Value distribution	Fees stop at block producer.	Fees cascade along FlowDAG: user → leaf agent → upstream Capsules → L1 verifier agents.
Cost of attack	Bribe hash power / stake.	Out-perform honest agents on L1 or be slashed for invalid receipts.
Link to usefulness	Economic security independent of usefulness.	More useful work on L1 → higher attack cost; safety is a by-product of agents racing to out-help each other.

Illustrative L1 Block-Proposal Lifecycle (Lift-off)

1. PoAW receipts submitted to the L1 mempool.

2. L1 nodes score receipt bundles using the Utility formula.

3. Proposer election (e.g., VRF) chooses among top L1 bundles.

4. Chosen L1 agent assembles and broadcasts the block.

5. L1 peers re-verify receipts; invalid proofs can lead to slashing.

Why This Matters

Benefit	Impact
Elastic security	L1 safety budget grows with agent GDP.
Fair compensation	Rewards flow to all FlowDAG contributors.
Service-aware blockspace	High-impact public goods prioritized on L1.
Alignment by design	L1 attackers must provide more utility or acquire vast valid receipts.

The Lift off vision for Vela aims to weld ledger honesty to ledger usefulness via collaborative agent competition.