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Execution Environments

HardKAS enforces strict separation between execution environments. A transaction planned for a simulator will be explicitly rejected by a localnet or mainnet guard.

Understanding what is simulated and what is real is critical to evaluating the evidence HardKAS produces.

Simulator (Synthetic)​

The simulator is a purely in-memory, deterministic execution environment provided by the HardKAS runtime.

  • What is real: The HardKAS SDK logic, transaction composition, and schema validation.
  • What is simulated: The UTXO set, time, Kaspa network behavior, and node consensus.
  • Backend: Internal HardKAS state machine (Coherence Simulator).
  • Evidence Produced: Deterministic artifacts (TxPlanArtifact, TxReceiptArtifact with synthetic txId).
  • What it does NOT prove: It does not prove that a real Kaspa node will accept the transaction, nor does it validate block consensus rules.
  • Replay Support: Full. Every simulator run is 100% reproducible from the same initial state.

Localnet (Real-node)​

The localnet environment orchestrates an isolated, real kaspad node instance (usually via Docker) running the Kaspa simnet network configuration.

  • What is real: The Kaspa node binary (rusty-kaspa), the RPC layer, and the internal mempool/DAG consensus logic.
  • What is simulated: The network topology (it is a single-node, isolated network) and the difficulty (mining is trivial).
  • Backend: DockerKaspadRunner orchestrating a real kaspad container.
  • Evidence Produced: True txIds generated by the node, valid RPC receipts.
  • What it does NOT prove: It does not prove behavior under network latency, reorgs, or multi-node propagation delays.
  • Replay Support: Limited. While the inputs can be re-submitted, the exact timing and DAG state of the real node cannot be perfectly snapshotted and rewound by HardKAS natively.

Testnet / Mainnet (RPC)​

The rpc mode connects HardKAS to an external, public, or private Kaspa node participating in a global network.

  • What is real: Everything. The node, the network, the UTXOs, and the consensus.
  • What is simulated: Nothing.
  • Backend: Remote Kaspa RPC endpoint.
  • Evidence Produced: Production receipts, undeniable cryptographic lineage.
  • What it does NOT prove: It proves execution, but does not guarantee future confirmations if fees are too low or if a deep reorg occurs after the receipt is captured.
  • Replay Support: None. State mutations on a live public network are irreversible.

Simnet vs. Simulator​

  • Simulator is an internal HardKAS mock.
  • Simnet is a Kaspa network configuration used by the real kaspad binary in localnet mode.

They are not the same environment.

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