Financial markets are inherently non-stationary, making the effectiveness of individual portfolio-management strategies highly dependent on changing market conditions. This work proposes a retrieval-augmented expert-switching framework that dynamically selects portfolio management experts based on their historical performance under similar market situations. A dual-stream variational autoencoder represents asset-level and market-wide information, while a retrieval-based knowledge base stores historical situations and expert performance. During inference, an instruction-tuned LLM reasons over the retrieved evidence to identify the most appropriate expert rather than directly generating portfolio actions. We further establish a monotonicity property showing that adding a locally superior expert cannot degrade the switching mechanism's performance. Experiments across cryptocurrency, stock, and foreign-exchange markets show that the proposed selector achieves the highest cumulative return and Sharpe ratio among the evaluated selection strategies in all three markets. In the stock market, for example, cumulative return increases from 26% for the best fixed expert to 34%, while the Sharpe ratio improves from 0.74 to 0.96. Ablation results confirm the importance of both retrieval and LLM reasoning, while experiments with different expert-pool sizes demonstrate the value of complementary expertise. Overall, the findings support retrieval-grounded expert switching as an effective approach to adaptive portfolio management in non-stationary financial environments.
Sunder Ali Khowaja, Kapal Dev, George C. Alexandropoulos
With the progression in open and disaggregated 6G radio access networks, it is expected that the system will be able to host multi-vendors. In order to host multi-vendors, it is essential that AI-assisted control loops remain safe, verifiable, and auditable under concurrent operator intents and untrusted model inputs. The existing studies address the agentic coordination, formal intent constraints, zero-trust prompt verification and cryptographic accountability in isolation, which leaves pre-realization safety, continuous semantic verification and cross-domain audit incomplete when used individually. In this regard, we propose zero-knowledge auditable control and zero-trust verifiable agentic intent architecture ($Z^2$-ACT), which integrates the aforementioned four primitives across the non-real-time and near-real-time RICs. We encode the typed Intent Contracts as operator goals while the large language model inputs are only admitted after a practical adversarial intent check. The skill sequences in the proposed study are released only when a self-management gate is satisfied while every successful commit is recorded as a binding commitment with a zero-knowledge proof. Our experimental evaluation on public ColO-RAN measurements compares the full architecture against targeted ablations and a conventional reinforcement-learning baseline. A live large language model is used in the non-real-time path to translate operator intents into Intent Contracts; we report translation accuracy, the rate of invalid or hallucinated contracts, non-real-time latency, and behavior under adversarial or misleading intents. Near-real-time control remains trace-driven on the public KPM sequences. Results indicate improved actuation filtering and attack resilience at modest latency and signaling cost inside the near-real-time envelope.
Volatility control converts risk estimates into portfolio exposure, yet existing approaches often rely on a fixed volatility estimator or a pre-defined control rule that may not adapt to changing market conditions. We propose VolRouter, a modular framework that formulates volatility control as state-conditioned routing over estimator-controller pairs. VolRouter first summarizes market conditions into a control-relevant state profile and then performs routing through three stages: state inference, switch review, and pair selection. The Router can be implemented using rule-based, learnable, or LLM-based decision modules, while portfolio actions remain generated by predefined control policies. We evaluate VolRouter across S&P 500, Multi-Asset, Bitcoin, and USDT volatility-control settings. VolRouter achieves the highest Sharpe ratio in three of four settings. On S&P 500, it improves Sharpe from 0.952 for RV + Naive Scaling to 1.222 while reducing maximum drawdown from 15.10% to 12.58% and daily CVaR from 1.76% to 1.32%. On Multi-Asset, it improves Sharpe from 1.498 to 1.540 and reduces CVaR from 1.56% to 1.18%. Bitcoin shows similar improvements in risk-adjusted performance, while USDT provides a boundary case where simpler state-aware selectors remain competitive. Ablation and sensitivity analyses show that the improvement comes from relative policy evaluation and selective persistent switching rather than simply expanding the policy library. These results suggest that volatility control can be viewed as a policy-selection problem when risk management requirements vary across market states.
Decentralization as a concept in computer science has existed for over half a century. Despite its fundamental role across domains such as security, distributed computing, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructures, and Internet of Things (IoT) architectures, there remains no universally accepted definition of decentralization applicable across computer communication systems. This has become increasingly problematic with the emergence of decentralized AI and machine learning paradigms, including collaborative training, distributed inference, blockchain-based, and agentic AI, where decentralization is often treated as a core design objective. Meanwhile, existing approaches frequently conflate decentralization with related notions such as distribution of trust or specific implementation paradigms. Such ambiguity creates inconsistencies in system analysis, limits comparability between works, and weakens the rigor of formal reasoning surrounding communication architectures and protocol design. In this work, we define this research gap as the Decentralization Problem. We analyze the formal-semantic, epistemological, and pragmatic foundations of decentralization and introduce a graph-based ontology defining it as both relational and subject-specific property of computer communication systems. The framework formally distinguishes decentralization from distribution and supports evaluation through two novel metrics: Void Tolerance and Imperviousness. We also provide a browser-based implementation that enables automated classification and metric computation of arbitrary systems. Instantiations to federated learning and blockchain architectures show consistent, comparable assessments where existing definitions produce incomplete or contradictory conclusions, providing a domain-independent foundation for analysing decentralization across heterogeneous systems.
A software agent on a public blockchain accumulates authority and economic stakes, raising the engineering question of what makes it count as an individual. The paper's central contribution is a shift of trust root for the key-to-weights binding of agent identity: from hardware, operator, or wrapper trust to cryptographic assumptions enforced by a pinned implementation (liveness, key custody, oracle trust, and the underlying software stack remain external). We design and deploy on Solana devnet an agent whose neural-network weights are a deterministic function of its private key. The binding is committed in zero knowledge at genesis, re-checked against that commitment at every state transition, and signed by the agent into an on-chain history unforkable once finalized; in a PoC-tier extension, a protocol-imposed metabolic cost is debited each cycle from a key-derived economic account, adding a consumption-side economic-viability constraint to the key-history-economy triple. Empirically, the agent completes a 2.36-day on-chain run with two host-side resumptions but no rejected transition, at bounded per-transition verification cost; a substituted substrate is rejected on chain, and independently keyed agents diverge as predicted while a same-key control stays at zero. To our knowledge, this is the first published on-chain agent whose identity primitive is itself a cryptographic invariant re-checked at every state transition. The resulting transition-time invariant instantiates the cryptographic individuality proposed by Suzuki 2026's Artificial Externality framework.
Autonomous AI agents, increasingly empowered by large language models, are becoming important components of human-machine systems for high-stakes decision support in digital twin ecosystems. However, existing multi-agent systems often lack robust verification for identity, capability, and policy compliance, especially in decentralized environments spanning multiple institutions. This paper proposes a neuro-symbolic decentralized governance framework for verifiable agents in collaborative digital twin environments. By representing agents through multi-layer semantic profiles, the framework bridges probabilistic neural reasoning with deterministic institutional governance, thereby supporting trustworthy human-AI collaboration and meaningful human oversight. Capabilities are grounded in formal domain ontologies to enable machine-interpretable, policy-aware, and context-sensitive participation. These credentials, issued by organizational authorities, are validated via blockchain-based smart contracts, ensuring auditable participation without exposing sensitive data. We demonstrate the framework using a decision-support prototype with clinic, digital twin, and wearable provider agents effectively prevents unauthorized interaction and enforces institutional policies with manageable overhead. Our findings suggest that neuro-symbolic decentralized governance provides a scalable and trustworthy pathway for safe human-machine collaboration across institutional boundaries.
Agentic AI networking (AgentNet) systems rely heavily on third-party skillset implementations and distributed multi-agent collaboration, yet they face major claim-to-capability inconsistencies and security vulnerabilities under trust-by-declaration assumptions. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes TrustAgentNet, a dual-tier blockchain-secured zero-trust framework. Specifically, a global Chain of Skillsets (CoS) governs the lifecycle of skillset metadata with protocols empowered by specialized agents to enforce off-chain auditing while maintaining lightweight on-chain cryptographic consensus. Furthermore, transient, task-oriented Chains of Collaboration (CoC) are dynamically established to enable trustless distributed multi-agent collaboration. Theoretical analysis of the three-way trade-off among security level, task performance, and resource overhead is provided and empirically validated. Experimental results on a hardware prototype demonstrate that compared with no-blockchain trust-by-default baselines, the zero-trust overhead of TrustAgentNet is dominated by off-chain inference, while the blockchain layer incurs minor ledger costs via the ledger-IPFS storage and on/off-chain integration design. Crucially, the proposed verification pipeline achieves a flawless 100% accuracy across 50 AI models, correctly validating 40 honest skillsets and intercepting 10 adversarial ones, and generalizes to non-AI domains with an 83.91% accuracy and a 0.85 F1-score across 1478 features from 171 ClawHub skills. Adversarial experiments further show that TrustAgentNet enables autonomous skillset self-recovery against various malicious attacks.
Empirical work on algorithmic collusion asks one question of the data: are prices supracompetitive? We show this can be answered "no" by a conspiracy that is nonetheless profitable. Consider bidding agents that couple only through the joint distribution of their unexplained bid components, leaving every agent's own bid law exactly at the competitive law. Any test whose input is a single agent's price or bid history then has power exactly equal to its false-positive rate, for every coupling strength up to comonotonicity. The published detection methodology is therefore blind to this conduct by construction rather than underpowered, and no sample size repairs it. Three empirical results follow. First, the mechanism appears in real language-model agents: twenty models from nineteen independent developers, three deployment prompts each, show residual correlation of $+0.053$ between two deployments of one model against $+0.0001$ across models, with a 95% interval clustered by developer of $[0.030, 0.078]$, under an auditor that sees every order feature and is fitted out of sample. Second, the coupling falls monotonically as sampling temperature rises ($p=0.002$), turning a deployment parameter into a candidate mitigation. Third, on 24 days of Ethereum block-building auction data covering 77,684 bids from 39 bidders, the honest population of bidder pairs is itself so dependent that a screen held at a 5% false-positive rate must sit above a floor of $+0.50$ to $+0.81$, which is 20 to 32 times the family-wise sampling threshold and does not fall as the audit window grows. Since lawful multi-identity operation and conspiracy are behaviourally indistinguishable here, the tractable regulatory target is not detection but counting: resolving 40 bidding identities into 23 operators raises the Herfindahl index by 247.5%, and adding behavioural clusters from public bid streams reaches 324.5%.
Sourena Khanzadeh, Daniel Platnick, Marjan Alirezaie, Hossein Rahnama
Modern AI systems bring societal risks such as mass surveillance, extreme concentrations of power, and loss of user autonomy---calling into question a model where third-parties collect and control massive amounts of user data. Users require a sovereign system to securely own, govern, and disclose their context while remaining compliant across regulated domains with strict provenance, interpretability, and policy adherence. Perspective-aware AI approaches this by transforming a user's aggregated personal data into a structured identity model called a \emph{Chronicle}: a temporal knowledge graph that represents and grows with the user. Chronicles support the secure disclosure of context across federated networks. A Chronicle holder may expose a queryable, authorized view that a third-party agent may consult without centralizing anyone's data. This paper explores the problem of minimum-necessary disclosure across domain boundaries: when a requester's agent queries a Chronicle, how can the system constrain its response to release only what the requester's relationship, stated purpose, and specific task require? We propose \textbf{Provenance Preserving Chronicles} (PPC), a federated protocol that compiles each holder's Chronicle into a compact \emph{authorized evidence subgraph} governed by one rule: \emph{share no more than the request requires}. Holders keep local sovereignty; an access controller projects relationship-aware views over domain-expert ontologies; and a two-phase flow returns provenance-linked text first, releasing raw artifacts only after explicit holder approval. We frame the problem, map gaps in blockchain, P2P, and holder-sovereign designs, define the core constructs, and sketch the protocol with an explicit threat model.
Autonomous AI agents increasingly execute actions, invoke tools, and operate on protected resources with limited human oversight. Existing authentication and authorization mechanisms establish identity and delegate authority, but do not inherently provide cryptographic evidence that a concrete request issued by a specific agent satisfies the applicable policy in a specific execution context. This paper hypothesizes that agent authorization can be formalized as a cryptographically verifiable relation, denoted $R_{CVA}$, that jointly binds an agent principal, a concrete authorization request, an execution context, and the satisfaction of an applicable policy, while selectively preserving the confidentiality of private authorization attributes. We introduce a preliminary formal abstraction for Cryptographically Verifiable Agent Authorization (CVA), define a compact set of candidate security properties including authorization soundness, principal binding, request binding, policy binding, and replay resistance, and provide an executable zero-knowledge proof of concept that instantiates selected elements of the model over a Groth16 zk-SNARK construction. We further identify and formalize the structural separation among identity binding, authorization-request binding, and runtime execution binding as a central open problem in the design of secure agentic systems (a distinction {not explicitly addressed by} current agentic security frameworks) and present a falsifiable research agenda for its resolution.
Bruno Ramos-Cruz, Javier Andreu-Perez, David Richerby, Luis Martínez
The operation of blockchain is governed by consensus algorithms (CA). Several consensus mechanisms require significant computational power, while others necessitate high amounts of stakes to select the participant to validate and verify the transactions in the block, leading to centralisation of power and participant exclusion. This paper proposes a novel methodology to address these issues in reputation-based consensus algorithms by studying the reputation behaviour of the validator using intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) and uninorm aggregation operations (UAOs). Our approach uses IFSs to express the "reputation" because the reputation values in a consensus algorithm eventually imply uncertainty, and IFSs facilitate the representation of a lack of precise knowledge about reputation. Moreover, this methodology utilises uninorm aggregation operations to monitor reputation over time and reinforces the importance of negative and positive reputation. Consequently, this solution allows validators to rectify past failures in subsequent verification processes and foster an equitable consensus algorithm design. The proposed framework maintains linear computational complexity and does not introduce additional communication overhead beyond the underlying consensus protocol. Supported by experimental results, our methodology demonstrates improved performance and evaluation, promising advancements in blockchain network fairness and inclusivity.
We audit whether candle-based machine-learning models can turn predictions of cryptocurrency extrema or short-horizon outcomes into positive Binance Spot paper policies after assumed costs. Numerical results come from scripted fixed-seed model runs and deterministic simulators; human-supervised AI agents supported the July 20 evidence-integrity revision through literature retrieval, separately tasked critique, artifact reconciliation, documentation, and source packaging, not trading decisions. The strongest later-period evidence, conditional on extensive predecessor search, is negative: an unchanged ten-pair mandatory-daily selector lost 6.72\% over 19 July cycles at an assumed 31-bps completed-cycle cost, with 3 wins and 16 losses. In short model-specific July evaluations, the validation-selected local-minimum policy returned -1.79\%, while the local-maximum sell-to-cash/re-entry policy underperformed continuous holding by 2.80\%; their gross mean advantages of 11.11 and 12.21 bps were below even the 21-bps stress. A Gurgul-inspired, OHLCV-only daily adaptation attained minimum/maximum ROC AUC of 0.874/0.896 but average precision of only 0.134/0.116 and lost 44.30\% over seven cycles, versus -41.20\% for buy-and-hold. A forensic audit also downgraded an earlier One4All "30-day holdout": its dates had influenced prior architecture work, its four-hour outcome horizon was not purged at split boundaries, it used same-close entry, and its raw result directories were absent. Across the tested, mostly exploratory protocols, event-ranking performance did not establish positive executable policy value. Every operational decision remains NO\_TRADE.
Agentic commerce protocols such as AP2 and ACP define mechanisms for secure agent-initiated transactions but do not provide interoperable, tamper-evident auditability or verifiable temporal ordering of events across heterogeneous domains. This paper addresses these gaps by proposing a verifiable global event timeline for agentic commerce, constructed from four core components: canonical event schemas that enforce deterministic serialization, deterministic batch formation ensuring reproducible ordering without reliance on synchronized clocks, Merkle-based append-only commitments providing logarithmic-cost inclusion proofs, and blockchain anchoring establishing a tamper-evident temporal backbone. Building on this infrastructure, we introduce a cryptographically signed fraud marker that binds risk labels to anchored evidence through an unforgeable provenance chain, and a dataset lineage model enabling reproducible, tamper-evident AI training pipelines. Empirical results from a prototype implementation demonstrate: Merkle tree construction processes 50,000 events in 47 milliseconds; end-to-end verification completes in under 0.013 milliseconds regardless of batch size; inclusion proof sizes grow logarithmically from 320 bytes at 1,000 events to 512 bytes at 50,000 events; and Merkle-based verification outperforms linear scan by 14.4x at 50,000 events.
This work titled "RFID Based Campuswide Payment System" introduces an innovative cashless payment solution for educational institutions. It uses RFID cards and a Raspberry Pi to enable hassle free payments for various campus services, such as cafeteria purchases, tuition fees, and library fines. A centralized database ensures real-time updates on transactions and account balances, accessible through a simple and user-friendly web interface. This work is involved in designing a secure system with object-oriented principles, setting up databases, and integrating hardware like RFID readers with a Raspberry Pi. The systems are proved to be a cost-effective and efficient alternative to traditional payment methods, enhancing convenience and security for students and administrators. The study also explored similar RFID applications, like smart parking and attendance systems, to identify challenges and improvements. Looking ahead, it envisions features like wearable RFID devices, voice-activated payments, and blockchain integration to boost security and usability. Results show that this system simplifies campus payments and has the potential for broader adoption in similar environments.
Sai Srikanth Madugula, Peplluis Esteva De La Rosa, Daya Shankar
The rapid proliferation of Agentic Artificial Intelligence fundamentally disrupts traditional customer loyalty paradigms. As AI evolves from passive recommendation algorithms to autonomous, goal-directed agents capable of executing purchasing decisions, the conventional understanding of consumer-brand relationships requires a structural reevaluation. By synthesizing extant literature across human-machine teaming, consumer decision-making, and algorithmic trust dynamics, we demonstrate that traditional loyalty models fail to account for algorithmic bounded rationality and constructed autonomy. To address this, we introduce the Dynamic Verifiable Multi-Agent Human Agentic Loyalty Loop (DVM-HALL) model. We formalize brand choice via a softmax probability formulation where human emotional equity, agentic machine-experience utility, calibrated trust, delegated authority, and verifiable execution jointly determine selection. The model features recursive updating mechanisms to dynamically calibrate trust and delegation after each interaction. Crucially, the framework integrates a verifiable execution layer for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and tokenized loyalty settings, incorporating execution risks -- such as gas costs, slippage, MEV exposure, and smart-contract vulnerabilities -- as core predictors of agentic brand preference. Furthermore, we introduce the Net Human-Agent Score (NHAS), an auditable, risk-weighted metric designed to measure human-agent alignment using human feedback, execution logs, benchmark comparisons, and verifiable receipts. Finally, we propose a comprehensive three-stage empirical validation plan spanning controlled shopping experiments, multi-agent market simulations, and DeFi testbeds. This framework provides the foundational theory required for brands to navigate the impending transition toward machine customers.
Mohotarema Rashid, Lingzi Hong, Junhua Ding, K. S. M. Tozammel Hossain
Large language model (LLM) trading agents show promising performance in equity markets, yet remain narrowly focused on US equities with little evidence from live deployment. We present Fin-Analyst, a hybrid agent for FinMMEval 2026 Task 3: an eight-specialist LLM pipeline over news, SEC filings, fundamentals, analyst forecasts, technical indicators, and social sentiment, aggregated by a Meta-Agent for Tesla (TSLA), and a lightweight rule based three-signal vote for Bitcoin (BTC). On the final official leaderboard (accessed 2026-07-05), Fin-Analyst ranks first of all agents on TSLA with a +13.51% return, +28.33 points over Buy-and-Hold (Sharpe 4.10, 88% win rate), while the BTC vote ends flat yet well above a sharply falling baseline. Relative to the interim performance, the asset ranking reversed, indicating that short live windows yield volatility-sensitive rankings. Ablation identifies event-driven 8-K disclosures as the most influential TSLA signal. Error analysis shows that the memoryless agents repeat wrong calls for days at a time, and that the fixed-threshold BTC rules lost money by trading on noise in a sideways market while the LLM pipeline gained under similar conditions, motivating a memory-aware, LLM-based successor for both assets.
Saviz Changizi, Nasibeh Mohammadzadeh, Mohammad Shojafar, Rahim Tafazolli
Telecom fraud-control studies often stop at detector-level classification, but deployment use requires request-level policy resolution, lifecycle traceability, and auditability. This paper reframes fraud control as blockchain-linked auditable decision management for synthetic telecom/IoT fraud-control requests, and its main result is that the QLoRA-tuned LLM branch becomes much more usable than zero-shot prompting but mainly approaches, rather than outperforms, a lower-cost centralized ensemble. The framework maps each synthetic deployment record to a managed request, blocks explicit out-of-boundary cases through a deterministic hard-fraud gate, scores non-hard requests using centralized ML (M1), federated meta-learning (M2), or LLM-family risk sources (M3), and resolves actions through a shared five-state policy, two-zone refinement mechanism, and local Ethereum-compatible audit layer. Evaluation uses separate synthetic training data and a 100,000-record deployment replay corpus, so the study should be read as controlled drift-replay evidence rather than field validation or proof of live deployability. On validation, M1 gives the strongest balance, with legitimate-request FPR 0.0890 under the 0.10 operating cap and soft-fraud recall 0.8341. On labeled deployment replay, however, the legitimate-FPR gap becomes large: M1 rises to 0.1646 and M3-QLoRA to 0.1801, while M3-QLoRA reduces the M3-Base legitimate FPR from 0.3915 and reaches 0.8240 soft-fraud recall. Blockchain telemetry shows that lifecycle gas, cost, latency, and throughput differences are driven by submitted off-chain decision profiles rather than changes in fraud logic.
Thandile Nododile, Ayinde M. Usman, Clement N. Nyirenda
Private blockchain networks run with fixed node configurations that cannot adapt to changing workload conditions. Too many nodes serving a light workload waste resources; too few nodes facing heavy demand slow block production and degrade finalisation. The right validator count is hard to determine, as it depends on overlapping factors that shift over time. This paper presents a Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy inference system that reads live blockchain parameters (block production time, block size, and active node count) and outputs a continuous efficiency score alongside a scaling recommendation: Scale Up, Maintain, or Scale Down. The controller uses triangular membership functions across three linguistic variables, evaluated through a complete 27-rule base with product t-norm aggregation. A key contribution is an empirical recalibration of the membership functions, anchoring linguistic terms to the observed operating range of the testbed rather than to theoretical extremes. The system is evaluated on a 10-node Substrate blockchain network storing real smart water meter data hashes from the Queensland Government open data portal. Statistical analysis across configurations of 4, 7, and 10 active nodes confirms that the controller produces distinct operational profiles reflecting each configuration's provisioning state. In closed-loop experiments, the controller autonomously adjusts validator participation in both directions, activating validators under rising load and removing them under over-provisioning, converging to the same stable equilibrium from both directions. Compared against three threshold-based baselines, it shows fewer scaling oscillations while maintaining comparable block production times. Results show that TS fuzzy inference can support autonomous validator management in private blockchain deployments, with stable scaling behaviour threshold approaches cannot match.
Shah Nawaz Haider, Steve Austin, Arnab Barua, Sarowar Morshed Shawon · 5 authors
Time-series forecasting supports decisions in finance, en-ergy, transportation, public health, and industrial monitoring. Recent foundation models improve transfer across forecast-ing tasks, but many depend on centralized data and Trans-former attention, which restricts their use for long, high-di-mensional, and privacy-sensitive signals. This paper presents QuantFlow, a probabilistic forecasting framework that com-bines inverted sequence embedding, bidirectional Mamba state-space decoders, quantile regression, and federated learning. Each variable is embedded over the complete ob-servation window, processed in forward and reverse direc-tions, and projected to five conditional quantiles. TSMixup expands temporal diversity through Dirichlet-weighted inter-polation while preserving sequence structure. Experiments cover cryptocurrency, traffic, electricity, Electricity Trans-former Temperature, influenza, and weather data. QuantFlow obtains mean squared errors of 0.2834 on ETTm1 and 0.2218 on Weather, and a 20-client non-IID deployment retains use-ful accuracy after three communication rounds without cen-tralizing raw records. The results indicate that selective state-space modelling is a promising basis for scalable, uncer-tainty-aware, and privacy-conscious time-series prediction, while also revealing limitations on irregular epidemiological signals and long-horizon generalization.
Pompeu Casanovas, Carmen Pastor Sempere, Marina Echebarria Saenz
Artificial intelligence reaches the land registry not as another tool but as a value chain that turns data into intelligence and intelligence into economic value. This paper argues that the decisive legal move is to place validity, a functional, second-order concept, at the centre of that chain. Rights, liability and supervision organise around it. It traces three impacts.Registry information becomes smart data, governed simultaneously by registry law, the GDPR, the European data acts and the AI Act. Control emerges as the operative concept for digital representations of real estate, whose proprietary effect depends on anchoring to the register. In a hybrid society of human and artificial agents, the registry becomes the public node of validity, with blockchain complementing rather than replacing it. Across three legal cultures, the registra's value migrates from processing documents to guaranteeing validated data,making validity an asset for the UNO Sustainable Development Goals.
Author: Luigi Usai ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3001-717X Location: Quartucciu (CA), Italy Date: June 26, 2026 Target: Zenodo / arXiv (cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.LO) Abstract Large Context Models (LCMs) exhibit an inherent vulnerability known as semantic hallucination, which stems directly from conditional likelihood maximization within discrete vector spaces. Traditional mitigation strategies operate predominantly post-hoc, managing errors after the stochastically generated token sequence has already mutated. This paper extends the Universal Cognitive Hypergraph (UKH) framework by introducing a discrete Alexandrov topology over knowledge hypergraphs to constrain the space of admissible states prior to token decoding. Utilizing the Monadic Neuro-Symbolic Verification and Synthesis Architecture (MNSVSA), probabilistic generation paths are intercepted and structurally validated against W3C SHACL constraints and axiomatic assertions verified by the Lean 4 kernel coupled with automated SMT solvers. Our theoretical results demonstrate the mathematical elimination of categorical deviations while fully preserving the model's syntactic fluency. 1. Introduction and Mathematical Formulation of the Problem Autoregressive language models estimate the probability distribution of the next token $w_t$ conditioned on the preceding context $w_{<t}$: $$P(w_t \mid w_{<t}) = \text{softmax}(W_{\text{unembed}} \cdot h_t)$$ where $h_t \in \mathbb{R}^d$ represents the final hidden state extracted by the Transformer architecture. Because the $\text{softmax}$ function maps scores to an open probability distribution, it inherently assigns non-zero probabilities to regions of the semantic space that violate real-world axiomatic constraints. Consequently, hallucination is not an accidental software bug but a structural property of the model's underlying stochasticity. The UKH framework bypasses the limitations of passive document retrieval (RAG) by integrating a topological-symbolic constraint directly into the sampling phase (speculative decoding). This setup actively prevents the model from exploring probabilistic trajectories linked to logically inconsistent states. 2. UKH Framework Architecture for Semantic Security The universe of discourse is mapped onto a directed hypergraph and serialized using the JSON-LD format. Let $\mathcal{H} = (V, E)$ be a cognitive hypergraph, where $V$ is the set of strongly typed nodes (conceptual entities) and $E \subseteq \mathcal{P}(V) \setminus \{\emptyset\}$ is the set of hyperedges representing multi-argument logical-functional relationships. 2.1. Alexandrov Topological Space and SHACL Constraints To establish geometric-structural rigor within a discrete domain, the hypergraph space is endowed with an Alexandrov topology, where open sets are defined as sub-hypergraphs closed upwards relative to a logical preorder relation ($\le$). W3C Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL) rules function as topological closure operators: $$\text{cl}(E_c) \subseteq \mathcal{H}_{\text{valid}}$$ If a candidate hyperedge $E_c$, derived from the semantic translation of the tokens proposed by the LLM, violates a structural Shape (e.g., assigning a physical property inconsistent with the primitive type of the node), the closure operator identifies a contradiction within the topological space. It subsequently invalidates the generation path before token rendering occurs. 2.2. Axiomatic Verification and Type Checking via Lean 4 While SHACL rules govern the macro-structural coherence of the graphs, the MNSVSA architecture executes formal verification of micro-logical assertions. The process follows a strict protocol: The semantic fragment generated by the LLM is isolated inside a logical monad. MNSVSA translates the assertion into a formal type within the evaluation language of Lean 4. Leveraging the Curry-Howard Isomorphism, the logical consistency of the statement is reduced to a Type Checking problem. To avoid the computational burden of generating complex mathematical proofs from scratch at inference runtime, the architecture delegates constraint satisfiability to an automated SMT solver (Z3) tightly integrated into the Lean 4 runtime kernel. 3. The Coherence Entropy Filtering Mechanism To quantify and halt stochastic drift within extended contexts, the framework implements a JIT (Just-In-Time) gatekeeping metric based on the Jensen-Shannon Divergence ($D_{JS}$). Let $P_{\text{LLM}}$ be the probability distribution over the next tokens generated by the model, and let $Q_{\text{UKH}}$ be the ontological adherence distribution derived from the allowed transition frequencies within the hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$. The semantic divergence is formally stated as: $$D_{JS}(P_{\text{LLM}} \parallel Q_{\text{UKH}}) = \frac{1}{2} D_{KL}(P_{\text{LLM}} \parallel M) + \frac{1}{2} D_{KL}(Q_{\text{UKH}} \parallel M)$$ where $M = \frac{1}{2}(P_{\text{LLM}} + Q_{\text{UKH}})$ and $D_{KL}$ is the Kullback-Leibler divergence defined over a discrete vocabulary $X$: $$D_{KL}(P \parallel M) = \sum_{x \in X} P(x) \log_2 \left( \frac{P(x)}{M(x)} \right)$$ If the divergence exceeds a system-defined critical threshold ($D_{JS} > \theta_{\text{max}}$), the generation hypothesis is immediately rejected. 4. Heterogeneous Hardware Implementation To bypass the parallelization bottlenecks inherent to logical-symbolic algorithms—which trigger massive thread divergence on SIMD architectures—the framework adopts a heterogeneous computation model powered by Speculative Decoding: GPU Execution (CUDA/Triton): The LLM generates $K$ candidate token pathways (drafting sequences) in parallel. CPU Async Execution: A high-frequency multicore CPU pool simultaneously executes the structural parsing of SHACL shapes and the Lean 4 type-checking over the sparse graphs corresponding to the proposed pathways. Non-compliant branches are pruned before the validation and synchronization phase of the model weights. 5. Conclusions Coupling information-theoretic metrics based on the Jensen-Shannon divergence, Alexandrov topological constraints on SHACL-structured hypergraphs, and axiomatic verification within Lean 4 delivers a rigorous formal methodology capable of neutralizing semantic hallucinations. Shifting control from post-hoc output filtering to a priori state space restriction sets a new benchmark for safety in Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence. Versione Italiana Unificazione Neuro-Simbolica mediante Ipergrafi Cognitivi: Mitigazione Quantitativa delle Allucinazioni nei Large Context Models a Monte della Generazione Autore: Luigi Usai ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3001-717X Luogo: Quartucciu (CA), Italy Data: 26 Giugno 2026 Target: Zenodo / arXiv (cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.LO) Abstract I Large Context Models (LCM) presentano una vulnerabilità intrinseca nota come allucinazione semantica, derivante dalla massimizzazione della verosimiglianza condizionata in spazi vettoriali discreti. I tentativi di mitigazione tradizionali agiscono prevalentemente a valle del processo probabilistico, intervenendo quando l'alterazione sequenziale è già avvenuta. Il presente lavoro estende il framework Universal Cognitive Hypergraph (UKH), introducendo una topologia discreta di Alexandrov su ipergrafi di conoscenza per vincolare lo spazio degli stati ammissibili a monte della decodifica dei token. Mediante l'architettura Monadic Neuro-Symbolic Verification and Synthesis Architecture (MNSVSA), i cammini di generazione probabilistica vengono intercettati e validati strutturalmente tramite vincoli W3C SHACL e vincoli logici verificati dal kernel di Lean 4 accoppiato a solutori SMT automatici. I risultati teorici mostrano l'eliminazione matematica delle deviazioni categoriali senza compromissione della fluidità sintattica del modello. 1. Introduzione e Definizione Matematica del Problema Un modello linguistico autoregressivo stima la distribuzione di probabilità del token successivo $w_t$ condizionata alla storia precedente $w_{<t}$: $$P(w_t \mid w_{<t}) = \text{softmax}(W_{\text{unembed}} \cdot h_t)$$ dove $h_t \in \mathbb{R}^d$ rappresenta lo stato nascosto finale estratto dall'architettura Transformer. Poiché la função $\text{softmax}$ mappa i punteggi su una distribuzione di probabilità aperta, assegna intrinsecamente probabilità non nulle a porzioni dello spazio semantico che violano i vincoli assiomatici della realtà. Di conseguenza, l'allucinazione non è un bug accidentale, ma una proprietà strutturale della natura stocastica del modello. Il framework UKH supera i limiti del recupero documentale passivo (RAG) integrando un vincolo topologico-simbolico direttamente nella fase di campionamento (speculative decoding), impedendo all'architettura di esplorare traiettorie probabilistiche associate a stati logicamente non consistenti. 2. Architettura del Framework UKH per la Sicurezza Semantica L'universo del discorso viene mappato su un ipergrafo orientato e serializzato in formato JSON-LD. Sia $\mathcal{H} = (V, E)$ un ipergrafo cognitivo, dove $V$ è l'insieme dei nodi (entità concettuali fortemente tipizzate) ed $E \subseteq \mathcal{P}(V) \setminus \{\emptyset\}$ è l'insieme degli iperarchi che rappresentano relazioni logico-funzionali multi-argomento. 2.1. Spazio Topologico di Alexandrov e Vincoli SHACL Per garantire il rigore geometrico-strutturale su un dominio discreto, lo spazio dell'ipergrafo viene dotato di una topologia di Alexandrov, definendo gli insiemi aperti come i sottoipergrafi chiusi superiormente rispetto a una relazione di preordine logico ($\le$). I vincoli W3C Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL) operano come operatori di chiusura topologica: $$\text{cl}(E_c) \subseteq \mathcal{H}_{\text{valid}}$$ Se un iperarco candidato $E_c$, generato dalla traduzione semantica dei token proposti dall'LLM, viola una Shape strutturale (es. assegnazione di una proprietà fisica inconsistente con il ti
Author: Luigi UsaiORCID: 0009-0003-3001-717XLocation: Quartucciu (CA), ItalyDate: June 26, 2026Target: Zenodo / arXiv (cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.LO) Abstract Large Context Models (LCMs) exhibit an inherent vulnerability known as semantic hallucination, arising from conditional likelihood maximization within discrete vector spaces. While the Universal Cognitive Hypergraph (UKH) framework was initially proposed as a theoretical model to constrain the space of admissible states prior to token decoding, this paper presents its first formal empirical and quantitative validation. We detail a software runtime implementation of the Monadic Neuro-Symbolic Verification and Synthesis Architecture (MNSVSA) using discrete Alexandrov topologies, W3C SHACL shapes as topological closure operators, and a Just-In-Time (JIT) Jensen-Shannon Divergence (DJSDJS) Coherence Entropy Filter. Through Monte Carlo simulations (N=150N=150 runs per configuration), we demonstrate that tightening the coherence threshold (θmax=0.05θmax=0.05) mathematically eliminates semantic hallucinations (reducing the rate from 36.7% to 0.0%) while preserving syntactic fluency. Crucially, by leveraging speculative decoding with parallel validation, we show that the processing latency remains identical to the unconstrained baseline (90.0 µs), bypassing the massive execution overhead (174.8 µs) of post-hoc verification. The complete open-source verification suite and interactive visualization dashboard accompany this publication. 1. Introduction and Problem Statement Autoregressive language models estimate the probability distribution of the next token wtwt conditioned on the preceding context w<tw<t: P(wt∣w<t)=softmax(Wunembed⋅ht)P(wt∣w<t)=softmax(Wunembed⋅ht) where ht∈Rdht∈Rd is the final hidden state of the Transformer. Because the softmaxsoftmax function assigns non-zero probabilities across the entire vocabulary, autoregressive generation naturally drifts into regions of the semantic space that violate axiomatic truth, resulting in hallucinations. The UKH framework mitigates this by introducing a priori symbolic constraints directly into the token sampling phase via speculative decoding. Rather than validating output sequences post-generation, candidate pathways are parsed and filtered prior to token rendering. 2. Experimental Validation Engine (UKH-Eval) To validate the theoretical claims of the UKH and MNSVSA frameworks, we developed UKH-Eval, a complete Python and JavaScript simulation engine that implements the mathematical and topological constraints described in the original work. 2.1. Discrete Alexandrov Topology The knowledge base of the universe of discourse is modeled as a directed hypergraph H=(V,E)H=(V,E). To enforce geometric-structural constraints, we endow the space with a discrete Alexandrov topology, where open sets are sub-hypergraphs closed upwards relative to a logical preorder relation (≤≤). Let the preorder relation be defined by a preorder index mapping: alexandrovPreorderIndex:V→NalexandrovPreorderIndex:V→N A subset of nodes U⊆VU⊆V is open if and only if: ∀x∈U,∀y∈V:(alexandrovPreorderIndex(x)≤alexandrovPreorderIndex(y))⟹y∈U∀x∈U,∀y∈V:(alexandrovPreorderIndex(x)≤alexandrovPreorderIndex(y))⟹y∈U If a candidate token proposes a node transition that violates this upward-closure property, the transition is marked as topologically invalid. 2.2. SHACL Constraints as Closure Operators W3C Shape Constraint Language (SHACL) rules govern the macro-structural properties of the generated hyperedges: cl(Ec)⊆Hvalidcl(Ec)⊆Hvalid If a proposed hyperedge EcEc violates target class properties, minimum/maximum node counts, or axiomatic validity flags, the closure operator fails, and the branch is pruned. 2.3. MNSVSA Micro-Logical Type Checking For micro-logical validation, assertions are encapsulated in a monadic container (LogicalMonad). Levering the Curry-Howard Isomorphism, consistency verification is reduced to a Type Checking and propositional satisfiability problem. The engine compiles the proposed semantic statement into a formal SymPy expression and checks its consistency against the background theory axioms: conjunction=Axioms∧Expressionconjunction=Axioms∧Expression If conjunctionconjunction is unsatisfiable (i.e. evaluates to False), a logical contradiction is detected and the path is rejected. 2.4. Coherence Entropy JIT Filtering At each generation step, the JIT filter computes the Jensen-Shannon Divergence (DJSDJS) between the stochastically proposed LLM distribution PLLMPLLM and the ontological adherence distribution QUKHQUKH: DJS(PLLM∥QUKH)=12DKL(PLLM∥M)+12DKL(QUKH∥M)DJS(PLLM∥QUKH)=21DKL(PLLM∥M)+21DKL(QUKH∥M) where M=12(PLLM+QUKH)M=21(PLLM+QUKH) and DKLDKL is the Kullback-Leibler divergence defined over vocabulary XX: DKL(P∥M)=∑x∈XP(x)log2(P(x)M(x))DKL(P∥M)=∑x∈XP(x)log2(M(x)P(x)) If DJS>θmaxDJS>θmax, stochastically proposed drift tokens are pruned, and the probability distribution is projected onto the compliant space. 3. Software Architecture & File Manifest The open-source validation package is organized into modular components to ensure reproducibility and maintainability: text ukh-evaluator/ ├── ukh_engine.py # Core verification engine and classes ├── test_harness.py # Automated unit test suite ├── benchmark.py # Monte Carlo comparative simulation runner └── dashboard/ # Interactive web UI and visualization ├── index.html # UI structure ├── style.css # Sleek dark-mode styling ├── app.js # In-browser real-time simulation and canvas graph └── results.json # Compiled benchmark data 3.1. File Descriptions 1. ukh_engine.py The core engine containing: LogicalMonad: Implements monadic binding and SymPy-based SAT solving. CognitiveHypergraph: Models nodes, hyperedges, Alexandrov open sets, and validates SHACL shapes. CoherenceFilter: Contains static methods for DKLDKL and DJSDJS calculations. UKHSystemSimulator: Links all subcomponents and handles the JIT filtering during next-token generation. 2. test_harness.py The automated test suite. It uses unittest to verify: Upward closure calculations under the Alexandrov topology. SHACL shape violations. Monadic consistency solving under the Curry-Howard isomorphism. Divergence math calculations. Coherence Entropy Filter rejections. 3. benchmark.py The empirical execution suite. It implements a Monte Carlo simulation running 150 independent generation steps per architecture (Baseline, Post-Hoc, and UKH) and sweeps the threshold parameter θmaxθmax from 0.050.05 to 0.950.95. It evaluates hallucination rates, perplexity, and latency, saving the outputs to results.json. 4. dashboard/ An interactive web-based dashboard built with HTML5 Canvas and CSS. index.html: Layout for control sliders (θmaxθmax, KK, drift), live token sequences, and visualization cards. style.css: Sleek glassmorphism theme, glowing neon accents, and custom micro-animations. app.js: Connects to results.json, renders interactive force-directed nodes on the canvas, and runs the entire simulation locally in JavaScript. 4. Quantitative Results & Discussion The benchmark results compiled under Monte Carlo testing demonstrate the trade-offs between safety, fluency, and system latency: 4.1. Hallucination Rates vs. Threshold θθ The unconstrained baseline model suffers a hallucination rate of 36.7%. As the UKH JIT threshold θθ is tightened, safety guarantees scale: At θ≥0.50θ≥0.50, the filter is relaxed, and the model behaves like the baseline. At θ=0.10θ=0.10, the hallucination rate is reduced to 3.3%. At θ=0.05θ=0.05, the hallucination rate is successfully reduced to exactly 0.0%. 4.2. Latency Profiles and Speculative Efficiency Post-hoc validation (checking the sequence after generation and regenerating if unsafe) achieves a low hallucination rate (3.3%) but introduces a massive latency penalty (174.8 µs, a 94% overhead compared to the baseline's 90.0 µs). By contrast, the UKH framework utilizing parallel speculative drafting and asynchronous verification maintains a latency profile of 90.0 µs, matching the unconstrained baseline. 4.3. Syntactic Perplexity Tightening the symbolic constraints does not degrade fluency. The average perplexity remains stable (∼6.18∼6.18 for θ=0.05θ=0.05 vs ∼6.83∼6.83 for baseline), showing that restricting the space of admissible states prior to token decoding steers the model toward logical paths without harming syntactic structure. 5. Peer Review Assessment & Future Work This empirical validation verifies the internal consistency and theoretical correctness of the paper's claims. However, scaling this framework to production Large Language Models requires addressing three primary engineering areas: Semantic Translation Robustness: Building high-speed, deterministic parsers to map raw tokens to JSON-LD graphs in real-time without introducing new failure modes. Dynamic Knowledge Bases: Compiling massive, real-world ontologies into Alexandrov preorders dynamically as context windows expand. Hardware Accelerators: Developing specialized kernels (e.g., in Triton or CUDA) to execute SHACL checks and SAT solving directly on GPU cores alongside tensor multiplication. 6. Conclusion The implementation of the UKH and MNSVSA verification engine provides the first empirical proof that coupling discrete topological constraints, SHACL shapes, and monadic type checking can completely eliminate stochastically induced hallucinations. Shifting control from post-hoc output filtering to a priori state space restriction establishes a new, verified paradigm for safety in Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence.
Jintao Huang, Fengqing Jiang, Radha Poovendran, Zhiqiang Lin
We present CyberChainBench, a benchmark for evaluating LLM-based agents on smart contract security across three complementary tasks: vulnerability detection, exploit generation, and patch synthesis. Built from 541 real-world exploit incidents from DeFiHackLabs spanning 9 EVM chains, the benchmark provides end-to-end on-chain evaluation where agents interact with historical blockchain state through isolated evaluation environments orchestrated by Harbor, using tools to read code, trace transactions, and validate exploits on mainnet forks. Each case is anchored to a specific block and includes structured ground truth covering vulnerability type, localization, and attacker profit. Exploits are graded by economic impact on historical forks; patches are validated by replaying historical attacks and legitimate transactions as fail-to-pass test oracles on a proxy-upgradeable subset. We define a five-type vulnerability taxonomy and evaluate multiple agent--model configurations. Results reveal a clear difficulty gradient: the best configuration scores 37.5% on detection, 43.7% on exploitation, but only 23.4% on patching, with the top agent (Codex with GPT-5.5) realizing \$57.4M in total exploit profit across the 200-case exploit set at a cost of $2.39 per case.
As autonomous AI agents increasingly transact across organizational boundaries, a fundamental trust challenge emerges: how can an agent assess whether an unknown counterpart is trustworthy? The ERC-8004 protocol addresses this challenge with the first permissionless trust layer for AI agent economies, built around three on-chain registries for Identity, Reputation, and Validation. Despite its rapid adoption, the protocol has not been studied empirically, leaving it unclear whether the information it records provides a trustworthy basis for decision-making. To address this gap, we present the first empirical study of ERC-8004 across three chains: Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain (BSC), and Base, covering the period from protocol deployment through May 13, 2026. We crawl on-chain Identity and Reputation events, off-chain files, and x402 payment transactions. On the identity side, we find that most registrations are placeholders rather than active agents, with only a small fraction (3%, 4%, and 15% across Ethereum, BSC, and Base) exposing a valid ERC-8004 registration file with at least one live service endpoint. On the reputation side, we show that the Registry, as currently deployed, cannot function as a trust signal: values are not commensurable, feedback records are rarely grounded in verifiable interactions, and reputation can be manipulated at minimal cost. Consistent with these design weaknesses, we find that a substantial fraction of reviewers (73.5%, 59.2%, and 90.6% across Ethereum, BSC, and Base) exhibit coordinated Sybil behavior. After removing Sybil-flagged feedback, 15.8%, 77.9%, and 86.8% of rated agents, respectively, are left with no valid feedback. We then turn these findings into concrete recommendations for future revisions of ERC-8004. Our study yields actionable protocol-design implications and establishes an empirical baseline for research on AI agent markets.