Guardian Nodes
Evidence level: Production reference. The registry contracts are live references; runtime reachability and service participation require separate current evidence.
Guardian Nodes belong to the CoNET DePIN service plane. Their identities and protocol relationships are anchored by contracts on CoNET L1, chainId 224422, but their service activity occurs through network processes rather than through L1 consensus voting.
Registry and runtime state
An on-chain Guardian registry records admitted node identities and beneficiary relationships. Registry membership is durable chain state. It does not prove that a node is currently online or serving traffic.
A runtime Guardian service can involve:
- DePIN message routing and mailbox delivery;
- bandwidth or forwarding services, metered and compensated in GBToken (
GB) for relaying ciphertext rather than for reading it; - signed mining-gossip participation; and
- service accounting tied to a registered identity or beneficiary.
Operational liveness depends on reachable services, valid routing registration, active listeners, and accepted signed messages. Consequently:
Registered Guardian count, live Guardian count, and active-miner count are different measurements.
A temporary difference between those counts is not evidence that L1 consensus has lost validators.
Separation from validators
Guardian Nodes do not determine the canonical L1 chain merely by being registered. L1 validators are the proof-of-stake participants that propose or attest to blocks.
| Property | L1 validator | Guardian Node |
|---|---|---|
| Primary plane | L1 consensus | DePIN services |
| Canonical-chain voting | Yes, through PoS duties | No, not by Guardian registration |
| Typical identity | Validator credentials and protocol records | Guardian wallet, route, and registry records |
| Runtime evidence | Consensus-client duties | Service liveness and signed service traffic |
One operator may run both roles, but documentation, telemetry, and accounting must keep them separate.
Staking terminology
“Stake” is not one interchangeable balance across the protocol. At minimum, distinguish:
- L1 validator deposits, which secure proof-of-stake duties;
- Guardian admission or service economics, where applicable; and
- bonds used by separate settlement or L2 roles.
Do not infer one role from a deposit belonging to another ledger. In particular, a settlement bond or Guardian record must not be presented as an L1 validator deposit.
Network identity
Wallet-address routing is intended to reduce dependence on a fixed public service IP and to improve resistance to targeted blocking. This is a network-layer design objective, not proof that a node is anonymous and not a replacement for L1 proof-of-stake consensus.
Read Guardian-related chain state through https://rpc1.conet.network, with https://publicrpc.conet.network as backup. Do not use the deprecated https://rpc.conet.network. Inspect contracts and transactions at https://mainnet.conet.network.
Registry membership is publicly readable. Admission is not permissionless: addNode and removeNode require adminList. Unique owner addresses, region labels, and the difference between those figures and L1 validator stake are recorded in L1 decentralization.
Source anchors
GuardianNodesInfoV6at0xBC6b53065b5647261396d002bDBA0d3396E0722f— on-chain Guardian registry and node recordsValidatorDepositRedeemat0xc71e246DD78B37C2fABc905D340932F28F503433— validator deposits and beneficiary relationships; a separate role from Guardian registrationsrc/CoNET-SI/— runtime routing, mailbox, and signed service traffic- L1 decentralization — reproducible Guardian counts, regions, and governance
- Validators — L1 consensus role
- Chain identity — chain and endpoint authority
- CoNET-DLE economics — separate L2 economic ledgers
Developer how-to: Participate in mining.