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Commissioning a Mint

Clear does not treat a healthy process as proof that a mint is ready for treasurers. Before routine authority is delegated, the root must exercise the mint's cryptographic, storage, wallet, and accounting paths and explicitly enable treasury operations.

install mint
  -> bootstrap locally with clear-root
  -> verify the complete Mint Note lifecycle
  -> record readiness
  -> enable treasury operations
  -> allow signed treasurer requests

What the root verifies

The commissioning workflow is designed to test:

  • configuration, database identity, and durable transactions;
  • random keyset generation and encrypted key storage;
  • public key, CMU, alias, and mint URL discovery;
  • quote creation and blinded issuance;
  • proof-state checks and exact-amount swaps;
  • redemption and retirement;
  • supply reconciliation;
  • root wallet persistence; and
  • complete audit records.

The root uses a dedicated commissioning keyset. It issues test units, exercises their complete lifecycle, and retires every unit. This proves the shared mint implementation without adding test supply to an organization's intended CMU.

Explicit enablement

Verification and enablement are separate decisions:

clear-root verify
clear-root treasury status
clear-root treasury enable

Before enablement, signed treasurer actions fail closed. The mint records who enabled treasury activity, when it happened, and which successful verification supported the decision.

The root can close the gate without deleting keysets or ledger history:

clear-root treasury disable --reason "maintenance"

Readiness can expire

A successful check is not permanent. Database migrations, restores, signer or key-storage changes, failed reconciliation, and critical routing changes make verification stale. Clear then requires a new root verification before treasurer operations can resume.

Changing a friendly currency name or unit alias does not normally invalidate readiness, although the mint must restart before its new configuration is advertised.

Designed, not implemented

clear-root already exercises the prototype mint locally. The durable readiness record, commissioning keyset, verify command, and treasury gate described here are accepted requirements for the next implementation stage.

Read the complete commissioning design How Clear is governed Security