Proof of Authority for agentic Regen: automate on bounded, revocable, on-chain grants — never a master key

Governance
1

Proof of Authority for Regen automation

As Regen leans further into automation and agents — keepers, agent voters, and the M013 burn keeper in the thread next door — one question decides whether that automation is safe:

What key does the automation run on?

A keeper or agent running on a treasury key or master key is a standing risk: unbounded power, no expiry, and no public accountability.

There is a better answer already available on-chain, using only stock Cosmos modules, verified live on regen-1 with SDK v0.53.4:

Grant automation a bounded, revocable, on-chain-provable authority — a “Proof of Authority” — instead of handing it a raw key.

The pattern

Using stock x/authz + x/feegrant:

  • SendAuthorization(spend_limit, allow_list=[sink])
    An executor can move REGEN only up to a defined cap, and only to a specific address, such as a burn sink. Nowhere else.

  • GenericAuthorization(/cosmos.gov.v1.MsgVote)
    Vote-only delegation. The executor can vote on the grantor’s behalf and nothing else.

  • feegrant BasicAllowance(spend_limit)
    The grantor pays the executor’s gas, capped. The executor holds no funds at all.

  • Expiry + revocation + public queryability
    Every grant carries an expiry, is instantly revocable through MsgRevoke / MsgRevokeAllowance, and is queryable by anyone at:

/cosmos/authz/v1beta1/grants

The grant itself becomes the public proof of exactly what the automation is allowed to do.

Why it matters

This is the safety layer that lets Regen adopt automation and agents without trusting raw keys.

Every automated action becomes:

  • bounded

  • dated

  • provable

  • revocable

  • killable by governance

That is what makes the M013 burn keeper safe to run.

It also generalizes. Any agent acting on-chain for a DAO, treasury, working group, or community process should run on a scoped grant, not a raw key.

x/authz even enforces the correct posture: granter ≠ grantee.

The key that decides stays separate from the key that acts.

No chain change

This is not a request for a new module or chain upgrade.

It is a pattern and reference implementation using modules the chain already has.

EcoWealth has built and audited the flow:

  • scoped burn authority

  • vote authority

  • feegrant support

  • EIP-712 manifest for the Base side

Happy to share the code and help standardize it.

The movement

Let’s make bounded, provable, revocable authority the norm for automation and agents on Regen.

As the ecosystem gets more agentic, it should become safer at the same time — not riskier.

Feedback welcome.

2

The numbers sharpen the case for Plan A

I ran the actual numbers, and they sharpen the case for Plan A — especially one design choice in particular.

Where the network is today

REGEN is around $0.00105, with a market cap near $155k and 24h volume under $100.

The whole validator set is securing the chain with roughly $96k of bonded stake.

The community pool is effectively empty.

That means under zero emissions, validator income goes to roughly $0. A validator seat becomes pure cost.

What that cost actually is

A lean validator node costs about $40–100/month.

A more redundant setup costs around $150–300/month.

So funding a small active set of roughly 7 validators is on the order of $8k–25k/year total.

That is small in absolute terms, but there is currently no meaningful on-chain source for it: the community pool is empty, and zero emissions means no validator income.

The honest design point

You cannot have all three at once:

  1. decentralized validator operations

  2. zero emissions

  3. unfunded validators

Pick two.

The coherent answer is that the Foundation, or another designated entity, curates the active authority set and covers its cost through a modest, explicit funding line.

That means roughly $8k–25k/year to keep the validator set reliable, instead of expecting validators to keep absorbing losses on goodwill.

Zero emissions only holds if the small validator set is funded. Otherwise, it accelerates the same attrition we are already seeing.

EcoWealth’s position

We are in either way.

Our marginal cost to run a Regen validator is near zero because we already operate reliable infrastructure. We are glad to be one of the roughly 7 validators, whether or not there is a funding line.

We will also stand up the on-chain proposals needed to execute this directly:

  • set emissions to 0

  • set max_validators to 7

This should execute in days, not quarters.

We are not going anywhere.