The book taught act one (getting a kernel to accept a proof) across twelve
chapters and never taught act two: the protocol that makes a green light mean
something to someone who was not present. ch11 armed the reader to interrogate a
CERTIFICATE and left the script that interrogates certificates — software the
author wrote, verified by nothing — entirely unexamined. That was the gap eight
rounds of external review found in the companion projects, and it is a didactic
failure of this book too.
ch13 teaches it from the war stories: the two acts and why act one is the easy
one (eleven theorems in two days, never disputed; eight review rounds and
eighteen defect classes to make the button over them credible); the single shape
every failure had (something load-bearing sat outside the binding), with the
demonstrated exploits including ALL GREEN over a repository proving False, a
certificate reduced to 'the loop equals the loop' with every fingerprint
byte-identical, and a stubbed compiler wrapper going green in 3.6 seconds over
destroyed proofs; completeness of binding and its four rules (derive the
population, fail closed on absence, exact not subset, a stranger must re-derive);
and the meta-defect of assertions that pass for the wrong reason, including the
tautological assert that appeared twice — the second time inside its own repair.
Closes with the habit to carry: ask both questions, and invite someone to attack
your button early, because none of the eighteen was found by the author.
ch11 now forward-references it at the point where the old blind spot sat.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The companion repos completed their signature apex (phases 1+2: four
button-enforced tiers up to "accept <=> decompress(R) = [k](-A)+[s]B as
points") and the scalar layer long ago crossed the kernel frontier - but
the book still taught the pre-campaign state, including one real
inaccuracy of the class coherence pass 3 purged from the repo READMEs:
ch12's apex section and audit-drill solution described the COFACTORED
equation (8sB = 8R + 8kA) with SIMD backends in the trusted base -
neither matches the proven certificates (canonical-R byte equality,
serial path pinned and proven, SHA-512 an oracle with NO assumed
properties).
Fixed:
- ch12: pyramid status diagram (scalar + signature rows now "done"),
the scalar-frontier paragraph (the wall was crossed, and how), the
apex section (future tense -> the proven four-tier statement, honest
trusted base), the "extend the pyramid" bullet (scalar -> pasta curve
layer; CONTRIBUTING files never existed - now points at the control
repo's METHOD/TIERS), exercise 12.2(c) solution (which lineage the
cofactored robustness belongs to), exercise 12.3 + solution (audit
the REAL certificate).
- ch01: framing diagram states the equation actually proven
(sB = R + kA from raw bytes, not the cofactored form).
- glossary: Cofactor entry says which verifiers check which equation.
- ch11: the companion repos' posture is stronger than the ideal-hash
example - no hash properties assumed at all, backend question
eliminated rather than assumed.
- ch08: extraction notes (one merged universe; extract-scalar.sh was
retired in coherence pass 3; SIMD scoped out, not assumed).
- repo tour appendix: floor plan, reading order (item 5 now tours the
apex capstone), Phase 3b described.
- README: companion table rows say "the complete pyramid" with the
four-tier apex; honesty ledger records this 2026-07-06 re-audit.
main.pdf rebuilt from the updated sources (106 pages, zero errors,
build-pass4.log retained).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- pen-and-paper worked examples in all 12 chapters, using the REAL
constants throughout: 2^-64 waiting-time arithmetic, headroom budgets,
hand type-checking, rfl traces, full goal-state boards, the column-sum
audit at 2^54, inverting 19 mod p via Euclid, the x19 fold at real
weights, denoting p itself (telescope), the 16p audit (8 fails by 151),
the 254+11 inversion-chain bookkeeping, the substitution test, sizing
the 28-vs-1000 extraction, cofactor/torsion arithmetic, and the full
Bernstein-Lange completeness derivation
- CORRECTNESS FIX: ch7 asserted a false factorization of p-1; replaced
with the computationally verified p-1 = 2^2 * 3 * 65147 * Q (Q 71-digit
prime), witness w=2 verified for all four Pratt conditions
- every chapter's exercises now followed immediately by 'Solutions and
pathways' (pathway first, then answer), incl. new exercises
- NEW Interlude: a complete two-clause verification done entirely by
hand, then mapped line-by-line onto the compiled Lean proof
- NEW appendices: A pen-and-paper toolkit (8 recipe cards + drills +
answers), B guided walkthroughs of every exercise-file hole, C tour of
the real repositories; plus glossary, instructor notes, 13-week plan
- preamble: worked-example box, solution macros, math-safe inline code
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- 53-page LaTeX/TikZ book (main.pdf + full sources): from zero background
to reading the real Ed25519/Pasta verification projects
- runnable exercises with sorry-holes + complete solutions for chapters
2-7, 9, 12; every solution file compiles clean (zero errors, no sorry)
against Lean v4.30.0-rc2 + Mathlib 5450b53e
- lake project pinned to the same toolchain/Mathlib the solutions were
verified with; students fetch the Mathlib cache, never build it
- honesty ledger in README: what was machine-checked and how
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
