Architecture

The parts

Clients sign operations: a wallet or app signs with the account's own key, a program or AI assistant signs with a trading key (a session) or an agent key that the account authorised. Nothing reaches the chain without a signature the chain can check.

Public interfaces take signed operations and serve the committed state: a REST API, a WebSocket stream for markets, a market-maker feed, and Ethereum JSON-RPC. Their addresses are part of the network's own spec:

Validators run VordiumBFT and VordCore. Every validator holds the whole state and applies every batch itself.

The bridge vault on Arbitrum One holds the USDC that backs every account's balance.

The path of an operation

Scroll sideways to see the whole diagram

1. Intake. A public interface checks the signature, the format and the rules it can judge at once (a known pair, a price inside the band, the account's open-order count). A refusal answers immediately with a reason code. An accepted operation answers 202 submitted: it has been accepted, not yet applied.
2. Forwarding. The accepted operation is passed to every validator over the validator network. There is no public peer-to-peer mempool; any validator that leads a height can include it.
3. Ordering. The leader of a height puts operations in its block. Heights are grouped into batches, and the validators agree on each batch as a whole.
4. Application. Every validator applies the batch: VordCore matches orders, checks margin, settles funding, runs liquidations. Matching and risk work run at the batch boundary, so every validator reaches the same state.
5. Reading back. The result is visible in the committed state (open orders, positions, balances) and in the trading records. Confirm a write by reading it back, never by the 202 alone.

Committed state and records

Two kinds of data come out of the chain:

• Committed state — balances, positions, open orders, agents, sessions. It is what every validator holds; reads that serve it say "source": "committed_state".
• Trading records — what happened, per height: orders placed and closed, fills, funding payments, liquidations, agent refusals. Every node that covers a height holds the same records for it. A height a node does not cover is unknown, never "nothing happened". See State and records.

Agreed facts

GET /truth/v1 answers only what several validators agree on: the chain id, the genesis, the finalized height, the rules in force, and whether trading, deposits, the EVM and agent rules are on. If the sources disagree or are stale it says so ("ok": false with a reason) instead of guessing. Every live value on this site that says "right now" is read from there.