Migration and Emergency Protocols

No Algorithm Agility

Hemera carries no version byte and provides no escape hatch. Every particle is exactly 64 bytes — no header, no tag, no room for a format indicator.

If the hash function is broken, the response is a full graph rehash. The old graph ceases to exist. Every particle is recomputed under the replacement function. This is not weakness — it is a design commitment.

Versioning headers waste bytes at planetary scale. At 10^24 cyberlinks, a single version byte costs 1 ZB of storage across the network. A two-byte tag costs 2 ZB. The overhead is permanent and compounds with every particle created.

Algorithm agility also introduces combinatorial complexity: every system that processes particles must handle every version, every transition, every mixed-version tree. A single function eliminates this class of bugs entirely.

Storage Proofs as Prerequisite

Migration requires content availability. Content availability requires storage proofs. The dependency chain:

Hash may need replacement
  -> Replacement requires rehashing
    -> Rehashing requires content availability
      -> Content availability requires storage proofs
        -> Storage proofs must be operational before genesis

Storage proofs are not optional infrastructure — they are a prerequisite for the system's ability to survive a hash function compromise. They must be deployed and operational before the network launches.

Emergency Response

At 10^24 cyberlinks distributed across 10^6 nodes: each node holds ~10^18 cyberlinks. At ~53 MB/s per core (single-threaded), rehashing 10^18 x 64 bytes = 64 EB takes significant time per node. With overhead for tree reconstruction, I/O, and coordination, estimated wall-clock time per node is ~17 hours. The entire network rehashes in parallel — total elapsed time is bounded by the slowest node, not the sum of all nodes.