A senior Solidity engineer who wishes to deploy a contract with fully homomorphic computation, post-quantum signature verification, and selective disclosure of state must, today, assemble four or more independent libraries, each with its own ABI conventions, gas models, and key serialization formats. The integration code is not checked by any compiler. The bugs live at the joints.

This is not merely inconvenient. It is a structural failure of the toolchain. When a developer writes fhe.decrypt(pk, ciphertext) after a zkVerify(proof, publicInputs), the compiler does not know whether the key used for FHE encryption is the same key identity that the ZK proof asserts. It cannot know, because these primitives are not part of the language; they are external calls. The composition is the developer's responsibility, and the developer is fallible.

Covenant treats FHE, post-quantum signatures, ZK proofs, and cryptographic amnesia as first-class language primitives. The compiler reasons about key identities, data flows, and privacy invariants across all four layers simultaneously. An operation that would violate a privacy guarantee fails at compile time, not at runtime — not in production, not in an audit, not in a postmortem.

fn process_private_vote(
    vote:  fhe<u256>,       // FHE-encrypted ballot
    voter: identity<pq>    // post-quantum identity
) -> amnesia {
    // @non_reentrant        auto-injected by compiler
    // privacy flow          verified: fhe → pq → zk consistent
    // compiled to           2,847 bytes

    let cleartext = decrypt(vote, voter.key);  // key identity enforced
    self.tally(cleartext);

} // scope exit: amnesia auto-triggered, ciphertext destroyed, proven on-chain

Styx Protocol is Covenant's native standard library — the substrate on which every Covenant contract runs. It is not a dependency to be imported. It is the runtime. Styx defines four named cryptographic layers, each responsible for a distinct class of guarantee. A Covenant contract may use any subset; the compiler verifies that compositions are sound.

The four layers are not independent modules. OBLIVION can trigger termination of keys held by FORTRESS. VEIL's homomorphic computations may be verified by PRISM without decrypting. FORTRESS provides the identity substrate for all three. These interactions are the reason a language-level approach is necessary: no library-level API can express them.

Version 0.1 Basics shipped April 2026. The first public Covenant contract is live on Ethereum Sepolia.

What follows is the public roadmap. Shipped phases are marked accordingly. The current phase is distinguished by a live indicator on the left margin.

The question arises. A number of projects have occupied adjacent positions. The distinctions are not trivial.

This site is both a project document and a living specification. The sections on language design and architecture are normative: any deviation between the compiler and this document is a compiler bug. The roadmap sections are informative: they describe our intentions, which are subject to revision.

The specifications published here are released under CC0-1.0. You may use them, fork them, implement them independently, and publish derivative work without attribution. The compiler implementation is released under Apache-2.0.

Covenant is early. We have a working compiler, a deployed contract, a test suite, and a roadmap. We are selectively seeking collaborators in four areas.

On compensation

Covenant has no venture funding and no token. There is currently no paid position available for contributors. We acknowledge this openly — the project cannot pay competitive market rates today, and we do not ask collaborators to pretend otherwise.

What we can offer

• Authorship — every technical contribution is credited publicly in release notes, documentation, and academic publications produced from this work.
• Research visibility — Covenant operates in the open. Contributors build a verifiable portfolio on a project of non-trivial technical ambition.
• Priority consideration for future paid roles — when funding becomes available (whether via grants, foundation support, or consulting revenue), contributors who shipped meaningful work receive first refusal on paid positions.
• Reference letters — for academic and industrial applications, we provide detailed reference letters documenting the specific technical work completed.

What we cannot offer

• Competitive salaries or hourly rates.
• Equity, revenue share, or token allocation.
• Guarantees about future paid work.

If this arrangement doesn't align with your constraints, we understand. Covenant is not for everyone at this stage, and we would rather you commit your time to work that compensates you properly than contribute with unvoiced expectations.

For contributors whose interest is fundamentally in the work itself — the research, the systems design, the opportunity to shape a language from first principles — we welcome you. The road from V0.1 to V1.0 is long and technically substantive. Every serious contribution will be acknowledged as such.

Reach out: covenant@kairos-lab.org

Watch this space. Private until V1.0.