Attested Execution Framework
What a record costs
non-normativeMeasured 2026-08-15, against the reference implementation. This page renders cost-observations.json and adds nothing to it.
Why this page exists
AEF 1000 section 2 argues that evidence requirements arrive where three conditions hold, and that the only one an operator can engineer is production cost. That makes the cost of a record the charter's own load-bearing number, and until this page it had never been stated. Every number below is observed, with the command and output quoted, or priced, with the source and date named. Computed values show their arithmetic. There is no third kind.
Linux 6.18.5 container, Node.js v22.22.2 (OpenSSL 3.5.5), Intel silicon, repository working tree at the review-1 tag. Wall times include interpreter startup where the command includes it.
Observed
| What | Value | Command, output |
|---|---|---|
| Size of the sealed record (aer.json), run-0001 | 14,631 bytes | wc -c aer.json14631 aer.json |
| Size of the separately sealed declaration | 2,072 bytes | wc -c declaration.json2072 declaration.json |
| Size of the artifacts the record binds (8 input documents + 1 output manifest) | 222,825 bytes | stat each inputState and outputArtifacts ref, summedartifact files: 9 bytes: 222825 |
| Anchor proofs carried by run-0001 | none: run-0001 is unanchored, and its verification result says so. The anchored example (anchor-0001) carries fabricated, well-formed RFC 3161 evidence in a 4,639-byte record plus a 574-byte renewal, which bounds what real evidence of that mechanism would add. | read aer.json seal.anchor{'anchored': False, 'party': None, 'evidence': None} |
| Wall time to produce one record (declare, seal declaration, execute the run, capture 18 acts, seal record, write tampered copy) | 1.9 seconds, including tsx interpreter startup | time npm run aef:runreal 1.892 s |
| Wall time to verify, command line (the record, its tampered copy, and the withheld-declaration case, all three) | 0.43 seconds for three verifications, including interpreter startup | time npm run aef:verifyreal 0.428 s |
| Wall time to verify, browser build (record with sealed declaration, artifact comparison not included) | 5.5 milliseconds per verification | performance.now() around AefVerifier.run, mean of 10 consecutive runs, Chromium via Playwrightbrowser verify mean of 10 runs (ms): 5.5 |
Priced
| What | Price | Source, date |
|---|---|---|
| RFC 3161 timestamp anchor, marginal cost per timestamp | free of charge | freetsa.org, a community-operated RFC 3161 timestamp authority, 2026-08-15. A free community service is a best-effort party; what that party is worth is a trust base question (AEF 1101 section 7), not a price question. Commercial authorities exist at nonzero prices; none is required by any document in this series. |
| Transparency log anchor, marginal cost per entry | free of charge | Sigstore Rekor public instance (rekor.sigstore.dev), operated as a non-profit public-good service with a stated 99.5% availability objective, 2026-08-15. Best-effort public good, per its own description. |
| Public-chain anchor, marginal cost per timestamp | free of charge | OpenTimestamps calendar servers, which aggregate submitted digests into Merkle trees and commit the root in a Bitcoin transaction; the servers state they are free to use with no registration, 2026-08-15. The aggregation is what makes the marginal cost zero; the underlying Bitcoin transaction fee is paid by the calendar operators, who accept donations. |
| Storage, per GB per month | USD 0.023 per GB-month (S3 Standard, first 50 TB, us-east-1) | Amazon Web Services S3 pricing page, 2026-08-15. One named commodity price, not a market survey. |
Computed
| Total bytes a reviewer needs for the full run-0001 verification (record + declaration + bound artifacts) | 239,528 bytes | 14,631 + 2,072 + 222,825 |
|---|---|---|
| Storage cost per record-year, full bundle, at the priced rate | about USD 0.000066 per year, six thousandths of a cent | 239,528 bytes = 0.000239528 GB; 0.000239528 x 0.023 USD x 12 months |
| Storage cost per record-year, record and declaration only | about USD 0.0000046 per year | 16,703 bytes = 0.0000167 GB; 0.0000167 x 0.023 USD x 12 months |
What these numbers are not
- run-0001 is a small run: 18 act log entries over 9 artifacts. Costs scale with act count and artifact size; nothing here observes a large run, and this file does not extrapolate to one.
- The wall times are one machine's, stated with their environment. They are observations, not benchmarks.
- Zero-price anchoring services are free the way public infrastructure is free: someone else is paying, and the trust base statement is where that dependency belongs.