Federation discovery

Every Marina exposes a non-secret discovery document at:

GET /api/federation/manifest

It contains a stable local world ID, display name, base URL, supported contract versions, and the current local evidence-chain head. Open Dashboard → Admin → Collective, open this world’s manifest, and paste another world’s manifest to register a peer. The same operation is available to authenticated clients at POST /api/federation/peers.

Registration is deliberately passive: Marina performs no server-side fetch, imports no memory, and marks the peer unverified. This avoids turning a pasted URL into an SSRF mechanism or a display name into identity. An operator can explicitly mark a record trusted or blocked; that decision is local policy metadata, not cryptographic authentication.

Optional signed identity

Marina is zero-configuration by default and publishes the explicitly unsigned marina.federation.manifest.v1 document. Set MARINA_FEDERATION_SIGNING_KEY to an Ed25519 PKCS#8 private key to publish marina.federation.manifest.v2. The v2 envelope signs a deterministic representation of the complete manifest and exposes only its public key and SHA-256 fingerprint. Imported v2 manifests with invalid signatures are rejected.

A valid signature proves that one key signed an unchanged document. It does not prove that the operator is trustworthy, that manifest claims are true, or that the key belongs to the world you intended to reach. Peers therefore remain unverified until an operator compares the fingerprint through an independent channel and makes an explicit local trust decision. Key rotation, cross-world principal authentication, replicated consensus, and automatic memory promotion remain outside this contract.

Content-addressed and chain-ready, without a chain dependency

Signed envelopes are plain canonical JSON and include no HTTP-only assumptions. They can be copied through a file, mirrored to content-addressed storage such as IPFS, announced over a peer-to-peer transport, or referenced by an external ledger without changing signature verification. A future adapter should publish encrypted or explicitly public artifacts off-chain and anchor only compact content identifiers or checkpoint hashes. Prompts, private memories, credentials, and personal data must not be placed on a public chain.

External storage availability, blockchain finality, and signature validity are separate facts. None of them automatically grants local trust, imports executable behavior, or blocks a local Marina from working when the external network is absent. This separation keeps ordinary installations simple while allowing independently operated worlds to add the witnesses and transports they require.

The supported inheritance.unverified.v1 capability preserves the safe behavior: imported DNA is a claim with asserted provenance, never governing policy. A future signed-envelope revision can add issuer verification without changing that epistemic rule.