[RFF] Akua — Production-Grade Commodity Settlement Infrastructure on Arbitrum (CRE + DTA)

Early Idea Discussion Sales Pitch by Service Providers
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Classification: Non-Constitutional
(For clarity, this proposal does not amend or interpret the Arbitrum Constitution and does not request treasury disbursement.)

Abstract

Akua proposes the development and production hardening of an event-driven, role-gated commodity settlement infrastructure on Arbitrum using Chainlink CRE and a Digital Transfer Agent (DTA) model. This proposal is submitted as a Request for Feedback (RFF) to validate scope, milestones, and ecosystem alignment ahead of a potential future Builder / Infrastructure grant proposal. No funding is requested in this AIP.

Motivation

Arbitrum has an opportunity to expand beyond DeFi-native primitives into real-world, non-speculative settlement activity that aligns with institutional and government-adjacent use cases.

Commodity markets represent:

  • Persistent, non-cyclical economic activity

  • Clear custody and settlement lifecycles

  • Strong demand for auditability and transparency

Akua’s infrastructure is designed to bring these workflows on-chain without encoding policy or regulation into smart contracts, making Arbitrum a neutral settlement and observability layer suitable for pilots, institutions, and public-sector stakeholders.

Rationale

This proposal aligns with Arbitrum’s mission and guiding values by:

  • Driving real-world usage through settlement and custody primitives rather than incentives

  • Maintaining neutrality (policy-agnostic contracts, role-gated state changes)

  • Promoting transparency via event-first architectures and reproducible audit trails

  • Supporting composability through modular contracts and reusable CRE workflows

  • Laying groundwork for future Orbit adoption without prematurely launching a chain

Akua functions as infrastructure, not a vertical application, and is intentionally designed for reuse by other Arbitrum teams building RWAs or institutional workflows.

Key Terms

  • CRE (Chainlink Runtime Environment): A secure, WASM-based workflow execution environment used to monitor and orchestrate on-chain events.

  • DTA (Digital Transfer Agent): A standardized lifecycle manager for primary-market subscription and redemption requests.

  • ORCHESTRATOR_ROLE: An on-chain role authorized to advance DTA lifecycle state.

  • Webhook Mode: Observability-only operation where lifecycle events are delivered off-chain without automated on-chain writes.

Specifications

On-Chain Components (Arbitrum Sepolia – deployed & verified)

  • WarehouseReceiptRegistry

  • CommodityEscrow (v10)

  • CommodityDTARequestManager

  • Commodity-backed ERC-20 tokens

  • PriceOracleRouter + Chainlink adapter

  • ReserveManager

Off-Chain / Workflow Layer

  • Chainlink CRE workflows:

    • escrow-flow (analytics & observability)

    • dta-flow (orchestration; write path scaffolded)

  • Event normalization and authenticated webhook delivery

  • Frontend dashboards for escrow and DTA lifecycle tracking

DTA Tracking Model

  • System of record: CommodityDTARequestManager

  • Lifecycle: Pending → Priced → Approved → Settled (Rejected / Cancelled)

  • Authority: Role-gated (ORCHESTRATOR_ROLE, DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE)

  • Scope: Primary-market issuance/redemption only

Explicitly Out of Scope

  • Token incentives or liquidity programs

  • Governance changes

  • Policy or compliance enforcement in Solidity

  • Secondary-market trades (handled via escrow)

  • Orbit chain launch in this phase

Steps to Implement

This AIP is for feedback only; steps are proposed, not authorized.

  1. CRE Workflow Deployment

    • Deploy escrow-flow and dta-flow to staging once early access is granted

  2. Durable Event Persistence

    • Implement DB-backed webhook storage with idempotency and replay

  3. Secure DTA Write Path

    • Enable role-gated transaction signing and broadcast for lifecycle updates

  4. Operational Hardening

    • Secrets management, monitoring, alerting, rollback runbooks

    • Role-grant / revoke / rotation rehearsals

  5. Public-Good Documentation

    • Publish schemas, lifecycle standards, and integration guides

Any future step involving third-party transactions (e.g., grants) would be subject to Arbitrum DAO legal and procedural requirements and is not included in this AIP.

Timeline (Proposed, Non-Binding)

  • Month 1: CRE staging deployment + monitoring

  • Month 2: Durable event persistence + replay tooling

  • Month 3: Secure DTA on-chain write path (RBAC enforced)

  • Month 4: End-to-end staging readiness + documentation

Overall Cost

$0 requested in this proposal.

This AIP is a Request for Feedback only.
A future Builder / Infrastructure proposal may include a funding request following community input and milestone refinement.

Government & Institutional Context

Akua is architected for observe-first government and institutional adoption, supporting:

  • Export & custody transparency

  • Issuance/redemption oversight

  • Deterministic audit trails via CRE-normalized events

The project holds non-binding LOIs and pilot alignment agreements with logistics and commodity ecosystem participants to validate operational feasibility. These LOIs do not obligate production usage, volume, or token incentives.

Feedback Requested

The authors request feedback on:

  1. Appropriateness of scope for a future Builder / Infrastructure proposal

  2. Milestone structure and verifiability

  3. Preferred patterns for orchestrated on-chain writes and role management

  4. Public-good deliverables that would maximize ecosystem reuse

  5. Any concerns from an institutional or government-adoption perspective

Closing Note

This proposal is intentionally conservative in scope.
Its goal is to validate infrastructure direction and sequencing, not to request funding or trigger governance actions.

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We have moved this post into the Early Idea Discussion category; as there is nothing yet to vote on and it is explicitly a request for feedback.

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