Within a Rayls Private Network there are several different user roles.

Private Network Participants are transacting institutions that connect their Rayls Sovereign node to a Private Network in order to exchange tokens of value with other institutions.

The Operator is the authority of the Private Network. They install the Private Network and they alone hold the power to enforce governance within the permissioned network.

The Auditor is the regulator of the Private Network. They have read-only access to the Private Network, are responsible for validating state and transaction proofs, and may hold the power to decrypt transaction data from the Private Network Hub.

Private Network Participants are covered in detail on the Rayls Sovereign page, so what follows goes deeper on the Operator and Auditor roles.

Private Network Operator

A Private Network's Operator is empowered to enforce governance rules and to make changes to how the Private Network operates.

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Note that only the Operator's private key is able to execute updates to the Private Network Operator smart contract.

Below is a summary of the governance features available to Operators in Rayls.

Governance methods

Approve / reject member registration, adding members to or deleting them from the member registry
Approve / reject token registration, adding tokens to or deleting them from the token registry
Assign and update Private Network member roles (Issuer, Participant and Auditor are the default options)
Freeze / unfreeze member, preventing or enabling a Rayls Sovereign node from sending and receiving messages or tokens across the Private Network
Query state validation 'Flagger' to identify cryptographic proof anomalies between the expected state and the reported state of Rayls Sovereign balances, which is what keeps the Private Network consistent and secure

Rayls Operator tools

The Rayls Operator installation package includes the following tools:

Rayls Operator API, to enforce governance rules directly into the Operator smart contracts
Rayls Custody, to update governance contracts via the Rayls Custody API
Governance engine, a set of inter-connected governance smart contracts with Operator-only authentication
Rayls Auditor Application, where the auditor view gives authorised users access to visualise the decrypted information

Private Network Auditor

A Private Network's Auditor is empowered to validate the Private Network's state and transactions cryptographically and continuously. They may also be able, in accordance with the Private Network Governance Charter, to peek into the private transactions between Rayls Sovereign nodes that are stored on the Private Network Hub.

Private Network Auditors are able to "peek" into encrypted transactions because they performed a Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange with each Rayls Sovereign node when it joined the Private Network. Those DH keys are what allow them to decrypt transactions stored on the Private Network Hub, and so to regulate the network. The DH keys are held within Rayls Custody, or within another preferred key custody solution.

Put simply, the Auditor role has limited read-only access to the cross-Private-Network transactions that pass through the Private Network Hub, and not to anything inside the Rayls Sovereign ledgers themselves. Where the Auditor identifies non-compliant transactions, they may, if the Private Network's Governance Charter allows or requires it, inform the Operator, who can then take action such as freezing a member.

This interplay between an Auditor who monitors and flags (read-only) and an Operator who can enforce rules and changes to the system (write-only) enables a separation of responsibilities. The same design also allows a single Private Network Operator to play both roles at once, which is a choice for the Operator to make when setting up their Private Network.

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Currently the Operator and Auditor roles are managed from the same infrastructure, although Rayls is working to technically segregate them so that they can be managed by different entities.

Auditor methods

Query the list and statuses of members registered with the Private Network (Member Registry)
Query the list and statuses of tokens registered with the Private Network (Token Registry)
Query token balances held by each Rayls Sovereign node, individually and in aggregate
Validate state commits to proactively prevent double spend
Decrypt and query cross-Private-Network transactions and transaction statuses between Rayls Sovereign nodes within the transaction (block) explorer