Kanari is organized as a layered Move/object chain. Applications submit signed work through JSON-RPC; nodes gossip transactions and checkpoints; the core engine builds deterministic checkpoint work; the Move runtime executes state transitions; RocksDB and SMT roots persist the canonical state.

Layer responsibilities

Layer	Responsibility
Application	Explorer, CLI, wallets, and payment SDKs create and inspect user activity.
RPC / API	Axum JSON-RPC validates request shape, applies concurrency limits, and returns typed responses.
Node	Runs RPC, libp2p gossip, checkpoint sync, identity, consensus keys, and backup tooling.
Core chain	Owns mempool, checkpoint production, state roots, transaction/object indexes, and DAG metadata.
Execution	Runs Move VM calls, native functions, scheduler logic, and state changes.
Data / crypto	Stores canonical state, object records, SMT roots, framework modules, signatures, and hashes.

Entity relationship overview

This diagram is a documentation view of the runtime flow, not a database schema. The authoritative data lives in the Rust types, RocksDB stores, checkpoints, and SMT state root.