Kanari is stronger after the recent hardening work, but it should still be treated as pre-mainnet software unless it has passed independent audit, long-running adversarial testing, and production operations rehearsal.

Improved areas

Consensus private key material is passed by file path instead of raw key strings in command-line arguments.
Mainnet refuses plaintext P2P identity material.
Validator backups are encrypted and include full recovery material.
Snapshot import/export verifies network, genesis identity, height, hash, and state root.
RPC has bounded heavy-VM execution and per-client protection.
Mysticeti/DAG sync avoids tiny fixed parent-lookup windows that could break long-running nodes.
Idle nodes no longer produce checkpoints without transactions.

Current caveats

Consensus signing uses Ed25519. Dilithium support exists elsewhere, but consensus is not yet fully post-quantum.
Public RPC must still sit behind a gateway, firewall, or WAF.
SMT diagnostic RPCs can be expensive if exposed without rate limits.
Formal verification and third-party external audit are still required before high-value mainnet use.

Operator checklist

Use unique consensus keys per validator.
Never commit private key files.
Encrypt local key files with KANARI_CONSENSUS_KEY_PASSWORD.
Keep consensus-public-keys.json identical across the committee.
Use a shared genesis manifest for all validators.
Stop nodes before strict snapshot/backup export when possible.
Keep validator RPC private; expose separate RPC nodes through a gateway.
Monitor state root equality across validators.