in less than 2 hours, NOCK block rewards drops 25%. last time this happened, base:0x9b5e262cf9bb04869ab40b19af91d2dc85761722 ran roughly 11x in 47 days. this time, the halving comes alongside a much bigger lineup of catalysts. • rewards fall from 2,048 to 1,536 NOCK per block. • the AI Compute Network launched in august, allowing inference providers to bring AI workloads into Nockchain’s mining system. • useful inference routing is on the Q4 2026 roadmap, with Logan teasing buys and burns. • Lockstep targets a key problem in AI verification: reproducing identical inference outputs across different hardware. Nockchain’s september research reports bit-exact results across Hopper, Ada and Blackwell GPUs, with Qwen3-30B-A3B running at 1.32–1.37x stock throughput. • in Q1 2027, the roadmap targets completion of the full Nock zkVM, alongside a native ZK verification opcode. this could let applications prove computation rather than asking users to blindly trust the result. the pieces are coming together: useful AI computation, general-purpose proofs and applications built around verifiable execution, with first utility unlocking potential buys and burns adding another dimension to the base:0x9b5e262cf9bb04869ab40b19af91d2dc85761722 thesis. the halving is only one part of what’s lining up. the weeks ahead could be considerably bigger than a simple supply cut. nockmilio.