Sovereign Execution Consensus (SEC): Ephemeral Threshold Authorization via Cross-Vendor Trusted Execution Environments

This working paper introduces Sovereign Execution Consensus (SEC), a security architecture that replaces static private-key custody models with transient, consensus-bound authorization across heterogeneous trusted execution environments. SEC enables cryptographic signing authority to emerge only during live, multi-device quorum events, eliminating static seed phrases, single-device hardware wallets, and server-held MPC shards. The paper presents a cross-vendor attestation normalization framework, a verifier-issued Trust Ticket mechanism, and an ephemeral threshold signing protocol based on modern primitives such as Noise and FROST. A formal threat model, security analysis, and recovery protocol are provided. The system is fully implementable using existing hardware and cryptographic standards and is intended as a foundational trust primitive for next-generation non-custodial systems.