The Immutable and Trustless Ledger: TNT (True-NO-Trust) File System
By Joseph Mark Haykov
June 9, 2024
A TNT (True-NO-Trust) file is a log file of relational database updates that, when applied to an empty relational database schema (a set of empty tables), consistently produces the same set of coin balances in digital TNT bank accounts for every historical crossing session, up to and including the last one that occurred. Applying this file of Bitcoin transactions to an empty database will always result in the current Bitcoin balances.
What makes this TNT file True-NO-Trust is that fraudulent versions of any TNT log file constructed as a result of processing payments within the Transparent Network Technology (TNT) system can be independently identified as non-authentic and rejected by any third-party examiner, including not only other peer-to-peer nodes but also third-party auditors, such as FINRA and the SEC. All TNT file updates occur at the end of a TNT crossing session, as all peer-to-peer nodes write a universally agreed-upon block update to each of their respective copies of the TNT log file.
Ensuring Authenticity and Trustlessness
Wallet and Coin Creation
Any valid update, such as opening a new wallet or creating a new coin, must be digitally signed by the one-true money wallet’s dual approval public key—a public key that is universally known and trusted. This guarantees that each individual wallet’s dual public keys (debit and credit) are both authentic and correct, having been vouched for by the one-true money.
Fund Transfers
Any subsequent transfers of funds between wallets must be dually approved by both the spender wallet’s debit key and the recipient wallet’s dual approval credit key for all TNT-Bank funds, thereby absolutely guaranteeing the authenticity of all fund transfers between TNT bank accounts (or wallets).
Cryptographic Security and Immutability
Cryptographic hashing of blocks ensures the database's immutability in the same way that Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other blockchain database guarantees immutability. This immutability is ensured regardless of the data stored inside it, due to cryptographically recursively linked hashes, where each block incorporates the hash value of the previous block in the chain.
Independent Verification
The TNT Transparent Network Technology makes the TNT True-NO-Trust flat file independently verifiable for authenticity. As long as everything is correctly signed by the proper designated signature and all the cryptographic hashes match the block contents, you can be certain you are looking at the sole authentic version of this one-true-money public key TNT file.
Ensuring Update Integrity
Each TNT update block has two sets of digital signatures: primary signatures collected during the odd minutes when payment requests are issued by bank customers signing the debits, and dual signatures collected during the next even minute when payments are processed by all peer-to-peer nodes and dual approval signatures are collected, accepting the credits to the receiving bank accounts. Credit signatures must reference the hash value of the entire primary signature block with all debits, making any type of fraud absolutely impossible. This theorem must be formally proven, independently verified for accuracy, and then published to ensure that there are no questions about the accuracy of the logical deduction in its mathematical proof.
Conclusion
The TNT file system ensures a trustless and immutable ledger whose "honesty"—meaning no fraudulent transactions such as double spending—can be independently verified by any peer-to-peer node or third-party auditor, guaranteeing the authenticity and integrity of the data it contains. This robust system of verification and cryptographic security provides a solid foundation for a transparent and trustworthy digital currency ecosystem. Moreover, while this type of TNT file can be created using various platforms, including Ethereum smart contracts, the authenticity of a TNT file can be independently verified using much simpler means, such as a small Scheme program. Using Transparent Network Technology (TNT) is not the only way to build a TNT true no-trust file, but it is the most energy-efficient way to do so, consuming far less electricity than competitors such as Solano, Cardano, Polka Dot, and Ripple.
PS
Of course, the Trojan horse here, which makes the entire system work from a Nash equilibrium perspective, is that if the one-true money wallet misbehaves, its dishonesty becomes visible to all peer-to-peer nodes. The consequences of a “misbehaved” root wallet are limited to refusing to process valid payments or temporarily crashing the super-fragile TNT system. However, a “bad” one-true money wallet can be easily removed (or forked off) from the TNT blockchain—but that’s version 2.0 with voting and additional features.
PPS
We need to discuss a pricing model akin to selling checkbooks, where you pay for, say, 200 checks when you open an account and then buy more checkbooks from core node providers, payable in one-true money—or something similar. The alternative is that you become a TNT node provider and process your own payments. However, to do so, you must put up some one-true money as collateral. This way, we can make crashes caused by a misbehaving root wallet super cost-prohibitive.
Understanding the Immutability of the Bitcoin Blockchain
We begin our discussion by underscoring an empirical fact about Bitcoin: what makes the theft of Bitcoins nearly impossible is the immutability of the Bitcoin blockchain. The term immutability, in this case, is somewhat misleading. It isn't that the Bitcoin blockchain file can’t be modified—it can be—but any such fraudulent modifications become immediately detectable.
What makes any attempts at fraud detectable, a feature sometimes referred to as the immutability of the blockchain, is not the cryptographic hashing of digital signatures of spending requests, as some may incorrectly believe. In fact, it is the exact opposite: it is the digital signature by the miner of the block hash value that makes the blockchain immutable. The reason is simple enough: if you were merely cryptographically hashing digital signatures, you could remove a transaction from the blockchain, recompute all the cryptographic hashes for all the blocks, and no one would be the wiser.
In the specific context of the Bitcoin blockchain, any modification is detectable because the cryptographic hash of each update block is digitally signed by the miner who processes the update block and adds it to the blockchain. The miner's signing of the update is also the reason why approximately 30% of Bitcoins are believed to be irretrievably lost due to misplaced private keys. Although a fraudster can easily recompute the hash value of any update block, they cannot digitally re-sign it with the miner's private key that matches the new cryptographic hash of the modified block. It is the miner's digital signature of the block's original hash that ensures the integrity and immutability of the entire Bitcoin blockchain.
In the context of the TNT blockchain, what makes it immutable is that each payment recipient, when signing the incoming credit, also signs the hash value of the update block generated during the prior odd minute. Here is what happens in detail:
During the odd minute, transactions are collected by the core node ring into a universally agreed-upon set of properly signed debit requests, identical in all respects to the block that a miner would add to the Bitcoin blockchain. These are in the form of a linked list of payment requests, where each request is digitally signed as follows: (define (digitally-sign msg private-key) (cons msg (encrypt (hash msg) private-key)))
For example: (cons ‘debit A 300 wBTC for further credit to B’ (encrypt (hash ‘debit A 300 wBTC for further credit to B’) (debit-private-key A)))
During the first few seconds of the following even minute, all five core nodes in a ring agree on the same update block and compute its hash value, the same exact hash value that would ordinarily be signed by the Bitcoin miner.
Each payment recipient digitally signs the original debit request as follows:
(define (approve-credit DEBIT credit-key)
(digitally-sign (cons BLOCK-HASH DEBIT) credit-key))
For example: approve-credit((cons ‘debit A 300 wBTC for further credit to B’ (encrypt (hash ‘debit A 300 wBTC for further credit to B’) (debit-private-key A))) (credit-private-key B))
This way, each credit signature, just like the Bitcoin miner, signs and seals the hash value of the entire update block, making the TNT blockchain even more immutable than that of Bitcoin.