Consensus has been synonymous with blockchain trust and immutability. But consensus carries a high price: the cost and complexity of distributed architectures and the compromise of data privacy.
ChainZero takes a different path. It anchors blockchain states to verifiable real world events, eliminating consensus protocols while preserving immutability and tamper evidence. Trust emerges from our shared observability of real wold events, rather than consensus among a few blockchain operators.
By recursively interleaving internal ledger blocks with attestations of external facts, ChainZero creates a record that cannot be falsified without leaving visible inconsistencies in the real world. Anyone can audit ChainZero’s integrity. This makes ChainZero ideal for applications that need durable, verifiable history—supply chain audits, financial transactions, NFT minting, or civic recordkeeping—at a fraction of the cost of conventional distributed blockchains.
Unlike cryptocurrency networks where the protocol is inseparable from the ledger, ChainZero separates attestors (entities generating data to be recorded) from the attestation infrastructure (the tamper-evident blockchain). This architecture allows any attestor to leverage ChainZero’s integrity guarantee without participating in consensus protocols or maintaining a heavy distributed infrastructure. Furthermore, ChainZero allows attestors to preserve data privacy by attesting cryptographic hashes of their data rather than exposing the data itself.
ChainZero’s single chain design comprises a few lightweight apps. “Root” bootstraps ChainZero and its PKI, assigning cryptographic identities to apps and attestors. The Metronome and Clock provide liveness and synchronize ChainZero with external time sources, shrinking the tamper window and preventing clock manipulation. The Gazer periodically attests unpredictable but verifiable real world data (news, stock prices, sports scores) to anchor the ledger in reality. And the Sprinkler publishes ChainZero block hashes into public channels (social media, mailing lists, cloud storage) and re-attests them back onto ChainZero, weaving an immutable knot between internal and external states.
By removing the need for distributed consensus while maintaining tamper-evidence and external verifiability, ChainZero offers a fundamentally new and inexpensive model for high-integrity recordkeeping for applications ranging from auditable supply chains, financial transactions, and NFT minting to attesting bets and payouts for a sportsbook. Much like the quirky Klein bottle, which seamlessly blends inside and outside without a boundary, ChainZero weaves internal attestations and external observations into a single, indivisible record. This architecture reimagines trust itself, transforming it from a consensus negotiated among a coterie of blockchain operators to a tangible property provable by anybody against the fabric of reality.
Cryptocurrency blockchains have only one type of block — the ledger block — produced by the protocol itself. To prevent tampering and establish “truth,” they rely on distribution across many operators and enforce consensus, which also makes all data public. ChainZero interweaves two block types: reality blocks, which attest to unpredictable real-world events and form a verifiable timeline or “fabric of reality,” and ledger blocks, created by attestors and anchored against that fabric.
Ledger blocks in ChainZero are not raw ledger data (like transactions or inventory). They are cryptographic hashes of that data, committing the attestor to its state without exposing the contents. The original data remains in the attestor’s private systems, so ChainZero provides both privacy and tamper-evidence.
ChainZero continually externalizes its state into diverse public channels — Twitter, Slack, mailing lists, IPFS, cloud storage, and more. For example, here is a tweet attesting a ChainZero state. Any rewrite would contradict such external attestations which anyone can verify. For example, if a block hash is published on Twitter and recorded in ChainZero, tampering with earlier blocks would cascade into cryptographic inconsistencies between the chain and that tweet — contradictions that cannot be hidden.
In cryptocurrency blockchains, deleting a block destroys truth because the ledger itself is the only source of authority. ChainZero works differently: truth resides in the attestors’ private data, while the chain provides tamper-evidence. As new external anchors (tweets, IPFS posts, mailing list entries, etc.) are added, older ones become redundant — so deleting a tweet does not weaken ChainZero’s immutability.
Because ChainZero is not distributed, it avoids the cost of consensus and replication. Each attestor maintains its own ledger privately and only commits periodic hashes to ChainZero, eliminating integration overhead. Multiple independent attestors can share the same attestation fabric without duplicating infrastructure. As a result, ChainZero scales linearly with the number of attestors and attestations, unlike distributed blockchains that grow quadratically with participants and data.
ChainZero is well-suited to any scenario requiring tamper-proof records with privacy and efficiency. Examples include civic recordkeeping, supply chain commitments, and NFT minting. More powerfully, it enables new applications where tamper-evident disclosure must be balanced against confidentiality. Archetypal examples include managing clinical trials, whistleblower complaints, transparent betting, criminal investigations etc.