Quantum Tensor Sequence: A Universal Data Compression Format with Physics-Inspired Architecture, Zero-Knowledge Verification, and Self-Healing Recovery

Abstract

This paper introduces the Quantum Tensor Sequence (.qtsq) format, a universal file format built to compress any kind of data — whether it's images, audio, video, text, structured data, or raw binary. Instead of treating everything as a generic stream of bytes like most compressors do, .qtsq looks at what the data actually is before deciding how to compress it. An internal component we call the "Spaghettification Engine" analyzes the input, figures out which of 16 data types it belongs to, and picks the best compression strategy for it: Iterated Function Systems (IFS) for images, Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) for audio and signals, dictionary-schema encoding for text and structured data, and procedural seed generation for binary data. Everything is packed into a single 80-byte header that supports 11 features: type-aware compression, lazy partial decompression, AES-256-GCM encryption, Schnorr zero-knowledge proofs, Reed-Solomon error correction, inter-file deduplication through wormhole links, compressed-domain differential updates, multi-resolution quality scaling, and adaptive size thresholds. The whole thing is organized around a five-layer architecture inspired by black hole physics — each region of the black hole maps to a stage of the compression pipeline. As far as we know, no existing file format brings all of these capabilities together in one place. Based on the theoretical properties of the algorithms involved, we expect compression ratios somewhere between 18:1 and 55:1 on mixed-type data. Real-world benchmarks using the reference implementation will follow in a separate paper.