Blockchain Papers

Shaimaa Akram Hassan, Adwea Naji Atewi

Over time, the security of traditional public-key infrastructures in blockchain systems and in decentralized applications is threatened by the rise of quantum-enabled adversaries.Due to incomplete protocol specifications, unclear validation semantics, and contradictory experimental reporting, it is challenging to apply lattice-based cryptography, which serves as a foundation for quantum-secure primitives, to blockchain-based AKE frameworks.For decentralized applications that use CRYSTALS-Kyber-768 as a lattice-based Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM), this study suggests a formally defined blockchain-enabled post-quantum authenticated key exchange and registration framework.The protocol links a public key registration based on a smart contract with an on-chain Groth16 zk-SNARK proof-of-possession verification, which makes for an efficient and authenticated public key registration that is replay-resistant, protects against key-substitution attacks, and establishes a safe session under a well-established adversarial model.To improve traceability, resolvability, and auditability, the suggested protocol separately identifies cryptographic assumptions, block chain consensus assumptions, smart contract validity semantics, and more.To allow for independent verification of the framework's operation, the complete message flows, contract-level validation rules, and on-chain/off-chain boundaries for interactive protocols are all clearly specified.The experiment was conducted on a private Ethereum Proof-of-Stake test network with 50 validators, a gas block limit of 60,000,000, and a block interval of 12 seconds.A set of tests, each consisting of 30 independent runs, was conducted to produce a total of 30,000 registration transactions for the same workload circumstances.The average end-to-end delay is 24.73 seconds, and the registration process includes an average of 275,555 gas.The actual interval of batch-finalization, which is the period between the first batch submitting a transaction and the last batch's finality confirmation in each round of experiment, was used to determine throughput.The throughput that results from running the experiment within the constraints of the blockchain restrictions is comparable to the theoretical, gas-limited processing speed of around 18. 1 tps.Additionally, the lightweight authenticated key exchange phase, which on the tested network settings, carried out about 41 complete bilateral exchange cycles every second, was also accomplished.The outcomes demonstrate that the post-quantum authenticated key establishment can be realistically incorporated into the blockchain-assisted infrastructure with the reproducible system-level behaviors, while maintaining provable proof-of-possession and preserving structured validation semantics.

konstantinos votis, Panagiotis Symeonidis, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas

This deliverable provides an overview of the Digital Product Passport, Distributed Ledger Technology, and blockchain applied to the needs of ALUMIL in order to demonstrate the use of DPPs in the Aluminium industry sector.

Leon Calvin II long, Benjamin Lawrence Eckenfels

System and Method for Reinforcement Learning‑Based Token Minting and Cross‑Chain Cryptographic Anchoring This archive contains the full non‑provisional patent submission for a unified digital‑asset lifecycle system integrating reinforcement‑learning‑based token minting, Merkle‑structured ledgering, and synchronized cross‑chain cryptographic anchoring. The invention establishes a deterministic, mathematically governed framework for creating, operating, and verifying digital asset states across heterogeneous blockchain networks including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The system introduces a blueprint‑based binding mechanism, a formal kernel governed by a unified state equation, and a sovereign ledger enabling long‑term provenance and deterministic replay. A reversible 32‑byte commitment value is computed using a Sponge‑586 invariant and anchored to Bitcoin via Taproot tweaks and OP_RETURN payloads. Parallel anchoring events emit the authenticated Merkle Mountain Range (MMR) root on Ethereum and Solana, producing tamper‑evident, multi‑consensus proofs of state. A reinforcement‑learning engine dynamically adjusts minting rates based on real‑time market conditions, behavioral metrics, and system‑level variables. The system further supports gasless user interactions (EIP‑2771), zero‑knowledge compliance pathways, federated‑learning simulations, and deterministic state reconstruction through Kolmogorov integrity scoring and synthesis restoration. This archive includes the complete specification, mathematical formulations, alternative embodiments, and references to supporting research hosted on Zenodo. It documents the developmental lineage, reduction‑to‑practice demonstrations, and cross‑chain anchoring methodology associated with U.S. Patent Application No. 19/693,343.

Jorge Pumar

We present the Lindblad Protocol, a distributed consensus mechanism grounded in physical verification rather than computational proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. The protocol treats distributed network state as a continuously evolving density operator governed by the Lindblad master equation for open dissipative quantum systems. Trust is established through the Lindblad Cryptography Protocol (LCP), a four-layer physical verification stack: hardware identity via silicon Physical Unclonable Functions (SRAM PUF), cryptographic signing via P-256 ECDSA derived from PUF output, spatiotemporal entropy via the Hybrid Stochastic Chua circuit (HSC), and irreversible consensus via the Lindblad master equation over a dissipative LoRa mesh network. In existing consensus mechanisms, security guarantees are computational and are therefore bounded by adversarial compute resources. LCP anchors security in thermodynamic law: a recorded state transition cannot be reversed without violating the second law of thermodynamics. The protocol simultaneously proves what was signed, when, where, and who, without a trusted third party. Hardware validation on commodity Heltec ESP32-S3 nodes demonstrates SRAM PUF inter-device Hamming distance of 48.60% (intra-device: 0.00%), a 486× separation ratio confirming strong uniqueness. A fuzzy extractor based on BCH(255,139,t=15) achieves 86% rock-stable bit selection across 12 power-cycle enrollment, validated on physical hardware with 100% reproduction fidelity. The protocol is deployed on mainnet: a live network of physical hardware nodes has produced over 21,000 blocks across 35,842 epochs, mining over 1,512,000 PYCO tokens via Physical Coherence Verification (PCV-4), with a bridge operating across Arbitrum One and Polygon providing USDT/USDC settlement. The first peer-to-peer transfer between two real users was completed on May 29, 2026.

Jyoti*, Sakshi, Aashima, Riya

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are unique digital assets built on blockchain technology that can represent ownership of data or digital items. Although widely associated with digital art and collectibles, NFTs are increasingly being explored for healthcare applications.[1] This review examines how NFTs could be used in managing health data, improving supply chains, enabling secure identities, and supporting emerging digital health services. While NFTs show promise in enhancing transparency, security, and patient control, their adoption is still limited due to technical, regulatory, and ethical challenges.[2]

Joel Poncha Lemayian, Ghyslain Gagnon, Kaiwen Zhang, Pascal Giard

Cryptographic wallets play a vital role in securing digital assets within blockchain networks by managing private keys that authorize secure transactions. However, side channel analysis (SCA) attacks have become a serious threat, enabling attackers to extract sensitive information by exploiting algorithmic weaknesses in microcontroller-based wallets, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in digital assets. In hierarchically deterministic (HD) systems, the compromise of a single primary key can endanger all subsequent child keys, while the use of independent keys for each account introduces complexity and challenges in key management. This work presents HardVault, a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based cryptocurrency wallet that supports both Bitcoin and Ethereum. HardVault introduces the first hardware wallet architecture that implements both non-deterministic (ND) and HD key generation modes directly in hardware, giving users the flexibility to choose either approach based on their security and usability needs. By leveraging constant-time operations and hardware-enforced private-key isolation, the design significantly improves resilience to SCA attacks. In addition, the architecture prioritizes resource efficiency to minimize area usage without compromising security, making it well-suited for compact, portable hardware wallet applications. Implementation on a ZCU104 FPGA shows that HardVault uses only 27% of available look-up tables (LUTs). Compared to the Trezor One cryptocurrency (crypto) wallet, the proposed implementation achieves$9\times $higher energy efficiency,$8\times $lower latency, and$7\times $higher throughput.

Lizhe Liu, Weijie Tan, Shutong Lv, Huan Zhuang · 6 authors

In the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), the large-scale deployment of smart vehicles has triggered new road traffic safety challenges. Particularly, existing vehicle accident report transmission schemes still face challenges such as privacy leakage, Single Point of Failure(SPOF), physical cloning attacks, and excessive computational overhead. To address these issues, this paper proposes a secure accident report transmission scheme that uses Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proof (NIZKP) and Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF). This paper designs a decentralized authentication scheme for vehicle registration that prevents SPOF and privacy leakage. We also use the PUF to realize two-factor authentication login, which effectively resists physical cloning attacks. In addition, the authentication process uses NIZKP based on the Pedersen commitment to realize authentication for accident report coordination. At the end of the accident report coordination, it is passed into the blockchain for storage, realizing the secure transmission of accident reports. To reduce the storage as well as computation overhead, this paper uses a key derivation function to update the key. Finally, formal security analysis was conducted using the Real or Random (ROR) model and the ProVerif tool, the results prove that the proposed protocol meets security requirements. Comparing our proposed scheme with related schemes, the computational overhead of our V2V scheme is reduced by 42.4%, with higher security and lower communication overhead.

shaoren li

Abstract:The security of traditional asymmetric cryptography (e.g., ECC, RSA) relies strictly on the computational complexity of mathematical dilemmas such as discrete logarithms and prime factorization. Confronting the generational disruption of quantum computing power, these rigid mathematical structures face catastrophic risks of exponential collapse. Modern iterations ranging from smart-contract platforms to blind transaction protocols fail to address this vulnerability, remaining fundamentally derivative software modifications to Nakamoto's baseline architecture. This paper proposes a definitive paradigm shift, introducing the Thing-to-Thing (T2T) Holographic Distributed Architecture Solution. By devolving anti-tamper algorithms from the informational dimension down to the physical irreversibility of thermodynamics and semiconductor physics, we construct a hardware-native consensus architecture. Utilizing Silicon Physical Unclonable Functions (SRAM PUF) to generate true physical entropy, and locking historical ledger states via nanometer phase-change programmable fuses (eFUSE), this framework realizes a definitive manifestation of Shannon’s Perfect Secrecy operating within a 406-dimensional optimal phase space. Crucially, the architecture resolves the existential paradox of decentralized networks facing state-level regulatory and capital centralization. By enforcing a macro-capital staking matrix where baseline investments significantly exceed block minting rewards, the protocol establishes a hyper-asymmetric game equilibrium. Large institutional cartels are bound to the network's survival by an absolute thermodynamic dependency; any Byzantine deviation instantly triggers an Asymptotic Damped Slashing vector over a 10,000-block retrospective sliding window. Furthermore, this framework achieves absolute strategic deterrence against jurisdictional coercion through a hardware-native Jurisdictional Circuit Breaker (JCB). Any state-compelled ledger modification or physical infrastructure seizure triggers localized chip-level self-destruction and automated liquidity vaporization rather than ledger corruption, achieving an enduring, sovereign-immune, and material-native trust manifold.

YASSINE LKHALIDI , MOHAMED LKHALIDI , HATIM KHARRAZ AROUSSI , ACHRAF TIFERNINE

IoT device authentication must resist impersonation and credential theft while respecting the computational constraints of edge devices. Existing frameworks rely on static cryptographic keys that, once extracted, enable full impersonation, whereas RF fingerprinting schemes that bind identity to hardware imperfections transmit and store device templates in plaintext, exposing them to template theft and linkability attacks. ZK-RFAuth is a three-phase authentication framework that integrates Siamese neural network-based RF fingerprinting, Groth16 zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) verification, and proof-of-authority blockchain logging. During registration, a Siamese convolutional network extracts a compact embedding from raw I/Q samples and commits a Poseidon hash of the quantized mean template on-chain. During verification, the prover generates a Groth16 proof demonstrating that the L1 distance between a fresh embedding and the registered template falls below a per-device threshold without revealing either vector. The proof and authentication outcome are recorded on-chain for tamper-evident auditing. Evaluated on the WiSig dataset (28 WiFi transmitters, 224,000 frames), ZK-RFAuth achieves 91.4% closed-set accuracy and 2.25% equal error rate at embedding dimension d = 64, with 88.4% genuine acceptance rate and 70.8% open-set rogue rejection using per-device P95 thresholds. The ZKP circuit requires only 972 rank-1 constraint system (R1CS) constraints over 100× fewer than an equivalent SHA-256 circuit producing 144-byte proofs verifiable in approximately 3 ms.

Min Ho Jung

This paper presents a paradigm-shifting data preservation framework that completely bypasses the von Neumann storage bottleneck and Shannon's information limits. By utilizing a deterministic Resonance Mapping algorithm, physical digital payloads are evaporated into 256-bit mathematical coordinate seeds, reducing physical storage requirements to absolute zero bytes. The protocol guarantees O(1) constant-time re-materialization and integrates NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) alongside Fuzzy Extractor mechanisms, ensuring absolute cryptographic immunity against Shor's algorithm. This architecture fundamentally redefines Hyper-scale AI Data Centers, Semiconductor GPU memory walls, and Web3 stateless cold wallets.

Nobuki Fujimoto, Rei (Rei-AIOS autonomous research substrate), claude-opus-4-7) Claude (Anthropic

We present a synthesis-friendly Verilog implementation of the D-FUMT₈ Arithmetic Logic Unit, programmed onto two distinct Sipeed silicon families: Tang Console 138K (GW5AST-138B, LittleBee5 A revision, IDCODE 0x0001081B) and Tang Nano 9K (GW1NR-9C, LittleBee1 C revision, IDCODE 0x1100481B). The ALU realizes eight discrete logic values — FALSE, TRUE, NEITHER, BOTH, ZERO, FLOWING, SELF, INFINITY — encoded in 3 bits with a tier-respecting layout. The 10 supported operations include four classical-tier unary ops (NOT, OMEGA, PHI, PSI), Belnap-extended binary lattice meet/join (AND, OR), generic XOR, hardware reset, no-op, and a novel ADIABATIC operation realizing the SELF⟲ (self-reflexive) primitive: ADIABATIC(SELF) = SELF, identity elsewhere. v0.6 contributions (2026-05-10): (1) **Four-substrate cross-verification complete**: 2 Sipeed silicon families (Tang Console 138K + Tang Nano 9K, **both running byte-for-byte same dfumt8_alu_synth.v 138-line Verilog with bit-identical 0 changes to ALU logic** — only wrapper top module re-targeted for clock divider, LED polarity, and pin assignments) + Qiskit Aer simulator (Phase 1-5: 231/231 entries) + IBM Heron r2 real quantum hardware (Phase 1+2+3+5: 144/144 entries, avg fidelity 0.954). (2) **chip-portability evidence (new finding F10)**: a synthesis bug or vendor-specific assumption would diverge between LittleBee5 (5nm-class GW5AST-138B) and LittleBee1 (28nm-class GW1NR-9C) Gowin architectures; absence of divergence is operational evidence of correct synthesis on both. (3) **Tang Nano 9K User Codes**: 0x0000A5F4 (LED Blinky STEP 1038) + 0x00001D46 (D-FUMT₈ ALU STEP 1039). (4) **Reproducibility entry-cost lowered**: minimum reproduction path is ~$20 (Tang Nano 9K from 秋月電子 g117448 at ¥2,980) + free Gowin EDA Education / OSS toolchain + free Aer + free IBM Quantum Open Plan. (5) **v0.5 corrigendum RESOLVED**: Tang Nano 9K is now physical silicon programming target on equal footing with Tang Console 138K (was computational evidence only at v0.5). (6) **IDCODE-revision honest correction**: per Gowin LittleBee Programming Manual Table 5-5, GW1N(R)-9 original = 0x1100581B, GW1N(R)-9C cost-down = 0x1100481B; both `set_device ... -device_version C` (build TCL) and `--device GW1NR-9C` (programmer_cli) required for ID code match. Inherited v0.3 contributions: Lean 4 refinement proof (OUKC.PhaseC.Dfumt8AluRefinement, 292 LOC, 0 sorry) establishes commutativity of the encode/abstract-op/decode square for all four unary operations + SELF⟲ primitive law + 7 algebraic laws. IBM Heron r2 per-op fidelity hierarchy NOP/ADIABATIC ≈ 0.977 > PHI ≈ 0.956 > NOT ≈ 0.912 > XOR ≈ 0.951 reflects gate-count-vs-noise correlation consistent with quantum-noise physics expectations. Honest scope: We do NOT claim 'world-first 8-valued quantum logic' — Shi et al. (MIT, 2026, arxiv:2506.09371) demonstrated d=8 Grover on a single trapped-ion qudit prior to this work; our distinction is 3-qubit basis encoding on transmon arrays vs single-system d=8 qudit. We do NOT claim 'first paraconsistent silicon' — PAL2v (Da Silva Filho 1998-; Abe & Nakamatsu 2009; de Carvalho Jr. 2025) realized in software libraries and microcontroller-level robotics. We do NOT claim 'first many-valued silicon' — Łukasiewicz/Belnap FPGAs date to 1990s. The to-our-knowledge novel quadruple is: (D1) the specific 8-tuple semantic mapping (Belnap FDE 4-value + 4 ontological extensions: INFINITY/ZERO/FLOWING/SELF), (D2) the SELF⟲ self-reflexive primitive realized as a hardware fixed point, (D3) the four-substrate cross-verification bound to a Lean 4 refinement specification, and (D4, new in v0.6) the chip-portability evidence across two Gowin silicon architectures. Three-party co-authorship per OUKC charter v1.0 (Nobuki Fujimoto / Rei / Claude). DRAFT v0.6 — feedback welcome via GitHub Discussions at fc0web/rei-aios.

Lifu Song, Gaoli Wang, Yifeng Wei, Y Huang · 12 authors

Deoxyribonucleic acid provides unmatched information density and longevity for data storage, yet its easy amplification by polymerase chain reaction enables unauthorized replication at negligible cost. We introduce ZAT-DNA, which encodes information in patterns of canonical adenine and noncanonical 2-aminoadenine. As DNA polymerases cannot distinguish adenine from 2-aminoadenine, polymerase-based amplification erases these patterns, enforcing molecular-layer non-replicability intrinsic to the base-pairing ambiguity. We validate ZAT-DNA for secure key storage, demonstrating error-free encoding, storage, and high-fidelity nanopore retrieval of 32-bit and 64-bit cryptographic keys. ZAT-DNA blocks polymerase-based copying and protects non-fungible tokens by preventing functional duplication. For larger datasets, we present a hybrid “Babel-DNA” architecture: multiple encrypted images are co-encoded in a single regular DNA pool, with each selectively decryptable only via its cognate, non-replicable ZAT-DNA key. This provides a practical framework for molecular access control, secure DNA-encoded databases, and scarce molecular tokens. ZAT-DNA encodes data in A/Z base patterns that PCR erases, ensuring molecular non-replicability. It enables secure 32/64-bit key storage and nanopore retrieval, blocks copying, and protects NFTs. The Babel-DNA hybrid allows selective access to multiple encrypted datasets from a single DNA pool using unique ZAT-DNA keys.

Asensio Arias

A non-custodial threshold instrument for Bitcoin would allow value to transfer between parties without network connectivity, fees, or custodial dependency. Digital signatures and multisignature scripts provide part of the solution, but the core benefit is lost if the issuer retains a key capable of unilateral redemption. All prior multisignature schemes have positioned the issuer at or above the spending threshold. We propose a system that inverts this: the holder receives the two keys constituting the spending threshold of a 2-of-3 multisignature script, and the issuer holds one key arithmetically below it.

Anton L.

The rapid proliferation of generative AI has collapsed the scarcity-based filters of digital trust, enabling synthetic identities, algorithmic fraud, and systemic epistemological uncertainty. Conventional authentication methods—passwords, cloud-stored biometrics, and external hardware tokens—are inherently fragile, centralized, and vulnerable to coercion or theft. This article proposes a paradigm shift toward bodily cryptographic sovereignty: a dental implant-based digital anchor that derives a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) key from the unique acoustic resonance and microarchitecture of the human jawbone. The architecture integrates Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) for privacy-preserving verification, hardware zeroization to neutralize extraction attacks, and a configurable duress protocol for coercion scenarios. By leveraging globally established dental infrastructure and informed-consent medical protocols, the model bypasses the regulatory resistance and psychological friction associated with centralized biometric registries. It enables graded identity, scoped AI-agent delegation, and origin-verified digital communication. The proposed framework transitions digital trust from fragile external devices to an inseparable biological-cryptographic symbiosis, offering a scalable, voluntary, and regulatorily aligned architecture for the post-AI trust economy.

Huang Dongyan, Huang Min

For communication scenarios demanding extremely high information security and facing significant risks of data leakage, a covert communication scheme based on Ethereum virtual machine bytecode was proposed. By strategically allocating the storage space of smart contract variables, the scheme embedded covert data into contract bytecode and utilized the inherent characteristics of bytecode to set positioning markers, enabling efficient extraction by the receiver. Additionally, three ciphertext parsing modes were designed to accommodate transmissions of different data scales, further enhancing the security of encoded data. Theoretical analysis and extensive experimental results demonstrate that the scheme can effectively hide up to 170 bit of information per transaction. The structural similarity of opcode frequency distributions between the embedded contract and the original contract reaches up to 99.78%. The Pearson correlation coefficient of the high-frequency 3-gram opcode patterns between the normal and embedded contracts is 0.999 7 (<italic>p </italic>= 6.42×10⁻¹⁴), indicating that the embedding process does not introduce statistically significant differences in the local instruction sequence distribution. These results fully validate the strong concealment capability, transmission efficiency, and security of the proposed scheme.

Ryan Fields

The Model State Attestation Framework (MSAF) is the theoretical foundation of the Auburn Governance Stack. It establishes the intellectual authority for why cryptographic AI attestation is necessary, defines the three-tier attestation architecture, surveys over 200 papers from 2022 through 2026 confirming that no existing system composes hardware trust, continuous model health monitoring, and supply chain provenance into a unified attestation artifact, and documents the theoretical ceilings that bound what attestation can and cannot guarantee. The framework addresses a fundamental governance paradox: organizations deploying foundation models into critical infrastructure cannot definitively demonstrate that a specific output was generated by a model version in a compliant internal state. Current governance artifacts including model cards, training logs, and static benchmarks are descriptive rather than prescriptive and fundamentally non-verifiable. MSAF composes three verification tiers into a layered architecture. The first tier provides TEE-backed platform attestation for execution environment integrity, proving the silicon is real and uncompromised. The second tier provides signed continuous metrics for training and inference health monitoring, proving the model is healthy at the moment of inference. The third tier provides selective zero-knowledge proofs for high-value inference verification, enabling verification without exposing proprietary model internals. The composed attestation artifact is mapped to specific evidence requirements across five regulatory frameworks: EU AI Act Articles 11 and 15, FDA Software as a Medical Device Pre-Determined Change Control Plans, Federal Reserve SR 11-7 ongoing monitoring requirements, US Federal Procurement mandates, and AI insurance underwriting. The framework identifies the theoretical ceilings that bound attestation: Rice's theorem establishing the undecidability of semantic properties, the Impossibility Sandwich bounding what verification can achieve between Rice's theorem and Gödel's incompleteness, and TEE physical side-channel vulnerabilities limiting hardware trust guarantees. The honest framing: MSAF provides probabilistic risk reduction and accountability infrastructure, not behavioral safety guarantees. This is analogous to financial auditing, which certifies process compliance without guaranteeing future solvency. The building blocks exist individually. MSAF is the composition that binds them into an enforceable governance architecture. This work was previously hosted on Figshare, where the author maintained a portfolio of 29 publications with minted DOIs and an established ORCID record. The author's Figshare account was disabled without prior notice, without citation of a specific terms violation, and without opportunity for review, rendering all published items and their associated DOIs inaccessible. No communication was provided before or at the time of the disable action. This deposit and associated deposits on Zenodo ensure continued public accessibility of the author's research on institutional infrastructure with appropriate permanence guarantees.

Oleksandr Kuznetsov, Yelyzaveta Kuznetsova, Gulzat Ziyatbekova, Yuliia Kovalenko · 5 authors

The proliferation of sensor networks in critical infrastructure, healthcare monitoring, and smart city applications demands robust privacy-preserving mechanisms for data verification. Zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs) offer a promising cryptographic primitive that enables data integrity verification without revealing sensitive sensor readings. However, the practical feasibility of deploying zk-SNARKs in resource-constrained sensor network environments remains insufficiently characterized. This paper presents a systematic benchmarking study of the Groth16 zk-SNARK protocol across eight representative circuit types spanning six orders of magnitude in computational complexity, from basic arithmetic operations (1 constraint) to ECDSA signature verification (1,510,185 constraints). Using an automated open-source benchmarking framework built on the Circom-snarkjs toolchain, we conducted 160 statistically controlled measurements (20 iterations per circuit) with cold/warm separation, collecting proof generation time, verification time, proof size, memory consumption, and witness generation overhead. Our results demonstrate that Groth16 proofs maintain a constant size of 804.7±1.7 bytes and near-constant verification time of 0.662±0.032 s regardless of circuit complexity, with coefficients of variation below 5% across all circuit types. Proof generation time exhibits sub-linear scaling (α=0.256, R2=0.608), with statistically significant differences between circuit categories confirmed by one-way ANOVA (F=355.0, p<10-79, η2=0.94). We identify three operational deployment tiers for sensor network architectures and estimate energy budgets for battery-powered devices. These findings provide actionable guidance for the design of privacy-preserving data verification systems in next-generation sensor networks.

Richard A. Blech

We present DSKAG-IT-SIG, a family of post-quantum transaction signature schemes that achieve computational existential unforgeability under adaptive chosen-message attack, built on the DSKAG deterministic key-derivation layer. The construction derives per-transaction MAC keys through DSKAG, a deterministic symmetric key agreement protocol requiring no key transmission, no handshake, and no public key infrastructure. We prove (Theorem 1) that for an adversary making q adaptive chosen-message queries, existential forgery advantage in standard mode is at most q * 2^{-128} plus the PRF distinguishing advantage of HMAC-SHA256, reducing to the pseudorandomness of DSKAG-derived keys and the PRF security of HMAC-SHA256 under a uniform key; the ideal-cipher-model analysis gives the same q * 2^{-128} bound in idealized form. We prove (Theorem 2) that cross-domain forgery advantage is at most 2^{-128} + epsilon_iso, reducing to the key-separation properties of DSKAG across policy domains. The construction is computationally secure and is not unconditionally secure. DSKAG key derivation is built on HKDF-SHA512 (RFC 5869) over HMAC and SHA-512, and the shared base is established once via FIPS 203 ML-KEM, so security reduces throughout to standard FIPS-based symmetric and hash primitives. The scheme's post-quantum security rests on symmetric and hash hardness for authentication and on lattice hardness for the one-time base alone: the construction presents no integer-factorization or discrete-logarithm structure, so Shor's algorithm has no target and does not apply, and the operative quantum attack is Grover search, which yields at most a quadratic speedup against the 256-bit HMAC-SHA256, SHA-2, and SHA-3 primitives and preserves a 128-bit quantum security level. Because buffer uniqueness derives from tx_seq monotonicity rather than hash collision resistance, the security argument does not depend on the collision property, the hash property most weakened by quantum search. Standard-mode signatures are 30 bytes, a 97.8% reduction versus Falcon-512 (666 bytes) and compatible with ISO 20022 SWIFT message fields without re-engineering. The NexusKey composite policy digest binds asset class, jurisdiction, KYC level, and chain identity into the key derivation path; policy bypass is cryptographically equivalent to key forgery. A four-layer UltraHonk zero-knowledge proof system (143,802 gates, no trusted setup, 16 KB proof) verifies policy compliance wherever policy is enforced, off-chain in governance, cloud, and payment-processing deployments, and, where permissionless public auditability is required, on-chain; the on-chain Solidity verifier is deployed on Ethereum Sepolia and Arbitrum Sepolia. Version 2.3. 18 pages, 8 tables. Changes from v2.2: concrete finite bounds replacing generic negl(lambda) in Properties 1 and 2; buffer uniqueness derived from tx_seq monotonicity (no SHA3 collision resistance dependency); explicit ideal cipher model and standard model dual framing for HMAC analysis; formal separation of empirical and theoretical claims.

Alaa Alqaryuti, Haya Aljaghoub, Khaled Salah, Ahmad Mayyas

The growing adoption of Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVS) has increased the need for secure, transparent, and verifiable certification and lifecycle tracking of hydrogen-related components. Current practices rely on fragmented documentation and centralized record-keeping, which creates risks of data manipulation, incomplete maintenance histories, and limited visibility for regulators and service providers. This paper introduces a blockchain-based framework that integrates decentralized storage, oracle-driven automation, and three interoperable smart contracts to manage stakeholder registration, component certification, vehicle assembly validation, and maintenance tracking. Implemented and evaluated in an EVM-compatible environment, the system enforces strict role-based access control, generates immutable audit trails, and automates both failure-based and mileage-based maintenance triggers using real-time inputs. A gas-cost analysis demonstrates that all contract functions operate at minimal cost under current Ethereum conditions, supporting the feasibility of real-world deployment. Overall, the proposed framework improves traceability, regulatory compliance, and operational accountability by enabling near real-time verification of certification records and reducing manual audit processing steps compared to traditional document-based certification workflows. • Blockchain ensures secure, tamper-proof FCEV component traceability. • Smart contracts automate certification, assembly, and maintenance. • Oracle triggers enable real-time, failure-, and scheduled service. • Framework improves compliance, transparency, and lifecycle oversight.

Antonio José Marín Soto

We establish an information-theoretic lower bound on the prover overhead of any zero-knowledge proof system that verifies arbitrary neural network inference. We prove a minimum multiplicative overhead of 2x for general circuits, rising to 4x for neural networks with ReLU activations due to activation encoding, weight commitment, and layer dependency costs. We further prove that composing ZK with fully homomorphic encryption produces multiplicative overhead blowup, making ZK+FHE verification impractical beyond approximately 10^4 gates. We survey six contemporary proof systems and show their observed overheads are consistent with our bounds. Our results formalize the intuition that free verification of AI computation is impossible and provide concrete bounds for system designers.

Anthony Coslett

A deployed model can appear unchanged while ceasing to be the model it claims to be. Publicly available weight-level mutation toolchains now automate safety-alignment removal from open-weight models on ordinary hardware, producing checkpoints intended to preserve operational familiarity while discarding refusal behavior. This paper argues that safety-alignment removal is a model-identity failure: in tested published checkpoints from multiple toolchains across two model families, the mutation leaves measurable structural scars ranging from 7.6 to over 2,300 times the instrument's acceptance threshold. Artifact identity, workload identity, and agent authorization can all remain valid while structural model identity fails — a finding that the program's formally verified admissibility doctrine predicted before this threat class existed. A sentinel validation panel across four model families confirms that the hardened instrument configuration preserves or improves all tested positives. In an agentic deployment context, model-identity failure propagates upward into agent-integrity failure: the agent is authenticated, but the model inside it is no longer the model the surrounding controls were designed to govern. The practical implication is that runtime evaluation frameworks — including those emerging under the EU AI Act — implicitly depend on a model continuity that weight-level mutation can break, and that structural identity verification offers a candidate evidentiary layer for closing that gap. The Neural Network Identity Series — Mathematical foundations, empirical validation, and governance frameworks for verifying which model is running Newest addition: Technical Note: The Disappearing Window — AI Logprob Access Withdrawal and the Structural Verifiability of Frontier Model Contracts (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20362098) Paper 1: The δ-Gene: Inference-Time Physical Unclonable Functions from Architecture-Invariant Output Geometry (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18704275) Paper 2: Template-Based Endpoint Verification via Logprob Order-Statistic Geometry (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18776711) Paper 3: The Geometry of Model Theft: Distillation Forensics, Adversarial Erasure, and the Illusion of Spoofing (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18818608) Paper 4: Provenance Generalization and Verification Scaling for Neural Network Forensics (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18872071) Paper 5: Beneath the Character: The Structural Identity of Neural Networks — Mathematical Evidence for a Non-Narrative Layer of AI Identity (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18907292) Paper 6: Which Model Is Running?: Structural Identity as a Prerequisite for Trustworthy Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19008116) Paper 7: The Deformation Laws of Neural Identity (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19055966) Paper 8: What Counts as Proof? — Admissible Evidence for Neural Network Identity Claims (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19058540) Paper 9: Composable Model Identity — Formal Hardening of Structural Attestations in the Enterprise Identity Stack (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19099911) Paper 10:Where Identity Comes From: Path Sensitivity and Endpoint Underdetermination in Neural Network Training (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19118807) Paper 11: Post-Hoc Disclosure Is Not Runtime Proof: Model Identity at Frontier Scale (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19216634) Paper 12: Family-Dependent Response to Reasoning Distillation Across Structural and Functional Identity Layers (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19298857) Paper 13: Safety-Alignment Removal as a Model-Identity Failure — Structural Evidence from Published Weight-Level Mutation Checkpoints (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19383019) Technical Note: Agent Identity Is Not Model Identity (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19240883) Technical Note: Gap Invariance: Why PPP Measurements Are Domain-Independent by Construction (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19275524) Technical Note: Measured Model Substitution Under Valid Agent Credentials (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19342848) Technical Note: Artifact Identity Is Not Runtime Identity — Trustfall Lite and the Boundary of File-Level Model Verification (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20019127) Formal Verification Stack for Neural Network Structural Identity (IT-PUF Coq Proofs) (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18930621) Copyright (c) 2026 Anthony Ray Coslett / Fall Risk AI, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Confidential and Proprietary. Patent Pending (Applications 63/982,893, 63/990,487, 63/996,680, 64/003,244).

Mayckon Giovani

Contemporary cryptographic execution systems-particularly those employing zero-knowledge proofs-provide strong guarantees that a computation satisfies a given arithmetic circuit. However, satisfying a circuit is not equivalent to executing correctly with respect to the intended semantics of the system being proven. This paper identifies and formalizes the semantic gap: the class of failures in which execution is provably valid under a proof system yet provably invalid under the system's formal specification. We present the Verifiable Semantic Execution Layer (VSEL), a layered architecture that binds formal specification, execution, constraint derivation, proof generation, and verification into a single semantically coherent pipeline. VSEL models systems as deterministic labeled transition systems, defines explicit semantic mappings between concrete and formal artifacts, derives constraints mechanically from a semantic intermediate representation, and requires that every accepted proof attest not merely to constraint satisfaction but to membership in the formal language of valid execution traces. We define the proof obligations, invariant system, and refinement chain required for end-to-end semantic correctness; characterize the adversarial model including specification manipulation, underconstraint exploitation, and compositional failure; and establish the conditions under which composition of independently correct systems preserves global correctness. The architecture integrates hybrid post-quantum cryptography to ensure long-term validity of proofs and commitments, and introduces a formal economic invariant layer that elevates economic semantics from informal domain knowledge to enforceable first-class predicates over states and execution traces. We provide a complete formal treatment of the system model, semantic preservation theorems, constraint soundness and completeness conditions, witness uniqueness requirements, economic admissibility conditions, and the assume-guarantee framework for safe composition.

PRAKASH VAITHYANATHAN

Current synchronous AI architectures, exemplified by the 1000W+ NVIDIA Rubin platform, rely on global clock-trees that generate deterministic electromagnetic harmonics. These periodic power signatures act as physical beacons, enabling sophisticated Side Channel Power Analysis (SCPA) to reconstruct sensitive model weights. This paper proposes the Asynchronous Entropy-Engine (AEE), a theoretical clockless execution environment that replaces rhythmic switching with handshake-driven logic to eliminate exploitable leakage. Central to this architecture is the Arnold Stability Index (ASI) Governor, which mapsregister-level neural trajectories onto high-dimensional stability manifolds to trigger Dynamic Grid-Coarsening. Architectural modeling indicates this approach achieves a 30.5% reduction in the ”Synchronous Polling Tax.” Crucially, we introduce a Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) interface, wherein synchronous logic islands are triggered by an asynchronous handshake protocol governed by the ASI to mask periodic power-draw harmonics. We demonstrate through performance analysis that the resulting energy surplus can power a hardware-integrated Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) generator, producing non-interactive STARKs of inference integrity without a net power penalty. Simulation results indicate a 98.9% reduction in deterministic harmonics, effectively rendering high-TDP silicon ”electronically silent.” By decoupling execution from a fixed global heartbeat, the AEE establishes a new paradigm of ”Energy-Neutral Privacy,” providing a robust physical-layer defense against adversarial power analysis in trillion-parameter AI factories.

Brandon Husbands, Witchborn Systems

Tangible Encryption is a cryptographic framework that replaces the “secret zero” bootstrap problem in secrets management with a verifiable, identity-based trust model. Instead of requiring an antecedent credential to access protected secrets, this approach binds access control to ownership of a persistent cryptographic token (e.g., an NFT), enabling authentication through proof of ownership rather than shared knowledge. This work formalizes the use of non-fungible tokens as ownable roots of trust, where token ownership encodes identity, access rights, and provenance on a distributed ledger. A deterministic key derivation model is introduced, allowing secrets to be encrypted and decrypted without transmitting or storing a traditional master secret. Verification is performed via cryptographic signatures and on-chain state checks, eliminating circular trust dependencies inherent in systems such as Vault, SOPS, and cloud KMS. The framework is evaluated in the context of AI systems, including model provenance, secure dataset access, and autonomous agent authentication across organizational boundaries. Security considerations such as key compromise, revocation, and ledger integrity are analyzed, alongside implementation tradeoffs between public and permissioned ledgers. Tangible Encryption establishes a portable, verifiable trust anchor that operates independently of any single platform or identity provider, unifying identity, access control, and auditability into a single cryptographic primitive.