Interplanetary Bitcoin Enabled by Verifiable Transit Timestamping ∞ Research

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Briefing

This foundational research addresses the inherent unsuitability of Bitcoin’s current consensus and transaction propagation mechanisms for interplanetary distances, characterized by extreme latency and intermittent connectivity. The paper proposes Proof-of-Transit Timestamping (PoTT), a novel transport-level cryptographic primitive that creates tamper-evident audit trails for Bitcoin data across deep-space links. This breakthrough enables a practical interplanetary Bitcoin economy by providing verifiable custody and timing evidence for off-chain disputes and asynchronous settlement, fundamentally extending Bitcoin’s utility to a multi-planetary future without altering its foundational monetary base or consensus rules.

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Context

Prior to this work, deploying Bitcoin as a universal monetary standard across interplanetary distances faced significant theoretical and practical limitations. Traditional blockchain consensus mechanisms, designed for terrestrial networks, are incompatible with the one-way light time (OWLT) delays of 3 to 22 minutes between Earth and Mars, which render synchronized competitive mining impractical. Earlier thought experiments suggested increasing base-layer block intervals to hours to preserve fairness, which would drastically reduce throughput. Existing transport protocols also lacked cryptographically verifiable records of message propagation necessary for robust dispute resolution in high-latency, intermittently connected environments.

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Analysis

The paper’s core mechanism, Proof-of-Transit Timestamping (PoTT, pronounced “pot”), is a new transport-level receipt primitive. It cryptographically chains hop-timed custody attestations to Bitcoin payload hashes, creating tamper-evident propagation histories. This mechanism fundamentally differs from previous approaches by providing a verifiable, beacon-audited, hop-timed chain bound to Bitcoin payload hashes, designed specifically for Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) environments.

Each relay node appends a signed receipt containing the payload hash, a unique nonce, its identity, ingress/egress timestamps, and a hash of the previous receipt, preventing splicing or reordering. This chain-of-custody operates strictly out-of-band, informing watchtower decisions, routing policy, and off-chain arbitration for Lightning Network and sidechain pegs, without modifying Bitcoin’s base-layer consensus or script semantics.

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Parameters

Core Concept ∞ Proof-of-Transit Timestamping (PoTT)
New Primitive ∞ Transport-level cryptographic receipt chain
Key Authors ∞ Jose E. Puente, Carlos Puente
Primary Application Domain ∞ Interplanetary Bitcoin economy (Earth-Mars)
Underlying Network ∞ Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN)
Bitcoin Integration Layers ∞ Lightning Network, Federated Sidechains, Blind-Merge-Mined Commit Chains
Timestamp Standard ∞ International Atomic Time (TAI) seconds
Receipt Size ∞ Approximately 203 bytes per hop

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Outlook

This formalization of PoTT opens significant avenues for future research and real-world applications. Immediate next steps include developing rigorous game-based security and timing proofs for PoTT, creating open-source interoperable specifications, and establishing terrestrial testbeds emulating interplanetary conditions. Within three to five years, this theory could unlock truly global decentralized finance, enabling secure, reliable Bitcoin transactions and payments for nascent off-world economies on Mars and beyond. It establishes a framework for extending foundational blockchain principles to extreme environments, fostering new research in space-based networking, distributed ledger technology, and cross-domain trust models.

This research delivers a critical, physics-aware cryptographic primitive essential for extending Bitcoin’s foundational principles to enable a robust, verifiable interplanetary monetary standard.

Signal Acquired from ∞ arxiv.org