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This document introduces the AllChain model — a conceptual architecture for distributed ledgers — for designers, developers, and observers of blockchain technologies seeking clarity beyond buzzwords.
This is the first public description of the AllChain ledger model, written to provide a conceptual framework for future technical and policy discussions. It describes how AllChain separates roles traditionally bundled into ‘full nodes,’ and reimagines ledgers as systems with human-readable purpose.
In 2025, the architecture of blockchain systems has reached a curious point. Dozens of networks exist, but they didn’t agree on how work should be divided — or even what the work was.
Some focused on consensus: getting everyone to agree, no matter the cost.
Others emphasized performance: trusting central actors for the sake of speed.
Still others sought transparency: storing everything, forever, everywhere.
There are vigorous debates regarding which game to play for the reward of declaring the next block in each blockchain, without clearly defining, in a unified way, what each scrip is supposed to be good for. AllChain brandion declarations include the identity of the entity who created the brandion, what its purpose is, what its policies are, and what, if anything, it can be redeemed for, in a way that constitutes an enforceable contract between the members holding the brandion and the crew who issued it.
Additional layers like ‘rollups’ appeared to patch inefficiencies in Nakamoto’s original design — which, though ingenious, doesn’t scale cleanly, and has veered very far away from its original populist promise.
AllChain doesn’t patch the old model. It rewrites the grammar.
Six roles. Three core functions. Each crucial. Each elegant. Each separable. The administrative and user roles are defined as part of a system intended to add value to the lives of human beings. Together, a synthesis.
Furthermore, having a single per-ledger authority allows greater facility for adjustments by humans: Instead of mutual suspicion, the AllChain ledger model switches the power dynamic to people at the top, rather than cold math, allowing for social dynamics and purposed coins that can be explicitly redeemed instead of burned.
The three core software roles are Boss, Clerk, and Mirror. Where traditional blockchains pack all responsibilities into ‘full nodes,’ AllChain separates the powers — like a well-formed government — enabling clearer responsibilities and more scalable, human-aligned systems. The "Boss" role extends the chain. In Bitcoin, all mining nodes compete to solve a computation-heavy puzzle first, for the reward associated with writing the next block. In AllChain, the Boss role is administratively centralized. The "Clerk" role collects new transactions for relay to the Boss. In Bitcoin, all nodes share new transactions universally, as any mining node might become the next boss. The "mirror" nodes form content delivery networks, communicating the current ledger states without requiring all participants in the system to maintain copies of data not relevant to them.
Rather than having competing consensuses, and wasting resources redundantly checking transactions and voting, or waiting multiple block additions to “lock in” a transaction to when having it backed out is sufficiently unlikely, an AllChain ledger state is an immutable acyclic graph of posted account balances.
Only the current ledger state need be posted by the boss, and only to the specialized mirror nodes, greatly reducing the amount of storage needed to operate a limited node, for instance a point-of-sale system. Duplication of the boss for high availability is still possible on a per-ledger basis, as the AllChain protocols support distributed clusters, but is no longer required. AllChain tokens pay their own way, instead of being taxed by a hosting blockchain.
Instead of shadow backers operating ponzi schemes, each AllChain scrip token, or "Brandion," has its own ledger which may be operated by the brandion's crew themselves or resources may be hired as needed. AllChain supports well-formed and explicit organizational charts with a human crew at the top.
The boss knows the ledger’s secret and uses it to sign the current ledger state. The boss may be distributed, within a virtual trust perimeter, as knowledge of the secret allows arbitrary alterations to the mirrored data.
The mirrors replicate and distribute the authoritative signed data.
The clerks validate transaction instructions from account holders and present them to the boss.
Additionally, the AllChain model introduces the human element explicitly. Each ledger in the AllChain model is the responsibility of a human “crew” who set the policies the Boss and Clerks enforce, while the persons with accounts in a ledger, and use wallet software to transact from these accounts, are called “members.” The entities which transact from accounts using the same protocols as wallets, but which are not persons, are called “aengels.” Aengels provide the services which would be provided by "contracts" in Ethereum. Like Bosses, however, aengels are not universally provisioned to run on full nodes. AllChain does not have "full nodes."
The clerk role corresponds to what some systems call validators, others miners, and still others just "nodes." Clerks communicate with the account holders, via wallet protocols.
But in AllChain, the clerk isn’t the final authority.
The clerk builds the draft: proposing the next step in the ledger’s evolution.
They validate inputs, assemble transactions, compute results — and present the wet clay slab for inspection.
They are the engineers.
They ensure that rules are followed.
But they don’t decide what becomes law.
They are scissors — slicing through bad data and trimming what doesn’t fit.
The boss is not a dictator — but neither is it just another participant.
The boss is the entity that blesses the concrete.
It takes the clerk’s draft and says, “This shall be the next block.”
It fires the clay into permanence.
It alone can say: this is the truth the world shall inherit.
The boss can override the clerk.
It can revise policy mid-stream.
It sets the rules, and enforces them not by computation — but by signature.
A final arbiter, not a contributor.
It is rock — the foundation.
The mirror nodes are not judges, and they do no drafting.
They watch. They copy. They serve.
Like the monks of old who transcribed sacred texts,
mirror nodes replicate the ledger for anyone to see.
They don’t invent truth, or decide it.
They preserve it.
They are the reason a user can say, “Let me see for myself.”
They reflect the state — always current, always faithful.
They make abstract truth accessible.
They are the scroll, but not the scribe.
The AllChain protocols include facility for an allchain scrip to declare network coordinates for recommended mirrors, and support for verifying that listed mirrors are in fact providing current data.
Operating a mirror is envisioned as a set-it-up-and-collect-payment entry level participation for interested sysadmins, similar to "mining" in proof-of-work blockchains.
Where earlier blockchain models blurred these functions, AllChain separates them — and by doing so, clarifies them.
Just as Dyson revealed that Schwinger, Tomonaga, and Feynman were all telling the same story — in different dialects — AllChain reveals that validation, consensus, and state dissemination are not necessarily entangled functions of a monolithic node program, but separate roles that may be provided by separate programs.
It’s not just a division of labor.
It’s a new lens on what distributed truth is.
This layered model may prove generally useful.
And the cycle continues — not as a hierarchy, as a loop of messages passed between cooperating components.
Instead of:
We reinterpret this as:
This reinterpretation suggests a syntactic tyranny — where each role derives its form from another, caught in a cycle of domination-by-information-source. There’s no absolute freedom, only inherited constraints.
Each one is:
It’s not just workflow. It’s a linguistic ouroboros, a closed grammar of function and control.
In metaphorical terms, each AllChain role is both constrained by and constrains another — a cycle of informational control that echoes the structure of language itself.
Paper controls Rock:
The narrative constrains the authority.
Rock acts only within the boundaries set by what’s on the page.
🪞 The crew controls the Boss — per-ledger policies are set by accountable persons
Scissors controls Paper:
The editorial blade shapes the story.
Constraints on who qualifies to have an account in a ledger, and not giving more from an account than is in the account, are enforced by clerks
✂️ The Clerk enforces access control and sanity — Only valid transactions are presented to the boss.
Rock controls Scissors:
The lawgiver crushes the tool.
Rock doesn’t argue — it ends debates.
🪨 The Boss controls the Clerk — Filtered transactions submitted by clerks are checked again, and merged, by the boss, forming the next posted ledger status.
Mirror is not a player in R/P/S — it’s the arena.
It’s the neutral field of play where moves are shown, frozen, and reviewed.
The mirror is the scoreboard, not the coach or the referee.
You can’t win a game as the mirror — but nothing that happens is real until the mirror shows it.
Roles:
In AllChain, truth is not mined — it is composed, endorsed, and revealed.
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