papers/chain-first-architecture/chain-first-architecture.tex

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{../shared/luxcover}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb,amsfonts,amsthm}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{algorithm}
\usepackage{algpseudocode}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows.meta,positioning,shapes.geometric,fit}

\hypersetup{colorlinks=true,linkcolor=black,citecolor=blue,urlcolor=blue}

\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{lemma}[theorem]{Lemma}
\newtheorem{corollary}[theorem]{Corollary}
\newtheorem{proposition}[theorem]{Proposition}
\newtheorem{definition}{Definition}[section]
\newtheorem{remark}{Remark}[section]

\title{Chain-First Architecture:\\Blockchain as Source of Truth for\\Regulated Financial Infrastructure}

\author{
Zach Kelling\thanks{Corresponding author: [email protected]}\\
\textit{Lux Industries, Inc.}\\
\texttt{[email protected]}
}

\date{2024}

\begin{document}

\luxcoverpage

\begin{abstract}
We describe a ``chain-first'' architecture for regulated financial
infrastructure in which the blockchain is the authoritative source of
truth for all asset ownership and transfer records, while traditional
databases serve only as read caches that are always re-derivable from
on-chain state.  This inverts the conventional pattern in which a
centralized database is authoritative and the blockchain is an
afterthought settlement layer.  We formalize the architecture as a
state machine with two components: (1)~an append-only chain that
records every state transition via digitally signed transactions, and
(2)~a local cache (SQLite in development, PostgreSQL in production)
that materializes the current state by replaying chain events through
a deterministic indexer.  We prove three correctness properties:
\emph{cache consistency} (the cache always reflects the chain state),
\emph{crash recovery} (the cache can be fully reconstructed from the
chain), and \emph{chain independence} (the API layer continues to
serve reads from the cache when the chain is temporarily unavailable,
and queues writes for later settlement).  The architecture is deployed
on a regulated EVM L1 for an ATS handling
12,784 security tokens, with benchmarks showing 2ms read latency from
cache versus 150ms from chain RPC.
\end{abstract}

\tableofcontents
\newpage

%% =====================================================================

\input{sections/01-introduction}
\input{sections/02-formal-model}
\input{sections/03-correctness-properties}
\input{sections/04-worm-audit-trail}
\input{sections/05-architecture-details}
\input{sections/06-resilience-analysis}
\input{sections/07-formal-verification}
\input{sections/99-conclusion}

\end{document}