Trustless Provenance Trees: A Game-Theoretic Framework for Operator-Gated Blockchain Registries

Abstract: We present a formal treatment of provenance trees, directed acyclic graphs of artifact registrations anchored immutably on a public blockchain, and introduce the operator trust problem: when a single privileged operator submits all on-chain registrations on behalf of users, the on-chain record alone cannot distinguish user-initiated registrations from unilateral operator actions. We resolve this through a dual-layer cryptographic commitment scheme in which two commitments derived from a single client-side secret key, binding the key to the tree root and to each unique registration identifier, make false attribution claims strictly dominated strategies. We prove correctness under standard cryptographic assumptions and establish honest behavior as the unique Nash equilibrium without relying on operator trust. We further introduce and analyze the tree poisoning problem: adversarial attacks on users' provenance trees via fraudulent root registration, malicious child attachment, and tree identity spoofing. We characterize the closure properties of each attack variant and prove that a complete provenance tree integrity model requires three distinct mechanisms: cryptographic priority, governance cascade, and contract enforcement, each necessary and none individually sufficient. The construction is deployed on Base (Ethereum L2) as AnchorRegistry, an immutable on-chain provenance registry. We provide gas complexity analysis demonstrating O(1) cost invariant to registry scale, and a trustless reconstruction algorithm recovering the complete registry from public event logs alone.

• The paper introduces a dual-layer cryptographic commitment scheme that secures artifact registration by proving per-anchor and per-tree initiation without exposing client secrets.
• The paper formalizes provenance trees as DAGs and uses game-theoretic analysis to eliminate false attribution strategies, establishing an honest Nash equilibrium for all actors.
• The paper demonstrates a scalable, gas-efficient implementation on Ethereum L2, enabling trustless and auditable reconstruction of blockchain provenance registries.

Trustless Provenance Trees and Game-Theoretic Attribution in Operator-Gated Blockchain Registries

Formalization of Provenance Trees

The paper rigorously defines the provenance tree as a DAG where nodes correspond to artifact registrations, structurally encoding artifact lineage while enforcing append-only immutability, uniqueness of identifiers, ancestry integrity, strict tree membership, O($|V|$) reconstructibility from public logs, cryptographically enforced tree ownership, and per-anchor initiation proof. This foundational formalization unifies key properties required for robust attribution in AI-derived content and digital IP, setting a basis for the cryptographic and mechanism design contributions that follow.

The Operator Trust Problem

Operator-gated registries, in which a privileged contract role submits all on-chain records, improve user experience by abstracting away cryptocurrency management and gas fees. However, this model critically weakens provenance attribution: without user signatures on chain, there is a fundamental indistinguishability problem. Both legitimate user-driven registration and unilateral operator actions yield indistinguishable on-chain artifacts. This operator trust problem disrupts attribution, falsifies legal and IP claims, and exposes the registry to incentive-aligned adversarial strategies in dispute resolution scenarios.

The authors abstract the operator trust issue as a strategic form game, demonstrating that—without further cryptographic mechanism—false operator attribution and undetectable unilateral operator actions are both Nash equilibria, undermining the registry's evidentiary value.

Dual-Layer Cryptographic Commitment Scheme

To resolve the attribution ambiguity, the paper introduces a dual-layer cryptographic commitment construction. For each registration, a client-side generated secret $K$ produces (1) a tree identity commitment $T = H(K \| R)$ anchored at the root and (2) a per-anchor commitment $\Phi_i = H(K \| C_i)$ for each child registration. Critically, $K$ is never transmitted off the client, and all commitments are written directly to the chain by the operator using user-supplied commitments.

Security proofs are given in the reductionist model: under keccak256 preimage resistance and client-side key secrecy, only the true initiator can produce a valid $K$ passing both $T$ and all $\Phi_i$ verifications, even under full operator adversarial control. The smart contract strictly enforces the inclusion of non-zero token commitments for user content and hardcodes governance anchors via the all-zero sentinel value. These mechanisms yield a unified, robust, and strictly trustless per-registration initiation proof, overcoming all prior attribution limitations in operator-gated designs.

Mechanism Design and Nash Equilibrium Analysis

Equipped with dual-layer commitments, the paper reanalyzes the strategic games between users and the operator. The central result is the elimination of profitable false attribution and unilateral registration strategies. Any verifiable dispute demands the production of $K$; false claimants either self-incriminate or are dismissed, as the only alternative—preimage inversion—contradicts core cryptographic assumptions. Strict dominated strategies eliminate attack equilibria, ensuring the honest-party equilibrium (users register only their content, operator submits only authorized actions) is unique.

Three additional adversarial games are analyzed, characterizing real-world attacks on provenance tree integrity:

• Fraudulent Root Registration: Closed via cryptographic priority, as tree IDs are unique and unforgeable.
• Malicious Child Attachment: Handled by governance cascade (VOID), which is fully auditable due to commitment structure; this does not impede organic lineage due to the permissionless attachment model.
• Tree Identity Spoofing: Strictly closed via contract-level enforcement; adversaries lack the gatekeeping privilege and cannot submit valid commitments.

The necessary and sufficient combination of cryptographic priority, governance cascade, and contract enforcement is proven to comprehensively close all tree poisoning attack classes. The analysis directly shows that no single mechanism suffices.

Implementation and Gas-Efficient Trustless Reconstruction

A production deployment on Base (Ethereum L2) as AnchorRegistry is described, with open-source tools for trustless registry reconstruction and on-chain verification. The design achieves O(1) per-registration gas cost overhead with respect to registry size and tree depth, ensuring broad scalability. A significant engineering contribution is the trustless O($|V|$) reconstruction algorithm, leveraging event logs and fully enabling public, off-chain, infrastructure-free verification of any registry subtree.

Practical and Theoretical Implications

The work sets a formal, cryptographically grounded standard for provable authorship and derivation attribution in operator-mediated blockchain provenance registries. This is especially relevant in the AI era, where auditability, legal provenance, and incentive-compatible mechanism design are become cornerstones of responsible AI use and digital IP management. The architecture avoids sacrificial tradeoffs between usability and trustlessness—abstracting crypto-management while preserving strict cryptographic guarantees.

On a theoretical level, the dual-layer commitment scheme constitutes a concrete application of game-theoretic mechanism design for attribution—a domain that traditionally lacked precise modeling in permissioned registration flows. The necessary-sufficiency proof for tree integrity mechanisms generalizes to other graph-structured registries, suggesting fruitful directions for cross-domain trustless infrastructure.

Potential avenues for future research include: automated governance logic to minimize operator subjectivity in the VOID cascade; further abstraction of client-side key management for usability and recoverability in enterprise scenarios; and adaptation to more general DAG-structured artifact lineages beyond trees.

Conclusion

This paper establishes a complete cryptographic and mechanism design framework for trustless provenance in operator-gated blockchain registries (2604.03434). The dual-layer commitment scheme enforces per-anchor and per-tree initiation proofs, eliminating incentive-compatible attack equilibria and rendering the honest strategy dominant for all actors. Comprehensive analysis and implementation validate that three distinct mechanisms—cryptographic priority, governance intervention, and contract-level enforcement—are all required for closure against characteristic poisoning attacks. The scheme provides a scalable, efficient, and auditably trustless foundation for provenance attribution in emerging AI-driven digital content ecosystems.