[Cryptography] DSM: deterministic state machine (edge, post-quantum, no public ledger/consensus)

[jennifer at bayuk.com]

I had a reason to write a script to search through the archives a while back, it was quick and dirty, but it worked to find your entries, attached.


From: cryptography <cryptography-bounces+jennifer=bayuk.com at metzdowd.com> on behalf of Cryptskii via cryptography <cryptography at metzdowd.com>
Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 8:39 PM
To: cryptography at metzdowd.com <cryptography at metzdowd.com>
Subject: [Cryptography] DSM: deterministic state machine (edge, post-quantum, no public ledger/consensus)

Hello,

I’ve been building a protocol called DSM (Decentralized State Machine), a deterministic, post-quantum state machine that lives on devices at the edge. There is no public ledger and no consensus protocol; peers exchange and verify relationship-specific state directly. It’s meant as a general verifiable state layer for arbitrary data (identity, credentials, logs, sensor readings, balances, etc.), not just payments.

I shared a paper here quite some time ago (which I would have replied to), but I’ve lost the emails and any other references. I couldn’t remember which month it was, so I didn’t scour the archives to find it. Hopefully that’s all right.

On 6 December 2025 I successfully ran full Bluetooth-only bilateral transfers with stitched receipts and deterministic verification, using the same state rules described in the spec. DSM is currently running on an armeabi-v7a Kindle tablet and an arm64-v8a Samsung A54; both work well, with only minor UI delay on the Kindle under load. I’m now preparing a small private beta and getting ready to open-source the code.

A concise specification is here:
    https://decentralizedstatemachine.com/DSM__A_Concise__Post_Quantum_Specification.pdf

I’ll also be publishing updated, full logs along with a short video showing the two devices sending and receiving an offline Bluetooth transfer of the native token ERA, using the same deterministic rules described in the spec.

Project ethos:
- No foundation and no protocol treasury.
- No VC funding; I’ve received no funding so far and prefer a grassroots, donation-supported path.
- DSM is intended as a public, non-commercial protocol that any device can implement without permission.

I’d like this list to be among the first groups to look at it and to follow along as I open the code. I’m happy to treat long-time members of this list as first in line for an early look at the implementation once I’m comfortable publishing it. I've done everything as solo dev thus far. I'm to peak some of the members of this list's curiosity and have you joined me in taking this to main net. I'm not experienced on a team and don't really have any networking. I'm self taught nine years of cryptography three years as a developer. Would be excellent to have some of you join me in building this.

For anyone who wants to follow implementation progress more closely, there is a small dev chat here:
    https://t.me/+agb3_DHBcCI5MTkx
or:
    https://keybase.io/team/d_s_m


Any critical feedback on the spec or the overall security model is appreciated.

Best,
Brandon Ramsay
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