No single global race
Tokyo ground motion, an Osaka building and a regional propagation layer are different useful tasks. Nodes can solve them in parallel rather than destroying one another’s work in a single winner-takes-all race.
Research concept
Physical-world consensus
Quantum-resistant foundation
Proof of Tensor Generating Work
Namazu Chain is a research architecture in which nodes earn trust and consensus weight by producing verifiable improvements to earthquake, regional-propagation and building-response tensors—not by winning a wasteful global hash race.
The concept separates immediate earthquake communication from later scientific verification and permanent ledger finalization. It is not presented as a deployed public warning system.
VERIFIED
TENSOR
WORK
TENSOR
WORK
3D sensor records
regional tensor
building response
independent verification
The central proposal
Useful calculation is the work.
A node should gain eligibility because it explains committed physical data more accurately and reproducibly—not because it searched more random nonces than everyone else.
A node earns the right to contribute by producing a new, independently verifiable tensor result.
Accuracy creates the next task
A validated improvement can unlock a wider-area tensor, a higher layer, a building-state update or a floor-level simulation. Progress expands a graph of useful work.
Claims create accountable history
Every node carries a signed record of correct claims, challenges, rejected calculations and later physical-state changes. Trust becomes specific, inspectable and domain-aware.
PoTGW mechanism
From signed shake data to a verified work certificate.
The ledger does not accept a claimed accuracy number on faith. Other nodes reproduce the measurement against the same committed inputs and defined calculation rules.
1. Open task
A region, time window, tensor type, input-data root and current accepted accuracy level are defined.
2. Commit result
A node commits coefficients, solver version, residual commitment and a claimed improvement level.
3. Independent checks
Validators recalculate fit, held-out prediction, physical constraints and canonical encoding.
4. Certificate
A quorum signs a Verified Tensor Work Certificate for the accepted task and result.
5. Final ordering
A post-quantum validator quorum orders certificates, challenges and state changes into checkpoints.
Primary work
Proof of Tensor Generating Work
Consensus credit comes from validated improvements: observed fit, held-out prediction, physical plausibility, stability and appropriate model complexity.
Liveness only
No-work periods
Maintenance tasks and low-cost validator heartbeat checkpoints keep the ledger alive. Minimal hash work, if retained at all, is only a clearly marked emergency fallback—not the economic center of the system.
Tensor work graph
Local work can grow into wider physical models.
Accepted tensors become inputs for later tasks. The network can progressively connect raw measurements, regions, structures and resident-level estimates.
Sensor points
Signed 3-axis acceleration streams from IoT devices, gateways and participating smartphones.
Local tensors
Canonical coefficient models for selected groups such as 8 or 80 geographically related points.
Regional layers
Validated local tensors become virtual observation points for wider propagation calculations.
Building response
Ground motion is combined with a versioned structural tensor to estimate motion by building and floor.
A chain of changing reality
A mismatch may reveal damage—not dishonesty.
A building tensor can be correct for one physical state and later stop matching after damage, renovation, sensor failure or other structural change. Namazu preserves both the old truth and the transition.
Building state epoch 7
Tensor version 7 is independently verified against the building’s measured response.
Earthquake event
New observations diverge materially from the expected residual distribution.
State-change investigation
The record is marked for possible structural change, sensor failure or insufficient data—not silently rewritten.
Building state epoch 8
A newly verified tensor becomes valid for the changed physical state while version 7 remains historically intact.
Claim outcomes
Verified, challenged, invalid calculation, false input, superseded model, physical-state change, sensor failure suspected, or insufficient data.
Domain-specific reputation
Reliability is tracked by region, sensor type, tensor class, algorithm family and building class—not reduced to one simplistic global score.
Scientific audit trail
Past coefficients, inputs, challenges and transition evidence remain available for later review and disaster analysis.
Two clocks, one system
Immediate communication first. Final verification later.
Public safety cannot wait for block confirmation. Namazu therefore separates a fast event path from the slower process of independent verification and permanent finalization.
Fast path
Namazu Event Network
Signed local detections are broadcast immediately. Nearby devices and gateways combine observations, form preliminary regional estimates and deliver progressive-confidence information to participating apps.
Verification path
PoTGW and settlement
Nodes improve and challenge the tensors, issue work certificates, record building-state transitions and finalize a post-quantum audit trail after the immediate event.
Sensor detection → immediate broadcast → regional estimate → building/floor model → independent verification → permanent checkpoint
Research status
What has been demonstrated—and what has not.
The PoTGW-first four-node local devnet has now been implemented and tested with deterministic synthetic tasks. The next scientific step is replay against recorded accelerometer datasets and independent review.
Executed locally
Initial tensor-work prototype
A Java research prototype generated synthetic 3D acceleration records, fit them into coefficients, checked error, committed result roots and constructed a locally verified proof block.
Executed locally
PoTGW-first four-node devnet
The project reports 30 finalized checkpoints, 20 valid work certificates across 11 task domains, and 24 passing tests with primary hash mining disabled. All four node processes reached the same finalized tip; false and copied claims were rejected; a simulated building-state transition was preserved.
Future research
Physical data and field trials
Recorded accelerometer datasets, calibrated sensors, controlled building experiments, latency studies, external scientific review and public-safety governance are still required.
Important: Namazu Chain is currently a research concept and prototype direction. It is not a
certified earthquake early-warning service, structural-safety diagnosis, evacuation instruction system or
substitute for official public-safety information.