Consensus
Introduction
Kontor is the first metaprotocol to transcend Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time and transaction throughput limits, offering confirmations in only 1–2 seconds, dramatically lower fees, and over 1,000 transactions per second—all while relying entirely on Bitcoin consensus for transaction finality.
Like all metaprotocols, every Kontor transaction is simply extra data stored inside regular Bitcoin transaction. Embedded consensus is the foundation: Kontor indexers scan Bitcoin blocks, find Kontor transactions, and execute them according to the Kontor protocol rules. Because Bitcoin provides an immutable log and Kontor’s rules are deterministic, every indexer arrives at the same state.
Kontor, however, includes three sets of innovations which greatly improve the performance, scalability and functionality of the Bitcoin network without compromising its security guarantees:
Transaction Encoding — Kontor offers the best of both worlds when it comes to token transfer semantics: Kontor tokens can be “attached” to Bitcoin UTXOs for trading with standard Bitcoin tools (PSBTs, atomic swaps), or “detached” for direct use in smart contracts.
Optimistic Consensus — Kontor includes a novel consensus layer that offers real-time transaction finality with a Byzantine fault–tolerant prediction market on Bitcoin’s mempool.
Scalability — Kontor’s transaction encoding scheme is heavily optimized for space efficiency, with trustless BLS signature aggregation, compact registry IDs, efficient binary encoding, and data compression, allowing Kontor to achieve 1,000+ TPS at less than 10 WU per transaction.