I've been thinking about the persistent opacity and accessibility problems in blockchain ledgers. Traditional blockchains store canonical data as symbolic structures (hashes, JSON, binary transactions, or code)—human intent only appears indirectly, requiring translation layers that introduce semantic loss, audit friction, and barriers for non-technical users.
What if we flipped this: a distributed ledger where the primary, immutable entries are natural language prose—full narrative statements forming a shared, tamper-proof "book" of events?
Example entry:
"On December 15, 2025, Alice transferred 500 units to Bob in exchange for consulting services completed on December 10, 2025. Both parties confirm mutual agreement."
The chain preserves continuous discourse as ground truth. LLMs handle interpretation, ambiguity resolution, validation, and consensus (e.g., nodes negotiate/confirm intent linguistically). Cryptography secures hashes of the prose; execution rules can be expressed and enforced in language.
This isn't:
A natural language interface or query tool on top of symbolic data (plenty of those exist).
Hybrid "smart legal contracts" where prose is just attached to executable code (code remains canonical).
Generating code from text (common in LLM-blockchain integrations).
Here, natural language is the substrate—no translation boundary between human meaning and machine enforcement.
Potential upsides:
Ledgers readable like a story (huge for personal finance: taxes/bills as lifelong narrative, no doom-scrolling statements).
Inherent auditability and dispute resolution (query the shared discourse).
Better fit for AI agent economies (agents negotiate/append via conversation).
Reduced semantic drift in governance/contracts.
Challenges obvious: ambiguity handling, storage overhead, security against adversarial phrasing—but LLMs are getting remarkably good at contextual reasoning.
Posting this as prior art/repo to establish the concept openly (CC BY-SA licensed). No implementation yet, but curious what the HN crowd thinks—feasible? Useful? Already explored somewhere I missed?
Repo: https://github.com/kase1111-hash/NatLangChain
Kase1111•1mo ago
A natural language interface or query tool on top of symbolic data (plenty of those exist). Hybrid "smart legal contracts" where prose is just attached to executable code (code remains canonical). Generating code from text (common in LLM-blockchain integrations).
Here, natural language is the substrate—no translation boundary between human meaning and machine enforcement. Potential upsides:
Ledgers readable like a story (huge for personal finance: taxes/bills as lifelong narrative, no doom-scrolling statements). Inherent auditability and dispute resolution (query the shared discourse). Better fit for AI agent economies (agents negotiate/append via conversation). Reduced semantic drift in governance/contracts.
Challenges obvious: ambiguity handling, storage overhead, security against adversarial phrasing—but LLMs are getting remarkably good at contextual reasoning. Posting this as prior art/repo to establish the concept openly (CC BY-SA licensed). No implementation yet, but curious what the HN crowd thinks—feasible? Useful? Already explored somewhere I missed? Repo: https://github.com/kase1111-hash/NatLangChain