@Jack K curious to hear your take on Taproot MAST trees as dark matter in Bitcoin.
"The paper that frames Bitcoin as a thermodynamic object defines it by one axiom above all others: no hidden microstates. In a bounded ledger, every joule of proof-of-work, every bit of script entropy, every private-key quantum must be accountable within the observable state. The system is thermodynamically closed because nothing disappears unmeasured and nothing arrives unaccounted for. Pre-Taproot Bitcoin achieved this with mechanical neatness. Post-Taproot Bitcoin broke the axiom.
Consider what a MAST tree actually is. Scripts are written. Hashes are computed. Branches are paired, rooted, and committed. Energy is spent. This work is not symbolic. It is physical computation that consumes electricity, generates heat, and occupies time. In the paper's framework, this work creates mass in timespace: a real excitation of the ledger's memory surface that should be visible to any auditor who reads the chain.
But if the key path is taken, that mass vanishes from the observable record. The tree is not destroyed in the physical sense — the hashes still exist as mathematical objects — but it is removed from the consensus-accessible state. The ledger records the spend. It does not record the full set of conditions that governed the output. The timespace geometry of Bitcoin now contains dark matter: real mass that warps the curvature of the system but cannot be observed from the chain alone.
This is not a poetic metaphor. Under the paper's framework, informational curvature arises from the spatial variation of value density across the block's memory surface. Hidden MAST trees are real thermodynamic preparation that alter the density of possible futures. An auditor computing curvature from chain data alone will get the wrong answer because the hidden states are excluded from the calculation. The geometry is warped by mass the auditor cannot see.
The paper also identifies the deeper structural condition this creates. In a ledgered universe, time is discrete and irreversible. Every state transition must be fully committed to memory. Bitcoin's coherence depends on this: there is no fractional-reserve ontology inside a closed ledger because contradictory claims cannot coexist without being collapsed into a single accountable state. Taproot reintroduced the fractional-reserve condition by allowing real liabilities to exist off-chain. The MAST tree is a real obligation — alternative futures that were thermodynamically committed — but it does not appear on the balance sheet. The ledger settled a spend without ever recording the complete set of rules that could have triggered it.
The paper calls these unmined futures: states that were prepared but never thermodynamically issued into the ledger's memory. In Bitcoin's ontology, nothing exists unless it is committed to memory. A transaction unconfirmed does not exist, no matter how many witnesses believe in it. But Taproot created a loophole: a state can be algebraically committed (through the tweak) without being thermodynamically committed (through consensus registration). The tree exists in the algebraic substrate, not in the thermodynamic substrate. This is exactly the ontological category the paper denies can exist in a closed system.
The cost is externalized. The spender who builds the tree and then takes the key path does not pay for the erasure. The cost is paid by every future auditor who attempts to verify the completeness of the ledger's state space and finds that the space of committed possibilities exceeds the space of revealed ones. This is thermodynamic inflation: real work was performed, real entropy was consumed, and the ledger expanded its hidden capacity without expanding its observable record."
