Introducing COTI’s Global Trust System (GTS) for Bitcoin

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COTI

3 min readDec 8, 2020

We are pleased to announce the launch of COTI’s Global Trust System (GTS) for the Bitcoin network. The GTS is available via a web interface, an API, and soon also via Chainlink’s oracle and smart contract framework. The first release of GTS, for the Bitcoin network, enables users and other blockchain services to analyse BTC wallet addresses and identify malicious parties before transacting with them, introducing a layer of trust to the Bitcoin network that has previously not existed.

Trust Scores and Trust Nodes form an essential part of the COTI Trustchain. The Trustchain is designed to create a trustworthy operating environment for both consumers and merchants alike, one of the key components considered essential for the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies. By creating the GTS and expanding our Trust score technology to other networks, any blockchain service, infrastructure, or chain will now be able to leverage efficient behavioral tracking to maintain trust scores and risk indicators for all network addresses and the consumers and merchants who access them.

The GTS engine is customized for each service, infrastructure, or chain, as each faces varying levels of risk, technicality complexity, and process flow. Past the Bitcoin network, we will also be expanding this service out to the Ethereum and Cardano networks in the future.

Trust Scores on COTI are calculating a number of factors, including, but not limited to -

Number of successful transactions
Number of transactions attempted or made that do not adhere to the network’s rules (with no obvious fraudulent intentions)
Number of possible attempts to double-spend/defraud. Actions like this must be critically dealt with to prevent a participant from perpetually building up a high trust score only to attempt defrauding other participants. There should either be a permanent and significant reduction in the participant’s Trust Score, or an extremely slow increase in the Trust Score.
Frequency of network use. We cannot expect ordinary users to use the network with the same frequency as merchants, so the user type is taken into account.
User type — the wide range of possible users impacts the trust score awarded to each user type and classification.
Network centrality

We’ve previously written about the GTS in great detail as it forms a critical part of our Universal Payment Solution (UPS) infrastructure.