High performance distributed system of record with delegated transaction signing

A method using an apparatus comprising a set of transaction handling computing nodes that comprise a network core and a delegated transaction signing node, the method comprising:

• receiving and processing, by at least one of the set of transaction handling computing nodes, transaction requests into an append-only immutable chain of data blocks, wherein a data block is a collection of transactions;
• associating, by the delegated transaction signing node, a set of wallet addresses on the append-only immutable chain of data blocks with a delegate address, wherein the delegate address comprises a set of one or more signing public keys, wherein each of the set of one or more signing public keys of the delegate address corresponds to one or more signing private keys used to sign Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) in transactions;
• receiving and processing, by the at least one of the set of transaction handling computing nodes, a new transaction, wherein the new transaction comprises an UXTO, wherein the UXTO is an input to the new transaction;
• in response to the new transaction being processed by the at least one of the set of transaction handling computing nodes, locating, by the delegated transaction signing node, a signing public key for the UXTO by following an address chain that includes an address in the set of wallet addresses together with the delegate address;
• retrieving, by the delegated transaction signing node, the signing public key from a location associated with the delegate address;
• and
• unlocking, by the delegated transaction signing node, the UXTO using the retrieved signing public key of the delegate address.