High performance distributed system of record with extended transaction processing capability

A computing system, comprising:

• a set of transaction handling computing nodes, wherein at least one transaction handling computing node comprises a cluster of computing, communications and storage elements, and wherein at least one transaction handling computing node operates autonomously and in an untrusted manner with respect to one or more other transaction handling computing nodes in the cluster;
• the set of transaction handling computing nodes configured to:
• receive and process transaction requests into an append-only immutable chain of data blocks, wherein a data block in the immutable chain of data blocks is a collection of transactions, and wherein an Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) data structure supporting the immutable chain of data blocks is normally output from a finalized transaction, the UTXO data structure consisting essentially of an address and a value;
• configure at least one UTXO data structure to include information either in addition to or in lieu of the address and value to define a Transaction Output (TXO) that is distinct from the UTXO data structure;
• and
• responsive to receipt of a request to process a transaction, concurrently process the transaction into a data block using at least the information in the TXO.