Ledger-State Stigmergy: A Formal Framework for Indirect Coordination Grounded in Distributed Ledger State
Fernando Paredes Garc\'ia

TL;DR
This paper introduces a formal framework for indirect coordination among on-chain agents using shared ledger state, bridging swarm intelligence concepts with blockchain technology.
Contribution
It provides a ledger-specific formalization, identifies core coordination patterns, and offers design guidance for decentralized on-chain coordination.
Findings
Identified three recurring on-chain coordination patterns: State-Flag, Event-Signal, Threshold-Trigger.
Developed a formal state-transition model for ledger-based indirect coordination.
Compared ledger-state coordination with off-chain messaging and centralized control in a task-board example.
Abstract
Autonomous software agents on blockchains solve distributed-coordination problems by reading shared ledger state instead of exchanging direct messages. Liquidation keepers, arbitrage bots, and other autonomous on-chain agents watch balances, contract storage, and event logs; when conditions change, they act. The ledger therefore functions as a replicated shared-state medium through which decentralized agents coordinate indirectly. This form of indirect coordination mirrors what Grass\'e called stigmergy in 1959: organisms coordinating through traces left in a shared environment, with no central plan. Stigmergy has mature formalizations in swarm intelligence and multi-agent systems, and on-chain agents already behave stigmergically in practice, but no prior application-layer framework cleanly bridges the two. We introduce Indirect coordination grounded in ledger state (Coordinaci\'on…
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