A Formal Analysis of Tangible Encryption: Non-Fungible Tokens as Persistent, Ownable Roots of Trust in Secrets Management Systems

Tangible Encryption is a cryptographic framework that replaces the “secret zero” bootstrap problem in secrets management with a verifiable, identity-based trust model. Instead of requiring an antecedent credential to access protected secrets, this approach binds access control to ownership of a persistent cryptographic token (e.g., an NFT), enabling authentication through proof of ownership rather than shared knowledge. This work formalizes the use of non-fungible tokens as ownable roots of trust, where token ownership encodes identity, access rights, and provenance on a distributed ledger. A deterministic key derivation model is introduced, allowing secrets to be encrypted and decrypted without transmitting or storing a traditional master secret. Verification is performed via cryptographic signatures and on-chain state checks, eliminating circular trust dependencies inherent in systems such as Vault, SOPS, and cloud KMS. The framework is evaluated in the context of AI systems, including model provenance, secure dataset access, and autonomous agent authentication across organizational boundaries. Security considerations such as key compromise, revocation, and ledger integrity are analyzed, alongside implementation tradeoffs between public and permissioned ledgers. Tangible Encryption establishes a portable, verifiable trust anchor that operates independently of any single platform or identity provider, unifying identity, access control, and auditability into a single cryptographic primitive.