Privacy preserving validation and commit architecture

A method (400) of scheduling and validating a multiple-participant process, the method comprising: submitting (420), by a submitting node (210) associated with a participant in the multiple-participant process, a proposed transaction by sending a cryptographically-protected message (140) to one or more recipient nodes (120, 122), wherein the cryptographically-protected message (140) comprises at least an unencrypted submessage (142) readable by an external node (130) and a cryptographically-protected submessage (144) to preserve privacy from at least the external node (130); determining (410), by the external node, an order of the proposed transaction relative to other transactions; by way of at least some of the recipient nodes, validating the cryptographically-protected message; receiving (440) a confirmation of validity of the cryptographically-protected message from at least some of the recipient nodes; finalizing (450) the proposed transaction, as a confirmed transaction, based on receiving one or more confirmations from at least some of the recipient nodes that satisfy a confirmation condition; and writing (460) the confirmed transaction to a distributed ledger according to the order determined by the external node.