A method of scheduling and validating a multiple-participant process, the method including: submitting, by a submitting node associated with a participant in the multiple-participant process, a proposed transaction by sending a cryptographically-protected message to one or more recipient nodes, wherein the cryptographically-protected message includes at least an unencrypted submessage readable by an external node and a cryptographically-protected submessage to preserve privacy from at least the external node; determining, 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 a confirmation of validity of the cryptographically-protected message from at least some of the recipient nodes; finalizing 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 the confirmed transaction to a distributed ledger according to the order determined by the external node.