US Patent 11288342 Integrity protected capacity license counting

A global count value can be determined in a distributed computing system by maintaining at each node in a plurality of nodes in the distributed computing system a local current count value determined at each node, copies of remote current count values determined at other nodes in the plurality of nodes and communicated to each node and a ledger having a cryptographically protected history of determined local count values and communicated remote count values. The local current count value and the copies of the remote current count values are used to compute the global count value at one or more of the plurality of nodes. In addition, the ledger is used to verify integrity of the history of determined local count values and communicated remote count values.