Add ATHENA: Admission and Transaction Handling for Efficient Network Architecture

[alichatme]

Summary

This Pull Request introduces the initial draft of the ATHENA (Admission and Transaction Handling for Efficient Network Architecture) proposal.

ATHENA dynamically forms balanced parallel validator groups and distributes incoming transactions among them. These groups validate different subsets of incoming transactions concurrently, while the final results are committed to the same unified global ledger through the network's native consensus process. This approach improves the network's effective transaction processing capacity without modifying the consensus algorithm or the global ledger architecture.

The proposal preserves the native consensus algorithm, ledger structure, account model, and economic rules of the host protocol while introducing an admission layer for transaction scheduling and validator assignment.

Changes

• Add the initial ATHENA TIP draft.
• Include the complete specification and architecture.
• Add the standard TIP header.
• Link the proposal to the discussion issue (ATHENA: Admission and Transaction Handling for Efficient Network Architecture #905).

Discussion

Related Issue: #905