9 ms·

The World’s Oldest Blockchain Has Been Hiding in the New York Times Since 1995

240 points by chuckblake 8y ago

dublin 8y ago
This isn't exactly new, and not only for the reason in the article - Check out NetNotary from back around that time, too: They published their checksums daily in the WSJ, IIRC. Could be wrong, but I seem to recall NetNotary was a Marshall Rose/Carl Malamud project...
dnautics 8y ago
i don't see evidence that it's really a block-chain since the data are not dependent on the previous block, i.e. it's not a linked list ("chain") data structure.
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  It doesn't have to be. The purpose of chaining in the blockchain is to establish an unspoofable temporal ordering of events. In the case of the NYT, you can just look at the date on the paper, so chaining isn't strictly necessary.
- JWett 8y ago
  Hi, ex-CEO of Surety here. The article is not very technical so I can see where you might assume this is not a true blockchain. However, the hash value published in the Times was, in fact, dependent upon every single hash value for every digital "document" ever submitted to the Digital Notary Service. A Digital Notary client application would submit a hash value (which in the early days was a combination of MD5 and SHA-1 but the system was very flexible in that it could upgrade the hash algos when more collision resistant versions became available) that would become part of a Merkle tree along with any other client submissions received in a short timeframe. The parent "top hash" node of the Merkle tree was then hashed with the the last value in a linked list referred to internally as the "super hash" chain to create a new end value in the chain. The client application would receive a notary "certificate" containing all the values in the Merkle tree required to re-calculate the hash woven into the super hash chain along with the timestamp for the moment it became part of the chain. The client application could use this certificate at any time to electronically verify the veracity of any "document" (i.e., guarantee that the document existed in its exact form at a specific point in time.) On a side note, the algorithms and implementation were successfully tested in court cases. (Some of Surety's customers used the system to timestamp millions of documents turned over in electronic legal discovery to ensure they were not tampered with by opposing counsel.) The New York Times value was only significant in that if could be used to "manually" calculate the veracity of the notary certificate by hashing the super hash value it contained with all subsequent values in the super hash chain until it resulted in the hash value published in the Times. This "widely witnessed" approach made it impossible for an insider to collude with someone to generate a correct notary certificate retroactively by replacing the document with a forgery. The blockchain technology used by crypto currencies is similar except for the tremendous amount of computation required to generate a "correct" hash value to close out a block and weave it into the chain. Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta deserve a lot of credit for creating this when were working for Bellcore. Two brilliant guys.
  - zadler 8y ago
    The “block” in blockchain is due to it being a byzantine fault tolerant replicated state machine. If it were centralised there would be no need for a block. That may be the main distinguishing characteristic. Git is another example of an application running on a hash chain, but it doesn’t have blocks because it doesn’t require a slow / costly consensus process.
    - bigiain 8y ago
      Feels a bit like that's a post-facto argument to me. It sounds like the Surity thing had "blocks" consisting of a week's worth of documents which got chained together and had their hash published irrevocably every week. Without the subsequent invention and popularity of the specific implementation of the bitcoin blockchain - I don't think the slow/costly consensus "feature" could be considered a requirement to distinguish between "hash chains" and "block chains" like that. (But I'm regularly on the losing side of nomenclature arguments - I'm still pissed at all the people who've decided they should call my non-autonomous quadcopters "drones"...)
      - jobigoud 8y ago
        > I'm still pissed at all the people who've decided they should call my non-autonomous quadcopters "drones" Apparently we should call them quadpters because it's based on helicopter for which the ethymology is not heli + copter, but helico + pter, like in helicoidal and pterodactyl.
        taejo 8y ago
        Or tetrapter, to stick with Greek roots (though I'm personally fine with heteroradicalism!)
        bigiain 8y ago
        From now on, I'm shall call them "spinning dinosaurs"! "Hey mister! Is that your drone?" "No kid, it's not a drone, it's a spinning dinosaur..."
galaxyLogic 8y ago
Interesting. Now how do we turn this into virtual currency?
- bigiain 8y ago
  I've got an idea - classified advertising! We'll start selling space in the coinbase field to real estate advertisers and escort services! 'The Times 03/Jan/2009: room to rent in 3br share house in The Mission, $2600/month+utilities'
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
Article has autoplaying audio
- gpvos 8y ago
  You can turn this off in many browsers nowadays (media.autoplay.enabled in Firefox). Still good to call it out though.
Groxx 8y ago
Is there actually any chaining going on, or is this a standard "trusted timestamp"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping
- phyzome 8y ago
  The article doesn't make it totally explicit, but it sure sounds like each new hash incorporated the previous one. (It's also possible that each published hash is just a brand new hash of the aggregate, but this seems somewhat less likely based on the wording.) ETA: Looks like it's a chain, or rather a Merkle tree. From the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865168
  - bittcto 8y ago
    A Merkle root including previous Merkle roots may have been innovative when Surety started, but while its required in bitcoin its not a key feature of what defines a Blockchain.
    - phyzome 8y ago
      Given that "blockchain" is a generalization of Bitcoin, not formally defined theoretically beforehand, I suspect we would not agree on what a blockchain even is, and would go 'round and 'round in circles. But I think we can agree that a Merkle chain like this would be sufficient for most of the things people are trying to use blockchains for recently, which certainly says something.
      - Groxx 8y ago
        Yea, I think most would lean towards requiring one or both of: - it's a distributed consensus system (often around "blocks", but e.g. iota is not) - it's a chain of hashes to prevent mutation (around "chains") And I doubt we'll ever get everyone to agree on what subset (including null) of those are "a blockchain". Very (very) few things benefit from distributed consensus IMO. And not all altcoins use blocks at all. So I tend to lean towards hash-chains. Publicly-verifiable immutability is useful in quite a lot of real-world scenarios.
Merrill 8y ago
Widespread use of this technology would be a problem for government, since it would be difficult to insert fake records to create "legends" for undercover detectives, spies, and people in witness protection, etc.
- schoen 8y ago
  Widespread use of Facebook might have a much more significant effect, because people don't usually memorialize all of their life events in a public digital notary service but often do so with social media. I bet counterintelligence agencies are scraping social media and the web in order to see whether some travelers' identities are lacking in (or contradicted by) historical online documentation.
api 8y ago
Bitcoin's innovation was trust and conflict resolution through proof of work, not linked lists of hashes.
- fooker 8y ago
  There is difference between bitcoin and blockchain. A blockchain is, by definition, a linked list of hashes.
  - 0xfffff 8y ago
    That's just called a hash chain, Bitcoin I believe just calls it a chain of hashes. The block data structure incl. salt and POW is what is so unique about Bitcoin.
  - bittcto 8y ago
    “By definition” people are just making up “Blockchain” as a desperate technology, usually people who don’t understand how bitcoin works and don’t realize they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Redefining the nature of the technology to get away from the difficult reality of it isn’t effective in the end.
bcarlton0 8y ago
This describes something from Surety, LLC. Too bad their web page doesn't have https. Hard to take them as seriously. http://surety.com/ http://surety.com/
- JWett 8y ago
  I believe the company is only active in that it still operates its service for existing customers. The website is very old, but you're right, it's admittedly ironic that a computer security company has an HTTP website.
- andreofthecape 8y ago
  The login page has ssl. https://enterprise.surety.com/MyAbsoluteProof/ChangeMyAccountSettings.aspx https://enterprise.surety.com/MyAbsoluteProof/ChangeMyAccoun...
  - jwfxpr 8y ago
    If the page that links to the login page hasn't proven it's secure, I shouldn't trust the links, and therefore shouldn't trust the destination. Hence why static landing pages need HTTPS just as much as login pages.
    - gpvos 8y ago
      Fair enough, although you could check that the domain names are the same in this case.
0xfffff 8y ago
Just a hash chain, pretty sure one can find much older ones. some old checksums might do that too. When someone says blockchain, in my book (and this might differ from others) - its about the consensus algorithm used to prevent tampering, like POW as introduced by Bitcoin.
- foxes 8y ago
  I think the most general thing you could say is monadic mutations of some global state. Blocks act as operators on this state. I don't necessarily think it has to be a consensus algorithm. It can be used as that though.
  - michaelscott 8y ago
    Blocks are taken as part of the blockchain once there is consensus amongst the nodes that it is valid, so the consensus algorithm (as well as the POW algorithm) are integral parts of what makes a blockchain a blockchain
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    That's just event sourcing. The innovation in the bitcoin whitepaper was the consensus algorithm.
- sametmax 8y ago
  If you don't have decentralized production and validation of blocks, you don't have a block chain.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    You don't need decentralization for a blockchain. All you need is 1) a reverse linked list of entries and 2) have the list be cryptographic in nature. Even git can be used for a blockchain since it uses a cryptographic hash for commits and can use GPG signing. Validation, consensus and decentralizations are additional properties that you can add on top that make it useful for certain use cases.
exikyut 8y ago
Initially I thought this was commissioned advertising, and it did read as such. However, the ex-CEO has mentioned that it only operates for existing customers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865294), which conflicts with that view somewhat, so maybe this isn't an ad. In any case; where can I view 1995 copies of NYT for free? :)
- jwfxpr 8y ago
  > In any case; where can I view 1995 copies of NYT for free? :) Every public library in the United States, if I'm not mistaken, and a large number of major libraries worldwide.
  - exikyut 8y ago
    Hmm. I was hoping there was a way I could do so online. Mumbles something about equal opportunity open access and the bourgeois
    - jwfxpr 8y ago
      New York Public Library, with a library card: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/22/how-to-search-nytimes https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/22/how-to-search-nytimes Los Angeles Public Library, with a library card: https://www.lapl.org/new-york-times-digital https://www.lapl.org/new-york-times-digital (and you can apply for an e-card online for free: http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/contact-us/e-card/e-card-registration http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/contact-us/e-card/e-card-regi...) Kansas City Public Library, with a library card: https://www.kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-read-back-issues-new-york-times-free-online https://www.kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-read-back-issu... Etc. Summary: get a public library card, support the oh-so-terribly bourgeois public library system ;)
      - exikyut 8y ago
        This is fair, but I don't know how much the National Library of Australia has, or whether access is free. Sorry I forgot to mention my location in my previous comment.
asasidh 8y ago
there are no blocks and therefore calling it an blockchain is pure clickbait. what we have here is a chain of hashes
lmilcin 8y ago
It is a hash of a block, but not a chain. For this to be a chain, it would have to be published multiple times, each time containing references to previous blocks under the published hash. Other than that I am pretty sure we can find many more examples. Hashing and publishing the hash is pretty popular way to prove timestamp of a secret without revealing the secret, yet. I did it myself a couple of times when I wanted to be able to prove later that I had a particular information before some specific time.
- FabHK 8y ago
  It's a block chain. From the article: > a copy of that seal and every other seal created by Surety’s customers is sent to the AbsoluteProof “universal registry database,” which is a “hash-chain” composed entirely of Surety customer seals. This creates an immutable record of all the Surety seals ever produced, so that it is impossible for the company or any malicious actor to modify a seal. Another well known example of course is git (which slightly extends the definition to a directed acyclic graph).
- sorokod 8y ago
  Other than that I am pretty sure we can find many more examples. This statement could be made much more interesting and convincing if you provided some actual examples.
  - sjs382 8y ago
    It's fairly common (at least among the security community) to post a hash of a claim to Twitter, that they can reference in the future to prove that they had X information on Y date without disclosing the actual information until later. For example, I could post the hash "9712f2488fa00fc5b11b657995ac10c9" to Twitter and then after the prediction comes to pass, I can reveal that the hash was for the phrase "Pittsburgh Steelers will Defeat New Orleans Saints 30-21 in Super Bowl LIII", proving that I had some knowledge or prediction that I didn't want to reveal at the time of the prediction.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
liftbigweights 8y ago
So essentially a checksum. Using that logic, blockchains have been hiding within the internet forever because tcp/ip protocol employs them.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bits-and-bolts 8y ago
No the oldest block chain was invented by Acient Greeks, take Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. They are similar to blockchain as follows: - Memorization of whole piece == Proof of work - You need lots of people to agree upon the story == 51 % of nodes - You can only append to the piece, because many others know and have memorized the piece so they will not agree to your version.

240 points by chuckblake 8y ago

This isn't exactly new, and not only for the reason in the article - Check out NetNotary from back around that time, too: They published their checksums daily in the WSJ, IIRC. Could be wrong, but I seem to recall NetNotary was a Marshall Rose/Carl Malamud project...

dnautics 8y ago

i don't see evidence that it's really a block-chain since the data are not dependent on the previous block, i.e. it's not a linked list ("chain") data structure.

dreamcompiler 8y ago
It doesn't have to be. The purpose of chaining in the blockchain is to establish an unspoofable temporal ordering of events. In the case of the NYT, you can just look at the date on the paper, so chaining isn't strictly necessary.
JWett 8y ago
Hi, ex-CEO of Surety here. The article is not very technical so I can see where you might assume this is not a true blockchain. However, the hash value published in the Times was, in fact, dependent upon every single hash value for every digital "document" ever submitted to the Digital Notary Service. A Digital Notary client application would submit a hash value (which in the early days was a combination of MD5 and SHA-1 but the system was very flexible in that it could upgrade the hash algos when more collision resistant versions became available) that would become part of a Merkle tree along with any other client submissions received in a short timeframe. The parent "top hash" node of the Merkle tree was then hashed with the the last value in a linked list referred to internally as the "super hash" chain to create a new end value in the chain. The client application would receive a notary "certificate" containing all the values in the Merkle tree required to re-calculate the hash woven into the super hash chain along with the timestamp for the moment it became part of the chain. The client application could use this certificate at any time to electronically verify the veracity of any "document" (i.e., guarantee that the document existed in its exact form at a specific point in time.) On a side note, the algorithms and implementation were successfully tested in court cases. (Some of Surety's customers used the system to timestamp millions of documents turned over in electronic legal discovery to ensure they were not tampered with by opposing counsel.) The New York Times value was only significant in that if could be used to "manually" calculate the veracity of the notary certificate by hashing the super hash value it contained with all subsequent values in the super hash chain until it resulted in the hash value published in the Times. This "widely witnessed" approach made it impossible for an insider to collude with someone to generate a correct notary certificate retroactively by replacing the document with a forgery. The blockchain technology used by crypto currencies is similar except for the tremendous amount of computation required to generate a "correct" hash value to close out a block and weave it into the chain. Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta deserve a lot of credit for creating this when were working for Bellcore. Two brilliant guys.
- zadler 8y ago
  The “block” in blockchain is due to it being a byzantine fault tolerant replicated state machine. If it were centralised there would be no need for a block. That may be the main distinguishing characteristic. Git is another example of an application running on a hash chain, but it doesn’t have blocks because it doesn’t require a slow / costly consensus process.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    Feels a bit like that's a post-facto argument to me. It sounds like the Surity thing had "blocks" consisting of a week's worth of documents which got chained together and had their hash published irrevocably every week. Without the subsequent invention and popularity of the specific implementation of the bitcoin blockchain - I don't think the slow/costly consensus "feature" could be considered a requirement to distinguish between "hash chains" and "block chains" like that. (But I'm regularly on the losing side of nomenclature arguments - I'm still pissed at all the people who've decided they should call my non-autonomous quadcopters "drones"...)
    - jobigoud 8y ago
      > I'm still pissed at all the people who've decided they should call my non-autonomous quadcopters "drones" Apparently we should call them quadpters because it's based on helicopter for which the ethymology is not heli + copter, but helico + pter, like in helicoidal and pterodactyl.
      - taejo 8y ago
        Or tetrapter, to stick with Greek roots (though I'm personally fine with heteroradicalism!)
      - bigiain 8y ago
        From now on, I'm shall call them "spinning dinosaurs"! "Hey mister! Is that your drone?" "No kid, it's not a drone, it's a spinning dinosaur..."

galaxyLogic 8y ago

Interesting. Now how do we turn this into virtual currency?

bigiain 8y ago
I've got an idea - classified advertising! We'll start selling space in the coinbase field to real estate advertisers and escort services! 'The Times 03/Jan/2009: room to rent in 3br share house in The Mission, $2600/month+utilities'

ThrustVectoring 8y ago

Article has autoplaying audio

gpvos 8y ago
You can turn this off in many browsers nowadays (media.autoplay.enabled in Firefox). Still good to call it out though.

Groxx 8y ago

Is there actually any chaining going on, or is this a standard "trusted timestamp"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping

phyzome 8y ago
The article doesn't make it totally explicit, but it sure sounds like each new hash incorporated the previous one. (It's also possible that each published hash is just a brand new hash of the aggregate, but this seems somewhat less likely based on the wording.) ETA: Looks like it's a chain, or rather a Merkle tree. From the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865168
- bittcto 8y ago
  A Merkle root including previous Merkle roots may have been innovative when Surety started, but while its required in bitcoin its not a key feature of what defines a Blockchain.
  - phyzome 8y ago
    Given that "blockchain" is a generalization of Bitcoin, not formally defined theoretically beforehand, I suspect we would not agree on what a blockchain even is, and would go 'round and 'round in circles. But I think we can agree that a Merkle chain like this would be sufficient for most of the things people are trying to use blockchains for recently, which certainly says something.
    - Groxx 8y ago
      Yea, I think most would lean towards requiring one or both of: - it's a distributed consensus system (often around "blocks", but e.g. iota is not) - it's a chain of hashes to prevent mutation (around "chains") And I doubt we'll ever get everyone to agree on what subset (including null) of those are "a blockchain". Very (very) few things benefit from distributed consensus IMO. And not all altcoins use blocks at all. So I tend to lean towards hash-chains. Publicly-verifiable immutability is useful in quite a lot of real-world scenarios.

Merrill 8y ago

Widespread use of this technology would be a problem for government, since it would be difficult to insert fake records to create "legends" for undercover detectives, spies, and people in witness protection, etc.

schoen 8y ago
Widespread use of Facebook might have a much more significant effect, because people don't usually memorialize all of their life events in a public digital notary service but often do so with social media. I bet counterintelligence agencies are scraping social media and the web in order to see whether some travelers' identities are lacking in (or contradicted by) historical online documentation.

api 8y ago

Bitcoin's innovation was trust and conflict resolution through proof of work, not linked lists of hashes.

fooker 8y ago
There is difference between bitcoin and blockchain. A blockchain is, by definition, a linked list of hashes.
- 0xfffff 8y ago
  That's just called a hash chain, Bitcoin I believe just calls it a chain of hashes. The block data structure incl. salt and POW is what is so unique about Bitcoin.
- bittcto 8y ago
  “By definition” people are just making up “Blockchain” as a desperate technology, usually people who don’t understand how bitcoin works and don’t realize they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Redefining the nature of the technology to get away from the difficult reality of it isn’t effective in the end.

bcarlton0 8y ago

This describes something from Surety, LLC. Too bad their web page doesn't have https. Hard to take them as seriously. http://surety.com/ http://surety.com/

JWett 8y ago
I believe the company is only active in that it still operates its service for existing customers. The website is very old, but you're right, it's admittedly ironic that a computer security company has an HTTP website.
andreofthecape 8y ago
The login page has ssl. https://enterprise.surety.com/MyAbsoluteProof/ChangeMyAccountSettings.aspx https://enterprise.surety.com/MyAbsoluteProof/ChangeMyAccoun...
- jwfxpr 8y ago
  If the page that links to the login page hasn't proven it's secure, I shouldn't trust the links, and therefore shouldn't trust the destination. Hence why static landing pages need HTTPS just as much as login pages.
  - gpvos 8y ago
    Fair enough, although you could check that the domain names are the same in this case.

0xfffff 8y ago

Just a hash chain, pretty sure one can find much older ones. some old checksums might do that too. When someone says blockchain, in my book (and this might differ from others) - its about the consensus algorithm used to prevent tampering, like POW as introduced by Bitcoin.

foxes 8y ago
I think the most general thing you could say is monadic mutations of some global state. Blocks act as operators on this state. I don't necessarily think it has to be a consensus algorithm. It can be used as that though.
- michaelscott 8y ago
  Blocks are taken as part of the blockchain once there is consensus amongst the nodes that it is valid, so the consensus algorithm (as well as the POW algorithm) are integral parts of what makes a blockchain a blockchain
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  That's just event sourcing. The innovation in the bitcoin whitepaper was the consensus algorithm.
sametmax 8y ago
If you don't have decentralized production and validation of blocks, you don't have a block chain.
- zaarn 8y ago
  You don't need decentralization for a blockchain. All you need is 1) a reverse linked list of entries and 2) have the list be cryptographic in nature. Even git can be used for a blockchain since it uses a cryptographic hash for commits and can use GPG signing. Validation, consensus and decentralizations are additional properties that you can add on top that make it useful for certain use cases.

exikyut 8y ago

Initially I thought this was commissioned advertising, and it did read as such. However, the ex-CEO has mentioned that it only operates for existing customers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865294), which conflicts with that view somewhat, so maybe this isn't an ad. In any case; where can I view 1995 copies of NYT for free? :)

jwfxpr 8y ago
> In any case; where can I view 1995 copies of NYT for free? :) Every public library in the United States, if I'm not mistaken, and a large number of major libraries worldwide.
- exikyut 8y ago
  Hmm. I was hoping there was a way I could do so online. Mumbles something about equal opportunity open access and the bourgeois
  - jwfxpr 8y ago
    New York Public Library, with a library card: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/22/how-to-search-nytimes https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/22/how-to-search-nytimes Los Angeles Public Library, with a library card: https://www.lapl.org/new-york-times-digital https://www.lapl.org/new-york-times-digital (and you can apply for an e-card online for free: http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/contact-us/e-card/e-card-registration http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/contact-us/e-card/e-card-regi...) Kansas City Public Library, with a library card: https://www.kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-read-back-issues-new-york-times-free-online https://www.kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-read-back-issu... Etc. Summary: get a public library card, support the oh-so-terribly bourgeois public library system ;)
    - exikyut 8y ago
      This is fair, but I don't know how much the National Library of Australia has, or whether access is free. Sorry I forgot to mention my location in my previous comment.

asasidh 8y ago

there are no blocks and therefore calling it an blockchain is pure clickbait. what we have here is a chain of hashes

lmilcin 8y ago

It is a hash of a block, but not a chain. For this to be a chain, it would have to be published multiple times, each time containing references to previous blocks under the published hash. Other than that I am pretty sure we can find many more examples. Hashing and publishing the hash is pretty popular way to prove timestamp of a secret without revealing the secret, yet. I did it myself a couple of times when I wanted to be able to prove later that I had a particular information before some specific time.

FabHK 8y ago
It's a block chain. From the article: > a copy of that seal and every other seal created by Surety’s customers is sent to the AbsoluteProof “universal registry database,” which is a “hash-chain” composed entirely of Surety customer seals. This creates an immutable record of all the Surety seals ever produced, so that it is impossible for the company or any malicious actor to modify a seal. Another well known example of course is git (which slightly extends the definition to a directed acyclic graph).
sorokod 8y ago
Other than that I am pretty sure we can find many more examples. This statement could be made much more interesting and convincing if you provided some actual examples.
- sjs382 8y ago
  It's fairly common (at least among the security community) to post a hash of a claim to Twitter, that they can reference in the future to prove that they had X information on Y date without disclosing the actual information until later. For example, I could post the hash "9712f2488fa00fc5b11b657995ac10c9" to Twitter and then after the prediction comes to pass, I can reveal that the hash was for the phrase "Pittsburgh Steelers will Defeat New Orleans Saints 30-21 in Super Bowl LIII", proving that I had some knowledge or prediction that I didn't want to reveal at the time of the prediction.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

liftbigweights 8y ago

So essentially a checksum. Using that logic, blockchains have been hiding within the internet forever because tcp/ip protocol employs them.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bits-and-bolts 8y ago

No the oldest block chain was invented by Acient Greeks, take Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. They are similar to blockchain as follows: - Memorization of whole piece == Proof of work - You need lots of people to agree upon the story == 51 % of nodes - You can only append to the piece, because many others know and have memorized the piece so they will not agree to your version.