3 ms·

Do you even need a blockchain for that? Can't you just encrypt a message detailing your discovery, and publish the result? Then at a later date, you can prove i

Do you even need a blockchain for that? Can't you just encrypt a message detailing your discovery, and publish the result? Then at a later date, you can prove it was you by decrypting the message.

lawn 7y ago
And how would you prove your encrypted message existed beforehand, and that you didn't just backdate the message after the discovery has been made public? For that you need to publish your encrypted message that's somehow connected with a timestamp. If you can you might be able to get it included in a journal or a newspaper (which is what Robert Hook did in 1660), or use a trusted third party that verifies your timestamp. Embedding a hash of your message in the blockchain is another way, which is arguably easier, more secure and trustless.
- joosters 7y ago
  As others have said, you could just tweet it (or a hash of it). Or post a video on youtube, or email it to a mailing list, or whatever. There's countless ways to publish information with a timestamp that's very difficult to fake.
  - leppr 7y ago
    Those are "easily" manipulated if the issue is important enough to someone powerful enough. Sure, you could carpet-bomb and publish your hash on many different platforms under jurisdictions with competing interests, but at this point you've just invented a poor man's blockchains. Blockchains are the systematization and democratization of that strategy. And those points are what technology is all about. __ Sure, to write our next shared article we can just have our Word files and call-up each other and exchange paragraphs over WhatsApp. Yet for some reason some people nerd out on unintuitive over-engineered CRDTs. That can't be useful to anyone, can it?
    - root_axis 7y ago
      > Those are "easily" manipulated if the issue is important enough to someone powerful enough Perhaps in theory, but in practice it's not really true, especially with regard to the nature of information that is worthwhile to censor; the kind of situation where the powers-that-be would hack twitter to manipulate the timestamp of a hash string are very far-fetched.
  - lawn 7y ago
    "Very difficult" is context dependent. It might be difficult for you and me to backdate a tweet, but easy for a Twitter employee or a hacker with a 0-day exploit. You also introduce the risk of your message getting deleted, for whatever reason. And these ways may also break your anonymity or leak your exploit if you're not careful. A blockchain backed timestamp is simply better.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  Society has plenty of trust functions. If you can’t rely on them, it’s not unreasonable to think that your blockchain evidence won’t help you either. Suppose you post your finding generally, then I see it, and post it to the blockchain timestamped as my own. Then you say, “hey, I was first”. The blockchain is bad here because it’s incomplete. If we mandate that only the blockchain can determine truth, then, if I really want to own that claim, I can hit you with a wrench until I have the private key, and now I am the owner of truth. Trustless societies suck. We should be trying to increase social trust.

Do you even need a blockchain for that? Can't you just encrypt a message detailing your discovery, and publish the result? Then at a later date, you can prove it was you by decrypting the message.

lawn 7y ago

And how would you prove your encrypted message existed beforehand, and that you didn't just backdate the message after the discovery has been made public? For that you need to publish your encrypted message that's somehow connected with a timestamp. If you can you might be able to get it included in a journal or a newspaper (which is what Robert Hook did in 1660), or use a trusted third party that verifies your timestamp. Embedding a hash of your message in the blockchain is another way, which is arguably easier, more secure and trustless.

joosters 7y ago
As others have said, you could just tweet it (or a hash of it). Or post a video on youtube, or email it to a mailing list, or whatever. There's countless ways to publish information with a timestamp that's very difficult to fake.
- leppr 7y ago
  Those are "easily" manipulated if the issue is important enough to someone powerful enough. Sure, you could carpet-bomb and publish your hash on many different platforms under jurisdictions with competing interests, but at this point you've just invented a poor man's blockchains. Blockchains are the systematization and democratization of that strategy. And those points are what technology is all about. __ Sure, to write our next shared article we can just have our Word files and call-up each other and exchange paragraphs over WhatsApp. Yet for some reason some people nerd out on unintuitive over-engineered CRDTs. That can't be useful to anyone, can it?
  - root_axis 7y ago
    > Those are "easily" manipulated if the issue is important enough to someone powerful enough Perhaps in theory, but in practice it's not really true, especially with regard to the nature of information that is worthwhile to censor; the kind of situation where the powers-that-be would hack twitter to manipulate the timestamp of a hash string are very far-fetched.
- lawn 7y ago
  "Very difficult" is context dependent. It might be difficult for you and me to backdate a tweet, but easy for a Twitter employee or a hacker with a 0-day exploit. You also introduce the risk of your message getting deleted, for whatever reason. And these ways may also break your anonymity or leak your exploit if you're not careful. A blockchain backed timestamp is simply better.
throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
Society has plenty of trust functions. If you can’t rely on them, it’s not unreasonable to think that your blockchain evidence won’t help you either. Suppose you post your finding generally, then I see it, and post it to the blockchain timestamped as my own. Then you say, “hey, I was first”. The blockchain is bad here because it’s incomplete. If we mandate that only the blockchain can determine truth, then, if I really want to own that claim, I can hit you with a wrench until I have the private key, and now I am the owner of truth. Trustless societies suck. We should be trying to increase social trust.