7 ms·

Probably unpopular answer: you could store your messages to the future in the op_return field of a series of small bitcoin transactions. I wouldn't recommend ma

Probably unpopular answer: you could store your messages to the future in the op_return field of a series of small bitcoin transactions. I wouldn't recommend making this the only egg in your basket but I think there is a non-zero probability the blockchain history will be preserved even if the currency isn't used any longer, kind of like how you can still go see Song dynasty paper currency from 1,000 years ago.

wevwevwe 5y ago
This. It's a gross abuse of bitcoins network, but bitcoin is a time keeping database at its core and it would not be impossible. That only accounts for data storage and retrieval though. For the end user to connect to the website, you still need some sort of server stack. Maybe IPFS could be used to overcome that part.
rackjack 5y ago
This is very clever! You don't need to make your own fame if you ride the coattails of something already famous.
paulpauper 5y ago
do it with ethereum or some other blockchain in a single tx
- leodriesch 5y ago
  I think Bitcoin is the safer option, since the history is more likely to be retained for historic reasons and it is smaller. Ethereum just has a lot more stuff running on it and the chain is much larger.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  I was curious what this would cost and found a thorough stackexchange post [0] that puts the price at 0.032 ETH per KB stored on-chain. Comes out to around 12,000 USD for a small 100kb static site. I would guess this cost is competitive with carving binary data into stone, not bad for permenant storage, reading the data is free. [0] https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872/what-is-the-cost-to-store-1kb-10kb-100kb-worth-of-data-into-the-ethereum-block https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872/what-is-the...
  - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
    Better would be an ENS name pointing to an IPFS address. Then just hope that IPFS sticks around. EDIT: ENS expiry would bite you. Maybe just IPFS then.
    - joshfraser 5y ago
      You need to make sure someone continues pinning the data for it to exist on the network. You need to create the right financial incentives for that to happen, which is what Filecoin is supposed to solve.
  - mcculley 5y ago
    Hmm. Putting 1 gigabyte in S3 for 500 years at today's most expensive price ($0.023 per gigabyte month) would be $138. Prices are certain to decrease over time. This says something about the cost of using the Ethereum blockchain for storage.
    - terafo 5y ago
      Add 1 download per day for 500 years and you will get 21k.
    - gjs278 5y ago
      s3 might close down shop before the ethereum blockchain does
    - foopod 5y ago
      S3 and blockchain have very different use cases right? Blockchain being for small quantities of data made immutable, used in a p2p manner with as many copies as there are peers. S3 generally being purpose built for short term (relative to blockchain) storage and price.
      - mcculley 5y ago
        Yes, they have different uses cases. But one can easily see an arbitrage opportunity here for building an immortal database atop S3 (and other cloud services) for a lot less money. For $12,000 USD, I could store the same data in S3 for (at the very least) 445,217 years. (Using the example above.) That makes the value proposition of the Ethereum blockchain as a data store a lot less attractive.
- LAMike 5y ago
  Then what happens when AWS goes down? Bye bye Ethereum. There is only 2,500 ETH nodes today, most run on "cloud" services which cost hundreds of dollars a month, soon to be thousands
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    the blockchain will still be permanent offline and on repositories
- diego_sandoval 5y ago
  Apparently, Ethereum is going to get rid of the proof-of-work chain history when it turns completely proof-of-stake. "The new chain is not going to hold information from what happened in the Ethereum chain before the merge" [1] [1] minute 1:31:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0QZmtbjvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0QZmtbjvs
arduinomancer 5y ago
How would people know to look for the messages though? A webpage is discoverable
- max_ 5y ago
  the transaction ID seems sufficient
Klimentio 5y ago
It should be a balance between readability, findability and integrity. I would not bet on the btc blockchain for it. Its relativly complex to use, its very niche, it is already 360gb big and there might be a time were it either disappears or gets optimized and your information will be gone.
- erhk 5y ago
  The first blockchain will almost certainly be preserved for historic significance
  - __d 5y ago
    We thought that about Usenet.
    - andai 5y ago
      Wait, we lost it?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - zhoujianfu 5y ago
        Don’t worry, Satoshi archived it in the genesis block!
- LAMike 5y ago
  I wrote my name in the Bitcoin blockchain 6 years ago, I barely knew Javascript. For a blockchain like Bitcoin to fit all of its transactions in only 420GB is an engineering feat that should be admired The blockchain data will never be "optimized" or "disappear" Please take the time to learn how Bitcoin works before pontificating
  - lloydgrossman 5y ago
    >The blockchain data will never be "optimized" or "disappear" This is a really bold assumption - you do understand that core dev is still ongoing, yes? You do understand that "infinite data on a disk" doesn't exist, yes? And as the chain goes on longer, more space is going to be needed, and centralization of the miners will continue to increase, yes? Please take the time to learn how Bitcoin works before pontificating
barmstrong 5y ago
Came here to post this - storing it on a blockchain is probably the most elegant answer to create high redundancy.
rlt 5y ago
Is there any standard for this, and a website (or websites) that publishes the data on the web? There are obvious problems with blindly republishing arbitrary data from a public blockchain, of course. Depending on how long you're willing to wait, you might be able to publish with as little as $0.00061 per byte: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ For reference, the text of the HN homepage (excluding HTML tags) is about 4KB so ~$2 if you're willing to wait, or up to ~$200 if you're in a hurry. I'm not sure if op_return transactions are typically priced the same as standard transactions though.

wevwevwe 5y ago

This. It's a gross abuse of bitcoins network, but bitcoin is a time keeping database at its core and it would not be impossible. That only accounts for data storage and retrieval though. For the end user to connect to the website, you still need some sort of server stack. Maybe IPFS could be used to overcome that part.

rackjack 5y ago

This is very clever! You don't need to make your own fame if you ride the coattails of something already famous.

paulpauper 5y ago

do it with ethereum or some other blockchain in a single tx

leodriesch 5y ago
I think Bitcoin is the safer option, since the history is more likely to be retained for historic reasons and it is smaller. Ethereum just has a lot more stuff running on it and the chain is much larger.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I was curious what this would cost and found a thorough stackexchange post [0] that puts the price at 0.032 ETH per KB stored on-chain. Comes out to around 12,000 USD for a small 100kb static site. I would guess this cost is competitive with carving binary data into stone, not bad for permenant storage, reading the data is free. [0] https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872/what-is-the-cost-to-store-1kb-10kb-100kb-worth-of-data-into-the-ethereum-block https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872/what-is-the...
- rattlesnakedave 5y ago
  Better would be an ENS name pointing to an IPFS address. Then just hope that IPFS sticks around. EDIT: ENS expiry would bite you. Maybe just IPFS then.
  - joshfraser 5y ago
    You need to make sure someone continues pinning the data for it to exist on the network. You need to create the right financial incentives for that to happen, which is what Filecoin is supposed to solve.
- mcculley 5y ago
  Hmm. Putting 1 gigabyte in S3 for 500 years at today's most expensive price ($0.023 per gigabyte month) would be $138. Prices are certain to decrease over time. This says something about the cost of using the Ethereum blockchain for storage.
  - terafo 5y ago
    Add 1 download per day for 500 years and you will get 21k.
  - gjs278 5y ago
    s3 might close down shop before the ethereum blockchain does
  - foopod 5y ago
    S3 and blockchain have very different use cases right? Blockchain being for small quantities of data made immutable, used in a p2p manner with as many copies as there are peers. S3 generally being purpose built for short term (relative to blockchain) storage and price.
    - mcculley 5y ago
      Yes, they have different uses cases. But one can easily see an arbitrage opportunity here for building an immortal database atop S3 (and other cloud services) for a lot less money. For $12,000 USD, I could store the same data in S3 for (at the very least) 445,217 years. (Using the example above.) That makes the value proposition of the Ethereum blockchain as a data store a lot less attractive.
LAMike 5y ago
Then what happens when AWS goes down? Bye bye Ethereum. There is only 2,500 ETH nodes today, most run on "cloud" services which cost hundreds of dollars a month, soon to be thousands
- paulpauper 5y ago
  the blockchain will still be permanent offline and on repositories
diego_sandoval 5y ago
Apparently, Ethereum is going to get rid of the proof-of-work chain history when it turns completely proof-of-stake. "The new chain is not going to hold information from what happened in the Ethereum chain before the merge" [1] [1] minute 1:31:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0QZmtbjvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0QZmtbjvs

arduinomancer 5y ago

How would people know to look for the messages though? A webpage is discoverable

max_ 5y ago
the transaction ID seems sufficient

Klimentio 5y ago

It should be a balance between readability, findability and integrity. I would not bet on the btc blockchain for it. Its relativly complex to use, its very niche, it is already 360gb big and there might be a time were it either disappears or gets optimized and your information will be gone.

erhk 5y ago
The first blockchain will almost certainly be preserved for historic significance
- __d 5y ago
  We thought that about Usenet.
  - andai 5y ago
    Wait, we lost it?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - zhoujianfu 5y ago
      Don’t worry, Satoshi archived it in the genesis block!
LAMike 5y ago
I wrote my name in the Bitcoin blockchain 6 years ago, I barely knew Javascript. For a blockchain like Bitcoin to fit all of its transactions in only 420GB is an engineering feat that should be admired The blockchain data will never be "optimized" or "disappear" Please take the time to learn how Bitcoin works before pontificating
- lloydgrossman 5y ago
  >The blockchain data will never be "optimized" or "disappear" This is a really bold assumption - you do understand that core dev is still ongoing, yes? You do understand that "infinite data on a disk" doesn't exist, yes? And as the chain goes on longer, more space is going to be needed, and centralization of the miners will continue to increase, yes? Please take the time to learn how Bitcoin works before pontificating

barmstrong 5y ago

Came here to post this - storing it on a blockchain is probably the most elegant answer to create high redundancy.

rlt 5y ago

Is there any standard for this, and a website (or websites) that publishes the data on the web? There are obvious problems with blindly republishing arbitrary data from a public blockchain, of course. Depending on how long you're willing to wait, you might be able to publish with as little as $0.00061 per byte: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ For reference, the text of the HN homepage (excluding HTML tags) is about 4KB so ~$2 if you're willing to wait, or up to ~$200 if you're in a hurry. I'm not sure if op_return transactions are typically priced the same as standard transactions though.