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Show HN: Timelock.dev – Send a secret into the future using timelock encryption

timelock.dev

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Re: Show HN: Timelock.dev – Send a secret into the future using timelock encryption

#41

Post by ttyprintk »

lucb1e wrote: post #35
ttyprintk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few geocaching approaches: Sunken chest / mysterious treasure map Beacon of high gamma radiation / undesirable to approach for many half lives USB key in Jimmy Hoffas pocket

My inner devil likes the "too dangerous to approach" idea :) About the last idea, I had to look up that name: > James Riddle Hoffa (born February 14, 1913; disappeared July 30, 1975; presumed dead July 30, 1982) was an American labor union leader who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 until 1971. Do I read it correctly if I understand "Jimmy Hoffas pocket" to be one…

I didn’t know his middle name was “Riddle” that’s almost ironic.

Re: Show HN: Timelock.dev – Send a secret into the future using timelock encryption

#43

Post by dumbfounder »

yogorenapan wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Smart contracts operate completely transparently. There is no private data other than the private keys used to sign transactions. Unless you just encrypt the data, then you need a key to access it, and the nodes don’t have that key.

I know a guy that worked on this same problem leveraging TEEs (trusted execution environments). This enables 3rd parties to run the software and join the network and take part without having access to the data. Unless they find a flaw in the TEE that can be exploited.

Re: Show HN: Timelock.dev – Send a secret into the future using timelock encryption

#46

Post by tutfbhuf »

You can replace one or a few trusted third parties with an entire network of node operators (similar to the blockchain or Tor network) and achieve practical timelock encryption[^1]. As long as there are enough uncompromised nodes, you will be able to obtain your secret in the future.

[^1]: https://github.com/drand/tlock

Re: Show HN: Timelock.dev – Send a secret into the future using timelock encryption

#47

Post by pjerem »

adastra22 wrote: post #15
Jamustico wrote: post #10

Whats the point of this if it's not decentralized/algorithmic based. Who knows if this service will go down or something? Might aswell just do this with one entity m

There is no decentralized algorithm for timelock encryption. No such scheme exists. Distributed is the best you're going to get without a radical breakthrough, and that's exactly what TFA is.

Why ? If you wrap the message into multiple layers of encryption (TOR style) that needs to go into multiple nodes, and if alongside the next encrypted layer you have a date the nodes agrees to wait to pass the message to another node, that would work, no ?

Even with some corrupted nodes, the message would still be secret, the only issue would be if the last nodes are corrupted : your message would be distributed too soon. But with enough layers and enough nodes to go through, you could mitigate this risk.

The network could even detect corrupted nodes if other nodes received the message too soon.

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