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Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

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Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#21

Post by diminish »

machrider wrote: post #17

This idea is generally called "trusted timestamping": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping One example would be to take a photo of a rental car showing damage at the time you rented it and be able to prove it was taken at that time. Then the rental company cannot later claim you caused the damage. This is a pretty clever use of the blockchain as a publicly-visible and authenticated timestamp. This way, t…

I was developing a similar online notary. My idea is to timestamp open code, docs etc create a prior case database against patent trolls and goliaths.

Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#23

Post by spiritplumber »

Two thoughts.

1) Will this have legal weight? I know that the whole "prove paternity of an invention by sending a certified letter containing the design through the mail, and not opening it until you need it" thing doesn't very much work, if it goes to court you tend to be told "OK, what you say is true in the physical universe, but you did not go through our blessed channels, so nyah nyah nyah".

2) Anything that makes bitcoins more legitimate / part of the world's infrastructure decreases the chance of bitcoin going away as a system. I think the idea for the bitcoin community is to make the system as a whole "too big to fail" before governments decide that they want to get rid of it.

Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#24

Post by SilasX »

gnerd wrote: post #11

The idea is cool but it might be too early for people to use the blockchain like this as right now BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second. Once that hard limit is lifted, and things like this can scale and support demand, applications like this could be very interesting. One thing though, it says the BTC involved in the transaction is unspendable, isn't that a bad thing? I imagine an idea like this that didn't…

Wow, didn't realize that! That's bad news, since the current daily transaction rate (~100k) is within an order of magnitude of the daily limit (~600k = 7 x 3600 x 24).

Fortunately, the doubling time is, from eyeballing the chart below, about 6 months, so that allows ~1-2 years for a fix.

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30day...

Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#25

Post by nwh »

spiritplumber wrote: post #23

Two thoughts. 1) Will this have legal weight? I know that the whole "prove paternity of an invention by sending a certified letter containing the design through the mail, and not opening it until you need it" thing doesn't very much work, if it goes to court you tend to be told "OK, what you say is true in the physical universe, but you did not go through our blessed channels, so nyah nyah nyah". 2) Anything that mak…

> Will this have legal weight?

I doubt it. If I have to fax something for it to be a legal document, such an antiquated system will ignore any advances made around it.

Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#26

Post by nwh »

gnerd wrote: post #11

The idea is cool but it might be too early for people to use the blockchain like this as right now BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second. Once that hard limit is lifted, and things like this can scale and support demand, applications like this could be very interesting. One thing though, it says the BTC involved in the transaction is unspendable, isn't that a bad thing? I imagine an idea like this that didn't…

> BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second

It doesn't really matter, it's not like they're at all close to that limit. The limit is there to create a market with transaction fees, so it's not just going to be "removed" any time soon.

Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#27

Post by gnerd »

SilasX wrote: post #24
gnerd wrote: post #11

The idea is cool but it might be too early for people to use the blockchain like this as right now BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second. Once that hard limit is lifted, and things like this can scale and support demand, applications like this could be very interesting. One thing though, it says the BTC involved in the transaction is unspendable, isn't that a bad thing? I imagine an idea like this that didn't…

Wow, didn't realize that! That's bad news, since the current daily transaction rate (~100k) is within an order of magnitude of the daily limit (~600k = 7 x 3600 x 24). Fortunately, the doubling time is, from eyeballing the chart below, about 6 months, so that allows ~1-2 years for a fix. https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30day...

Well I was expecting there would be a significant jump in transaction volume as news spreads, prices rise, more services were offered in BTC and more countries get local exchanges. You also seem to miss that its not the total number of transactions per day you need to worry about, its the transactions per second.

There are surely periods of frenzy in the day where we cannot support 7 transactions per second as more economic activity takes place, even if the total transactions for the day is well under 600000. Its not like the transactions are neatly distributed on a flat line throughout the day.

There must also be some consideration that each time this is done, the BTC in the transaction is rendered unspendable and so it is taken out of the market. So I guess its not good if something like this could scale on top of BitCoin.

Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#28

Post by taway2012 »

Couple questions.

1) AFAIK, bitcoin has "comments" within transactions. Why not embed the checksum as a comment in a transaction between wallets you control?

2) In the approach described here, no coins are being sent with the transaction (right?). Are blockchain participants really accepting NOP transactions involving 0 BTC transfers. Maybe I missed something.

3) As others pointed out, requiring the whole file to be uploaded is a non-starter for anybody savvy enough to be using this service. Users should be able to directly specify the checksum.

Re: Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain

#29

Post by gnerd »

nwh wrote: post #26
gnerd wrote: post #11

The idea is cool but it might be too early for people to use the blockchain like this as right now BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second. Once that hard limit is lifted, and things like this can scale and support demand, applications like this could be very interesting. One thing though, it says the BTC involved in the transaction is unspendable, isn't that a bad thing? I imagine an idea like this that didn't…

> BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second It doesn't really matter, it's not like they're at all close to that limit. The limit is there to create a market with transaction fees, so it's not just going to be "removed" any time soon.

> The limit is there to create a market with transaction fees, so it's not just going to be "removed" any time soon.

The limit is actually there to limit the size of a block. It has nothing to do with transaction fees. Click the link I posted: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Current_bottlenecks

It used to be 250K and then this year was raised to 1M so it probably will get lifted again. That is the goal of the project, to allow it to scale to at least PayPal numbers (46 transfers per second).

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