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

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

#31

Post by earthscienceman »

JWett wrote: post #8
dnautics wrote: post #3

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.

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 S…

In case anyone else knows little about the history of cryptography or who these names are, here's some relevant information.

Here's the paper that started it all:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00196791

And a WSJ article describing the atmosphere in more detail:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-eureka-moment-that-made-bit...

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

#32

Post by sametmax »

0xfffff wrote: post #16

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.

If you don't have decentralized production and validation of blocks, you don't have a block chain.

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

#33

Post by Moodles »

0xfffff wrote: post #16

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.

I agree with you that your definition is what we should define a blockchain as, as Natamoto defined it. However, I'm afraid to say probably the majority of companies that claim they use blockchain probably use something very close to Git instead, or even just a digital signature or a hash function. Seriously, it's ridiculous.

Imagine if Google called certificate transparency blockchain? Journalists would lose their shit. Such an easy article to write. In fact, Google explicitly say on their website that they're kinda against the hype: http://www.certificate-transparency.org/general-transparency "These technologies are strongly related to the much-hyped blockchain. The reality, of course, is that there isn't a "the" blockchain, and that decentralisation is not always the answer. We are not making "the" blockchain, and we do not claim to support decentralisation."

I'll never forget my first job the business people wanted to investigate "the blockchain" and the yes men came up with a bunch of PoCs. I just asked "how is this different to Git?" Such an awkward moment.

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

#34

Post by beaconstudios »

foxes wrote: post #18
0xfffff wrote: post #16

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.

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.

That's just event sourcing. The innovation in the bitcoin whitepaper was the consensus algorithm.

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

#36

Post by lmilcin »

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.

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

#37

Post by maxerickson »

0xfffff wrote: post #16

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.

So they'd have to do something like publish the hashes in a major newspaper?

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

#38

Post by maxerickson »

zadler wrote: post #12
JWett wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

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.

The bitcoin whitepaper used the word "block" in the sense of "some data under a given hash".

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

It didn't use the word block in the sense of "to stop people from forging history".

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

#39

Post by [deleted] »

Moodles wrote: post #33
0xfffff wrote: post #16

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.

I agree with you that your definition is what we should define a blockchain as, as Natamoto defined it. However, I'm afraid to say probably the majority of companies that claim they use blockchain probably use something very close to Git instead, or even just a digital signature or a hash function. Seriously, it's ridiculous. Imagine if Google called certificate transparency blockchain? Journalists would lose their s…

[deleted]

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

#40

Post by zaarn »

sametmax wrote: post #32
0xfffff wrote: post #16

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.

If you don't have decentralized production and validation of blocks, you don't have a block chain.

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.

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