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

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

sjs382 wrote: post #60

sorokod wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than that I am pretty sure we can find many more examples. This statement could be made much more interesting and convincing if you provided some actual examples.

It's fairly common (at least among the security community) to post a hash of a claim to Twitter, that they can reference in the future to prove that they had X information on Y date without disclosing the actual information until later. For example, I could post the hash "9712f2488fa00fc5b11b657995ac10c9" to Twitter and then after the prediction comes to pass, I can reveal that the hash was for the phrase "Pittsburgh…

Post by mhluongo » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

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…

Post by mhluongo » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

bittcto wrote: post #43

Filligree wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it need to be decentralized? A blockchain is a chain of blocks. Tautological, but the words mean something; it isn't just a name. If you hash blocks that contain hashes of previous blocks, you have a blockchain. At most it might be argued that a centralized blockchain has no reason to exist, but I doubt that's true.

Because the term was coined by Nakamoto to describe the technology behind bitcoin. Decentralization, proof of work and other characteristics of bitcoin are intrinsic to making the system work. Otherwise you have an inefficient database that has no reason to exist.

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

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…

Post by ChrisClark » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

sorokod wrote: post #62

sjs382 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly common (at least among the security community) to post a hash of a claim to Twitter, that they can reference in the future to prove that they had X information on Y date without disclosing the actual information until later. For example, I could post the hash "9712f2488fa00fc5b11b657995ac10c9" to Twitter and then after the prediction comes to pass, I can reveal that the hash was for the phrase "Pittsburgh…

How is this similar to: "Instead of posting customer hashes to a public digital ledger, Surety creates a unique hash value of all the new seals added to the database each week and publishes this hash value in the New York Times. The hash is placed in a small ad in the Times classified section under the heading “Notices & Lost and Found” and has appeared once a week since 1995." ?