The text, which was from a headline in that day’s newspaper, was the first extra data, other than the transaction itself, to be stored in the Bitcoin blockchain. Fast forward a few years, and applications are storing all sorts of data in the Bitcoin blockchain, far beyond a few words attached to a transaction.
ENTER THE SAFE NETWORK The final piece in creating our true, recorded history of the world falls into place with the capabilities of a decentralized, immutable storage network for large files. The Safe Network, and other projects, such as Storj, are creating a place for users to permanently store files on a distributed network of nodes, making the original document recoverable for all time.
One of the methods to accomplish this is known as “Proof of Existence,” where the user hashes a long document into a short string of letters and numbers and places that hash into the blockchain.
Now we can maintain an honest accounting of the timing of events in history, thanks to the blockchain.
ENTER FACTOM
Finally, with all the hashes in this process linked to the blockchain record, any user can, at any time in the future, conduct a “Proof of Audit” and confirm the process was following according to the rules set forth.
The clarity and reliability with which we can record, prove, and audit events in our personal lives, as well as our collective history, is about to radically improve. It could even be said that this shift is equal to that of the move from our ancient past of oral history, to the beginning of written history as we know it. —S
DAVID A. JOHNSTON , Investor, Technologist, and 10X
Entrepreneur, Austin, Texas—David has extensive experience with a number of leading tech and cryptocurrency organizations. Currently he’s the managing director for DApps Fund I, where he evaluates investments in Decentralized Applications & Protocols. He’s also a founding board member at the MSC Protocol Foundation, which supports the development of open source tools for the Master Protocol. He’s also a co-founder, and the original Executive Director, of the BitAngels Network, where he built up the group’s membership to one of the largest angel networks in the world.
Crypto Biz Magazine
The next logical extension of this “Proof of Existence” is to allow users to chain together these timestamped documents as a “Proof of Process,” thus leveraging the time-stamping service throughout a defined series of activities, so that an entire process can be proven to have been executed.
CONCLUSION October.2014 Page.11
This effectively places an immutable timestamp on the document, forever onward (provided the user has a copy of the document), it can be proven with cryptographic certainty that the document did indeed exist in that form, and at the time it was added to the blockchain record.
So, now we have the original document, we have the time-stamping from the immutable blockchain, we can bring the two together with a Notary Chain, and further prove a fine-grained series of actions accrued.