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

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5nzx4/what-was-the-first-blockchain

by chuckblake • 8 years ago

240 78 8 years ago

motherboard.vice.com

dublin• 8 years ago

This isn't exactly new, and not only for the reason in the article - Check out NetNotary from back around that time, too: They published their checksums daily in the WSJ, IIRC. Could be wrong, but I seem to recall NetNotary was a Marshall Rose/Carl Malamud project...

dnautics2• 8 years ago

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.

dreamcompiler• 8 years ago

It doesn't have to be. The purpose of chaining in the blockchain is to establish an unspoofable temporal ordering of events. In the case of the NYT, you can just look at the date on the paper, so chaining isn't strictly necessary.

JWett4• 8 years ago

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 SHA-1 but the system was very flexible in that it could upgrade the hash algos when more collision resistant versions became available) that would become part of a Merkle tree along with any other client submissions received in a short timeframe. The parent "top hash" node of the Merkle tree was then hashed with the the last value in a linked list referred to internally as the "super hash" chain to create a new end value in the chain.

The client application would receive a notary "certificate" containing all the values in the Merkle tree required to re-calculate the hash woven into the super hash chain along with the timestamp for the moment it became part of the chain. The client application could use this certificate at any time to electronically verify the veracity of any "document" (i.e., guarantee that the document existed in its exact form at a specific point in time.)

On a side note, the algorithms and implementation were successfully tested in court cases. (Some of Surety's customers used the system to timestamp millions of documents turned over in electronic legal discovery to ensure they were not tampered with by opposing counsel.)

The New York Times value was only significant in that if could be used to "manually" calculate the veracity of the notary certificate by hashing the super hash value it contained with all subsequent values in the super hash chain until it resulted in the hash value published in the Times. This "widely witnessed" approach made it impossible for an insider to collude with someone to generate a correct notary certificate retroactively by replacing the document with a forgery.

The blockchain technology used by crypto currencies is similar except for the tremendous amount of computation required to generate a "correct" hash value to close out a block and weave it into the chain.

Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta deserve a lot of credit for creating this when were working for Bellcore. Two brilliant guys.

zadler• 8 years ago

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.

earthscienceman• 8 years ago

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...

prepend• 8 years ago

Doesn’t this rely on Surety being trusted though? It seems technically possible for Surety to modify documents consistently in and out so the hashes are consistent, but not representative of the submitted documents.

Especially back in the 90s when generating crypto hashes wasn’t as easy for users.

So this is similar to notaries where the trust lies with a different party.

The killer app, I think, that made blockchain blockchain is the trustless nature.

Surety is certainly cool, but just a better version of putting a hash in a bank’s safety deposit box.

dnautics2• 8 years ago

Thanks for clearing that up!

galaxyLogic• 8 years ago

Interesting. Now how do we turn this into virtual currency?

bigiain3• 8 years ago

I've got an idea - classified advertising!

We'll start selling space in the coinbase field to real estate advertisers and escort services!

'The Times 03/Jan/2009: room to rent in 3br share house in The Mission, $2600/month+utilities'

ThrustVectoring• 8 years ago

Article has autoplaying audio

gpvos2• 8 years ago

You can turn this off in many browsers nowadays (media.autoplay.enabled in Firefox). Still good to call it out though.

Groxx2• 8 years ago

Is there actually any chaining going on, or is this a standard "trusted timestamp"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping

phyzome4• 8 years ago

The article doesn't make it totally explicit, but it sure sounds like each new hash incorporated the previous one.

(It's also possible that each published hash is just a brand new hash of the aggregate, but this seems somewhat less likely based on the wording.)

ETA: Looks like it's a chain, or rather a Merkle tree. From the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865168

bittcto6• 8 years ago

A Merkle root including previous Merkle roots may have been innovative when Surety started, but while its required in bitcoin its not a key feature of what defines a Blockchain.

Merrill• 8 years ago

Widespread use of this technology would be a problem for government, since it would be difficult to insert fake records to create "legends" for undercover detectives, spies, and people in witness protection, etc.

schoen• 8 years ago

Widespread use of Facebook might have a much more significant effect, because people don't usually memorialize all of their life events in a public digital notary service but often do so with social media.

I bet counterintelligence agencies are scraping social media and the web in order to see whether some travelers' identities are lacking in (or contradicted by) historical online documentation.

api• 8 years ago

Bitcoin's innovation was trust and conflict resolution through proof of work, not linked lists of hashes.

fooker• 8 years ago

There is difference between bitcoin and blockchain. A blockchain is, by definition, a linked list of hashes.

0xfffff2• 8 years ago

That's just called a hash chain, Bitcoin I believe just calls it a chain of hashes. The block data structure incl. salt and POW is what is so unique about Bitcoin.

bittcto6• 8 years ago

“By definition” people are just making up “Blockchain” as a desperate technology, usually people who don’t understand how bitcoin works and don’t realize they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Redefining the nature of the technology to get away from the difficult reality of it isn’t effective in the end.

bcarlton0• 8 years ago

This describes something from Surety, LLC. Too bad their web page doesn't have https. Hard to take them as seriously. http://surety.com/

JWett4• 8 years ago

I believe the company is only active in that it still operates its service for existing customers. The website is very old, but you're right, it's admittedly ironic that a computer security company has an HTTP website.

andreofthecape• 8 years ago

The login page has ssl. https://enterprise.surety.com/MyAbsoluteProof/ChangeMyAccoun...

jwfxpr3• 8 years ago

If the page that links to the login page hasn't proven it's secure, I shouldn't trust the links, and therefore shouldn't trust the destination. Hence why static landing pages need HTTPS just as much as login pages.

0xfffff2• 8 years ago

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.

foxes• 8 years ago

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.

michaelscott• 8 years ago

Blocks are taken as part of the blockchain once there is consensus amongst the nodes that it is valid, so the consensus algorithm (as well as the POW algorithm) are integral parts of what makes a blockchain a blockchain

beaconstudios• 8 years ago

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

sametmax• 8 years ago

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

zaarn2• 8 years ago

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.

Filligree• 8 years ago

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.

Moodles• 8 years ago

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.

mhluongo2• 8 years ago

I agree with you that your definition is what we should define a blockchain as, as Natamoto defined it.

Funny enough, "blockchain" as a term wasn't defined in the Bitcoin white paper at all.

maxerickson3• 8 years ago

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

exikyut3• 8 years ago

Initially I thought this was commissioned advertising, and it did read as such.

However, the ex-CEO has mentioned that it only operates for existing customers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865294), which conflicts with that view somewhat, so maybe this isn't an ad.

In any case; where can I view 1995 copies of NYT for free? :)

jwfxpr3• 8 years ago

In any case; where can I view 1995 copies of NYT for free? :)

Every public library in the United States, if I'm not mistaken, and a large number of major libraries worldwide.

exikyut3• 8 years ago

Hmm. I was hoping there was a way I could do so online.

Mumbles something about equal opportunity open access and the bourgeois

asasidh• 8 years ago

there are no blocks and therefore calling it an blockchain is pure clickbait. what we have here is a chain of hashes

lmilcin3• 8 years ago

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.

sorokod2• 8 years ago

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.

sjs382• 8 years ago

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 Steelers will Defeat New Orleans Saints 30-21 in Super Bowl LIII", proving that I had some knowledge or prediction that I didn't want to reveal at the time of the prediction.

lmilcin3• 8 years ago

It's not difficult to find examples:

https://twitter.com/gruber/status/991122089557004288?lang=en

There is even whole industry around the concept, it is called trusted timestamping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping

It basically works like this, you compute a hash of the document and send to some kind of service that will either publish your hash with the timestamp or will also sign the hash and the timestamp cryptographically without ever touching the document.

Later, you can refer somebody to the external service or let them examine the signature and the hash to prove that you were in possession of the information before certain date and time.

phyzome4• 8 years ago

It's a chain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865168

lmilcin3• 8 years ago

Thank you for posting this and clearing it up. This was missing from the original article.

FabHK2• 8 years ago

It's a block chain. From the article:

a copy of that seal and every other seal created by Surety’s customers is sent to the AbsoluteProof “universal registry database,” which is a “hash-chain” composed entirely of Surety customer seals. This creates an immutable record of all the Surety seals ever produced, so that it is impossible for the company or any malicious actor to modify a seal.

Another well known example of course is git (which slightly extends the definition to a directed acyclic graph).

liftbigweights• 8 years ago

So essentially a checksum. Using that logic, blockchains have been hiding within the internet forever because tcp/ip protocol employs them.

bits-and-bolts• 8 years ago

No the oldest block chain was invented by Acient Greeks, take Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. They are similar to blockchain as follows:

- Memorization of whole piece == Proof of work - You need lots of people to agree upon the story == 51 % of nodes - You can only append to the piece, because many others know and have memorized the piece so they will not agree to your version.

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

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