Topic: CryptoGraffiti - Block Chain Message Encoder & Decoder - page 9. (Read 35482 times)

You can think of the block chain as global dialogue with a long memory. Up until now it has mostly been used to communicate transfer of value in the form of bitcoins. But Bitcoin's block chain can also be used to store human readable messages.

For example it could be used as a notary service and as an alternative to patenting inventions.

Instead of writing down and idea and posting it to yourself you can type the idea in to a file, create a SHA1 hash of it and put it in the block chain. If at a later stage someone tries to steal your idea you can prove that it originated with you, or at least that you recorded it first.

And what about passports and birth certificates?

In many parts of the world this is a real problem, especially for girls in certain parts of India. You can use the block chain to document your birth, maybe cross reference it with your heart's ECG signature.

You could also use it for rights management of art works and of course smart contracts which is what Ethereum and others are trying to do.

I think we are starting to discover the true value of this invention now. It's not about money, it's about communicating meaningful action over time.

I don't understand your question, please use proper English.

I develop this service because it's interesting to discover what people have stored in the block chain. I secretly hope to find information that is censored and banned in other media. Information regarding the Hollow Earth Theory and aliens for example. Stuff like that: http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/177726/THIS_WILL_BLOW_YOUR_MIND_Anunnaki_in_the_ANTARCTIC/

what you use for it ? for website gambling bitcoin or what ?
interested but im confused.

Let's say you are the owner of the bitcoin address that receives donations for Bitcoin protocol development. You can publish the fingerprint of the new Bitcoin core release in the bitcoin's block chain, having it signed by the address that receives donations. Everyone can then verify the integrity of the new version and be sure that it was released by the person who controls the donation address. If the named address is a multi signature address, the whole development team could sign the release.

In addition, let's say you want to donate to erowid.org:
http://www.erowid.org/donations/donations_cryptocurrency.php

They have a static address available for bitcoin donations:
http://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1BuA9NqUa66k3aVVYExo22rBZRRyJ2vCFr

With cryptograffiti you can compile an additional output address to be included in the donation's transaction.
For example, you enter the text "Thank you, Erowid!" and receive the according bitcoin address: 18hJoc46nY3aTL7cFa2Wt88WMHbT7wcdiX

Now you make a transaction to these two bitcoin addresses:
1BuA9NqUa66k3aVVYExo22rBZRRyJ2vCFr (donation)
18hJoc46nY3aTL7cFa2Wt88WMHbT7wcdiX (Thank you, Erowid!)

and once the transaction gets saved into block chain, the message you attached to your donation is saved forever. Everyone can decode the donation transactions made to erowid and see if there are any messages attached.

Similarly, services could be paid for, having short messages attached.
Let's say I run an automatic SMS sending service that takes payments only in bitcoins. The SMS sending engine detect a new incoming transaction and decodes the message attached to the payment. The message includes the target mobile number and a short message to be sent. SMS gets automatically sent and the operator gets paid.

Endless possibilities amongst others, I have discovered love messages and web address advertising in the block chain. In early blocks there were even links to child porn. gets controversial

what are the practical uses of this, i'm sure there are loads 

Oh you mustn't stop doing this, it's important. I am starting to think that this aspect of block chains is more valuable than the currency. Because it's not really money that has value, it's the work/movement it represents. If people can prove their work and have individuals independently verify it by performing checksums over the course of their life, then over time it would build up a picture of person's contributions to their civilisation. And not just the result but the evolution of their thoughts and plans.

A friend of mine made something similar for the alt chains but it was for Bittorrents: http://blockchain-link.com/

Money fills the gap between our purchasing decisions; our measures of sacrifice. But it dances with time too. Time and energy.

I will think more about this. Thank-you for your time and energy 

Thank you for the positive feedback. My service was dying a while ago because I did not get any feedback but then someone had written an instant message with a donation of 0.5$ worth of bitcoins attached. This combined with your reply makes me optimistic about the service.

Latest developments (thanks to donations and people showing interest):
* optimized the decoder's HTTP queries by initiating cURL only once instead doing it for every query
* fixed a minor bug which made a wrong time to be written in the log at 100% CPU occasions
* CG Decoder now decodes randomly chosen blocks from the beginning of Bitcoin on its "free time"
* added a timeout of 30 seconds for the Decoder's HTTP queries (this should keep the service online more persistently)

Already working on:
* fix a bug in the user interface that currently obstructs the interface from decoding more messages after some time

everyone is welcome to write me their ideas for new changes either personally or in this topic

I just want to say how much I love your product. I have started putting my git commits in the block chain as a proof of existence experiment and recently at the World Crypto Network we put a hash of our Town Hall Meeting in there.

This is a very powerful idea. Thanks so much. I hope there will be updates.

Yes it's different. Everyone can put messages into block chain not only miners.

I know that miners can put messages when they find a new block. But is it different from your method to encode messages? I thought there is only one way to put text into bitcoin blocks.

I'm encoding messages into bitcoin addresses but that dude seems to have done it the way only miners can do it. When a miner finds a block, it can always put some message with it similarly to how Satoshi did it.

I feel like this sort of thing already exists? or is it not that simple to do

Cool! Thank you for your reply!

I have another question:

Days ago the f2pool creator got married, and on that special day he wrote a message in one block: https://blockchain.info/tx/e250c6d7ea4c5037fb96de1a2cb169850be792474401bae140fce784940f1dd3

In this block, the message is written not ASCII but in Chinese (literally translation is "Let me hold your hand and grow old together with you") , and the message is directly readable without decoding. How does this type of block message engraving work? Is it different from your method?

Yes you can, go to some transaction in blockchain.info, and scroll down until you see this:

Output Scripts
OP_DUP OP_HASH160 687474703a206269742e6c792f47433535313337 OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG
OP_DUP OP_HASH160 d76665a1a48815f000654d159bcef7ca3fd282c4 OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG

Now copy paste the hex string "687474703a206269742e6c792f47433535313337"
to this site:
http://www.dolcevie.com/js/converter.html

and press "Hex to ASCII"

The message stored in the block chain appears.

To clarify: from blockchain.info, I can view the blocks infomation with "Input Script" hash values. Can I read the messages from blockchain.info or other blockchain explorer?

This is a nice service!

How to query the text info stored in previous blocks? Can we view the text from blockchain directly, instead from your website?

Ok sent you PM. I support the idea of making a dumb-user-version that makes the TX for the user. Also I've been thinking about adding support to other block chains, such as Peercoin and Dogecoin.

I love the idea of this site. The only thing is, you gotta make it more user friendly. Make it sooooo easy.
In my opinion, it give the "average user" too many options.
"Import to wallet"- medium to hard difficulyy for average user
"instant", "list", "csv"- average user doesn't even know what that means as far as bitcoins and wallets, etc. are concerned.
And the costs, and amount, and donation, you might want to specify is that in btc or usd.

Is it possible to just have the user type their message, then say send x amount of bitcoins to xyz, and then your service automatically sends the funds to the blockchain?
I love the idea of your site. PM me

If you open a block chain file in a text editor that displays ASCII characters, then your messages will be there at the first glance. You are directly writing the byte values of your message to the block chain as they are indicated  by the ASCII table. If anyone displays the block chain bytes in ASCII table encoding, they would see your text, surrounded by a lot of gibberish. In essence, the same way this famous sentence is stored in the block chain:
"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

So, let me understand this.
A user goes to CryptoGraffiti and writes whatever message in the space given. Then, your software generates bitcoin addresses in relation to the human text/message a user just entered. After that, I use my wallet to send bitcoins to those addresses your software generated? However, the "messages" now in the blockchain aren't in plain text. You need to use your software to convert it to plain text? Do I have this right?