So if I send a message with blockchain.info then to read the message you must search for the public key in blockchain.info?
If you send a message with blockchain.info, then to read it you must find the message in the blockchain.info service. This can be accomplished by searching for the bitcoin address or transaction ID on the blockchain.info website.
Excellent. But this is not stored in the blockchain then? Its just a feature of the blockchain.info site?
Regards,
Matthew
It's just a blockchain.info feature, they're just a company that happens to have the same name as blockchain (technology) which makes the whole thing a bit confusing from time to time.
Your assumption is indeed correct: they (blockchain.info, the company) store your message in their internal database and link it to a transaction (note), or an address (tag).
Blockchain.info (company) parses the blockchain (technology) and stores everything in their own database and lets you link notes and tags in their internal database.
This process has nothing to do with the blockchain (technology).
If blockchain.info (company) ever goes bancrupt, gets hacked, dissapears,... All notes and tags that were done on blockchain.info will be gone forever.
Hmmm so back to the original question then I guess. For a non tech guy like me what is the best way to send a 6 digit message with a transaction that will be in the block chain forever
I don't really have experience in this kind of thing, but if you read this blog for example, things should become pretty clear:
https://www.wlangiewicz.com/2014/10/24/how-to-put-custom-messages-into-bitcoin-blockchain-op_return/The easyest way to do it seems to be this library:
https://github.com/coinspark/php-OP_RETURNThe thing is, you'll need a LAMP (or possibly WAMP) stack + bitcoin daemon to do this...
The other option would be to bloat the blockchain... If you want to send the message "152365" (a six digit message, like you said), you could create a transaction with a very small output to address 1Proof152365ProofD2P2BUH6HoTbuKNWQ The downside is that all the nodes on the network will allways keep the unspent output in their memory. The output of the transaction will always stay unspent, since nobody has the private key to controll 1Proof152365ProofD2P2BUH6HoTbuKNWQ.
The other downside is that each "message" will cost at least a couple cents (fee + couple satoshi's as output), in contrast to the OP_RETURN-method (the output can be used as an input, thus spent again, and it'll only cost you the miner's fee).
Once again: i'm not an expert in this... My explanation might be off on the technical level, or there might be other ways to do this... But this is how i understand it.