
The World’s Oldest Blockchain Has Been Hiding in the New York Times Since 1995 - chuckblake
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5nzx4/what-was-the-first-blockchain
======
lmilcin
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.

~~~
sorokod
_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
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.

~~~
blocked_again
Wait but this is not fail proof right. For example I can post that Kolkata
Knight riders will defeat Mumbai Indians along with a post that Mumbai Indians
will defeat Kolkata Knight riders and delete the wrong twitter post once the
competetion is over?

~~~
logfromblammo
Presumably, one can assume that once it is published publicly, someone else
could make a note of it, and tattle on the author whenever they delete a hash
without revealing the source of it.

In practice, nobody is attending to anyone that closely, aside from a handful
of public figures, and shenanigans like those you described might actually
work to get someone more attention, only to fail once they have enough. That's
why a publication mechanism that disallows deletions is desirable for such
hashes.

------
0xfffff
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.

~~~
Moodles
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](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.

~~~
mhluongo
> 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.

------
dublin
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...

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

~~~
phyzome
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865168)

~~~
bittcto
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.

~~~
phyzome
Given that "blockchain" is a generalization of Bitcoin, not formally defined
theoretically beforehand, I suspect we would not agree on what a blockchain
even is, and would go 'round and 'round in circles.

But I think we can agree that a Merkle chain like this would be sufficient for
most of the things people are trying to use blockchains _for_ recently, which
certainly says something.

~~~
Groxx
Yea, I think most would lean towards requiring one or both of:

    
    
        - it's a distributed consensus system (often around "blocks", but e.g. iota is not)
        - it's a chain of hashes to prevent mutation (around "chains")
    

And I doubt we'll ever get everyone to agree on what subset (including null)
of those are "a blockchain".

Very ( _very_ ) few things benefit from distributed consensus IMO. And not all
altcoins use blocks at all. So I tend to lean towards hash-chains. Publicly-
verifiable immutability is useful in quite a lot of real-world scenarios.

------
dnautics
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.

~~~
JWett
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
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.

~~~
bigiain
Feels a bit like that's a post-facto argument to me.

It sounds like the Surity thing had "blocks" consisting of a week's worth of
documents which got chained together and had their hash published irrevocably
every week.

Without the subsequent invention and popularity of the specific implementation
of the bitcoin blockchain - I don't think the slow/costly consensus "feature"
could be considered a requirement to distinguish between "hash chains" and
"block chains" like that.

(But I'm regularly on the losing side of nomenclature arguments - I'm still
pissed at all the people who've decided they should call my non-autonomous
quadcopters "drones"...)

~~~
jobigoud
> I'm still pissed at all the people who've decided they should call my non-
> autonomous quadcopters "drones"

Apparently we should call them quadpters because it's based on helicopter for
which the ethymology is not heli + copter, but helico + pter, like in
helicoidal and pterodactyl.

~~~
taejo
Or tetrapter, to stick with Greek roots (though I'm personally fine with
heteroradicalism!)

------
Merrill
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
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.

------
bits-and-bolts
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.

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

~~~
bigiain
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'

------
exikyut
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](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? :)

~~~
jwfxpr
> 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.

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

 _Mumbles something about equal opportunity open access and the bourgeois_

~~~
jwfxpr
New York Public Library, with a library card:
[https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/22/how-to-search-
nytimes](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/22/how-to-search-nytimes)

Los Angeles Public Library, with a library card: [https://www.lapl.org/new-
york-times-digital](https://www.lapl.org/new-york-times-digital) (and you can
apply for an e-card online for free: [http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/contact-
us/e-card/e-card-regi...](http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/contact-
us/e-card/e-card-registration))

Kansas City Public Library, with a library card:
[https://www.kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-read-back-
issu...](https://www.kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-read-back-issues-new-
york-times-free-online)

Etc.

Summary: get a public library card, support the oh-so-terribly bourgeois
public library system ;)

~~~
exikyut
This is fair, but I don't know how much the National Library of Australia has,
or whether access is free. Sorry I forgot to mention my location in my
previous comment.

------
ThrustVectoring
Article has autoplaying audio

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
0xfffff
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.

------
bcarlton0
This describes something from Surety, LLC. Too bad their web page doesn't have
https. Hard to take them as seriously.
[http://surety.com/](http://surety.com/)

~~~
andreofthecape
The login page has ssl.
[https://enterprise.surety.com/MyAbsoluteProof/ChangeMyAccoun...](https://enterprise.surety.com/MyAbsoluteProof/ChangeMyAccountSettings.aspx)

~~~
jwfxpr
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.

~~~
gpvos
Fair enough, although you could check that the domain names are the same in
this case.

