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Comment by bockchain | Hacker News Reader

> How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

This is the best use case for blockchain. Put the secret on the blockchain and show others that transaction. Since it's on blockchain, no one can deny your claim about knowing the secret. This is why blockchain was invented.

Before blockchain, I was miserable. There was no way for me to prove to my girlfriends that I knew a secret, without telling the secret. Now with blockchain, my life is so easy - I just show them the blockchain transaction and they know that I know.

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> Before blockchain, I was miserable. There was no way for me to prove to my girlfriends that I knew a secret, without telling the secret. Now with blockchain, ...

I thought the joke would continue that now with blockchain, I don't have a girlfriend anymore.

Fixed the bug, boss!

Now you're thinking with web3(tm)

If all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

Thanks for this grandiose piece of satire.

Well this actually is a good usecase for blockchain, though... The very original Bitcoin client contained this functionality already.

Very ironic usage of this quote, imho. Almost like - "even a broken clock is correct 2 times a day"

Except that any of the various RFC3161 compliant crypto timestamp services available would have done, too. They are run i.e. by the Swiss Post (commercial), or the german DFN (a non-profit conglomerate of german research facilities and universities). So you could show your girlfriend the crypto timestamp with its included Hash, and also proof you had the secret at a specific point in time, without giving it away.

> Put the secret on the blockchain and show others that transaction

You missed the "without giving it away" part.

I assume this is excellent satire, but you never really can tell.

You really can't..

> Before blockchain, I was miserable.

This part gives it away. Also his username which is probably misspelled deliberately.

Bockchain - human centipede but with chickens

Bockchain - digital pecking order

Stoutchain

More like borkedchain

Not without blockchain, you can never really tell.

Not sure if you are trolling? If the secret is on the blockchain, it literally becomes public by definition. And if it's encrypted somehow, what is the point of the blockchain?

You could just send an encrypted document to all the relevant people, and later on give them the key. At best the blockchain would prove that you actually send it to them (or everyone in that case), but nothing else.

I bet $1000 that this is an ai bot. Hn should have a bot that bans bots

How can you tell with that level of confidence?

He put it on the blockchain to prove he knows the secret. Can’t be wrong, it’s immutable.

He can tell, because he has a secret bot detection bot. That bot can detect 100% correctly with no false-positives, as long as he never reveals how it operates. The bot is named ZeroK.

He doesn't need to, he only needs to be confident that someone with more knowledge (or confidence) in the actual status of the commenter won't make a counter-bet

I would like to take the other side of that bet.

I guess SHA1 isn't cool anymore?

During the old forum mafia days message digests were one of the ways people made predictions that you'd reveal later. You would usually tack on something random at the end to make guessing hard.

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