Permacoin: Repurposing Bitcoin Work for Data Preservation

cs.umd.edu

4 pointsdoczoidberg2 comments

I suggested somewhere earlier that it might be a good idea to use the blockchain to claim prior art on implementation of ideas. Add the 'filing fee' to get your message included and presto: instant notarization by 10's of thousands of people.

Sure, that was discussed in detail by Jeremy Clark in CommitCoin. http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~clark/papers/2012_fc.pdf and a related scheme implemented by Manuel Araoz http://www.proofofexistence.com/

But Permacoin solves a different problem. With timestamping, the 'hash' of your document is in the blockchain but it's up to you to store the doc yourself if you want to reveal it later. In Permacoin, the network is rewarded for storing all the data itself, redundantly.

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