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Comment by nxzero | Hacker News Reader

With something as important as blockchain verification, you would think DARPA would stop investing in private intellectual property.

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Why is blockchain 'important' to Darpa? Because you are rooting for bitcoin or for some other non-specific to you reason?

edit: Updated question to be more clear of intention

The blockchain is critical current & future technology, it's future is independent of Bitcoin's future.

Bitcoin is the first implementation of a blockchain system, but it's a technology, not Bitcoin.

All major log systems will be based on it; governments, banks, military, voting systems, etc.

Highly suggest reading the Wikipedia entry on Blockchain to learn more and think about how you might use it too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_(database)

I'm a blockchain blockhead. Any more suggested reading?

Really basic like a) how will my debit card debit my money buying DD coffee?

If I create another book can I "get blockchain" (so to speak) to protect my work? Thus, I will need to make the right choice to be covered under a blockchain or not?

At 50000 ft I get the significance I think. I just cant even come close to explaining it.

I recommend "Mastering Bitcoin" by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. It provides great detail on how the Bitcoin network actually works, including the cryptography you need. Work through that and you'll know how blockchain payments work and have a good idea of how the technology can be applied to other areas.

It's available from O'Reily: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032281.do

Think of a blockchain like linked lists. The linked lists exist on the network and is peer to peer, so there is no central server that stores the data.

Whenever a new transaction is made, in the case of Bitcoin, a new node is created and joined to the linked list.

The bitcoin blockchain is limited in the sense that you can only buy / sell bitcoin. Ethereum is another up and coming blockchain that allows you to write smart contracts (contracts that enforce themselves). There is a whole community of developers working on developing decentralized applications for Ethereum blockchain now.

Come join us over at /r/ethereum

I am versed on the blockchain. My question was not regarding its merits or usages. My question was on your phrasing of importance and how blockchain would be considered important to Darpa.

Do they have publicly known projects where they intend to use it? The funding itself shows they find it valuable or at least are curious enough to spend but for what reason?

Because it's a cryptographic proof. If their implementation is faulty they are vulnerable. It's very difficult to do correctly and many bugs have been found in bitcoin and other blockchain technology. This is pretty much one of the harder areas of computer security...

They want to make a decentralized chat app based on blockchain tech among other things.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-25/u-s-wants...

Yes, that was an odd DARPA RFP though, since amoung other paradoxical that RFP wanted to be able to delete parts of the blockchain after the fact.

NATO is also looking into blockchain uses: https://www.ncia.nato.int/NewsRoom/Pages/160425_Innovation.a...

There are reasons that this an interesting technology other than simply rooting bitcoin.

For example, consider the challenge of monitoring strategic weapon treaties or nuclear proliferation agreements. Agencies can leave monitoring video cameras at locations and would like to insure that there is no way for one party to modify the captured data.

It doesn't work that way. The hashes can simply indicate proof of tampering, so instead you get (some) assurance that there was no tampering in the evidence.

Attackers can still modify the data. For example, if they modify the feed before the hash of the feed is introduced into the blockchain.

Edit; Security at that level is extremely difficult as their adversaries are much more powerful and well funded. I can understand in that respect why DARPA would want to invest a large amount into that area.

Because time is baked into the process, and there are alternate means of establishing the time of events that relate to treaty verification, actually it would work this way, at least with respect to a hypothetical video feed. I have intimate knowledge of treaty verification procedures and methods, and worked in collections relating to these activities for the intelligence community. The fact is that there is no video feed, and it's utility is of dubious value anyway, but in principle, a video feed could be secured this way.

It just seems like you're expressing contest of granularity. A simple example is a feedback loop that would still have the process be deterred by some time from collecting evidence, and from being detected. The process just prevents to a certain degree the tampering of evidence once collected.

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