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Conference:March 7-9, 2016
Workshops:March 10-11, 2016
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Presentation: Hash Histories - toy blockchains for great danger

Track: 
Full Stack Javascript

Location:

  • Churchill, G flr.

Duration

Duration: 
11:50am - 12:40pm

Day of week:

  • Wednesday

More talks on:

Key Takeaways

  • Learn about Document Coin, and it’s goals.

  • Discover ways that blockchain is being used in new and innovative ways.

  • Follow the JavaScript Cryptography code line by line and see running test cases using Prova in the browser.

Abstract

Document Coin uses a simple hash history algorithm to track coin provenance. Coin content is secured with cryptography but the history is secured with a hash of the cleartext content. We'll follow the JavaScript cryptography code line by line, using HTML5 Web Crypto APIs and IETF standardized JSON signature formats.

Coins also carry a copy of the signers public key which makes sybil attacks frictionless unless we take care which pubic keys we believe, so in a full implementation, identity will also be signed by subsequent coin holders, coloring the identity assertion with each transaction.

Expect slides with JSON on them, and JavaScript over-the-shoulder test/dev iterations using Prova in the browser.

Interview

Question: 
QCon: So what type of work are you doing these days?
Answer: 
J Chris Anderson: The project that I’m working on now is an art research project. The aim is broaden people's understanding of what the blockchain can do, and what counts as a currency. If you go and look at what people are really doing with bitcoin, it’s not revolutionary, it’s evolutionary. I have been reading a bunch of anthropology and that has got me thinking about how people can use objects as currency. So I am modeling digital objects using cryptographic tools like the HTML5 WebCrypto API.
Question: 
QCon: Can you tell me more about the project? It’s Document Coin that you’re talking about right?
Answer: 
J Chris Anderson: Yes. Document Coin is an approach to cryptocurrency based on anthropological accounts of gift economies, so rather than tracking the amount of a given currency held by each wallet, it creates unique and distinct coins and tracks them as they flow through the social network. The content of a coin can be any data, but for the first version I think using photographs illustrates the key points best. Digital objects open up entirely new realms of user behavior. Document Coin is not meant to compete with commodity currencies, but to illustrate that non-market exchanges are also meaningful and interesting.
The first incarnation will be a social media sharing application that happens to use blockchain technology to track coins, but feels informal and fun for users.
Question: 
QCon: Why JavaScript and blockchain?
Answer: 
J Chris Anderson: When new features become available in the browser that always opens up opportunities for interesting innovations (like Document Coin). So the trend to look at here is that WebCrypto is hitting the mainstream browsers, opening a path for cryptographic tools to be used in non-traditional ways.
Question: 
QCon: What are some of the use cases that blockchain is being used for that I wouldn't really think about today?
Answer: 
J Chris Anderson: The one that is most relevant to document coin is securing digital assets. There is a whole bunch of companies that are basically allowing digital artists to protect their work. It essentially takes the mechanisms of DRM and uses it to empower artists instead of distributors. It’s allowing you to take these metaphors that we have in the physical world can apply them in the digital world in a way that we haven’t been able to before. This allows us to treat digital objects like physical objects.
The converse is also happening with smart contracts. Platforms like Ethereum allow developers to treat physical objects like digital objects, mapping the Internet of Things to a distributed computation platform.
Question: 
QCon: What am I going to learn in your talk?
Answer: 
The big picture takeaway is that the blockchain can be used to create things we haven’t considered. These things can have richer behaviors associated with them than just commodity currencies. I would like people to really understand that you can use the blockchain to gamify experiences. It’s not just for use as a financial services instrument.
Specifically we’ll see an implementation of a Merkle tree that uses public key signatures to verify content, and how that can be used to track data provenance of document coins. These techniques can be generalized to all kinds of applications, so the presentation should be useful to anyone building crypto in the browser, or anyone who wants to learn data structures for distributed databases.

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