Factom - Good news for Mastercoin holders?

Apps
1

Factom is utilizing the ‘Master Protocol’ in trying to solve some of the big problems of Bitcoin. If successful, could be bullish for Mastercoin and beneficial to the Maidsafe Core Team (David Johnston is the ‘Chairman of the board’)

Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session

Maidsafe and StorJ have potential to store Factom data as well. Those technologies are coming later though

Factom Whitepaper:

Factom Secures Data With The Blockchain

Factom allows you to build applications on top of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Factom provides a simple API that lets you build projects that were not possible before while still harnessing the trust and security of the Blockchain.

Use Cases for Factom

  • Real time auditing of exchange (preventing a future Mt. Gox)
  • Proving the time documents were created (preventing robo signing
    scandal).
  • Tracking of all business processes (preventing future Deepwater
    Horizon Oil Spill type events where sub contractors fail to meet
    specifications)

The Factom Peer-to-Peer Network

Factom will have a peer-to-peer (P2P) network which accomplishes two goals: communication
and data preservation.

Factom Peer-to-Peer Communications

Factom will have a P2P network very similar to Bitcoin’s. It will consist of full nodes which have all the Factom data. The full nodes create a mesh network which will flood fill valid data throughout the network. The Federated servers would be full nodes, but not all full nodes are Federated or Audit servers. This is very much like Bitcoin, where miners are full nodes, but not all full nodes are miners. This will limit the ability to DDOS the Federated servers individually.

They can connect anywhere inside the network to acquire the data needed to build the data structures. As the servers are coming to consensus and disseminate their signed data, they would publish the data over the P2P network. The P2P flood filling also limits the ability of Federated servers to censor based on IP addresses, since valid traffic is mixed together by the nodes they connect to. It also helps to prevent censorship, since the Audit servers can see the Entries which should be included in the Entry Blocks. The Audit servers have an incentive to bring bad behavior to light, so they can be voted up to a Federated server.

Data Preservation and Dissemination

Factom data structures (Directory Blocks, Entry Blocks, Entries) are needed for Factom to be useful. They are public and will be preserved in two places. The Federated and Audit servers need to maintain this data to make correct decisions about adding new Entries. Since they have this data, they can provide it as a service, as part of being a full node. There will also be partial nodes, which share only part of the Factom dataset. The partial nodes could share only the data which is relevant to their specific application. Peer discovery for the partial nodes is handled by
a Distributed Hash Table (DHT).

Making exchanges honest is one of the first projects that’s being done on Factom. You can run a proof-of-audit on steroids – letting you produce a true audit trail of every transaction at every moment. That’ll really get businesses to sit up and notice. The other application that will pop up right away is title records – because they secure such a large portion of a country’s wealth

Factom, Proof of Existence, Proof of Process, Proof of Audit

Rivetz and Factom Announce Collaboration

Rivetz and Factom Add Device-Level Security to the Blockchain Ecosystem

Today, Rivetz (http://rivetz.com/), and Factom (www.factom.org) announced that Factom has selected Rivetz to integrate world cyber-security for the Factom applications, and that Rivetz has selected Factom to assure the global integrity of attribute data for Rivetz-protected applications.

This collaboration will leverage Rivetz’s Trusted Execution model for the secure protection and processing of data and collection of user intent with Factom’s data layer on the blockchain to provide organizations in the financial, manufacturing, distribution and wholesale industries with the efficient means of verifying processes and registering data.

David Johnston, chairman of the Factom Foundation board of directors said, "We are excited to integrate Rivetz’s capabilities to bring world-class protection of users’ identities and private keys as an option for all of Factom’s users.

Rivetz is providing a fundamental technology that will benefit all new blockchain-based applications."

“Rivetz is pleased to partner with Factom to bring a new capability to all applications – the ability to store a fact. We look forward to integrating Factom’s capabilities into our solution to protect and attest to the attributes of modern devices for security, convenience and privacy,” stated Rivetz CEO Steven Sprague.

Factom uses blockchain technology to innovate how organizations can manage and record their data. Businesses can now reliably look to Factom and Rivetz for highly secure, decentralized record-keeping using their API, without having to ensure their information is being stored in a compliant and private manner.

All the data managed by Factom is hashed (a process by which mathematical algorithms encode data into a different form), resulting in an indistinguishable string of alphanumeric characters, rendering information such as names, addresses, transactions and finances impermeable.

Only the person who sent the information into the Factom layer is aware of what data it contains. Rivetz provides the local environment which assures that the information being protected was what the user intended, and enhances the quality of the hash signatures by incorporating cyber-security controls for the local keys and identity information.

Rivetz believes that keeping both the data and the location of the data private is essential to many business and consumer transactions. Rivetz allows the assurance of the Factom network to meet all of the global requirements for protection of identity keys and encryption process. Together, the solution will meet the needs of the most demanding customers and substantially reduce the cyber-security risks which face so many solutions today.

1 Like
2

I’m a little confused… Isn’t the Bitcoin mining centralization a major problem with block chain and Bitcoin… Yet people are still using tons of time with that…

1 Like
3

I only just found this and realized from the Craig Sellars letter (included in the post below) that Factom is utilizing the Master Protocol…which they don’t seem to be talking too much about.

The Reddit AMA, explains a fair bit on the details, one fact that caught my ‘eye’ was:

Factom creates permanent records that can’t be changed later. In a Factom world - there’s no more Robo-signing scandals. In a Factom world, there are no more missing voting records. In a Factom world, you know where every dollar of government money was spent.
Basically, the whole world is made up of record keeping and as a consumer, you’re at the mercy of the fragmented systems that run these records.

This is where, in my opinion, Blockchain tech is taking us, complete accountability of all activity across all systems…except SAFE…bullish for SAFEcoin :smile:

When you think biometric records will also be part of the mix and take for example iris scans

I watched a movie last night called ‘I Origins’ (good movie) and at the heart of the storyline is the topic of re-incarnation …in short a guy collected eye photos as a hobby from an early age, he met a girl (took pics of her eyes) that he had a real bonding with and she died…but later on through a huge eye database that had been developed by a research institute, gave a match on these same eyes as a living 8 year old girl.

So re-incarnation with the same eyes was a proven in this movie.

Then I thought…wow once your eyes go on a system…and if this movie plot happened to be true, they have you forever…on the blockchain! Owe money in one life and don’t pay it back, we’ll get you next time around etc etc :eyes:

The Dali Lama is supposed to be the same soul reincarnated for example of a supposed real life situation.

1 Like
4

http://blocktech.com/#appcoins

See Alexandria

1 Like
5

The Dali Lama himself wants to end the ridiculous tradition of the Dali Lama being “re-incarnated” - to pre-empt Chinese authorities deciding who the next Dali Lama will be in the future.

come on now…there are many scientific reasons why it can’t possibly be…lol. However, I think you are spot on with bitcoin - it is potentially a way of monitoring every transaction a person makes; this when added to the general surveillance society does not bode well for the future. Bitcoin is fishy to me.

2 Likes
6

hey china vote dallyshalla for dallyllamma

3 Likes
7

I think Factom is going to be good for MaidSafe from the perspective of awareness and indeed, it may be able to utilize MaidSafe.

On the other hand, don’t forget:

  • It will have its own currency. So to use it you’ll need at least BTC, the factom currency, and - if you want to store data on MaidSafe - some SAFE coins. That’s not too convenient - just from the transaction and cost perspective it’ll involve additional complications.
  • Factom will be able to plug in to any back end. Company X will be able to store their data internally on whatever they like (including NFS, STORJ, S3 (which means literally everything)) and just expose certain proof-of-record to the outside world via Factom API. While some of those are centralized, Factom is targeting exactly that market - companies and governments.

IMO there are more downsides than upsides for MaidSafe in say 30% of the addressable market (but those 30% may be more lucrative). As the market is growing from literally 0, it doesn’t mean much either way. What matters most is the execution. Factom’s approach is easier to execute, I think, but also easier to copy/emulate.

8

Science? …yeah ok

Let’s start from fundamentals…I like this guys approach, he has an interesting history and great hair:

2 Likes
9

[snigger]

10

Interesting stuff. It makes me think though, the blockchain is a ledger of events, so you can trace a coin (a hash) as it transfers around the place. There is some space with the hash you can put small amounts of data in (like other hashes). People say its a clock, but really its a rolling ledger for these hashes. A bitcoin is a hash (basically) so the data is the hash really, or its a hash with no data if you think that way.

So I see many projects looking at this and great, good to see things being tried. Now I think further, what are we trying to achieve here. Seems like its proof a document exists (a hash of it in the blockchain), so there is somewhere a thing that has this fingerprint. So we need to be able to find the thing (the document) and if its digitally signed and dated (date included in the doc so its signed in) we can validate, yes this is a contract agreed by these two (or more) parties.

Great stuff.

So in SAFE we have immutable data (stuff that cannot be deleted), that is content of files right now. We also have public data, this is data where the data map (key to the files) is unencrypted and therefore readable by anyone. This allows public data to exist, it is signed by an owner (this is the MPID part currently going in to allow public ID’s and messaging etc.)

So this gives us the web if you like, we can publish data and everyone can see it, the data can be in any form we wish, html, .doc, pdf etc. and that is cool. We can do safe::david/web/ to get to my web site etc. fine and dandy.

However I can delete this data (I signed the directory element (this holds data maps for all files in a directory)). So like the web you can delete your own site etc. All well and good again.

However, with a tiny change here this can provide what I think these systems are looking for and maybe a bit more.

If there was location to store to immutably then this all changes. All we need to do is have a mechanism where the client does not sign the directory listing (meaning it cannot be changed as the network sees this as immutable data) but still uploads it to their public place (safe::david/public_record ) then the only difference is that data and directory are immuable and cannot be changed or deleted (permanent).

Then you can open a document (it can still be encrypted if it is indeed a proof you need to have, but want private) and the network can easily authenticate the digital signature (its inherent in SAFE and happens a lot under the hood anyway, for many reasons) and the content of that document is guaranteed. So if it is a mortgage application then you sign, the bank signs and it’s locked, you can store a copy in your public place and so could the bank. Then the data is immutable, digitally signed and if necessary encrypted (you can store it in your private drive if it is sensitive).

Then you have, proof of existence, proof of content and immutability (so no deleting the evidence or governments loosing data type issues). For public accountability this seems to me very easy.

For private contracts then all you do is not publish it, but keep it for your own records/evidence etc. and Bobs yer uncle as they say :slight_smile: So I see this as very simple really, when you have a secure autonomous network that has inbuilt cryptographic security. the importance of the hash is fine, but its the ability to get the content I think SAFE provides as when its public and immutable it is forever and if SAFE II comes along all you do is drag the files form SAFE I to that place.

then projects like factom can create apps that track contracts etc. or create their own public drive to store certain data on, genverments can place their data there for public record and more. So for a globally secured public record tracking system then it seems job done, The only cost would be store the data, but if it is public data like that then its either free or the cost of private versions would be so little its immeasurable to humans (a single doc with a few hundred pages I would imagine would be a nanopayment and not noticeable), I think you would need to store thousands of such docs to see a cost really, as there is no transaction costs in safe then this would prove to be incredibly cheap and importantly present the actual data that is permanent record.

12 Likes
11

Will this now become core? If so it’s a great feature to promote SAFE.

A video and a blurb out about this, would be great if indeed it will be implemeted as a feature. Perfect to pitch to public organisations and head off the ‘Public Ledger’ awareness that’s happening within the ‘Bitcoin’ space.

“ProjectSAFE has 'secured public/private record tracking ’ built in…and with your organizations computer infrastructure, could be cost neutral to implement”

2 Likes
12

Yes this is part of core, there are a ton of things like this that we can do now. I would like to provide the API and let app devs create much of this. I suppose we will put this in the lifestuff app (@Viv ?) to allow folks to see how its done. It is a very simple issue and can be easily done. It is a simple matter of putting public data and not signing the directory (which means the data cannot be deleted). This is the kind of thing I am desperate to show folks, but holding back till we get these testnets done and get apps rolling. There are quite a few more things like this.

6 Likes
13

This is tooooo much! How many more times will I be blown away by learning about yet another built in capability? Sounds like that’s not over yet…omg :slight_smile: Hat off to you @dirvine.

1 Like
14

My sentiments too…and stop sniggering…lol

2 Likes
15

:smiley: Cheers, it’s a bit better than many systems in this way. If you consider the data (content) is already immutable then the pointers to it (the directory / datamap) are tiny. So this means many systems could point to the same data, so a government or corp could put up their records and others simply copy the pointers (looks like copying the data). So ‘watching’ the corps is not a single blockchain type approach but a fully decentralised bunch of different projects. i.e. maybe Wikileaks keeps their copy in order of country/gov and EFF keep theirs in order or privacy statements/licences etc.

It’s just another example of real decentralisation and while SAFE is hard to explain and implement the benefits become really apparent when you dive into it (then it looks completely obvious). Wait till we get the computation part, then stuff gets really wild :smiley:

7 Likes
16

Factom won’t be using Mastercoin/Omni or even Counterparty, but Koinify.

1 Like