Scholars Keep Records: Blockchains As a Natural Step Towards Better - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

May 15, 2018 NFAIS Blockchain Conference

Scholars Keep Records:

Blockchains As a Natural Step Towards Better Record Keeping

• Prof. Christopher E. Wilmer

Managing Editor of Ledger University of Pittsburgh

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Civilization’s Greatest Inventions:

Fire Wheel Bronze Tools Electricity Computer Writing 3000 BC Proto-Writing 6000 BC

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Proto-Writing 6000 BC

• Earliest form of record keeping
• Combination of two inventions:

1. The idea of recording thoughts onto a physical medium 2. Discovery of a suitable physical medium

• Ever scrambled to find a pen and paper to

write down an idea before you forgot?

• Imagine being in a cave 10,000 years ago…
• … Scratch rocks together? Markings in sand?
• Discovery that wet clay & reed sticks works

was pretty clever!

• Method of recording as important as the idea
• f recording itself!

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Evolution of Record Keeping

Clay Tablets Paper Printing Press Computer

?

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Computer

Digital Records vs. Paper Records

• Paper records are not as easily corrupted
• Easier to tell when paper records have been

tampered with

• Authenticity of digital records much bigger

problem than it was with paper (fake passport vs. fake scanned image of a passport)

• Digital records can be instantly deleted at a

push of a button… takes more effort to destroy paper records!

Printing Press

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Evolution of Record Keeping

Clay Tablets Paper Printing Press Computer

?

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Evolution of Record Keeping

Clay Tablets Paper Printing Press Computer Blockchain?

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Printing Press

Meanwhile, Academia is Stuck in the 17th Century…

• When Galileo discovered what the surface of

the moon looked like in the 1600’s… he rushed to the printing press to tell everyone!

• What would Galileo have done today?
• He would have tweeted it.
• (or post on a personal blog)
• Slow process of going to a publisher

and waiting for your results to print was the only way to disseminate science back then!

• Why do academics today still follow the

printing press model? Why are our results laid out in “pages” in a virtual “book”?

• Peer review? Our peers can read our tweets

and review our blog posts.

Galileo’s Drawing of the Moon

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Printing Press

Meanwhile, Academia is Stuck in the 17th Century…

• Publishers do provide a necessary service in

science today: timestamping.

• Anybody can claim on a personal website that

they discovered something five years ago, even if it was only discovered five days ago

• Publishers act as trusted referees when there

is a dispute over who was first to make a discovery

Blockchain?

• Perhaps a point of intersection

between academic scholars and blockchain technology?

• Authentic, indisputable

records of discovery

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What is “Blockchain Technology”?

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Blockchains are a new kind of data storage technology with several unique features: 1. Extremely robust & reliable (no central point of failure, massively redundant) 2. Tamper-proof / immutable (no ability to erase information) Blockchain technology is an exciting area: Rapidly growing interest around the world, because it can potentially dramatically improve storage and tracking of:

• Health records
• Social security information
• Land titles
• Intellectual property/patents
• International borders
• Stocks/bonds/debts
• Money… (i.e., Bitcoin)

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• “Blockchain” emerged from “Bitcoin”
• Why and how was Bitcoin invented?

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• In the early 1990s, Internet pioneers saw a future of online shopping!

(which back then was widely considered ridiculous) “Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.”

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• Using credit cards to pay for things online was, at the time, seen as insane

(it still is insane, and leads to one disaster after another)

• In a credit card transaction you give a merchant the exact information

that merchant would need to make purchases on your behalf…

Hello Jane! I’d like to buy a toothbrush Sure. That’s $5

• OK. Here’s my online

bank password. Just promise not to take more than $5 OK? Promise.

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• Using credit cards to pay for things online was, at the time, seen as insane

(it still is insane, and leads to one disaster after another)

• In a credit card transaction you give a merchant the exact information

that merchant would need to make purchases on your behalf…

Sure. That’s $5 Promise. Hello anonymous Internet merchant! I’d like to buy a toothbrush

• OK. Here’s my online

bank password. Just promise not to take more than $5 OK?

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• Using credit cards to pay for things online was, at the time, seen as insane

(it still is insane, and leads to one disaster after another)

• In a credit card transaction you give a merchant the exact information that

merchant would need to make purchases on your behalf…

• To do so with anonymous online merchants seemed doubly crazy
• Significant investment in the 1990s in alternative approaches from major

companies, like Microsoft

• DigiCash, led by Berkeley PhD David Chaum, was a pioneer
• You buy “e-cash” from the DigiCash company
• Spend e-cash online. Very secure transactions.

(Much like PayPal today)

• DigiCash kept track (on a central controlled ledger)

who owned how much e-cash

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• DigiCash faced major obstacles
• Needed quick adoption (it was a startup) but consumers were slow to

adopt, and DigiCash had not earned their trust yet

• Needed permission from many financial regulatory agencies
• The mere perception that DigiCash might go under, meant that people

were reluctant to use its technology (central point of failure problem)

• All competitors faced similar problems. Some founders of e-cash-like

technologies even went to jail for (perhaps inadvertently) violating anti- money laundering laws (e.g., “e-gold”)

• All “e-money” startups/projects fizzled out by the late 1990s.

Visa/Mastercard more-or-less figured out online payments and the idea faded for ~10 years…

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• In 2008 a paper was published to a cryptography mailing list:

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• Avoided pitfalls of DigiCash and other prior attempts because it was

decentralized and… not a company!

• Just a set of rules that anyone can follow

“Hockey is just a collection of rules that describe a particular sport. Nobody owns the rules of hockey, and if anybody wants to change the rules, they can do so as long as they don’t mind playing by themselves. It is possible for the rules of hockey to change, but only if everyone agrees to the new rules. Bitcoin is the same way.”

• Yuri Takhteyev, researcher at the University of Toronto

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• March 2010, first Bitcoin transaction, 2 pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• Mt.Gox, one of the first Bitcoin currency exchanges

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• Today a bitcoin trades at over $10,000 each

(you have to add BTC and BCH)

• Total market value of cryptocurrencies in circulation, over $400 billion

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A Brief History of Blockchain Technology

• In 2013-2014, the term “blockchain technology” came into common

use, referring in a fuzzy way to the common enabling protocol that allowed Bitcoin and all of the subsequent variations to work

• Today it is an active area of research and innovation

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Bitcoin-Blockchain connection

• What is the connection between Bitcoin & Blockchain?
• Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a distributed ledger

called a Blockchain

?

The same ledger can also store other data (Example: weather data on the Bitcoin blockchain)

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Bitcoin-Blockchain connection

• What is the connection between Bitcoin & Blockchain?
• Bitcoin transactions recorded on a distributed ledger called a

Blockchain Financial incentive keeps “voluntary” network of computers robust

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Blockchain Technology vs. other record keeping technologies

Paper files in a cabinet Database on your computer Database synced across multiple computers Linked-entry database synced across multiple computers Blockchain Efficient? Resilient/ Redundant? Tamper/Error Resistant? Immutable?

Data storage technologies Features

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Where might blockchain technology be useful?

• Applications were there is no appropriate, neutral, custodian for data that

everybody trusts (i.e., there *must* be a lack of trust)

• E.g., Domestic vs. International patent disputes
• Custodian can be well-meaning, but unreliable
• E.g., A startup company that may not be around in 20+ years

(E.g., DropBox?)

• Is there an incentive for a data custodian to cheat when the stakes are high?
• E.g., Doctor being sued in a multi-million insurance claim case
• E.g., Police evidence database

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Ledger

• The first peer-reviewed journal for publishing original

research on cryptocurrency-related subjects

• Founded in 2014
• Broad scope:
• Mathematics, cryptography,

engineering, computer science

• Law, economics, finance,

social sciences

• Open access
• Free to view content

(no subscription cost)

• Free to publish

(no author fees)

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Publishing in in Ledger: Policies & workflow

• Once accepted, articles are digitally signed by the authors (we

provide a user-friendly tool for this)

• Cryptographically proves article has not been altered
• The signed document is timestamped by the Bitcoin blockchain
• Cryptographically proves article existed before certain time
• Under exceptional circumstances, authors may publish under a

pseudonym

• Demand less than anticipated. One pseudonymous

cryptographer, whose research was on how to make an even more anonymous version of Bitcoin, decided to publish with us under his real name

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Quarterly Progress Summary

You can also verify a signature to someone’s real name if they use OneName! Author’s signature Download link beside PDF article Bitcoin private key Drag & drop paper to sign Ledger timestamps hash in Blockchain (proof of existence) Authors can digitally sign their papers, Ledger will timestamp the file hash in the Blockchain

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Proof-of-Publication using Blockchain Technology

• Blockchains as a data-storage mechanism, are well suited to be used in

scholarly publishing because:

• Extremely resilient, tamper-proof, practically indestructible

database

• No single point of failure
• No cost of operation
• Incontrovertible proof of publication date, even across

countries and institutions whose incentives are not aligned (which is sometimes a point of contention for scientists racing to discover cure/new theorem/etc.)

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Blockchain Technology for Scholars & Publishers

• “The Blockchain is the new Internet” – Everyone
• Upcoming / exciting ideas that use blockchains
• (Nearly) real-time uploading of research results to blockchain

(next panel!)

• Sharing data / collaborating with researchers around the world

without relying on a centrally controlled database (e.g., climate science data)

• Meta-analysis: Learning about us by studying the blockchain
• Decentralization of citation indexing
• Enabling of fractional citations?
• Many interesting possibilities!

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Questions?

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What are blockchain forks?

• A blockchains can fork for different reasons
• Short forks due to small errors or network propagation delays
• A bug that splits the network

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What are blockchain forks?

• A blockchains can fork for different reasons
• Short forks due to small errors or network propagation delays
• A bug that splits the network
• A split in the community (disagreement on what the rules should be)
• Despite acrimonious claims to the contrary, if a community splits, neither

really can claim that they are the “original” blockchain more than the other

• One side, however, can claim to have greater support (by various measures)

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What are blockchain forks?

• If a fork persists then people who use to have currency units on one chain

will now have units on both (all information is duplicated) Notable forks:

• A very popular Etherem smart contract called “the DAO” was created in May
• f 2016. Over $150 million of ether was sent to the DAO contract’s address.
• Turned out to have a serious bug that was discovered (and exploited) in
• June. Hacker assigned all $150 million ether to himself.
• Intense ideological debate in the Ethereum community. Was the hacker

stealing people’s money? Or was the hacker “following the rules” of the smart contract, which allowed him to take all of the money.

• Community split into “Ethereum” and “Ethereum Classic”
• Ethereum reversed “hack” (people got their money back) (today: $700/ETH)
• Ethereum Classic let the hacker keep the money (today: $20/ETC)

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What are blockchain forks?

• If a fork persists then people who use to have currency units on one chain

will now have units on both (all information is duplicated) Notable forks:

• Bitcoin has split into “Bitcoin” and “Bitcoin Cash” over gridlock related to

the blocksize limit. Bitcoin Cash allows the blocks to be larger to process more transactions.

• How will this all pan out? No one knows.
• Forks may not persist if they do not have miner + market support

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Script

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Record keeping through the ages

• If you ask people to list the most important inventions of human civilization starting

from the pre-historical period, most people would probably say fire, the wheel, something about bronze or pottery, then perhaps the steam engine, electricity and then the Internet

• I think more than few people would leave out writing, and probably more than that

would leave out proto-writing… the writing of pictures and symbols that are not quite language

• But proto-writing was extremely transformative, because it was the earliest form of

record keeping. And it was in fact two separate inventions, though often talked about as

• ne: (1) the idea of writing things down was itself an invention, and (2) finding a

durable medium on which to record your ideas.

• How many of you have had an idea you wanted to write down before you forgot it…

scrambling for a piece of paper and a pen? Now imagine yourself in a cave 10,000 years

• ago. Even if it occurred to you that writing down an observation was a good idea… how

would you do it? Scratch one rock against another? Make some marks in the sand at your feet? The discovery that wet clay could be used, with a reed as a stylus, could be used for record keeping was as important as the idea that one should keep records in the first place.

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Record keeping through the ages

• But clay was heavy and bulky, the invention of paper greatly improved record keeping
• Then came the printing press, which allowed records to exist as metal templates, and

then used to make paper records.

• And skipping many little revolutions along the way, we now have computers and

electronic records… which can be stored millions of times more densely and transmitted effortlessly around the world.

• Is this the peak of record keeping?
• Just as clay maintained certain advantages over paper (for example, it did not burn),

paper has certain advantages over the electronic records we used today

• Paper records are not easily corrupted, and importantly, it is easier to tell when they have been

tampered with, compared to electronic records. Because it is so easy to copy and paste digital data, the authenticity and credibility of electronic records are a much bigger and more pervasive issue than we used to face with paper records (how much easier is to fake an image of a passport than the physical passport?). Another problem, electronic records, even in vast quantities, can be deleted in an instant with the push of a button - takes a little more effort with paper!

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Record keeping through the ages

• Now we have this new thing, called a blockchain, which imbues digital records with

certain properties we associate with paper (or perhaps even stone) records: they cannot easily be destroyed, records are provably authentic (a blockchain-based passport issued by the government could not be faked)

• In the meantime, while record keeping has evolved in the world in general, there is a

parallel tradition in academia… where we have for some reason fixated on technologies that were developed in the 18th century and never moved onwards.

• When Galileo discovered the planet Jupiter had moons, he rushed to the printing press

to publish his results. What would Galileo have done today? Obviously he would have tweeted it, or just posted his findings on a personal website. Yet today, academics (and I include myself among these stubborn traditionalists) continue to send our results to a “press” even if it is an online one… and have the text laid out in “pages” in a virtual “book or magazine”… even if such a thing is never printed.

• Is this madness? You might say “but what about peer review?” but surely our peers are

able to read our tweets and critique data posted on our websites!

• There is a function, however, that publishers provide today to scholars… and that is a

trusted third party that can attest to when the idea was first received. Anybody can claim on a website that they made a discovery 5 years prior, even if they had only made the disvoery yesterday. But a publisher serves as a referee to prevent that kind of abuse.

• And here, again, we find perhaps a first point of intersection between scholars and

blockchains