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[EN] The Book of Satoshi by Phil Champagne (beta)
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  • The Book of Satoshi : The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto by Phil Champagne
  • About the Cover Picture
  • Acknowledgements
  • Who This Book is Intended For
  • Foreword
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. How and Why Bitcoin Works
  • 3. The First Post on Crypto Mailing List
  • 4. Scalability Concerns
  • 5. The 51% Attack
  • 6. About Centrally Controlled Networks Versus Peer-to-Peer Networks
  • 7. Satoshi on the Initial Inflation Rate of 35%
  • 8. About Transactions
  • 9. On the Orphan Blocks
  • 10. About Synchronization of Transactions
  • 11. Satoshi Discusses Transaction Fees
  • 12. On Confirmation and Block Time
  • 13. The Byzantine General's Problem
  • 14. On Block Time, an Automated Test, and the Libertarian Viewpoint
  • 15. More on Double Spend, Proof-of-Work and Transaction Fees
  • 16. On Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Denial of Service Attacks, and Confirmation
  • 17. More in the Transaction Pool, Networking Broadcast, and Coding Details
  • 18. First Release of Bitcoin
  • 19. On the Purpose For Which Bitcoin Could Be Used First
  • 20. "Proof-of-Work" Tokens and Spammers
  • 21. Bitcoin Announced on P2P Foundation
  • 22. On Decentralization as Key to Success
  • 23. On the Subject of Money Supply
  • 24. Release of Bitcoin Vo.1.3
  • 25. On Timestamping Documents
  • 26. Bitcointalk Forum Welcome Message
  • 27. On Bitcoin Maturation
  • 28. How Anonymous Are Bitcoins?
  • 29. A Few Questions Answered By Satoshi
  • 30. On "Natural Deflation"
  • 31. Bitcoin Version 0.2 is Here!
  • 32. Recommendation on Ways to Do a Payment for An Order
  • 33. On the Proof-of-Work Difficulty
  • 34. On the Bitcoin Limit and Profitability of Nodes
  • 35. On the Possibility of Bitcoin Address Collisions
  • 36. QR Code
  • 37. Bitcoin Icon/Logo
  • 38. GPL License Versus MIT License
  • 39. On Money Transfer Regulations
  • 40. On the Possibility of a Cryptographic Weakness
  • 41. On a Variety of Transaction Types
  • 42. First Bitcoin Faucet
  • 43. Bitcoin 0.3 Released!
  • 44. On The Segmentation or "Internet Kill Switch"
  • 45. On Cornering the Market
  • 46. On Scalability and Lightweight Clients
  • 47. On Fast Transaction Problems
  • 48. Wikipedia Article Entry on Bitcoin
  • 49. On the Possibility of Stealing Coins
  • 50. Major Flaw Discovered
  • 51. On Flood Attack Prevention
  • 52. Drainage of Bitcoin Faucet
  • 53. Transaction to IP Address Rather Than Bitcoin Address
  • 54. On Escrow and Multi-Signature Transactions
  • 55. On Bitcoin Mining as a Waste of Resources
  • 56. On an Alternate Type of Block Chain with Just Hash Records
  • 57. On the Higher Cost of Mining
  • 58. On the Development of an Alert System
  • 59. On the Definition of Money and Bitcoin
  • 60. On the Requirement of a Transaction Fee
  • 61. On Sites with CAPTCHA and Paypal Requirements
  • 62. On Short Messages in the Block Chain
  • 63. On Handling a Transaction Spam Flood Attack
  • 64. On Pool Mining Technicalities
  • 65. On WikiLeaks Using Bitcoin
  • 66. On a Distributed Domain Name Server
  • 67. On a PC World Article on Bitcoin and WikiLeaks Kicking the Hornet's Nest
  • 68. Satoshi's Last Forum Post: Release of Bitcoin 0.3-19
  • 69. Emails to Dustin Trammell
  • 70. Last Private Correspondence
  • 71. Bitcoin and Me (Hal Finney)
  • 72. Conclusion
  • Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
  • Terms & Definitions
  • Index
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  • On Short Messages in the Block Chain

62. On Short Messages in the Block Chain

62

On Short Messages in the Block Chain

THE BLOCK CHAIN is the public ledger of all bitcoin transactions and is shared within the peer-to-peer network. At present, it contains only the transactions themselves. In this thread, someone proposes adding another piece of information within each transaction contained in the block chain that would be the equivalent of the “Note” section on bank checks. Unlike these, however, this note would be public and so visible to all. Satoshi expressed concerned that someone could publish in this note some information that was meant to be kept private, such as a customer account number.

Nevertheless, this feature is currently being considered for a future update of Bitcoin but is not yet available as of this writing. For now, only a third party service such as blockchain.info allows users to add extra text information, but it is not part of the block chain itself.

Miners have the ability to add some extra text in the block. As a matter of fact, the very first block created by Satoshi Nakamoto, block 0, has the following message in it:

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”

The message is in ASCII encoded form but easy to extract for those who know how.

Suggestion: Allow short messages to be sent together with bitcoins ?

Posted by ShadowOfHarbringer, October 23, 2010,03:11:17 PM

Bitcoin is great, but it misses one thing that usual bank transfers have: payment title.

Perhaps it should be possible to include short (<=512 bytes)message for each transaction.

The message could be encrypted with public/private keys so only the receiver can see its contents.

What do You think ?

PS. I might be wrong, but the messages could also be used to increase randomness of hashing process by the way, couldn’t they ? If not, never mind.

Re: Suggestion: Allow short messages to be sent together with bitcoins ?

Posted by satoshi, October 23, 2010, 07:02:57 PM

ECDSA can’t encrypt messages, only sign signatures.

It would be unwise to have permanently recorded plaintext messages for everyone to see. It would be an accident waiting to happen.

If there’s going to be a message system, it should be a separate system parallel to the bitcoin network. Messages should not be recorded in the block chain. The messages could be signed with the bitcoin address keypairs to prove who they’re from.

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