Author: Timo Hanke 2013-02-08 10:03:54
Published on: 2013-02-08T10:03:54+00:00
The blockchain technology has been proposed to establish identities in the past. Now, a new project has been announced that extends this idea to turn the blockchain into a "root CA" that can sign arbitrary certificates. The purpose of this is to use these certificates in the payment protocol where traditional centralized root CAs are considered unsatisfactory by some. The code for this project can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/bcpki and technical specifications and full-length examples can be found in the wiki. The project involves drafting a general specification for bitcoin certificates (protobuf messages) that allow for a variety of payment protocols. The signatures under the certificates are what is new here. Bitcoind has been patched to handle certificates, submit signatures to the blockchain, verify certificates against the blockchain, pay directly to certificates, and revoke certificates. Signatures in the blockchain are stored entirely in the UTXO set which makes signature lookup and verification reasonably fast. Payment methods include static bitcoin addresses, client-side derived payment addresses (pay-to-contract), pay-to-contract with multisig destinations (P2SH). Full-length real-world examples for all payment methods are provided in the tutorial pages and have been carried out on testnet3. For further details and specifications see the wiki.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T09:56:41.891521+00:00