Author: Ron OHara 2014-07-25 01:14:20
Published on: 2014-07-25T01:14:20+00:00
The author of the message is asking whether the blockchain can be used as an approximate time source. The blockchain provides an extra piece of reliable data that is not being exploited by applications, which is the time agreed upon by more than 50% of participants with a strong financial incentive to keep it accurate within approximately 10 minutes. Although 'time' on the blockchain can be manipulated with great difficulty, an application presented with a fake blockchain can use heuristics to test its validity. In this case, cryptographic proofs can be reviewed, and the difficulty should be growing/declining only in a realistic manner up to the most recent block. Arbitrary tests like difficulty > 10,000,000,000 are also used to presume that any less means that the Bitcoin system has failed massively from where it currently is and has become an unreliable time source. The blockchain can now be used to build time capsule applications that cannot be tricked into exposing their contents too early by running them in a virtual environment with the wrong system time. The author believes that using the blockchain as an approximate time source gives a world-wide consensus without direct trust of any player.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T01:30:25.529639+00:00