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Hashcash+Bitcoin - securing (digital) items

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Stefan Claas

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Oct 21, 2021, 11:23:58 AM10/21/21
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Hi all,

I like to show a user-friendly method, which IMHO should allow
artists or other people to trade items, where the person who
like to obtain an item can be confident that the item is offered
by its original author.

The first step for this method is done with example content
from me, which you can download and verify:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmegafEAy6D88QgiNdu16ivUf3jt3pzXKwuGibg6kNRnpZ

You see there are three items, one is the item ORIGAMI.jpg, the second
one is the tamper-proof QR-Code Stefan_Claas-ORIGAMI.png
and the third item is the certificate from a professional Blockchain
timestamping service, where I signed up.

If you decode the QR-Code you will see the following content:

Author: Stefan Claas, Berlin, Germany
Domain: radio-eriwan.su
Item: ORIGAMI.jpg
Hashcash: 1:20:211021:bc9b48826b707ec13994b637f6451e98a8f7efde1c5302f9b12f32920165a81:bc1qyvjfu24y4rn32xv60vxefk7ejun97fqe846awm:jmpaFLyy:ba3eb

Details of the procedure:

The original doodle ORIGAMI.jpg I created in the mid-'90s and hashed
the image with a SHA256 hash. I then created it for demo purposes
a Bitcoin Wallet with the following address:

bc1qyvjfu24y4rn32xv60vxefk7ejun97fqe846awm

With Hashcash I bound the sha256 hash from the image to the Bitcoin address as you can see with the above Hashcash: string QR-code content.

One can verify the validity of the Hashcash string with Hashcash:

https://github.com/sac001/hashcash

To verify the QR-Code go to https://originstamp.com/verify/ it should show
Success and in this case the proof is in the Aion Blockchain.

The .pdf document is a certificate issued to me which explains the
steps used for Blockchain timestamping and later I get also an
Etherium Blockchain and Bitcoin Blockchain proof.

Sign-up for the timestamping service is free and you can get five
timestamps per month for free. There is also another timestamping
service (opentimestamps.org) but I like this service much more.

I think this is an easy method to prove ownership so that later,
once other steps are thought out, an item can be verified and
linked to a cryptocurrency address or even bank account or PayPal
account.

Ownership in that way, that when I create an item and immediately
Hashcash and timestamp it with the location where it is hosted
and the ability to do a Google image search, it is hopefully good
enough for an average person not to digitally sign items with ones
own private key and an attacker hopefully thinks twice, prior
stealing content and re-distributing it.

Regards
Stefan



Stefan Claas

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Oct 21, 2021, 12:30:36 PM10/21/21
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On Thursday, October 21, 2021 at 5:23:58 PM UTC+2, Stefan Claas wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I like to show a user-friendly method, which IMHO should allow
> artists or other people to trade items, where the person who
> like to obtain an item can be confident that the item is offered
> by its original author.
>
> The first step for this method is done with example content
> from me, which you can download and verify:
>
> https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmegafEAy6D88QgiNdu16ivUf3jt3pzXKwuGibg6kNRnpZ
>
> You see there are three items, one is the item ORIGAMI.jpg, the second
> one is the tamper-proof QR-Code Stefan_Claas-ORIGAMI.png
> and the third item is the certificate from a professional Blockchain
> timestamping service, where I signed up.
>
> If you decode the QR-Code you will see the following content:
>
> Author: Stefan Claas, Berlin, Germany
> Domain: radio-eriwan.su
> Item: ORIGAMI.jpg
> Hashcash: 1:20:211021:bc9b48826b707ec13994b637f6451e98a8f7efde1c5302f9b12f32920165a81:bc1qyvjfu24y4rn32xv60vxefk7ejun97fqe846awm:jmpaFLyy:ba3eb

Ouch, I forgot, while copy/pasting, to include the last character in the sha256 hash, a 'c'.

Regards
Stefan

Stefan Claas

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Oct 21, 2021, 2:23:07 PM10/21/21
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On Thursday, October 21, 2021 at 5:23:58 PM UTC+2, Stefan Claas wrote:
I guess my adventure with this is realizable by setting up a web server
on my domain with a gallery and then combine it with this cool service:

https://www.blockonomics.co/

which allows after a person paid in BTC he will automatically
receive a download link of the item(s). Once time allows I will set
up a server and try my solution out. Then I must figure out of course
if the number of items can be limited with this service so that I
do not need to take down the product after n sales. For the product,
the display would then only have a smaller preview image available and
an information page on how this all works, compared to NFts.

(My motto for this: "resist the mainstream and follow your own dreams" :-))

Regards
Stefan
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