The #bitcoin-assets deed system

After an earlier failed attempt that old idea finally seems to have come to fruitionⁱ, thanks to punkman's tireless efforts.

The system consists of :

• An IRC bot (punkbot, for now) that idles in #bitcoin-assets and

  • Responds to commands, like
    

    jurov punkbot, deed https://coinbr.com/foundation.txt.asc
    punkbot jurov: Queued 1 valid deed for next bundle.

    ben_vulpes punkbot: status
    punkbot ben_vulpes: No pending deeds | Last bundle 2 hours and 31 minutes ago

    ben_vulpes punkbot: balance
    punkbot ben_vulpes: Balance at 1LAwrWMbP[...] is 0.0146 BTC (0.0 unconfirmed), enough for 132 more bundles.

  • Issues its own status updates, like
    

    punkbot [trust-update] | removed: fivezerotwo

    punkbot Bundled 1 deed | http://deeds.bitcoin-assets.com/b/12CJHNrB

    punkbot Confirmed bundle 12CJHNrBGLNxLaYbX9NH2tnU1JAeXxByZ6 | http://deeds.bitcoin-assets.com/b/12CJHNrB

    notifying the channel on updates of assbot's L2 listⁱⁱ, of prepared bundles being sent as transactions and of such transactions being confirmed.

• A website (deeds.bitcoin-assets.com) where registered deeds are listed in historical order, and the raw deed as well as details about its confirmation can be inspected.
• An unseen part, which takes all the deeds received during an hour, sha256 hashes them, b58encodes those hashes, joins with "," all the b58encoded hashes, sha256's the resulting string and uses that as a private key for the confirmatory transactionⁱⁱⁱ and also maintains the database, website and so forth.

The point of the system and its advantages are not going to be discussed here. It's a registrar of deeds, it serves exactly the same central purpose in commerce, politics and the life of the city generally that any other registrar of deeds system^iv ever served : a definite statement can be registered as having been issued by a specified party at a certain time^v.

It serves them better, of course, seeing how pgp signatures are and will remain an unmatched advance in merchantry, but this is entirely besides the point : just like we won't bother to try and explain to the peasant that's never seen a horse anything about the economic advantages and military importance of locomotion, similarly we won't bother explaining to the rider hordes anything about the economic advantages and military importance of the superiority of internal combustion engines over trained animals in terms of locomotive power. Let everyone figure out the world in his own time, on his own dime, or else die trying. It's not like anything about it is optional or needs any persuading anyway.

The bot only accepts pgp-signed material^vi. The code is open source. The future is now.

1. As you've perhaps noticed already. [↩]
2. That almighty lordship list. [↩]
3. The way deed bundles are confirmed by the bitcoin-assets deed system is by sending a Bitcoin transaction from the system's fixed address (1LAwrWMbPLLSpt7nkD5Jv1Yf4cwPhD98ny - that LAw part being a coincidence!) to an address obtained by hashing the bundle. There's some work done to help independent third parties to spend that transaction, thereby passively verifying the bundle. [↩]
4. The Torrens title office in your town, for instance, provided your town lies in a jurisdiction advanced enough to use that system, or else the notary public service. [↩]
5. Not in a certain place, because the Internet is all the same one place. [↩]
6. And only from people on the #bitcoin-assets lordship list. [↩]