[Cryptography] Satoshi's PGP key.

ianG iang at iang.org
Tue Nov 17 20:13:42 EST 2015


On 16/11/2015 21:50 pm, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>
> On 11/15/2015 11:52 PM, grarpamp wrote:
>> Is not the mark of Satoshi the crypto [private] key of the
>> genesis block, to which all other supposed GPG keys
>> are functionally subservient?
>
>
> That depends on how you mean 'functionally subservient',
> but as far as I know he (or she or they) never used the
> Genesis Key for correspondence.


Why would they?  Do *they* have any need to prove themselves?  If I was 
Satoshi, which I am every second Tuesday, I'd be scared to have to 
authenticate my very words, it would mean that my words meant nothing, 
only my persona.  That way lies madness.


> At least, not correspondence to me or anyone I've ever
> heard from.
>
> I don't think that widespread knowledge of the Genesis Key
> would actually cause harm at this point.
>
> Although one could generate another checkable Genesis
> Block using it, that fact could not be used for theft now.
>
> Aside from the Genesis block being checkable
> cryptographically, it is widely known and distributed.  It
> would not be displaced even if another checkable Genesis
> Block generated by the same key showed up.


This surprising (?) unknown (?) property is similar that used to make 
root lists work - distro by other means.  It is also exactly the same 
property that makes Ricardian Contracts strong without any external 
referent - the document is distributed from person to person until it is 
so widespread that it is hard to introduce a "false" one.


> And the hashing proof-of-work has the interesting property
> of being bidirectional;  We have hashers working away to
> produce a partial collision with the hash of the previous
> block.  You could produce an arbitrarily-long fake block
> chain of _perfect_ hash collisions working backward, but
> a chain of _partial_ collisions is just as hard to produce
> backward as forward.  So a new Genesis block couldn't be
> the root of a longer (in hashing power) block chain.
>
> So the Genesis Private Key has value only as a historical
> artifact at this point.


We should ask her to try that experiment ;)

Coming back to the need to prove words, it is notable that people tend 
to ignore the mail because they are unsure if the source is valid.  Do 
we have a situation where SN could write a great idea and have it be 
ignored because it isn't signed?  Or, if he wrote a daft idea for say 
blocksize enlargement, signing would cause the daft idea to become gospel?



iang



More information about the cryptography mailing list