Bitcoin Forum

Andread Antonolopolous, one of my top Bitcoin Gurus said in one of his speeches that Bitcoin transfer is possible through light signal even through smoke signal.

Can someone technically explain to me how to make a Bitcoin transaction can be done through smoke signal?

How is it possible to have blockchain, the ledger, the confirmations etc through this method?

https://youtu.be/zxj0CUoijrU?t=1428

Simply by transmitting your transaction in binary form via smoke signals (or other means able to carry a binary signal) to someone who is connected to the network and can broadcast your transaction then on behalf of you (probably takes some time, not recommended for over the counter purchases at Starbucks etc.).

Sounds very similar to the good old "Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" which allows to send IP packets with the help of pigeons:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149

(Note the date in the RFC though!)

I'm pretty sure he mentioned Smoke signal and Semaphore Flags (which means combination of both method), so i think this is how it works :
1. Sender make signed transaction
2. Sender convert the signed transaction into raw transaction (probably in binary, hex, base36, or other format)
3. Sender make smoke signal which indicate start broadcast transaction
4. Sender start Semaphore Flags while receiver write down sent message

But sender/receiver must agree on :
1. Raw transaction format they use
2. Standard of the smoke signal such as broadcast transaction, block or other message

IMO it's not realistic and should only used as last resort, other method that he mentioned is more realistic in case of extreme censorship. Besides, i'm not sure if it's practical for anything besides transaction due to it's size which makes information transaction is very big.

If he meant only use Smoke signal, then @psycodad explanation is what you're looking for. But even for SegWit transaction with 1 input and 1 output, you need to change your smoke signal up to 1184 times (148 bytes * 8 ).

Really respect that guy and of course, I'm pretty sure he only meant to demonstrate that any form of transmitting data can be used to transmit or broadcast Bitcoin transactions... but you'd still need a node to confirm that transaction and include it into a block for it to be accepted by the network, so you definitely need the cooperation of both sender and receiver for this to work.

It is still a way to send messages, for sure.

I think, that AA used this as an example for other data transportation than the internet and not for practical means. You can send binary data in a lot of different (and probably more usable) ways than smoke or flag signs, like mesh wifi or short wave radio signals.
Humanity is obv. experiencing a transformation, where brains are connected to each other by fast data streams and there is nothing, that can stop this. Bitcoin is just one of the effects of the ongoing decentralization.

A Bitcoin transaction is just data. The method of transmitting a transaction from one node to another, whether by smoke signals, yodeling, or twitter, is not part of consensus.

On a related note, I would like to see the networking code segregated in such a way that nodes can interact using different network protocols and message formats.

Thank you very much for the explanations guys. It really helped to answer my questions.

But in none of the answers I saw how others will confirm the transaction?
How ledger will be held and synced by many people ?

Blockchain is not just transactions. It has miners, full nodes and confirmations... how do you guys explain that? I don`t think it`d be a Bitcoin transaction without a miners to confirm and full nodes to keep the ledger

http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html

Every node, including miners, validates and relays all the transactions and blocks that it receives to all other nodes that are connected to it (assuming they are valid). If that is not clear or you don't understand how it answers your questions, then I recommend learning more about how bitcoin works: https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works

How does the hash get created randomly to be encrypted and decrypted again?


That`s what I`m asking. How do you do those validations of all transactions that`s happening within the network while there`s no mining or full nodes in a smoke signal?

What do you mean? A hash is a mathematical function that is easier to solve in one direction rather than the other way round (eg. calculating 23 * 23 is easier than calculating the root of 529) while also producing an output that looks random. As such you don't need a computer to calculate it -- computers are just faster at calculations than humans.



The assumption is that somewhere on the other side of the prairie you have a user acting as a gateway, who would then transcribe the smoke signals to a transaction and transmit said transaction to the internet (where it would then end on the mempool, with miners and all).

Alternatively you could do the same without any computers at all and just rely on smoke signals, physical ledgers and manual mining. However you'd have to implement such a protocol as an altcoin, since you'd have to vastly increase the target block interval to account for latency caused by the low bandwidth of smoke signals and lengthy transcription process. Obviously not really viable but technically possible.