Block #1

[morantis]

I was answering another post when I realized that I did not know anything about Block #1.  Every one here has most likely downloaded the chain at some point or being on this forum is kind of silly.

I have some questions and my research did not answer them all.  Most of the questions are about Satoshi and his relationship with current Bitcoin.  I will tell what I know about the beginning here and it is not much.  First, Satoshi was more interested in the Crypto and confirmation system than the actual virtual currency.  I say this because he was working to prove or disprove the General's Problem.  Virtual currency was already around then in some places.  Many people here have used Second Life currency to buy Bitcoin and it is a little older than Bitcoin.

So, this is what I imagine.  Satoshi finishes the first client and server and contacts some friend or colleague.  He says "Hey I busted out some new code and I need your help testing it"  The other person says sure and now two people have the clients on their CPU's.  This is my first point of confusion.  I don't think a proper transaction would work with just two wallets.  I guess it would, but it defeats the security of the confirmations and the General's problem.  I send you BTC and when your wallet asks the network if the TX is legit I am the only one that can answer.  Sure the money I just gave you is not counterfeit, I verify it myself!  

So, skipping that thought, a third person participates and the network is up and running.  Now, what did Satoshi do with that first code.  The oldest Bitcoin source that I find is on Github and maintained by Wladimir J. van der Laan, username laanwj.  Who is that guy and where did he get the code.  Before this research I actually felt pretty smart about Bitcoin.  Obviously people will build up myth and such about Satoshi, but this is not his only project I am sure, he is a coder.  The little bit of info about him say he was still in the project until 2010.

Here was the big question that started me on all this and if someone can answer it and only it, I will go to sleep happy.  Block #1 and really Block Zero too.  Block #0 is the genesis block, of course, The Merkle.  Looking at it on the chain shows that it was 50 BTC, pretty straight forward.  The 50 was sent to address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa.  Is that Satoshi?  Is the original block chain gone or buried in a computer somewhere and the block chain that we use actually a first "fork"?  The first address has a little over 1000 transactions and still has 66 BTC in it.  Those first transactions never show a 50 BTC block, just small transaction.  Block #1 shows the first 50 BTC and it is obviously mined.  

Satoshi or not, these first two blocks confuse me.  Shouldn't the Genesis block have the first block reward.  I mean doesn't that first daemon on any coin actually mine the Merkle and output the block reward.  The whole thing is crazy to wrap your head around.  Block #2 was mined and I am sure that the first couple hundred are mostly mining.

Lose my question along the way?  

Two questions

Is this block chain not just derived from the original Satoshi client/server/daemon?  Is Block #1 mined by Satoshi himself?  Or....was that first client played with and then cloned/forked to go into a "production" status?  My kids will download the same chain I originally did, but did I download the first block chain or the very first copy?  To me the block chain and the concept is a blast.  Even without Satoshi, this block chain is filled with history.  The first Silk Road illegal transaction.  The first transfer that resulted in a FIAT exchange.  The first block mined by an ASIC built for Bitcoin.  Your first mined block/reward and my first block are in there.  The first faucet give away.  This might mean nothing to you, but to me it is like picking up the phone to make a call and being on the same party line as Edison.  

Any comments and input would be great.  I am sure that I am wrong on more than one point.

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[achow101]

So, some history. Satoshi wrote the bitcoin whitepaper in late 2008. The whitepaper laid out the design of the bitcoin system. This paper was posted on sourceforge and posted to the cypherpunks mailing list. A few months later, satoshi released the first bitcoin client, bitcoin 0.1.0. Bitcoin core is based upon this client.

Now satoshi probably did create several test Genesis blocks and blockchains while writing this software but the current Genesis block and blockchain is the original production one and the only production mainnet blockchain. Satoshi mined this block and created the Genesis transaction. He probably also mined the first several hundred blocks himself as well.

One of the first bitcoiners was Hal Finney and he and satoshi made some of the first transactions and code changes to bitcoin. Also present was Sirius also did many of the early code changes for bitcoin. Later Gavin also began developing bitcoin in 2010. Some of the other people who develop bitcoin such as Pieter and Gaezik also began working on bitcoin in 2011.

Wladimir came into the scene also in 2011. He is the current release maintainer meaning he decides release schedules and tags released. He took over after Gavin who took over after satoshi. The current oldest source on github comes from the original sourceforge repository. The oldest version is 0.1.5. Prior to that, sources and binaries were probably distributed by zip files from satoshi.

The github repository is not maintained by Wladimir but by all of the core devs collectively.

The address that you mention does get the Genesis block block reward, but due to something in the code that I don't remember, it is actually unspendable. The Genesis block and its coinbase transaction are hard coded into the software.

[morantis]

Awesome answer, knightdk I figured that Satoshi faded himself into other projects over time.  It would be awesome to see his Github collective, if there is one.  It is his kind of thought processes that can change software from a simple tool into something that changes people's lives.  Thanks again for the info.

[achow101]

Awesome answer, knightdk I figured that Satoshi faded himself into other projects over time.  It would be awesome to see his Github collective, if there is one.  It is his kind of thought processes that can change software from a simple tool into something that changes people's lives.  Thanks again for the info.

Satoshi doesn't have a github account. I'm pretty sure that the original sourceforge repository was setup by Sirius. It was migrated to github later by someone else.

[morantis]

I am closing this as it answered all of the questions that I had.  I want to thank knightdk for his prompt answer.  If this topic has inspired new questions along the same line, I will suggest that perhaps they could PM him before starting a topic.  I do not wish to flood this user with PM's and if  I wrong about his willingness to accept those questions privately, I urge him to let me know and I will retract that statement.

Thanks again