How close did they get to Blockchain before it was 'invented'?

[legendster]

I came across this pdf from the 90's about UAIF, if you read the quotes below, it is remarkably similar to what Blockchain and Satoshi's Bitcoin is in principle.
What is UAIF? Acronym for Unified Accounting Information Framework, it was a bank accounting system,  You can read more about it on the original pdf here.

Off course Blockchain was not an eureka! moment and it evolved into what it is thanks to JS and millions of caloused fingers. But what do you think? How close was this accounting system to what Blockchain is in terms of principles? I mean at the core of both of these lies the same idea of a distributed ledger system.

We therefore propose an open system oriented approach - Unified Accounting Information Framework
(UAIF) that is based on an industrial standard CORBA architecture to overcome the aforementioned limitation.
UAIF’s mission is to promote true distributed client -server processing and inter-applications communication in order
to facilitate electronic exchange of standard business documents between third parties. Instead of scrapping the
legacy systems, this framework takes advantage of distributed object technology, on-line detection system (Booch
1991, Clark 1994, CORBA 1995), XML and OMG General Ledger (GL) Facility, which can improve the quality and
accuracy of accounting information for specific industry and can be viewed as an enabling technology for
continuous reviewing and auditing (AICPA, 1995, Booch, 1991).

Distributed Object Technology
 
The next wave of client/server technology must be able to handle multiuse, consumer-to-business, and
business-to-business transactions across multiple servers distributed over global networks. Existing distributed
system such as the Object Management Group’s CORBA, the Open Group’s DCE, Sun Microsoft’s Enterprise
JavaBeans, or Microsoft’s Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), not only permit applications and data to
reside on different platforms such as UNIX or NT system, but also require them to work together seamlessly and
support various business processes. In all of these environments, server applications are designed to advertise
interfaces to services, or functions, that they offer. Clients locate these services by searching a directory and bind to
the desired services using the information stored in the directory. 

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is one of the well-known distributed middleware
that is proposed by a consortium – Object Management Group (OMG). CORBA promotes interoperability,
extensibility, portability, distributed processing and asynchronous operations all within an environment adhering to
open systems standards and providing improved performances (Lee 1995). If widely adopted, CORBA may have a
profound impact on AIS software marketplace.

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[legendster]

Quite surprised that no one has anything to say about this..

[amila_cs]

I saw a link to this in EQUAL discord. Thanks legendster for sharing this. Do you know what has happened to this network and whether they have actually implemented it? We might find Satoshi somewhere in this 

[legendster]

I saw a link to this in EQUAL discord. Thanks legendster for sharing this. Do you know what has happened to this network and whether they have actually implemented it? We might find Satoshi somewhere in this 

Actually no. It seemed like the project was never implemented and it just dropped out into the abyss. Its even hard to find any mention of the project anywhere on the internet except old published archives.
Satoshi or no Satoshi this is a cool little project that got very close to what Blockchain is.

[olumyd]

I saw a link to this in EQUAL discord. Thanks legendster for sharing this. Do you know what has happened to this network and whether they have actually implemented it? We might find Satoshi somewhere in this 

Actually no. It seemed like the project was never implemented and it just dropped out into the abyss. Its even hard to find any mention of the project anywhere on the internet except old published archives.
Satoshi or no Satoshi this is a cool little project that got very close to what Blockchain is.

In other words, blockchain or distributed ledger tech, isn't 2008 origin as many followers and enthusiasts believe? Concept is one thing, actual implementation is a whole different ballgame. Besides It's like electricity, people still debate who the father is - the greatest inventor or the one who discovered/coined the term.

[legendster]

In other words, blockchain or distributed ledger tech, isn't 2008 origin as many followers and enthusiasts believe?

Correct.

Concept is one thing, actual implementation is a whole different ballgame. Besides It's like electricity, people still debate who the father is - the greatest inventor or the one who discovered/coined the term.

Bitcoin's core functionality lies in the 'concept' of blockchain. It was not a product that came out of the blue. The marriage of hash tables to distributed ledgers and everything in between is well laid out in a chart by VB1001 on this thread : Bitcoin Prehistory.

Go glance it over.

[vit05]

I saw a link to this in EQUAL discord. Thanks legendster for sharing this. Do you know what has happened to this network and whether they have actually implemented it? We might find Satoshi somewhere in this 

Actually no. It seemed like the project was never implemented and it just dropped out into the abyss. Its even hard to find any mention of the project anywhere on the internet except old published archives.
Satoshi or no Satoshi this is a cool little project that got very close to what Blockchain is.

In other words, blockchain or distributed ledger tech, isn't 2008 origin as many followers and enthusiasts believe? Concept is one thing, actual implementation is a whole different ballgame. Besides It's like electricity, people still debate who the father is - the greatest inventor or the one who discovered/coined the term.

Satoshi never claimed he has invented blockchain. I think even the word was not used by him. He was responsible for building something that works using concepts and studies that many have thinking about before.

But it was a great paper to be found, op.

[avikz]

I must say I am very surprise to see this paper which is strikingly similar to the blockchain technoly that we use today, at the conceptual level. I know Satoshi didn't invent blockchain but he had implemented it in a way which became acceptable to the mass. That's where Satoshi deserves a special standing ovation.

While looking at the paper, I realized that no publishing date is mentioned in the paper and we have only a fraction of the original paper. Further my Google search led me to the below link,

https://clutejournals.com/index.php/JABR/article/view/2229/2206

Again I could not found the actual date of publication because the same fraction is available here as well. However, looking at the references I realized that all references are published prior to 2000. Does anyone have any info on the published date of the paper?

[legendster]

I must say I am very surprise to see this paper which is strikingly similar to the blockchain technoly that we use today, at the conceptual level. I know Satoshi didn't invent blockchain but he had implemented it in a way which became acceptable to the mass. That's where Satoshi deserves a special standing ovation.

While looking at the paper, I realized that no publishing date is mentioned in the paper and we have only a fraction of the original paper. Further my Google search led me to the below link,

https://clutejournals.com/index.php/JABR/article/view/2229/2206

Again I could not found the actual date of publication because the same fraction is available here as well. However, looking at the references I realized that all references are published prior to 2000. Does anyone have any info on the published date of the paper?

The earliest reference to the article and the work was on June 12th, 1995 and on this ancient looking website : http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_95/journal/vol4/wcy/report.html

The Distributed Object Technology (DoT) in connection to CORBA was mentioned here : http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/KAW/KAW96/bradshaw/KAW.html on June 9th, 1994.

It would be natural to assume that 'CORBA' as a distributed service system with DoT was already developed and publicly available for it to be referenced by that time.

[Kakmakr]

Satoshi never claimed to have invented a whole new technology, he simply put different existing technologies together and they worked perfectly together. The concept and ideas for this was out there, long before Bitcoin was developed, but people never combined different technologies like this to get a currency to work like this.

In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called "bit gold". <So it was not something new>

Also remember that the Banking system might have proposed a decentralized network, but it would have been controlled by a single authority and not a general consensus mechanism like with Bitcoin.  

[odolvlobo]

I don't think they are closely related. UAIF is basically a communication protocol. I feel that the only similarity with Bitcoin is the use of a distributed object system.

BTW, Bitcoin did not invent the concept of a distributed database. In fact, many blockchain-based projects would actually be better off if they used a standard distributed database instead.

[Haunebu]

Satoshi never claimed to have invented a whole new technology, he simply put different existing technologies together and they worked perfectly together. The concept and ideas for this was out there, long before Bitcoin was developed, but people never combined different technologies like this to get a currency to work like this.

In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called "bit gold". <So it was not something new>

Also remember that the Banking system might have proposed a decentralized network, but it would have been controlled by a single authority and not a general consensus mechanism like with Bitcoin.  

Bit gold? First time hearing about this. Sounds interesting. Whatever the case is, Satoshi Nakamoto is a true genius for combining old concepts and creating a coin that has tremendous potential.

Honestly, everyone only cares about Bitcoin and its value and they don't really care about its history or anything at the end of the day.

[BitcoinPanther]

Honestly, everyone only cares about Bitcoin and its value and they don't really care about its history or anything at the end of the day.

Not everyone, but majority of Bitcoin supporters.  Op won't be publishing the possible reference of the blockchain if he is not interested on Blockhain history.  Most developer look at the history of a certain program and not just copy pasting it.


It was well known that prior to Bitcoin, there are already a centralized blockchain developed, it's that Bitcoin made a difference because of its decentralization and was widely accepted afterwards.

You can check this article for more info : https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-origin-of-blockchain

[Noa_Amable]

I saw a link to this in EQUAL discord. Thanks legendster for sharing this. Do you know what has happened to this network and whether they have actually implemented it? We might find Satoshi somewhere in this 

Actually no. It seemed like the project was never implemented and it just dropped out into the abyss. Its even hard to find any mention of the project anywhere on the internet except old published archives.
Satoshi or no Satoshi this is a cool little project that got very close to what Blockchain is.

In other words, blockchain or distributed ledger tech, isn't 2008 origin as many followers and enthusiasts believe? Concept is one thing, actual implementation is a whole different ballgame. Besides It's like electricity, people still debate who the father is - the greatest inventor or the one who discovered/coined the term.

well, everything new might be something forgotten a long time ago...

[pushups44]

Some of the free bitcoin documentaries online cover the Cyberphunk movement of the 1990s and early 2000s. It is believed that Satoshi was involved with this small coterie of programmers and cryptographers.

[Beerwizzard]

Satoshi has invented a Blockchain but not the entire cryptography.  There is nothing special in fact, that in other spheres except currencies people were also working on digital security. And tbh making a decentralized data storage doesn't seem so creative so this idea could easily come to someone else's mind.

[franky1]

this topic has got nothing to do with blockchains

its more about API calls
in otherwords how 2 computers talk to each other.

its nothing to do with hashlocked blocks of data that are linked together in a chain of blocks

[Ucy]

That distributed ledger accounting system is way inferior to Bitcoin blockchain.

 Bitcoin is a distributed ledger with a deflationary currency. Projects can be built on Bitcoin Blockchain... am not sure if this was possible on the distributed accounting system. .  And most importantly, it is censorship resistant and immutable

[kryptqnick]

This is indeed an interesting finding. I remember a recent discussion where the op gathered the main sources that led to appearance of Bitcoin, I found it rather useful and accurate: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5126554.0. This article seems not to be there, but all this is only supporting the claim that there aren't really any revolutionary inventions. People who are  inventing something that seems totally innovative and a full break from tradition are simply those that know this tradition better than anyone else and find the ways to combine already existing ideas in new ways. I recently heard a talk of an Oxford professor on this matter.
The ideas of cryptography, privacy, decentralization, online money - they all existed before Satoshi. And yet it was this person/team that brought it all together to create something fascinating.

[dothebeats]

UAIF seemed to be more of an API with an involvement of a decentralized body, completely far from the blockchain. The blockchain employs the use of a decentralized distributed database in the form of blocks, and that, to me sounds like the synthesis of different cryptographic papers and Satoshi openly admitted that in some of his replies and comments. Should computers and tech were widespread during the heydays of Chaum, Szabo and Dai, we may have seen a working cryptocurrency before bitcoin that is utilized heavily even if it's just confined in the interwebs but sadly, that was not the case.