[ANNOUNCE] Bitcoin message service v1.0 (within block-chain)

[btcmsg]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello Bitcoin community!

Now you can write your message into the bitcoin block chain.
It will stay there forever with a proved timestamp.
Reading such bitcoin messages can be done online or offline.

Just visit http://btcmsg.staticloud.com or http://btcmsg.ifreeweb.net
Alternatively download the site for offline use from http://btcmsg.staticloud.com/offline.tgz or btcmsg.ifreeweb.net/offline.tgz or http://btcmsg.4shared.com

The procedure is:
1. Write your message.
2. Click the "send email" button that creates a request. Send this request.
3. Pay the _exact_ amount of BTC to the given account.

Your message will be part of the block-chain within few blocks, which means instantly thousands of copies all around the globe forever.

* No registration required.
* Totally anonymous if wanted.
* Open protocol and basic python tools are included.
* Offline option.
* Client is signed to verify authenticity.

Basic technical details:
The clients are html+css+javascript only, and they are enough to read the messages forever (you can save the client locally for offline use).
The service for writing new messages requires the availability of an appropriate server, but the already processed messages are accessible forever, and some are already present on your copy of the block chain.
In order to write a new message, the clients create an email request which the server then processes.
The server is a special customised bitcoin setup behind tor.

More information?
* FAQ inside the client
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/btcmsg
* Blog: https://btcmsg.wordpress.com
* Later on in bitcointalk.

Be one of the first to place a message within the block-chain and touch the eternity now!
Be responsible for your messages and think twice before you write them, so you don't regret later.
They cannot be deleted! Recall that your grandchildren will be able to see these messages ...

The service is still in Beta, please check twitter for downtime announcements.
Further testing is still needed:
Requests sent by mail.yahoo.com and send-mail.org were tested. If you use other webmail services or local clients, support will be added on the fly. It may mean a short delay in the timestamp.
If a problem does occur, you will get your bitcoins back (well, except for the usual bitcoin transaction fee).
For the first few messages I will communicate with you private issues per email. It would be better if you send your transaction id in the subject. Also, keep your message aside for reference just in case.

Note:
This project is also an experiment with anonymity. I am trying to be an active entity behind a public service which gets even paid, without exposing my identity. If you do manage to know who I am or even get interesting details about me, please contact me directly per email using my pgp key. The details are in the client.


BTCmsg,
at your service.
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[GamingG]

Previous discussions about this topic have pointed out that this unnecessarily bloats the blockchain for those that would rather use Bitcoin as a currency and a currency alone.  Some people wanted DNS information to be stored in the Bitcoin blockchain, but now the project materialized as its own blockchain, Namecoin.  Why not make a new blockchain for this service?  With merged mining, it could even have the same security as Bitcoin if you get enough pools to jump on it.

[btcmsg]

Thank you GamingG for your comment!

I understand your concerns and I hope you find my answers below satisfying.

As an owner of bitcoins, I hope that the bitcoin system keeps running and that the value of bitcoins does not keep decreasing constantly as it did in the last months. With the introduction of the bitcoin message service I am trying to open the bitcoin to a wider circle by giving bitcoins an added value, a service which was not possible before: a simple way for any average person to write something that will stay there forever (possibly anonymously) and at the same time to be able to prove the timestamp of that message. I use the special infrastructure of bitcoin which is the "p2p + money value" that makes it something that many like to keep.

The idea is to have this service living in symbiosis with bitcoin. Supply new users to bitcoin as I offer something new which can be of interest to people who did not consider using bitcoin before. Any such new service pushes bitcoin further into being a real currency that one can do something with rather than only speculate in the exchange game. In return I get the credibility that bitcoin has already gained, and mainly it large user base.

The service indeed increases the size of the blockchain, but it is not much different from other transactions which occur as part of bitcoin being a currency. Browsing the blockchain shows very similar transactions all around. If bitcoin ever becomes more popular, a major increase in the blockchain is imminent and the system has to cope with it.

As for the solution of starting a new blockchain: the merged mining may solve the difficulty/security problem, but still an important factor for a service like bitcoin message is the popularity - the amount of copies of the message out there in the world. This is required to assure that this message will be there forever (or at least until bitcoin currency totally dies). If the new generated blockchain is held be only few, it could be easily erased and ignored.

It is important to note that also the miners gain from this service as the transaction fees which are paid are high (e.g. 0.006 BTC which is 12 times the common 0.0005 BTC fee), and at a certain point the transaction fees would be the main drive to keep the bitcoin system running.

Obviously I need the support of the bitcoin community that will start using the service. This is a required step before the service becomes popular also outside the current community.

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[ripper234]

Previous discussions about this topic have pointed out that this unnecessarily bloats the blockchain for those that would rather use Bitcoin as a currency and a currency alone.  Some people wanted DNS information to be stored in the Bitcoin blockchain, but now the project materialized as its own blockchain, Namecoin.  Why not make a new blockchain for this service?  With merged mining, it could even have the same security as Bitcoin if you get enough pools to jump on it.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1431/does-encoding-namecoin-messages-into-the-blockchain-bloat-it

[eldentyrell]

With merged mining, it could even have the same security as Bitcoin if you get enough pools to jump on it.

Not really.  Pools only promise their miners bitcoins in return for shares; if there are even a handful of pools that don't mine your blockchain, you're essentially crossing your fingers and hoping the operators of those pools don't abuse the "free hashpower on your chain" they get as a consequence of the fact that their miners don't expect HappyPantsCoins.

Pool operators are kept in check by the fact that their members expect to get paid BTC for shares; if the operator uses the hashpower for anything other than "playing nice" it's likely to cut into the poolmembers' profits, they will get upset, and they will leave.  If you're an altchain using merged mining this mechanism is not working for you -- you've been warned!

Bitcoin is as secure as all the miners, each voting in proportion to his/her hashpower.  Altchains using merged mining are only as secure as the BTC-mining pool operators are trustworthy.

[ripper234]

Not really.  Pools only promise their miners bitcoins in return for shares; if there are even a handful of pools that don't mine your blockchain, you're essentially crossing your fingers and hoping the operators of those pools don't abuse the "free hashpower on your chain" they get as a consequence of the fact that their miners don't expect HappyPantsCoins.

Pool operators are kept in check by the fact that their members expect to get paid BTC for shares; if the operator uses the hashpower for anything other than "playing nice" it's likely to cut into the poolmembers' profits, they will get upset, and they will leave.  If you're an altchain using merged mining this mechanism is not working for you -- you've been warned!

Bitcoin is as secure as all the miners, each voting in proportion to his/her hashpower.  Altchains using merged mining are only as secure as the BTC-mining pool operators are trustworthy.

Sorry, but I don't understand the argument.

Since now with Merged Mining mining Namecoin is essentially free if you're already mining Namecoin, the rational thing for all pools would be to mine Namecoin as well. The rational thing for all miners participating in pools is to demand payments in Namecoin as well as BTC (or BTC equivalent of those Namecoin), and migrate to whatever pools offers this to them if their current pool will not.

What am I missing?

[btcmsg]

Many thanks for the first user!

The system did not get your message request per email so it cannot be automatically processed.
Please help me debug the issue.

Your payment transaction has arrived safely:
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/7ff690ed9bb02045cbe0700fb977302cb0bd3b01eb792541a8a1af2cd790c7c5
Please try to write again the message and send the email with the "Send email" button (no need to send again the BTC payment). You may use send-email.org service instead for better anonymity.

Once the message arrives, the automatic process will take place.

If the message is not processed within few hours after your sending (this you can see in the above tx, as the "Not yet redeemed" changes to the next tx link),  please contact me per email (available in the client), and write there the exact message (every space is important).

I will continue the discussion with you in private.

If you don't respond within 72 hours, I will issue a refund for you.

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[Littleshop]

What pool is this being done through?

[btcmsg]

Another message is already present on your disk inside the block chain:
Why not checking it now?

You can read it offline using (slightly modified) bitcoin-tools (patch included):

Code:

$ bitcoind stop
$ mkdir -p /tmp/bitcoin-block-snapshot
$ cp ~/.bitcoin/blk* /tmp/bitcoin-block-snapshot
$
$ wget http://btcmsg.staticloud.com/msgdump.tgz
$ tar xfz msgdump.tgz
$ cd btcmsg-tools
$
$ python msgdump.py --datadir=/tmp/bitcoin-block-snapshot --transaction=72e78a410caf245e18ec9ee04d2e478c1e68f5eb8503d34ff69589a07aaa3cd1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth
was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and
the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, "Let there be light".
$
$

Or using the web client:
1. Copy everything from http://blockexplorer.com/rawtx/72e78a410caf245e18ec9ee04d2e478c1e68f5eb8503d34ff69589a07aaa3cd1
2. Paste it in http://btcmsg.staticloud.com/#Browse

And you will see the message!

Write your message as well :-)

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[ripper234]

under that logic, the 'rational' thing for all pools would be to mine ixcoin, i0coin, solidcoin, everyothercoin as well, and for all miners participating in pools to demand payment in all these alternates or their btc equivalent.

Not really. When mining anything else except Namecoin, you have to give up on some Bitcoin mining for that (at least until merged mining expands beyond just Namecoin). So if someone believes Bitcoin+Namecoin is more profitable than other chains, the rational thing for him to do is keep mining just Bitcoin & Namecoin.

The one possible exception is the GPU-hostile coins (you could say mining Litecoin is free because your CPU isn't used when mining for Bitcoin), but I think those coins are rather orthogonal, and wouldn't be mined by the same pools at all.

[BitterTea]

under that logic, the 'rational' thing for all pools would be to mine ixcoin, i0coin, solidcoin, everyothercoin as well, and for all miners participating in pools to demand payment in all these alternates or their btc equivalent.

Merged mining isn't what you think it is.

[BitterTea]

seems it's exactly what i thought it was.

i just didn't know it hadn't been expanded to anything other than btc/nmc yet.

Gotcha. Once merged mining is proven in a general sense, it seems to me that merged mining is a no-brainer for all pool operators and miners. Why wouldn't pool operators offer mining of all block chains simultaneously, and why wouldn't miners want additional revenue? I understand that now selling many chains on the exchange could be a hassle, but tools will be available to relieve that burden if so.

[btcmsg]

The system did not get your message request per email so it cannot be automatically processed.

http://blockexplorer.com/tx/7ff690ed9bb02045cbe0700fb977302cb0bd3b01eb792541a8a1af2cd790c7c5

If you don't respond within 72 hours, I will issue a refund for you.

Since the user has not yet resend the email message and not contacted me directly either, I have issued a refund:
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/c7c253e5fdfe267b5604d0ae09ab7224967e67653e9881d1afe3444548465b01

Actually, according to the payment I could see that the message had no more than 9 letters. I have scanned the whole space of possible ascii messages of maximal 9 letters, and found none that could have arrived to the specific bitcoin address with this amount. It means that except for the lost email problem, the sender also had a mistake with the bitcoin payment - he has sent either a wrong amount or used a wrong address to send to.

First user - you may try again now :-)
Maybe somebody else would like to be the first user to write a message which can't be deleted?

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[btcmsg]

Historical event!
The first message written using Bitcoin message service (well, except for my own messages), has been processed.

To see it, you should copy everything from:
http://blockexplorer.com/rawtx/afed08f0d9a99b7ee68e58cd8ac42f83d8238cdb0a36cbb0ded6d5498b2dd807
and paste in:
http://btcmsg.staticloud.com/#Browse
... or go the "local" way using your own copy of block-chain, as described in a previous message.

I would just say that it is a known (and relevant) citation from Thomas Jefferson :-)
This citation will stay as part of the bitcoin block-chain forever.

Some technical details about this message:

• Request first appeared in Block 149039 (2011-10-12 15:01:14)
• Request got processed in  Block 149045 (2011-10-12 15:36:03)
• The amount paid by the user for this message is 0.24863442 BTC
• The fee that Bitcoin message service has paid to the bitcoin network for this message is 0.001 BTC

Thank you first user :-)

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[Raoul Duke]

Damn, $1 for THAT? lol

What's this all about? Digital era tatoos? Just remember kids, no love declarations with names: You might regret it later, just like with real tatoos

[btcmsg]

Damn, $1 for THAT? lol

What's this all about? Digital era tatoos? Just remember kids, no love declarations with names: You might regret it later, just like with real tatoos

Well, psy, as you suggest, we should think outside of the box ;-)

Lets see what you get for this 1$:

• Your message is kept forever. I don't think there is any other service in the world offering you anything like this.
  
• Lowest possible rate. Any price divided by eternity is mathematically 0 $/month.
  If it was for 50 years only, it would have meant 0.0017 $/month. Affordable, isn't it?
  
• Proof of time - you can easily prove that this message was written before it's timestamp.
  

But that is not the main thing about the bitcoin message at all:
Where else do you get a backup of your data in 100,000 locations uniformly distributed all over the planet (is there any bitcoin user in Antarctica)?
Even in the most secure services, e.g. Amazon S3 you may have your data in 2-10 locations. Bitcoin message service offers here a backup which is 10^5 times stronger, not to mention that it is kept by 100,000 different people.
Another important note is that the message cannot be erased (with any other service, e.g. Amazon S3, a government can easily order to delete the message).

Let's go one step further:
If the civilisation is destroyed or if simply WWIII starts, the messages of the bitcoin message service will be the best survivors, as there are so many scattered copies of the messages. Soon more copies than the bible ...

You have mentioned digital tattoos. They are also an option, but the service is meant for special information publishing needs:

• Anonymous publish of data (leak sensitive information securely and directly using the p2p network).
• Proof of owning information with a timestamp (e.g. patents and other intellectual property related).
• Keep data that cannot get deleted or lost.

Hey, when I look at the service this way, the price of 1$ is way too low :-)
Actually it is no where even close to the development and running expenses ...

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[finway]

Nice job!

[btcmsg]

Where else do you get a backup of your data in 100,000 locations uniformly distributed all over the planet

Posting to Usenet gives you just as much redundancy.

The p2p architecture of bitcoin uses the redundancy very well for availability. It is enough that only few among the thousands of copies are online to make the system fully available 24/7.
If the usenet servers fall and I want my message - I have to ask around who has a copy. Who made a backup of my usenet post. That's less likely to work.

The bitcoin user MUST have a copy of the blockchain just to make transactions. No one makes you keep offline usenet archive backups ...
Once you have read the usenet post, you don't keep it, but the blockchain you do keep.

Any bitcoin block chain copies are present also on each smartphone with a wallet ... and that's where personal computation is heading. There will be no copies of the usenet posts on your phone, I assume.

Government order to delete a message from the usenet would probably work, but deleting the message from the blockchain wouldn't.

And the cherry is the cryptographically signed timestamp, that you don't have in the usenet. It would be very handy to prove prior art in court for example.

But we can all choose where to put our data.

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[finway]

Again, this is really nice.
A really worthy way to destroy (spend) bitcoins.

[btcmsg]

Again, this is really nice.
A really worthy way to destroy (spend) bitcoins.

Thank you finway!
It you have something important to tell humanity, that's the place.
Be the second user :-)

BTCmsg,
at your service.