Using Bitcoin to help minorities in East Asian State.

[BorealUS]

Please understand that I must be vague in some aspects for fear of my well being, as I have developed a software building on Bitcoin that takes some power away from a state to control undesirable minorities.

Threat Model: Keeping State Actors from shutting out individuals from economic activity (based on a real example)

Hello,

last year I was loosely chatting with a person from a country with dictatorial streaks. He told me that because he was a critic of the state, he has great difficulty buying things on the internet and in person, because his account from a popular payment app was being restricted.

He had access to cryptocurrency but it was hard for him to find people that would be willing to sell to him, as they would not list their wares online for fear of it being known that they sell to oppressed minorities. It was all word of mouth.

So I developed an application based on a new protocol that allows people to safely and securely list their wares so that minorities like him can buy them.

The trick is that all their listings are encoded in the Bitcoin Blockchain itself. It is stenography in the blockchain. So as long as he has access to his cryptocurrency, he can see the listings and participate in normal market activity that the state wants to keep him from. I have published the tool for transparency here:

https://git.tchncs.de/BorealUS/blockaze

There are also public faucets and websites available, thanks to the community, which you can find but I will not advertise here. I have documented everything as well as I can so that if I am not here anymore a strong individual can continue. Please back up the code yourself too if you can, because this easily directs the ire of said state at me.

[NotATether]

That's actually a pretty neat idea, but have you thought about making a web-based-version that runs as a Tor onion service? They are specifically designed for running these type of applications.

Then you can find some anonymous hosting and run the tool yourself, so that people can easily use it not only on their desktops and laptops, but also on their mobile devices too.

[BorealUS]

Hello NotATether,

this is already happening. Curageous members of the community are hosting various services, where you can send RPC calls for free and receive responses back.

For example:

https://moofetch.mooo.com

There are websites that are using these services to have their inventory and buyers history "in the cloud" via the Bitcoin blockchain. And others just send RPC calls directly. Because I cannot restrict what people encode, the stuff you find there is completely free and unregulated But I think this is a necessary tradeoff, as that freedom is needed for some people across the world. Please understand that this puts me in the target of not just the aformentioned country, but also Western democratic states. But I believe the overall mission is more important than myself.

I have created a very extensive documentation here:
https://moofetch.mooo.com/documentation_blockaze/

[hugeblack]

1) I don't understand why there is a need to encrypt data and send it over the Bitcoin blockchain, it will be there forever and if someone can decrypt it then everyone will know what you bought, and since we are talking about peer-to-peer networks it is better to destroy everything after the trade is finished.

2) You did not mention how to deal with scammers, will the service provide an escrow? And if so, what will escrow be? Or will it rely on trust points?

3) Wouldn't it be easy to fork OpenBazaar and create a highly private shopping service that is available to everyone?

[yhiaali3]

  and since we are talking about peer-to-peer networks it is better to destroy everything after the trade is finished.

Yes, I also support the idea of ​​destroying data after the end of the trade to preserve privacy on the one hand and to prevent the blockchain from being filled with useless data after the end of the trade and the delivery of the goods on the other hand.

But what if the seller or buyer wants to return the transaction data due to a dispute? This will be impossible if the data is destroyed.

[Vod]

But what if the seller or buyer wants to return the transaction data due to a dispute? This will be impossible if the data is destroyed.

This is where you would turn to a BaS (blockchain as a service) solution to protect/validate the data like the bitcoin network does.

If Bitcoin is going to survive long term, we need to eliminate garbage data on the blockchain.   I define garbage data as not useful to the majority of network participants.   Your example above would include that.

[Kavalski]

While I am not the author, I have worked with his framework since he released the first version a couple of months ago. I therefore feel qualified to answer some of the questions.

1) I don't understand why there is a need to encrypt data and send it over the Bitcoin blockchain, it will be there forever and if someone can decrypt it then everyone will know what you bought, and since we are talking about peer-to-peer networks it is better to destroy everything after the trade is finished.

2) You did not mention how to deal with scammers, will the service provide an escrow? And if so, what will escrow be? Or will it rely on trust points?

We must understand that his software is not a single market but a "repository of markets" where users can open their own market with their own rules.
There is an inbuilt reputation system that is fee based. In addition, a market owner can freely set his own fee as a percentage of the listing price. The market owner sets the rules and can use e.g. 50% or more of the listing price as an escrow value that is returned if the customer has no complaints. There are no limits to creativity.

But what if the seller or buyer wants to return the transaction data due to a dispute? This will be impossible if the data is destroyed.

This is where you would turn to a BaS (blockchain as a service) solution to protect/validate the data like the bitcoin network does.

If Bitcoin is going to survive long term, we need to eliminate garbage data on the blockchain.   I define garbage data as not useful to the majority of network participants.   Your example above would include that.

Customer data can be RSA 4098 encrypted and sent over the chain. This is optional however and most users of his protocol use off chain methods (e.g. Telegram or a website) to transfer this customer data. The more valuable part, the listings, market configurations etc., are OP_RETURN encoded but are very small (and can therefore also be pruned by Bitcoin software). From all transaction outputs in his protocol, only a small amount is OP_Return data.
The other good thing is that is based on standard Bitcoin transactions. If you know how to create a Bitcoin transaction you can always offer your listings, even from a library computer.

However, the bigger problem is BlockAze is currently a cesspit of drugs, guns and violence.
Websites that used be hidden in the dark net use it to immortalize their presence.
But is it a problem of human nature itself if given unlimited freedom? It is unregulated and obeys the same rules as Bitcoin. Should we regulate Bitcoin as well if used for such purposes? It is a really hard question and I understand OPs fear.

[BorealUS]

When I open the platform, indeed my heart sinks at times for what it is used. But this is the price of freedom. I cannot moderate the content. I just hope karma will not eventually moderate me.