Bitcoin Whitepaper Added to Blockchain as Contiguous Block of Bytes in OP_RETURN

[P2PKH_dude]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here, so forgive me if this isn't in the right place.

I run a handful of Python scripts I wrote a couple of years ago from time to time to find unusually large outputs in single transactions. The most common thing that pops up is large OP_RETURN outputs, as people have recently been shoving more arbitrary data in these since Bitcoin Core raised the policy-imposed limit.

My script found this transaction, recently: 00000000000ad99639585eb5fb0dc0bb093575719ecd78cfede972637b65de07.

It contains the entire whitepaper in a single OP_RETURN output (vout=1).

The transaction itself is also funny, since the TXID has clearly been vanity-searched (there is a nonce in the last vout of the TX), the origin address has a small HASH160, and one of the output addresses starts with 1Bitcoin.... The SHA-256 hash of the PDF itself must also have been vanity-searched: 0000000000003c2287e2a94e93882e1f56fcbfa3c71c5b1c75edf11c6946e6cb.

Thought it could be interesting to highlight this.

Best regards,
P2PKH_dude
BTCBTCBTC

[ABCbits]

It's crazy someone actually pay 1.25 million satoshi ($958.24) to MARA slipstream for this TX, when someone else already did that long time ago with P2MS on https://mempool.space/tx/54e48e5f5c656b26c3bca14a8c95aa583d07ebe84dde3b7dd4a78f4e4186e713.

[DaveF]

It's crazy someone actually pay 1.25 million satoshi ($958.24) to MARA slipstream for this TX, when someone else already did that long time ago with P2MS on https://mempool.space/tx/54e48e5f5c656b26c3bca14a8c95aa583d07ebe84dde3b7dd4a78f4e4186e713.

We don't know what it actually cost them.
All we know is the fee was 1.25 million satoshi.
Could just have been an employee of mara testing something or someone else who had an agreement with them.

Could also be someone sitting on dozens and dozens of 50BTC blocks they mined back in early 2010 and really don't give a crap. In which case yeas they did pay it but it's the equivalent amount of money to them  of me not making a U-turn to get a cheaper cup of coffee on the way to work.

-Dave

[P2PKH_dude]

It's crazy someone actually pay 1.25 million satoshi ($958.24) to MARA slipstream for this TX, when someone else already did that long time ago with P2MS on https://mempool.space/tx/54e48e5f5c656b26c3bca14a8c95aa583d07ebe84dde3b7dd4a78f4e4186e713.

Yeah, the whitepaper has been added to the blockchain before, but this is the first time - as far as I know - that it's been pushed as a single, contiguous block of bytes.

But I agree, 1.25M sats for this is crazy! I could have put that to much better use, hehe.

I pulled it from my node like this:

Code:

bitcoin-cli getrawtransaction 00000000000ad99639585eb5fb0dc0bb093575719ecd78cfede972637b65de07 true | jq -r '.vout[1].scriptPubKey.hex' | xxd -r -p | tail -c +7 > whitepaper.pdf

Vout=1. The scriptPubKey starts with 1 byte for the OP_RETURN, then OP_PUSHDATA4 (1 byte), then 4 bytes as the length, and the rest of the bytes are the whitepaper.

BTCBTCBTC

[satashi_nokamato]

Nice gesture if you ask me. 13 years ago, in a block with 134 transactions, on a date such as 2013/04,  and with a lot of 30s in the hex data of the transaction.

I recall from back in the days, the one and only master of cryptography and a lover of numbers, the @real_satoshi,  had a few games of mysterious numbers, letters and symbols.

Maybe it has something with Feng shui. Who knows? at least the block space wasn't used for gibberish.
Bitcoin with the introduction of blockchain on a global scale has proven to be an uncensorable  medium, whether it be used for monetary purposes or so many other useful applications to have access to information without interference.

Imagine we could save the actual history in such ways, where no one will be able to change a single letter.

[P2PKH_dude]

Nice gesture if you ask me. 13 years ago, in a block with 134 transactions, on a date such as 2013/04,  and with a lot of 30s in the hex data of the transaction.

I recall from back in the days, the one and only master of cryptography and a lover of numbers, the @real_satoshi,  had a few games of mysterious numbers, letters and symbols.

Maybe it has something with Feng shui. Who knows? at least the block space wasn't used for gibberish.
Bitcoin with the introduction of blockchain on a global scale has proven to be an uncensorable  medium, whether it be used for monetary purposes or so many other useful applications to have access to information without interference.

Imagine we could save the actual history in such ways, where no one will be able to change a single letter.

Yeah, compared to some of the other "stuff" added to the chain, the Whitepaper itself is a decent use of space, I'd say. Even though it was added before, at least it's possible to extract now in a single shell command.

I agree. The applications of blockchain in information storage are pretty groundbreaking. I like the IPFS as it is, but obviously that doesn't work in the same way as Bitcoin.

[ABCbits]

Bitcoin with the introduction of blockchain on a global scale has proven to be an uncensorable  medium, whether it be used for monetary purposes or so many other useful applications to have access to information without interference.

Imagine we could save the actual history in such ways, where no one will be able to change a single letter.

Unfortunately, most people use it to store data that generally not considered as important or critical. Considering block size, cost to run node and others, i would rather to see people use OpenTimestamp which use Bitcoin (or other crypto) as "verification layer", while they store actual data elsewhere.

I agree. The applications of blockchain in information storage are pretty groundbreaking. I like the IPFS as it is, but obviously that doesn't work in the same way as Bitcoin.

IPFS is more suitable to store files/data though. There are several project and cryptocurrency, such as Filecoin that give some incentive to make IPFS node operator to store certain data wish to be stored. And FWIW, BitTorrent protocol is also exist.