[ANN] FACTOM - Introducing Honesty to Record-Keeping

[FACTOM]

relevant: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2uneem/what_happened_last_night_on_the_blockchain_and/

Thank you for sharing! 

[dillpicklechips]

An interesting use case for FACTOM would be hashing this forum or any forum in real-time providing a trusted record that is verifiable. With FACTOM you don't have to trust any forum operator about tampering with the database. It's great for business transactions and helps with evidence.

[FACTOM]

An interesting use case for FACTOM would be hashing this forum or any forum in real-time providing a trusted record that is verifiable. With FACTOM you don't have to trust any forum operator about tampering with the database. It's great for business transactions and helps with evidence.

Yes it would be a good use case, it could be fun to put together too with: 10,359,068 Posts in 402,063 Topics by 422,475 Members (at the time of writing)

Will add to our list of use cases. Feel free to come up with more, we'd like to hear what will you do with Factom?

[kjn311]

Lets say I'm a company that paid to use factom.
Factom saves it's hashes to the bitcoin blockchain.
Bicoin fails.
I lose everything?

[FACTOM]

Lets say I'm a company that paid to use factom.
Factom saves it's hashes to the bitcoin blockchain.
Bicoin fails.
I lose everything?

Factom could use any other blockchain but have chosen Bitcoin as it is the most widely used and most popular one.
If Bitcoin fails Factom can always switch to another blockchain, the metadata about your entries will still be in a Factom chain of its own and can be re-hashed.

[kjn311]

Lets say I'm a company that paid to use factom.
Factom saves it's hashes to the bitcoin blockchain.
Bicoin fails.
I lose everything?

Factom could use any other blockchain but have chosen Bitcoin as it is the most widely used and most popular one.
If Bitcoin fails Factom can always switch to another blockchain, the metadata about your entries will still be in a Factom chain of its own and can be re-hashed.

that's awesome. thanks.

[FACTOM]

Great article on WSJ MoneyBeat today with a nice mention of Factom!

BitBeat: Dell Takes Bitcoin Into Canada, the U.K.

Factom keeps your tax returns safe!

[FACTOM]

Salon Talks: COINFEST 2015: Vanbex Edition! Synereo, Factom, Trustatom, Etherparty, Opalcoin

Factom talks at Decentral Vancouver Coinfest 2015 Hangout with very interesting guests discussing identity, decentralization, 2fA, etc.

Speakers

• Clef - Brennen Byrne
• Synereo - Greg Meredith
• Factom - Paul Snow
• Trustatom - Yurii Rashkovskii
• Etherparty - Lisa Cheng
• Opalcoin - Whit Jack

[fthoughts]

This was a really insightful discussion led by Paul of Factom, discussing digitial identity and trust while also speaking humbly about Factom's origins as an identity service! Crucial watching for Factom-fans and would-be Factoid-owners- Their code is getting developed everyday (https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomCode) and just going through the tax documentation use case (https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/tree/master/examples/tax) is enough for me to see the real value they are trying to bring to the blockchain. Bravo guys!

[FACTOM]

Paul Snow presenting at the Dubai Bitcoin Conference: a great video to watch to learn more about Factom.

[mishax1]

Paul Snow presenting at the Dubai Bitcoin Conference: a great video to watch to learn more about Factom.

This is great. Thanks for the update!

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

Andrew wrote a good article explaining how Bitcoin and Factom complement each other: http://newsbtc.com/2015/02/26/bitcoins-factoids-symbiosis/. A lot of Bitcoiners get worried about altcoins draining Bitcoin's market cap, bu it should really add value in the end via these new use cases.

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

We also interviewed Peter Kirby recently. Sorry for the forward questions

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/03/03/peter-kirby-interview/

[FACTOM]

We also interviewed Peter Kirby recently. Sorry for the forward questions

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/03/03/peter-kirby-interview/

Thank you for the share will add to articles list! 

[bit4x]

Any update on the ITO? This looks awesome...

[FACTOM]

Any update on the ITO? This looks awesome...

It's being finalized, we want to make sure all details are taken care of.
We will post announcements on all our channels when we get closer to the time.
Thank you for the support. 

[FACTOM]

We are pleased to announce a collaboration between Tether + Factom.
Read the details on our blog and a Press Release on Bitcoin Magazine
We have hosted a Hangout with the founders of both teams discussing the announcement:

[starsoccer9]

Cool announcement, I told bitreserve a while back to do something similar to tether using their reserve chain.

[starsoccer9]

Cool new video from factom - Serica's Taariq Lewis and Factom's Peter Kirby talk Proof of Gold Existence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eboYWmIAeJM&feature=youtu.be

[chmac]

I'm just starting to read about Factom, so forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.

So far I understand the following, please correct me if I'm wrong (which I probably am) on any of these points:

• the top n servers are the network
• Those n servers can vote each other out of the network (via SFM)
• There's no penalty for posting false SFMs

As I understand these properties, there is no incentive for a server not to send SFMs for every other node in the network, every block. I can't directly gain by increasing my share of the return, but I also can't lose. If I create many identities and many servers, there is a chance, no matter how small, that I will eventually be elected as a majority of nodes if enough nodes get voted out. The counterbalance to this, as I understand it, is community review.

People who control factoids get to vote for "well behaved" servers, so they are unlikely to vote for a server which constantly SFMs every other server. Is that the only defence against this behaviour?

It seems like at its heart, the factom consensus model comes down to starting with a "trusted" group of servers, and all trust stems from there. If the majority of those nodes are malicious, they can control the network ad infinitum. That is true because factom servers have to accept voting transactions. So a majority of servers could collude and decide to reject any votes that change the balance of power.

I'm also thinking that if I can DOS a single node in the network, I can push it out of the federated servers list. If I have sufficient network power to do that, I can seed the network with 100 of my own nodes, and then DOS each node in turn until it gets excluded from the network (for a few hours). If I can get every node above me excluded within those few hours, I can now control the network. I guess I can't change people's votes here, but I could continually SFM the servers as they come back online, and keep them all out of the network indefinitely.

Hmm, seems like a few attack vectors, but I'm probably misunderstanding the protocol.