Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

broken website links to files, well

beyond the context of blockchain

technology for the overall functionality

of the Internet. Here, BitTorrent peer-to-

peer file-sharing technology has been

merged with the tree and versioning

functionality of Git (initially applied to

software but “confirmable versioning”

as a concept being more widely

applicable to any digital asset). IPFS,

then, is a global, versioned, peer-to-peer

filesystem, a system for requesting and

serving a file from any of the multiple

places it might exist on the Web (versus

having to rely on a central repository)

per a hash (unique code) that confirms

the file’s integrity by checking that spam

and viruses are not in the file.60 IPFS is

congruent with the Bitcoin technical

architecture and ethos, rewarding file-

sharing nodes with Filecoin.

Third, in the area of archiving, a full

ecosystem would also necessarily

include longevity provisioning and end-

of-product-life planning for blockchains.

It cannot be assumed that blockchains

will exist over time, and their

preservation and accessibility is not

trivial. A blockchain archival system

like the Internet Archive and the

Wayback Machine to store blockchains

is needed. Not only must blockchain

ledger transactions be preserved, but we

also need a means of recovering and

controlling previously recorded

blockchain assets at later dates (that

might have been hashed with proprietary

algorithms) because it is likely that

certain blockchains will go out of

business. For example, it is great that

someone established proof-of-existence

of her will on the Bitcoin blockchain in

2014, but how can we know that the will

can be rehashed and authenticated in 60

years when it needs to be verified? If

blockchains are to become the lingua

franca archival mechanism for the whole

of a society’s documents, longevity,

preservation, and access mechanisms

need to be built into the value chain

explicitly. Further, the existence of these

kinds of tools—those that archive out-

of-use blockchains and consider the full

product lifecycle of the blockchain—

could help to spur mainstream adoption.

Ethereum: Turing-Complete

Virtual Machine

Blockchain technology is bringing

together concepts and operations from

several fields, including computing,

communications networks, cryptography,

and artificial intelligence. In Satoshi

Nakamoto’s original plan, there were

three steps, only two of which have been

implemented in Bitcoin 1.0. These are

the blockchain (the decentralized public

transaction ledger) and the Bitcoin

protocol (the transaction system to move

value between parties without third-

party interaction). This has been fine for

the Blockchain 1.0 implementation of

currency and payment transactions, but

for the more complicated tier of

Blockchain 2.0 applications such as the

recording and transfer of more complex

assets like smart property and smart

contracts, we need the third step—a

more robust scripting system—and

ultimately, Turing completeness (the

ability to run any coin, protocol, or

blockchain). Nakamoto envisioned not

just sending money from point A to point

B, but having programmable money and

a full feature set to enable it. One

blockchain infrastructure project aiming

to deliver a Turing-complete scripting

language and Turing-complete platform

is Ethereum.

Ethereum is a platform and a

programming language for building and

publishing distributed applications.

More fundamentally, Ethereum is a

foundational general-purpose

cryptocurrency platform that is a Turing-

complete virtual machine (meaning that

it can run any coin, script, or

cryptocurrency project). Rather than

being a blockchain, or a protocol

running over a blockchain, or a

metaprotocol running over a protocol

like other projects, Ethereum is a

fundamental underlying infrastructure

platform that can run all blockchains and

protocols, rather like a unified universal

development platform. Each full node in

the Ethereum network runs the Ethereum

Virtual Machine for seamless distributed

program (smart contract) execution.

Ethereum is the underlying blockchain-

agnostic, protocol-agnostic platform for

application development to write smart

contracts that can call multiple other

blockchains, protocols, and

cryptocurrencies. Ethereum has its own

distributed ecosystem, which is

envisioned to include file serving,

messaging, and reputation vouching. The

first component is Swarm (“Ethereum-

Swarm,” not to be confused with the

crowdfunding site Swarm) as a

decentralized file-serving method. A

second component is Whisper

(“Ethereum-Whisper,” also not to be

confused with other similarly named

projects), which is a peer-to-peer

protocol for secret messaging and digital

cryptography. A third component is a

reputation system, a way to establish

reputation and reduce risk between

agents in trustless networks, possibly

provided by TrustDavis, 61 or ideas

developed in a hackathon project,

Crypto Schwartz. 62

Counterparty Re-creates

Ethereum’s Smart Contract

Platform

In November 2014, Counterparty

announced that it had ported the open

source Ethereum programming language