NEM can already do what Factom does now

General Discussion
#1

Continuing the discussion from Metadata for Accounts:

I thought more about this.

The other day Paul Snow the founder of Factom replied to my comment explaining a little bit about what Factom is. https://forum.bitcoin.com/post13025.html#p13025

At which point I realized, that NEM right now can do the same thing as Factom. To do that all I have to do is make a new account and then send a message to it naming the document and describing it. Then I subsequently send a hash of document and maybe a note about changes if I wanted. Each time there is a major important revision to that document, I could send a new message that account that signifies that document.

A free and open-source program like Quick Hash could be used to make the hashes. https://sourceforge.net/projects/quickhash/

But how to make it perfect.

In an ideal world, we could just apply meta data to the account. Something like

Document Name: xxxxxxx
Author: xxxxxxx
Description: xxxxxx
Hash Algorythm: xxxxxx

And somebody would also build a document upload/hash feature into NCC and hash documents with it and then place the hash in a transaction to the account necessary.

In fact, Gimre had long ago already taken a step to doing this when he uploaded a simple hashing feature in NCC. That can be found under settings wheel -> account details -> sign a token using a hash. Once a person can do that they can paste up to one page of text and get a unique hash proving that text in that form existed at that time and then post that in a signature.

What would be better would be a more advanced signing a token feature. Something possibly with more utility for any kind of document, not just text, like Quick Hash.

I think if we got a serious upgrade to our hashing feature in NCC, and a proper meta data system for accounts, we could not only do Factom, but we could do Factom better than they do it.

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#2

You gotta give em credit still for everything they built on top. NEM does not do what Factom does because noone has built all that stuff on top of NEM. NEM is indeed capable of all that stuff though (like most blockchains really).

I’d much more like a serious metadata upgrade for transactions (so I guess just more space) and not just accounts. I don’t feel like creating new accounts for all the documents I’m uploading. Stuff like that is exactly what i always mean when i say “arbitrary transactions”.

1 new field for tx called serviceId to identify what the transaction is about (could also use the alredy existing type field, just need to add some types i guess).

More space in the message field.

Then you can build some cool things :slight_smile:

How about we establish a protocoll to request new tx-types much like NEPs (NEM Enhancement Proposals) ?

#3

Updating the messaging capabilities in transactions would be really nice too.

I’ve always wanted a feedback type transaction, where people can give ratings or feedbacks. That I guess would be covered in more meta data for transaction messages too. I guess if you had metadata you could in theory string them together, but it would be better to just increase the size.

I’m all for a new NEP for transaction types.

#4

Good stuff, I was wondering how NEM could do that. Use case:

Just recently I had to prove to someone that I graduated from school. That graduation was quite a while ago and I realized that after living in different countries and moving frequently, I had lost that sheet of paper.

So I called my school from back then and asked for a copy. They said: “Uh yeah that was a while ago man, it’s not in the computer anymore, we have to get it from the archives.” I imagined an old man with a white beard sitting in the basement between stacks of paper. Pretty sure it was something like that. It took a week for them to get it and then I had to physically go there and pick it up. Then I had to have it copied, notarized and send it off.
Fair enough, but the whole time I thought: “How cool would it be if that thing was just sitting on the blockchain?!”

Some things came to mind:

  • Would public institutions use a public chain or use their own?

Pro for a public chain: They don’t have to worry about securing the network.

Pro for a private chain: They don’t have to pay TX fees. But then they have to run their own nodes.
Possible privacy issues? But I guess if everything is encrypted it’s pretty safe?

Every school has some kind of server and database system for storing student data, plus some IT staff, or at least a contractor. A lot of money could be saved I guess.

  • What’s a safe way to share my data with someone?

Let’s say I have that piece of paper sitting on the blockchain. It’s encrypted and only I and the school have the key. So I want to send it to my friend Bob to brag about my grades. Obviously sending it via email is potentially going to ruin my privacy. So the best way would be to send it in an encrypted message to an address that I know belongs to Bob?

Thoughts?

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#5

There are already a dozen initiatives to put diplomas on blockchains. Here is one https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/parisian-engineering-school-will-certify-diplomas-blockchain/

I think that pretty much all public records will be on the blockchain someday. It is a far better system. We are talking birth/marriage/death certificates. Criminal records (hashed). Armed forcers services, dimplomas, tickets… You name it. If there is a record somewhere of it now, it is actually better to put it on the chain. Storage is not really an issue like people think it is. These records take up very little space. And storage is on an exponential curve of ever being cheaper.

meta data on the chain is a great way of doing this.

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#6

just to be clear, when an account gets metadata, it changes how we think of them.

Right now people think of an account as kind of like a wallet that holds tokens so what does it matter what the label of that account is? up until now the main focus of cryptocoins is how do we build a better token. nobody is really asking “how do we build a better account?” when you put metadata on an account, it ceases to just be a wallet. It now becomes much more like a token, but a token that is extremely versatile and can do things that other tokens can not and will not ever do. Remember that in NEM, accounts are transferable. In other systems they aren’t. So nobody has been asking that question because it wasn’t even a question worth asking.

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