TIL - The longest running blockchain produced its first block well before Bitcoin was born. Till this day you can find it (weekly) as a print in the classified section of the The New York Times.

First, blockchains don't always have to be related to cryptocurrency. At the core, a blockchain serves as a database that is maintained by a network of users and secured through cryptography. New information is added to the database and eventually stored in the blocks we all know. These blocks all have an unique ID, a hash. Together all the blocks create a chain of IDs which ensures the integrity of all the data stored on the blockchain. Altering the data in any block is near impossible since it would produce a different hash.

The basics of Blockchain, the chronological chain of hashed data, was first invented by the cryptographers Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta, in 1991. Their use cases for the Blockchain were a lot less ambitious than Satoshi's. Instead, Haber and Stornetta envisioned the technology as a way to timestamp digital documents to verify their authenticity.

So, 14 years before Bitcoin was invented, Haber and Stornetta created their own time stamping service called Surety, and put their invention into action.

Instead of posting customer hashes to a public digital ledger, each week Surety creates a unique hash value of all the new seals added to the database and publishes this hash value in the New York Times. The hash is placed in a small ad in the Times classified section under the heading “Notices & Lost and Found” and has appeared once a week since 1995. Currently the longest running blockchain in the world.

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The Hash (example)

Both Haber and Stornetta left Surety a long time ago. They went back into doing research, but today both of them work also work as cryptographers on other blockchain projects.

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Happy weekend, cheers!