In blokcheyna as any invention, there is a story - about the people who have made the greatest contribution to the creation of a technological platform that helped Bitcoin and blokcheynu become digital money standard technology (which is digital and not electronic).
Not so long ago was a popular version that Nick Szabo (Nick Szabo) is the creator Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin, because he has made a huge contribution to their scientific publications and developments, which he dedicated his life. The most significant of them - an attempt to create BitGold in the 2000s. Himself Nick Szabo denies authorship of Bitcoin.
If we try to understand more deeply, the most important inventions of mankind are often created not only an inventor.
Until recently, the community kriptovalyutnom few people have heard of such outstanding cryptography Adam Beck (Adam Back). This article allows the uninitiated to cryptography reader to understand what the essence of the invention of Adam Beck - Hashcash, which appeared as early as 1997, and what role it plays in the mechanism of Bitcoin today.
Leading edition podcast interview with Andreas Antonopoulos Beck characterizes conservative, not a media person who has made a great contribution to improving the predictability of cryptography and created many cryptographic algorithms, without which it would be impossible for the existence of Bitcoin.
Adam received his diploma professor in computer technology and distributed systems at Exeter University, and the first time engaged in programming of cryptographic systems. He had to work on projects of electronic money in the company ZeroKnowledge Systems (protocol developer of TOR browser, such as Adam had played a key role in developing the system of the browser part number), where he was able to gain experience in privacy technologies, cryptography and distributed systems.
Long before the appearance of bitcoin, he worked on free software projects (Open Source) studies which have become fundamental for the development of the algorithm Proof-of-Work. Despite the vast experience and knowledge in this field, Adam himself could not imagine what will its development. On the other hand, many years ago, he knew that once came to light systems such as NameCoin.
In the two months before the first version was released Bitcoin wallet, Satoshi published its expert report (White Paper), got it all Subscribers on cryptography. Adam Beck was among them.
How it was designed HashCash
Due to the principles of the SHA-256 algorithm, when trying to change only the input data by 1 bit, the algorithm runs a series of cascade mechanisms which lead to the unexpected conclusion. As a result, when changing the input 1 bit output you get differing only by 1 bit. It will be completely unpredictable conclusion.
For example, if found in Yandex or Google any calculator SHA-256, you can easily calculate the hash for the Hello phrase! (With a capital letter) - this phrase has its own specific "fingerprint" SHA-256. If you try to write the same word, adding or removing an exclamation point, or if you write it in lowercase, you will get totally unpredictable hash, which is a unique name for this variation.
But no matter how much time passes, if you provide as input the same characters - and then the hash will be displayed exactly the same.
It is thanks to this simple technology features in 1997. Adam Beck created a system of anti-spam, which is called HashCash.
The motive was the fact that even at that time the spammers are simply too many, and he thought, "what if I use this function to make every computer to perform some work?".
The aim was to allow for the posting, such as posts on the forum, the computer would have to solve a certain problem, yielding 256 bits, which have been determined in advance.
Clearly - "feed" any data algorithm SHA-256 - the task is simple. Therefore, to check whether there was actually carried out the work on the selection of appropriate conclusions - is not a problem.
Adam found a way to predict how long it takes a computer with a processor clock speed with a certain calculation. This was necessary in order to, for example, give the computer to do the task complexity of the operation time of 1 second, before sending one message.
If you are truly a user of the forum, which is necessary to write a message on the Internet or to send another e-mail, then your computer 1 second effort - it is not such a luxury. But if you - a spammer and you need to send 1 million messages, then it is a significant barrier, because you have to spend 1 million seconds of CPU time. And, suddenly, there is a whole economy on these calculations.
This mechanism is used by Adam Beck in Hashcash, it has another, more well-known name - Proof-of-Work.
What did Adam Beck for Bitcoin?
Embodiment HashCash in Bitcoin is not an exact copy of what created Adam. The Bitcoin was made the transition from the SHA1 algorithm to SHA256 with minor code changes. However, these details apart - idea Proof-of-Work 99% was taken from its application in model HashCash.
Taking into account the views of Adam's commitment to model distributed systems, cryptographers in the community that first mailing on Bitcoin, he quickly took its position among the leading developers, even though he did not write a single line of code to Bitcoin. He was one of those voices, which listened to everything, including Satoshi.
The invention of Adam Beck became the foundation for the emergence of mining ecosystem. When ASIC chips cheated a huge number of hashes - they produce the same calculations that were made in Hashcash.
In the first months of the Bitcoin primary problem was that it did not know of even 1,000 people. None of mining machinery, and given that Bitcoin is not a huge advertising budget, it was not possible to draw the first programmers, without which the system would be stopped in its development at the very beginning.
The creator of Bitcoin payment allocation logic built back in 2008, when work began on writing the finished software product - the first client Bitcoin. If you look at this issue from a philosophical and a practical point of view - that the algorithm Proof-of-work Adam Beck allowed to do the impossible: to build a fully transparent mechanism of remuneration, but irreversible for those who want to falsify data.
Satoshi Nakamoto merit lies in the fact that he guessed to use this mechanism to teach computers to negotiate in a global distributed network. This consensus-based miners work on calculating hashes underlies Bitcoin.
heshrovaniya algorithms, including SHA-256, there were many years. Hashcash system existed since 1997. But Satoshi combined these technologies with P2P networks, which work similarly to the BitTorrent, and many other applications based on P2P, to create a new system of digital money, which we now call cryptocurrency.