On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 1:53 PM, 'Nil Geisweiller' via opencog
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On 02/18/2018 09:38 PM, Linas Vepstas wrote:
>>
>> yet more. In a certain sense, versioning and provenance is already
>> built into the atomspace, in a "strong" way. But no one uses it.
>
>
> I'm not sure I understand, could you elaborate? I can think of TimeLink,
> HypotheticalLink, ContextLink and such, is that what you have in mind?
Well, we do not have a wiki page that explains "here's how you do versioning"
But we do have the ability to create chains of arbitrary depth:
OrderedLink
Concept "Commit 43"
SomeAtom
OrderedLink
Concept "Commit 42"
OtherAtom
OrderedLink
Concept "Commit 41"
MoreAtom
OrderedLink
....
Concept "root of chain"
Due to the design of the atomspace, it is impossible to change "MoreAtom"
unless you first delete the entire incoming set. Its even weakly
cryptographically secure, in that the atom hash of the top-most ordered
link includes the hashes of every atom under it. Its not a crypto-strong
hash; its just a plain-old hash, but its still a hash.
You could make this robust, by writing a wiki page that states that e.g.
the string "commit 43" should instead be a SHA-256 hash of everything
that came before. The wiki page could also state (for example) that a
TimeLink should be slotted in there. Perhaps truth values could be
"frozen" by turning them into NumberNodes, and wrapping each level
in a ContextLink.
Obviously, branching is trivial; merging requires a wiki page stating how
merges are done; it does not require new software. This gets you up to
the level of git, in terms of features. (abstractly; it would take tooling to
make it as usable as git).
If you had some proof-of-whatever, you could staple it to this, thus
creating a chain whose incoming set could never be altered because,
just like in bitcoin, it was too deep.
So in principle, the atomspace has all the basic ingredients needed to
support a blockchain. In practice, you'd have to write the wiki pages,
create some RFP process, create a bunch of tooling, get worried
about performance, usability, etc.
There is a to-do item from singularity.net to write smart contracts in atomese.
The point of this email is that you do not need to invent a new, different
blockchain, other than the one already provided by the atomspace.
Exactly what it would take to make it portable and popular, I don't know.
Perhaps I'm being naive. But it seems plausible, to me.
(Crying over spilled milk: the atomspace was one of the first graph
databases, ever, back in the day. Now, its not even a footnote, in the
history of such things, and that's kind of the statement about a failure
to build an open-source community around it. We're now in a similar
situation, but in a different way.)
--linas
--
cassette tapes - analog TV - film cameras - you
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