Quote from: matthewh3 on November 27, 2012, 12:13:42 PM

Quote from: r_chen on November 27, 2012, 11:13:39 AM

Hello everyone:

I have watched with some amazement the development of the Bitcoin project, especially admiring its technical properties and achievements. A rather off-topic side-project has recently popped into my head, which I would now like to publicly propose. It seems that, all cryptographic currency properties aside, the most interesting development of the entire project is the blockchain itself, and its distributed (and distributed-verified) database system. What has been considered about its application in other areas? The strong censorship resistance of the distributed blockchain model seems ideal in some ways for distribution of "forbidden" sites and data. As the subject implies, The Pirate Bay seems like a viable candidate for such a mechanism, if only as a proof of concept.

So to the Bitcoin technical team, and anyone interested, I ask the following questions:

1: Is it first of all conceivable for a presently dynamic web site like The Pirate Bay, to be created as a desktop app, and to have its entire database distributed and verified across thousands of computers, blockchain style?

2: What metadata could and should be reasonably and sensibly added to the blockchain, keeping in mind that with each torrent on The Pirate Bay you have: magnet link, description, comments, possibly an image, some user id, a time stamp and possibly more.

3: Could dynamic updating of content work in the same way? For example if someone wanted to add a torrent to the pool, how, in the blockchain style, might it be able to be flagged as good or bad?

4: As an addition to the above question, what could be done to dilute pollution to the blockchain (and its subsequent bloating in size), by parties interested in destroying the project?

5: What components that are currently a part of the main Bitcoin client and protocol that would absolutely not be necessary for this? I presume that various things about the transactions are unnecessary, but perhaps for the security of the network the need only be re-purposed?

Thank you very much for your time!

I think what you may be asking for is Freenet - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet - with its distributed encrypted data store.

Quote from: paulie_w on November 27, 2012, 01:25:31 PM

i don't think that solves any of the problems he's asking about matthew.

this is a really cool idea! mods, can we move this thread somewhere else, so that it can be seen by relevant people?