Quote from: gmaxwell on March 04, 2014, 11:58:12 PM

What you're asking its not generally possible in an anonymous system. A signature proves the knowledge of a secret. In an anonymous distributed system there can be no secret. (Ignoring the question of effective program obfuscation being possible which is hotly debated, and is not currently practical in any case, and even assuming it is, it is if this task can be accomplished without trusted initialization in any case).

Hey thanks for your response.

I know that I don't have a lot of specialized knowledge here, but here me out because I'm not sure you are understanding my question: my suggested solution proposes a separate blockchain which does NOT contain the secret. Perhaps my title is bad ("ambitious") because there is no 'distributed signing'.

The secret is in a separate bare-bones software which is watching the second blockchain, in the manner that Mike Hearn described a hypothetical piece of software watching Google. From this, I assumed that one could compile binaries such that the source code / private key could not be re-derived (an assumption I came here to check with experts). Moreover, in the longer description I mention possible obfuscation techniques such as using the hash of a block as a source of randomness.

I hope you don't feel I'm wasting anyone's time. If you can explain how:
a) an Oracle can sign a transaction upon Mike Hearn winning a gold medal as reported by Google...
...is fundamentally and unalterably different from...
b) an oracle can scan a blockchain and sign transactions embedded within it after certain criteria are met
...then I'll close this specific request.

I'm sorry to disagree with your friend but his essay contained the following "sections":

Quote from: Linked Paper

5 Cryptography of Bitcoin 1: transactions and signatures.
[explain how transactions, scripts, signatures work] [\list stupid shit alts have done to these things
and how theyre stupid]
6 Cryptography of Bitcoin 2: distributed consensus.
[explain distributed consensus works, risk of forks, incentive issues, etc] [\list stupid shit alts have
done to these things and how theyre stupid]

Clearly that is a draft but that's hardly an excuse imho. I strongly feel that Altcoins are disrespectful to Satoshi and the work that is done here, but if you expect anyone to take a piece of writing like that seriously you are crazy.