Quote from: Equality 7-2521 on December 30, 2014, 12:08:11 PM

Quote from: prophetx on December 30, 2014, 11:16:21 AM

Quote from: Equality 7-2521 on December 30, 2014, 10:27:35 AM

Quote from: prophetx on December 30, 2014, 09:20:54 AM

Quote from: Equality 7-2521 on December 29, 2014, 11:10:27 PM

Quote from: prophetx on December 29, 2014, 10:43:32 PM

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

Just to expand it a bit - XCH has a "blockchain notary service" implemented and "custody chains" are in development now. Yes, this is all very close to what Factom is developing, however Factom outsources 99% of this work and data storage away from the Blockchain of choice (Viacoin, in this case) and on to their own network. You can probably roll your own in house Factom server/infrastructure too. XCH look like they will stuff everything into their Blockchain.

i don't think that is the case my understanding is that the XCH notary just puts the hash of the document(s) onto the blockchain, which is what i thought factom does as well? and the data storage could be anything from storj, maidsafe to my mom's hard drive.

My apologies, when I said "data storage" I meant storage of the hashes. I didn't mean storage of the original data, which as you mentioned could be achieved in any way imaginable. So to summarize what I tried to say earlier:

Factom = Factom Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chain(s)) + Bitcoin Network (to notarize aggregations/snapshots of what has happened in the Factom Network)

Clearinghouse = Bitcoin Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chains)

TL;DR Factom has a dedicated off-chain (off-Bitcoin Blockchain) notary service/network, Clearinghouse doesn't (i.e. it just uses it's Viacoin Blockchain for everything).

It all comes down to questions of price/fee, security, Blockchain Bloat, trust in the given network, etc.

what do you mean by "dedicated off chain... notary service/network"? a network of actual human notaries?

anyway i don't see the difference, one is already live and barely used (although one must keep in mind that the dev's have done little to use the funds given for XCH to promote it)

What I mean by "dedicated off chain... notary service/network" is captured in this image:

Factom have their own network (specifically designed for this notary service provision). The "last mile" of their protocol is to store a hash of what happened on their network in the Bitcoin Blockchain (because Bitcoin has the best security).

Currently the Clearinghouse features amount to little more than the general Proof of Existence (http://www.proofofexistence.com/) concepts/features, but on a less secure Blockchain (Viacoin). People are using Proof of Existence (see the latest registrations and confirmations).

Maybe this is the bit that you are missing - if you want to prove that a document existed, you'd better use the MOST secure Blockchain possible. Right now that is Bitcoin. That is why people use Proof of Existence and they will use Factom but they don't use the corresponding XCH features.

EDIT: This is also why the XCH notary features would be better implemented in Counterparty, because the hashes are committed to the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Also, as an aside for anyone interested, Counterparty could notarize a checkpoint hash of it's own data/database to the Bitcoin Blockchain. This could be done with Smart Contracts, for example. This could allow (potentially by SPV) for downloading CP data from any channel (torrents, usenet, radio etc.) and checking to see is that data legit by ensuring that the hash of that data matches the checkpoint hash.

TL;DR Rapid downloading of and simple authentication and verification of all Counterparty Data (up to a recent checkpoint) using an SPV client is probably possible.

is this a p2p network? It seems like it is not? Or is that what is mean by nodes?

I'm not missing the point that bitcoin may be more secure than viacoin, which by the way is now merged mined. I don't think that this is a big sales point as any reasonable secure blockchain network is better than a human being time-stamping a document. Additionally, however, there are no court cases as far as I know which have set any precedent for equating block chain based time stamps to traditionally notarized documents. Although perhaps in some recent criminal cases they may have used it as evidence that certain transactions occurred.