Corporate Identify: Easy Evidence
Founders: Rafael Cordón and Christian Lowenthal
Moment Based: February 2023
Location of Headquarters: Guatemala
Quantity of Bitcoin Held in Treasury: N/A
Selection of Workers: 6
Web site: https://www.simpleproof.com/
Family or Non-public? Non-public
Within the presen of virtual information, how do we all know that knowledge has no longer been tampered with? Rafael (Rafa) Cordón has a solution.
In efforts to saving the integrity of actual data — particularly govt paperwork — he created Easy Evidence, an organization that safeguards professional knowledge by the use of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Many got here to grasp the corporate latter month when it was once hired to forbid fraud in Guatemala’s presidential election. Then again, Easy Evidence’s undertaking is greater than that.
“We uphold the information integrity of public records,” Cordón instructed Bitcoin Album.
“Elections are not really our focus. They were just the first use case. We’re focused on [safeguarding] public records — information that’s being produced by governments,” he added.
So, how precisely does Easy Evidence conserve data integrity?
How Easy Evidence Works
Easy Evidence leverages Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd’s OpenTimestamps protocol, which makes use of hash purposes to timestamp data onto the immutable blockchain.
Cordón describes the method in layperson’s phrases as such:
“First, we take the hash of the document, which can be thought of as the digital fingerprint. Every document has a very unique digital fingerprint, which is a string of characters.
Bitcoin transactions have space for arbitrary text, which is called the OP_RETURN function. This is analogous to when you’re writing a check, there’s a little line on the bottom right that says ‘Memo’ where you can write arbitrary text that reminds you of what this check is for. The OP_RETURN function can be thought of as a memo space within a Bitcoin transaction.
Inside this ‘Memo’ space, we include the hash, the digital fingerprint. This hash is then included in the Bitcoin transaction. When the transaction is published, it gets included in a block, and then it’s stored immutably. So, you have this digital fingerprint stored inside a Bitcoin block that lives in perpetuity.”
Cordón clarified {that a} hash isn’t integrated for each and every explicit report however that the hash in an OP_RETURN is the “root hash” of a Merkle tree, which is a tree of hashes for more than one paperwork.
This fashion, OpenTimestamps can attest to an indefinite quantity of paperwork with a unmarried OP_RETURN access. Merkle bushes help you successfully end up {that a} unmarried piece of information was once within the tree.
Secure in thoughts, although, that Easy Evidence doesn’t assure the authenticity of the information it is helping to collect at the Bitcoin blockchain. This nonetheless falls at the govt or the frame overseeing –say– an election.
In relation to the Guatemalan presidential election, nearly 200,000 volunteers and witnesses from other political events watched over the vote casting procedure in efforts to forbid fraud, the main points of which might be defined within the documentary Immutable Freedom:
Who Is The use of Easy Evidence?
Cordón and his staff are in talks with plenty of other govt officers and personal corporations that paintings with governments who’re desirous about using Easy Evidence.
“There are two types of customers,” defined Cordón. “One is public officials who are concerned about upholding information integrity in their institutions who could get in trouble if information in their institutions is modified without authorization, and the other is technology vendors who are hired by governments to generate or process information who have the same problem of ‘I don’t want to be accused of modifying information.’”
Easy Evidence has not too long ago tie a 2d buyer, the id of which Cordón didn’t divulge. The buyer has been shrunk via its govt to create an software for managing population information, in step with Cordón.
“They won’t be making their Verification Pages publicly accessible,” Cordón mentioned.
“Instead, they’ll store their proofs privately, with the option to reveal them if needed to authenticate documents in the future. This approach serves as a form of digital insurance,” he added.
Cordón believes this means of constructing non-public, verifiable proofs will grow to be increasingly more noteceable no longer only for governments however for alternative establishments and folks, as smartly.
Relating to his paintings with population officers, Cordón stressed out one level particularly.
“In order for Simple Proof to work, the authorities have to want [to use] it,” defined Cordón.
“That was the case in Guatemala. The authorities wanted to use it because they were concerned of being accused of election fraud,” he added.
Occasion some could have speculated that Easy Evidence may have helped forbid vote casting fraud within the fresh Venezuelan presidential election, Cordón disagreed.
“In Venezuela, it’s very likely that the election authorities didn’t want to have transparency from the beginning,” mentioned Cordón.
Easy Evidence best works if our shoppers need transparency. In the event that they don’t need transparency, they’re no longer going to need [our service],” he added.
Cordón went directly to percentage that Easy Evidence seems to paintings with officers from established democracies world wide.
“I would never want to work with an undemocratic regime,” he shared.
Advancing Easy Evidence
Previous this month, Carlos Toriello (Carliño) joined the Easy Evidence staff.
Toriello oversaw a vote audit of the Guatemalan presidential election, the result of which Easy Evidence helped give protection to.
“He did the audit as a citizen, as part of a civil society movement called Digital Witness, or Fiscal Digital,” defined Cordón. “Digital Witness was taking the documents that were being published by the election officials and verifying them against Simple Proof to check that they were authentic.”
Toriello crowdsourced a staff by the use of StakWork, a chore app that permits contributors to earn bitcoin for finishing duties.
Hundreds of contributors labored from their telephones to test the information of votes as opposed to what have been recorded to the Bitcoin blockchain by the use of Easy Evidence, incomes sats for his or her paintings.
“Digital Witness confirmed that the election results were 99% accurate,” mentioned Cordón.
Toriello is now running to have Easy Evidence saving the integrity of the result of an election in a US county.
He has been achieving out to US-based Bitcoin meetup teams, encouraging them to support their county make use of Easy Evidence in its upcoming elections.
“The meetups are sort of competing to see who’s the first county in the US that implements this,” mentioned Cordón.
As a prize, Easy Evidence is prepared to report the adoption of its era in the USA by the use of a trim movie, like Immutable Freedom.
“We can help them document this in a good way by doing a documentary or sending a film crew to give them the opportunity to show the world that they’re the first people to do it,” mentioned Cordón.
Past Easy Evidence
Occasion Cordón is excited to have created a device to support struggle disinformation, he’s additionally smartly conscious that Easy Evidence is simply one of the defenses that we will be able to want towards it.
“We’re very concerned with the way that AI tools are evolving,” said Cordón. “We need things like Simple Proof in order to protect us against AI misinformation.”
Cordón additionally discussed that govt staff must have in mind of ways they make paperwork and believes that virtual signatures can play games a job in authenticating paperwork as they’re printed.
“We’re advising governments to at least use digital signers like YubiKey,” mentioned Cordón. “So, when somebody scans a document, the person who controls the YubiKey should sign it to produce the signature and then it’s included into the blockchain.”
Even with era like YubiKey, although, Cordón remainder involved.
“[There’s difficulty in] proving who generated information and whether this digital information was based on an input exclusively from the real world or whether it was based on input that was already manipulated,” defined Cordón.
“How are we gonna be able to prove that?” he requested with a stern facial resonance.
“It’s an unresolved question that is going to become very important in the coming 10 years.”
