Craig Wright: The security model of Bitcoin isn’t the consensus method

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The new iteration of the internet is here, and leaders of the said innovative tech are busy teaching what it can do—among them is Satoshi Nakamoto himself, aka Dr. Craig Wright.

Dr. Wright shared with CoinGeek Backstage on the sidelines of the IEEE in Exeter Blockchain Event how he’s educating the public with IPv6, his view on private blockchains and unified ledgers, advertisement on the internet, and more.

IPv6 is the new version of the internet protocol that enables users to connect directly from other users’ devices—in such a sense that each device on the internet could have its own address to communicate using a peer-to-peer connection. Or, as per Dr. Wright’s words:

“It’s part of the overarching structure of what Bitcoin will be involved with, which is pushing everything to the edge. So edge computing changes things from the cloud to more of a fog where we have lots of little endpoints and individuals able to directly communicate with each other.”

When asked about his opinion regarding private blockchains, Dr. Wright said such concept doesn’t exist.

“So the security model of Bitcoin isn’t the consensus method. It is the fact that the hash header is distributed. Now, if you have 5 billion people each with that hash header [and] something changes, then you’ve got 5 billion witnesses. Whereas the other concept is, ‘Oh, we’re all mining.’ Well, that doesn’t really work that way. What you have is a fixed protocol, and all of those 5 billion people now know that nothing has changed. So if you have it secret, how do you know nothing’s changed?” he pointed out.

Dr. Wright also mentioned that if users have two companies creating records on ledgers, it’s challenging to determine which one is true—eventually creating scams because there are multiple ledgers.

“So the secret here is everything needs to be public. If you own something that you linked to something like a key creation, it needs to be privately held so that you can attest later,” he noted.

Before closing, Dr. Wright and Liggero talked about the advertising model of Google, which they both agreed is full of ads.

“If we have not an ad-based Internet, but one based on monetization of the best service, then you end up with competition. Right now, Google gets everything because Google has the best ad sort of basis,” he said.

Dr. Wright hopes in the future, users can have more control over the internet because there will be more unique search engines that do different jobs.

“In the future, you’ll be able to have many, many specialist search engines who do different jobs. An example of this would be paying 100th of a cent per search, maybe less, and then being able to monitor what you get for quality and going to the one that gives you the best quality, the best results that actually match what you’re looking for,” he noted.

Wrapping up, Dr. Wright projects a web that takes us away from the current community-based and ad-based Web 2.0 to one that has real engagement.

“Right now, people think that they’re helping because they click like [but they’re] not really doing anything. I mean, look, I said, I like the rainforests. [However, that] didn’t stop anyone [from] cutting down the tree. Whereas if you have property rights and the ability to integrate this, clicking ‘like’ and donating $0.10. If a million people do that, then that’s $100,000 worth of buying new trees,” Dr. Wright concluded.