Company Name: Simple guide
Founders: Rafael Cordon and Christian Lowenthal
Date of Establishment: February 2023
Headquarter Location: Guatemala
Amount of Bitcoin in the vault: Unavailable
Number of Employees: 6
website: https://www.simpleproof.com/
Public or private? private
In the age of digital records, how can we ensure that data is not tampered with? Rafael (Rafa) Cordon has the answer.
In an attempt to preserve the integrity of genuine information – especially government documents – he created Simple guidea company that works to protect official data across the Bitcoin blockchain.
Many people first learned about the company last year when it was hired to prevent fraud in Guatemala’s presidential election. However, Simple Proof’s mission is bigger than that.
“We maintain the integrity of the information in the public record,” Cordon told Bitcoin Magazine.
“Elections aren’t really our focus,” he added. “It was just the first use case. We’re focused on (protecting) public records — the information that governments produce.”
So, how exactly does Simple Proof keep information safe?
How does the simple guide work?
Simple Proof benefits from Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd Open timestamps A protocol that uses hash functions to time-stamp information on an immutable blockchain.
Cordon describes this process in simple language as follows:
“First, we take the hash of the document, which can be thought of as a digital fingerprint. Every document has a very unique digital fingerprint, which is a string of characters.
Bitcoin transactions have a space for random text, called the OP_RETURN function. This is similar to what happens when you write a check, there is a little line at the bottom right that says “Memo” where you can write random text reminding you what the check is for. The OP_RETURN function can be thought of as a memo space within a Bitcoin transaction.
“Inside this ‘note’ space, we embed a hash, or digital fingerprint. This hash is then embedded in the Bitcoin transaction. When the transaction is published, it is embedded in a block, which is then stored immutably. So you have a digital fingerprint stored inside a Bitcoin block that lives forever.”
Cordon explained that the hash is not for each specific document, but the hash in OP_RETURN is the “root hash” of a Merkle tree, which is a tree of hashes for multiple documents.
In this way, OpenTimestamps can prove an unlimited number of documents with a single OP_RETURN entry. Merkle trees allow you to efficiently prove the existence of a single piece of data in the tree.
But keep in mind that Simple Proof does not guarantee the authenticity of the data it helps store on the Bitcoin blockchain. That still falls to the government or election body.
In the case of the presidential elections in Guatemala, nearly 200,000 volunteers and observers from different political parties participated. Monitor the voting process in an effort to prevent fraud.which was detailed in the documentary. stable democracy:
Who uses simple proof?
Cordon and his team are in talks with a number of government officials and private companies that work with governments interested in using Simple Proof.
“There are two types of customers,” Cordon explained. “One is public officials who care about keeping information in their organizations safe and who might get in trouble if information in their organizations is modified without permission, and the other is technology vendors who governments hire to generate or process information and who have the same problem of, ‘I don’t want to be accused of modifying information.’”
Simple Proof recently secured a second client, whose identity Cordon did not disclose. The client was contracted by the government to develop a public records management application, Cordon said.
“They will not make their verification pages public,” Cordon said.
“Instead, they will store their evidence privately, with the option to disclose it if needed to verify the authenticity of the documents in the future. This approach acts as a form of digital insurance,” he added.
Cordon believes this approach of creating private, verifiable evidence will become more important not only for governments but for other institutions and individuals as well.
Regarding his work with public officials, Cordon stressed one point in particular.
“For Simple Proof to work, authorities have to want to use it,” Cordon explained.
“This is what happened in Guatemala, where the authorities wanted to use this technology because they were worried about being accused of electoral fraud,” he added.
While some have speculated that simple evidence might help prevent Voting fraud in the recent Venezuelan presidential electionKurds disagree.
“In Venezuela, it is very likely that the electoral authorities were not willing to be transparent from the beginning,” Cordon said.
“The simple guide only works if our customers want transparency. If they don’t want transparency, they won’t want (our services),” he added.
Simple Proof seeks to work with officials from established democracies around the world, Cordon added.
“I would never want to work with an undemocratic regime,” he added.
Simple proof
Earlier this year, Carlos Torriello (Carlino) joined the Simple Proof team.
Toriello oversaw the audit of the Guatemalan presidential election, which Simple Proof helped protect.
“I conducted the audit as a citizen, as part of a civil society movement called Digital Witness, or Digital Finance“Digital Witness was taking the documents that election officials were releasing and verifying them using Simple Proof to ensure they were authentic,” Cordon explained.
Torello assembled a team through Stack Worka home-based business app that allows participants to earn bitcoins for completing tasks.
Thousands of participants worked from their phones to verify the vote records against what was recorded in the Bitcoin blockchain via Simple Proof, and received satoshis for their work.
“Digital Witness confirmed that the election results were 99% accurate,” Cordon added.
Torriello is now working to get Simple Proof to take on the task of maintaining the integrity of election results in a US county.
He has been reaching out to US-based Bitcoin meetup groups, encouraging them to help their district use Simple Proof in the upcoming election.
“The meetings are kind of a competition to see who is the first county in the United States to implement this,” Cordon said.
As a prize, Simple Proof wants to document the adoption of its technology in the United States through a short film, such as stable democracy.
“We can help them document it in a good way by making a documentary or sending a film crew to give them the opportunity to show the world that they were the first to do it,” Cordon said.
Beyond simple proof
While Cordon is happy to create a tool to help combat disinformation, he is also well aware that Simple Proof is just one of many defenses we will need against it.
“We are very concerned about the way AI tools are evolving,” Cordon said. “We need things like Simple Proof to protect us from misinformation about AI.”
Cordon also said that government employees should be aware of how documents are produced and believes digital signatures can play a role in verifying the authenticity of documents as they are published.
“We advise governments to use digital signatures at least as often as Yubiki“So, when someone scans a document, the person who controls the YubiKey has to sign it to produce the signature and then it gets included in the blockchain,” Cordon said.
But even with technology like the YubiKey, Cordon still has concerns.
“There is difficulty in proving who created the information and whether this digital information is based exclusively on real-world inputs or whether it is based on inputs that have already been manipulated,” Cordon explained.
“How will we be able to prove that?” he asked with a stern expression on his face.
“It is an issue that has not yet been resolved but will become of great importance in the next ten years.”
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