New service Indelible.ink offers blockchain tweeting

Web developer and notary expert Steven Williams’ new service, Indelible.ink, is the easiest way to embed up to 80 characters of plain text directly into the bitcoin blockchain, according to the blockchain tweeting service’s press release sent to CoinReport.

Once you sign in, and confirm your email address, the first tweet is free (yes, the rest are not 🙁 ).

Within five minutes, data is relayed to the blockchain, so there is no need for complex conventional transaction protocols or APIs, said the release. Each tweet is perpetually stored within a single transaction.

“How does it work? What is our “secret sauce”? We are running a full network node which, along with custom programming and systems administration, allows us to embed so-called arbitrary data into the field of transactions. But that’s probably more than you need to know. As the Wizard of Oz said to Dorothy, Scarecrow and the gang, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” says the service’s website.

The algorithm does depend on bitcoin’s OP_RETURN field. Moreover, as with any authentic transaction, incentives go to the miners, who are willing to add the transaction within a block.

After tweeting, users receive a Blockchain Receipt, which is a documentary proof of the embedded data contents and also offers a few links to suggested blockchain explorers (currently Smartbit, Blocktrail and SoChain), where the transaction can be consulted instantaneously for third-party confirmation.

Early arrivals in the space were Crypto Graffiti (www.cryptograffiti.info) and Eternity Wall (www.eternitywall.it).

This type of projects have been done before also. However, says the press release, this new project is significantly different because it does not try to show a running list of messages received from all users. The data can still be seen by colleagues, friends, family or anyone from the general public who can be directed to particular recorded transactions effortlessly.

Image credit – deavmi  (CC BY-SA 4.0)