It's a hard-to-break digital string that commits proof that the person knows something in a file encoded by that string. When the known file becomes public, the fact that the file connects to the string in a one-way hash algorithm proves that the file was known at the time it was said.
To date, nobody has produced a file that hashes to that string. Maybe we need to take our Bitcoin miners offline and get them reverse-searching some of these public precommitments instead.
"I know something now, and anyone will be able to prove that I knew it at this time as soon as someone else reveals the same thing I know. That means that when it is revealed it will be provable not to be recently faked."
(Smiling) It's not that I know, it's that a person who makes the statement in the OP is making a statement of knowledge equivalent to what I put in quotes, and is stating that he knows something now and can prove it later. If what he knows becomes public, researchers can prove mathematically he already knew it.
It's a hard-to-break digital string that commits proof that the person knows something in a file encoded by that string. When the known file becomes public, the fact that the file connects to the string in a one-way hash algorithm proves that the file was known at the time it was said.
To date, nobody has produced a file that hashes to that string. Maybe we need to take our Bitcoin miners offline and get them reverse-searching some of these public precommitments instead.
"I know something now, and anyone will be able to prove that I knew it at this time as soon as someone else reveals the same thing I know. That means that when it is revealed it will be provable not to be recently faked."
(Smiling) It's not that I know, it's that a person who makes the statement in the OP is making a statement of knowledge equivalent to what I put in quotes, and is stating that he knows something now and can prove it later. If what he knows becomes public, researchers can prove mathematically he already knew it.
Yeah really.