Company Name Easy Proof
Founders: Rafael Cordón and Christian Lowenthal
Date of Founded The month of February 2023
The location of the headquarters: Guatemala
The amount of Bitcoin held in Treasury N/A
The number of employees: 6
Website: https://www.simpleproof.com/
Is it Public or Private? Private Investigators
How can we be sure that digital data is not tampered? Rafael (Rafa) Cordón has an answer.
In efforts to preserve the integrity of real information — especially government documents — he created Simple ProofA company which protects data on the Bitcoin Blockchain.
Last year, many knew the company when it employed them. prevent fraud in Guatemala’s presidential election. Simple Proof has a bigger mission than this.
“We uphold the information integrity of public records,” Cordón told Bitcoin Magazine.
“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.
Simple Proof is a company that aims to protect the information integrity.
What Simple Proof Does
Simple Proof leverages Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd’s OpenTimestamps Hash function protocol that uses timestamping to record information on the blockchain.
Cordón describes the process in layperson’s terms 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 included for each specific document but that the hash in an OP_RETURN is the “root hash” Merkle Tree, which is an array of hashes of multiple documents.
OpenTimestamps is able to attest an unlimited number of documents by using a single OP_RETURN. You can prove that one piece of information was contained in a Merkle tree.
Simple Proof is not a guarantee of authenticity for the data that it stores on the Bitcoin chain. This still falls on the government or the body overseeing –say– an election.
The Guatemalan election saw almost 200,000 volunteer and observer observers from different parties. watched over the voting process in efforts to prevent fraudThe documentary explains the specifics. Immutable Democracy:
Who uses simple proof?
Cordón and his team are in talks with a number of different government officials and private companies that work with governments who are interested in utilizing Simple Proof.
“There are two types of customers,” explained 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.'”
Simple Proof has recently secured a second customer, the identity of which Cordón did not disclose. The client has been contracted by its government to develop an application for managing public records, according to Cordón.
“They won’t be making their Verification Pages publicly accessible,” Cordón said.
“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 approach of creating private, verifiable proofs will become increasingly important not just for governments but for other institutions and individuals, as well.
Regarding his work with public officials, Cordón stressed one point in particular.
“In order for Simple Proof to work, the authorities have to want [to use] it,” explained Cordón.
“That was the case in Guatemala. The authorities wanted to use it because they were concerned of being accused of election fraud,” he said.
Some may have thought that Simple Proof would have prevented the occurrence of certain incidents. voting fraud in the recent Venezuelan presidential election, Cordón disagreed.
“In Venezuela, it’s very likely that the election authorities didn’t want to have transparency from the beginning,” said Cordón.
Simple Proof works only if customers are willing to have transparency. They won’t buy it if they don’t care about transparency. [our service],” he added.
Cordón went on to share that Simple Proof looks to work with officials from established democracies around the world.
“It is impossible for me to ever work under a non-democratic government” he shared.
Advancing Simple Proof
Earlier this year, Carlos Toriello (Carliño) joined the Simple Proof team.
Toriello oversaw a vote audit of the Guatemalan presidential election, the results of which Simple Proof helped protect.
“The audit was done by a member of the civil society group Digital Witness. Fiscal Digital,” explained Cordón. “Digital Witness checked the authenticity of the documents published by election officials using Simple Proof.”
Toriello crowdsourced a team via StakWork, a chore app that allows participants to earn bitcoin for completing tasks.
Thousands of participants worked from their phones to check the records of votes versus what had been recorded to the Bitcoin blockchain via Simple Proof, earning sats for their work.
“Digital Witness verified that the results of the elections were 99.9% accurate.” said Cordón.
Toriello is now working to have Simple Proof preserve the integrity of the results of an election in a US county.
He has been reaching out to US-based Bitcoin meetup groups, encouraging them to help their county employ Simple Proof in its next elections.
“They’re competing with each other to be the first country in the US who implements it.” said Cordón.
As a prize, Simple Proof is willing to document the adoption of its technology in the US via a short film, like Immutable Democracy.
“They can document their efforts in a positive way through a documentary, or by sending a team of film makers to let the world know that they are the first ones to have done it.” said Cordón.
Beyond Simple Proof
While Cordón is happy to have created a tool to help fight disinformation, he’s also well aware that Simple Proof is just one of many defenses that we will need against it.
“AI Tools are constantly evolving and we’re concerned about the direction they’re going.” said Cordón. “Simple Proof can help us protect ourselves from AI misinformation.”
Cordón also mentioned that government employees have to be mindful of how they produce documents and believes that digital signatures can play a role in authenticating documents as they’re published.
“We advise governments to use at least digital signatures like YubiKey,” said Cordón. “The person in control of the YubiKey must sign it after scanning the document. This signature is added to the blockchain.”
Even with technology like YubiKey, though, Cordón remains concerned.
“[There’s difficulty in] It is important to prove who produced the information. This digital information can be based either on a real input, or on a manipulated input.” explained Cordón.
“How will we be able prove this?” he asked with a stern facial expression.
“In the next decade, this unresolved issue will be very significant.”
“This article is not financial advice.”
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com
