Matt Mullenweg Has Lost His Way And Is Taking It Out On The Community. The Latest…

Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal reported that the latest in the WordPress Drama had dropped. Matt Mullenweg, the “leader” of the WordPress project has barred longtime supporter of the project Joost De Valk from speaking at WordCamp Asia, because Matt feels Joost stabbed him in the back.

Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) announcing that Joost de Valk was no longer speaking at WordCamp Asia and was persona non grata for having “stabbed” him when he was vulnerable and betraying his confidence. Mullenweg cited statements by de Valk to prove his point, but those statements were presented without their full context, which significantly altered their meaning.

Matt is seriously unhinged. And what’s scary is that WordPress is suffering because of this insanity. WordPress powers ~40% of the Websites on the Web. There is a lot at stake here if Matt goes nuclear.

He brought this on himself. And now Matt is paying the price for his actions. But sadly he’s taking the whole fucking community down with him.

There are efforts to make sure this doesn’t happen, or hopefully doesn’t. But it has a lot of us on edge, me included.

Seriously, this is one more thing that many of us don’t need right now.

#JoostDeValk #MattMullenweg #wordcamp #WordCampAsia #wordpress #WPDrama

#weeklyreview 06/2025

Again a mixed week

Took Monday off to drive a friend to an examiner for his insurance to assess that he’s not capable of working in his job. He’s got severe ME/CFS, can’t sit or stand upright without passing out in a matter of minutes, has the attention span of squirrel before his brain fog kicks in etc. The examination was originally meant to be 2 days of 4 hours examinations each. But it was clear from the start that he’d not be able to do that. The bloody examiner sit’s in a non-accessible building in the south of Berlin. My friends needs a wheelchair to move around. Of course the building neither had an elevator nor a ramp or something. So it took my friend about 25 minutes to rob in his bum up to the 3rd floor. Yeah… because he can’t stand upright and just walk. And he’s also a bit heavy so can’t be easily carried. And our brilliant health system also does not pay for transport and carrying him upstairs anymore. You’d need three persons to move him, but the default staff on official ambulance cars is only two.

Overall a rather humiliating and exhausting experience for him. I’ll just hope that he’ll finally get’s the deserved payout from his insurance.

The good thing was though, that I 4 hours to roam around in Friedenau and was able to give my good friend Boerge as visit in his new home 😀

Tuesday & Wednesday I was fighting with work bureaucrats the get an exemption for using my corporate USB Disks to free off space on my internal hard disk for experiments mit LLM models. I get the need for rules and restrictions etc. But there must be a way to not prevent people from doing their work. There is all this mandatory security training and tools etc. But I think there should be a way for people to somehow prove that they know what they’re doing and get rid of the usual corporate shackles that prevent you from doing stuff and cripple your expensive corporate hardware.

Baltic Sea

For the rest of the week (which was the Berlin winter holiday week for schools) my daughter and me took off to Usedom island. This time we stayed in Świnoujście on the polish side of the isle.

The weather left room for improvement the first two days with grey clouds, cold wind and drizzle. But that’s kind of what we came for. The sea is awesome at any weather and our hotel had a Spa area where we spent time in the pool and sauna 🙂 I also got a fair bit of reading done on my kindle in the sauna. “The dawn of everything” is really good.

We explored the local restaurants and roamed around the city, beach and piers a bit.

On Saturday we took a trip to the German side and payed Gulliver a visit and had good pizza on the pier restaurant in Heringsdorf.

In the afternoon the sun finally came out and people were flocking to the beach for a walk. We saw the TF Line ferries coming in and eventually had really good Sushi at the Hilton Hotel Sushi Bar and Grill.

Overall a rather relaxing four days at the Baltic Sea.

But there was not a single #meshtastic node on the whole Baltic Sea. I was carrying my T-Echo the whole time to check for any nearby radios. Nothing, nada, zilch.

#BalticSea #beach #enEN #food #meshtastic #Poland #Usedom #Vacation #weekly #weeklyreview

Rejuvenation for Pro Senectute through NFT and Metaverse?

Pro Senectute beider Basel, a foundation to help the elderly around Basel, launched its NFT project last week and already informed about its Metaverse commitment beforehand. According to a media release, Michael Harr, managing director of the 15-million Basel-based company, wants to use the purchase of these “properties” in a “central location” in two online worlds to promote solidarity between the generations and enable older people to use current and future digital technologies, promote their integration and reduce social isolation.

Diesen Artikel gibt es auch auf Deutsch 🇩🇪. Or read more blockchain-related stuff.

We wanted to take a look at what “central location” actually means in an online world called “Decentraland”. Decentraland measures 5 km by 5 km and the Pro Senectute presence can be found 500 m from the edge of the city, i.e. on the outer 10% of the buildable space. The view from the roof of the anarchy café right next door also screams anything but “central!”: a deserted environment as far as the eye can see and on the other side of the street a seemingly endless steppe. Neither walking around nor several return visits did change that.

But Michael Harr’s vision goes far beyond today: “Where will we reach older people in the distant future and how do get to interact with them?”

A behind-the-scenes look at metaverses and NFTs help us understand whether this goal can be achieved.
The view from the roof of the neighboring Anarchy Café of the Pro-Senectute double parcel in Decentraland (bottom left, black), the main road (center), and the steppe landscape (right)

Table of Contents

Toggle

• But what is the Metaverse?
  
  • Metaverse 1: Decentraland
  • Metaverse 2: The Sandbox
  • Early metaverses
  • Interaction metaverse

  
  

• What is an NFT?
• Goals reached?
  
  • NFT goals
    
    • A. Unique property?
    • B. Asset value?
    • C. Paper Wallet
    • D. New channels?

    
    

  • Metaverse goals
    
    • A. Participation in progress?
    • B. Prediction for 40 years?
    • C. Central location?
    • D. Reduce isolation?
    • E. Experiences despite limitations?
    • F. Digital course/consultation center?

    
    

  
  

• Conclusion
• Blockchain ecosystem

But what is the Metaverse?

According to Wikipedia, a metaverse is a digital space created by the interaction of virtual, augmented and physical reality. Neal Stephenson created the term 30 years ago for an online world that allows its users to escape, at least temporarily, from the dystopia of “Snow Crash.” The term “metaverse” became known to a wider audience when Facebook was renamed Meta.

More than 200 such virtual 3D experience spaces are offered by various companies today. Analogous to social media platforms, these metaverses also try to differentiate themselves from each other through incompatibility and lock-in mechanisms: “customer loyalty” by means of walled gardens.

Accordingly, customers also have to make multiple commitments. Pro Senectute beider Basel has acquired “plots of land in two of these metaverses, Decentraland and The Sandbox, with the vision of one day building a virtual course center or a virtual counseling center with a meeting place there” (Harr). Currently, metaverse architects are still being sought for this.

Let’s take a closer look at these two metaverses.

Metaverse 1: Decentraland

View from the street to the construction site with a stylish “Under Construction” sign (left of the lettering). Neighborhood, from left to right: Anarchist Café, Menstruation Pyramid, Canadian Law Firm.
For new Decentraland users, getting started is a snap if you speak English: Visit play.decentraland.org in your browser and select that you want to play as a guest (and, depending on your computer, dismiss the message that your graphics performance is insufficient). Some loading time later you are greeted by an introduction that explains how to roam the virtual world with a combination of mouse and keyboard known from first person shooters. With a jump into the cold water (literally) you arrive in the city center with many buildings, but not a single other player.

Inexperienced in first person shooters, slightly disoriented, and annoyed by the sometimes suddenly materializing walls, I try to locate the “central location” (coordinates -38,120 and -38,121) on the map.
Decentraland map at maximum zoom: Still not enough to see the Pro Senectute “plot” (it is far further “north”).
Despite the maximum zoom level, the map only shows a good third of the way to the Pro Senectute. In the chat, however, you can enter “/goto -38,120“, as one of the omnipresent in-game advertising posters will explain to me later. (The owners of some Decentraland parcel want to lure me from the “central” Pro Senectute vicinity to their actual location, probably also somewhere else “central”).

The double lot currently consists only of a black wall, with a floating(!) writing “Pro Senectute beider Basel” in front and a shy “Under Construction” sign next to it, evoking memories of 90s websites.

The environment of the online presence (or better, absence?) of Pro Senectute is still relatively empty. Why the choice fell on this “site” is not clear to me. Neither the neighboring Canadian law firm, nor the advertising for a menstruation app behind it really seems tailored to Swiss seniors.
The view from 50 m “southeast” of the parcels.
But maybe some of the male senior citizens will admire the oversized pin-up girl of the NFT discount store a few steps in the southeasterly direction of the plot. At least one can spend some of the waiting time until the opening of the course center.

Metaverse 2: The Sandbox

Sandbox map showing the parcel and neighborhood.
For The Sandbox, you are forced to create an account, which we managed only after several attempts. Then it turns out that a separate application is needed, which is not compatible with my computer.

A colleague has a compatible computer and can finally start playing after several gigabytes of download. However, the operation of The Sandbox is not intuitive enough for him to navigate to the “premium” coordinates of Pro Senectute.

If two computer scientists are already reaching their limits, what does it look like for senior citizens? Presumably, they first have to go to the physical course center in downtown Basel, where they are then told how to get to the virtual course center.

Early metaverses

Second Life is greeting more friendly, both in language (German) and graphics.
Since the 1980s, online games have been used for the first social interactions, at that time still text-based. Online worlds then experienced a somewhat greater degree of popularity starting in 2003 with the 3D world of Second Life or with online role-playing games like World of Warcraft. Today’s metaverses hope to escape this niche existence.

Both Second Life and World of Warcraft, though much older, feature more realistic (and in my opinion, friendlier) graphics than the Pro Senectute selection.

Interaction metaverse

The floor plan of a community WorkAdventure (left, with a glimpse at the expansive garden outside the office) with our avatars. Meeting in the lounge automatically and intuitively starts a video conference among those present.
Spring 2020 marked the beginning of home office for many. With Workadventure, a few Frenchmen created a platform that allowed them to recover some of the social aspects of their usual office into their home office. The result was an open platform where anyone could create their own 2½D scenes. Most implementations recreated office worlds with meeting rooms and lounges. Anyone hanging around in the same lounge would automatically join a joint video conference, a very natural form of interaction. In addition, however, there is also possibility to connect objects with websites or other workadventures: Pinboards can thus display information from the intranet or doors lead to other Workadventure metaverses, in the open style of the web and its links. All with the goal of enabling informal social exchange in clear yet friendly virtual worlds.
Workadventure scenery is not restricted to boring office worlds, but can also be colorful, such as in this world targeted at school children.

What is an NFT?

The Pro Senectute beider Basel online presence will be funded through NFTs, artworks designed specifically for this campaign that can be traded on the blockchain.

“NFT” stands for “Non-Fungible Token”, roughly a “non-exchangeable token”. The “non-exchangeable” serves to distinguish it from “normal”, exchangeable tokens such as digital coins: Any digital dollar can be exchanged for any other digital dollar and no one will notice.

These NFTs are being marketed by some as the future of digital art (and for much more). For this purpose, a program is stored on the blockchain, a so-called “smart contract”, through which these works of art can be traded. These trade changes and the payments made for them are also stored back on the Blockchain. Interestingly, however, the artwork itself is not in the blockchain; only the URL (web address) is stored in the smart contract.

Thus, an art NFT and its smart contract:

• Public: A public, normal web link (URL), usable by anyone, to a computer file of a work of art that can be changed at any time.
• Perpetual: The NFT is managed by a public “digital contract” (“smart contract”). These smart contracts and each associated transaction are elaborately (and contrary to ideas of privacy) kept publicly and virtually immutable in a blockchain “forever.” (But that alone is not enough for them to also retain their function).
• Program: This smart contract is a piece of cryptic program code that often is not even properly understood by its developers, let alone estimate its consequences (Background).

The NFT (and the underlying smart contract), on the other hand,do not provide(sometimes or always):

• Right of use:The usage rights which you gain from this NFT or its contract are rarely precisely defined.
• Hurdle: The contract, however, does not pose a technical hurdle to viewing or even downloading the artwork. On the contrary, it points every blockchain user to where the artwork can be downloaded.
• Trustworthiness:Some of these smart contracts “simply” charge a fee when they are resold (sometimes as a surprise); others are actively malicious (e.g., they steal crypto-money or NFTs); quite a few are buggy and can be abused by hackers. An ordinary user does not have the tools to determine this before bindingly interacting with the contract.
• Bug fixes: Many smart contracts do not offer the possibility of a software update, which could correct errors or security vulnerabilities. This is because this update option can also be (and has already been) abused.
• Goodwill: There is no cure for faulty or malicious smart contracts. Not even against simple typing errors during the transfer. Recourse is impossible, so is an appeal to a court. Hoping for generosity on the part of the other party is also impossible by design: The smart contract program, once started, acts completely stubbornly and autonomously and cannot be influenced by anything or anyone (“Code is Law”: The program code is the only valid, first- and last-instance law).
• Contract: This “digital contract” probably does not even correspond to what the Code of Obligations understands by a contract, since consent to such an incomprehensible construct cannot be seen as an expression of will. In the event of deceipt (which is easily possible with smart contracts), there is also no possibility for subsequent correction, for example by annulling or correcting the contract.
• Uniqueness: The alleged uniqueness of NFTs is an illusion. Likewise, without additional, sometimes time-consuming research, it is not possible to verify whether the creator of the NFT is also the owner of the copyright or right of use to the work of art. (In other words, the fact that something is sold as an NFT says nothing about its authenticity or whether it is copied/faked).
• Free of charge: Transactions around smart contracts (even just moving them between the owner’s left and right pocket) cost money, or more precisely, “cryptocurrencies”. These are not currencies in the classic sense, as they lack both a functioning monetary cycle and the necessary stability.
• Value: Quantifying the value of art reliably and objectively is already an impossibility. It becomes even more difficult when the yardstick for this, the cryptocurrency, is itself highly speculative and can only be kept alive, as it were, by a snowball system.
• Simplicity and democracy: This blockchain was created in 2008 as an alternative to an economic system dominated by a few people and characterized by greed, inefficiency, intransparency and excessive complexity. However, the economic system created by blockchains is riddled with concentrated greed, inefficiency, intransparency, and unnecessary complexity. And, despite the regularly repeated promises of fairness and democratization through the blockchain, the financial power behind it is in the hands of very few people with sometimes very strange ideas about the society we should all live in.

In short, a very complex, opaque and unclear system is being set up without any possibility for appeal or mercy, which tramples on our rights to privacy and – despite all protestations of fairness and distribution – actually only benefits a few (newly) rich.

The use of NFTs does not fundamentally change the problems of funding the arts or nonprofit organizations: Neither the often unfair access to audiences, the often unfair pay, nor the often difficult access to upfront investment. It also isn’t a step into an entirely new arts culture or arts funding culture. (Or, in the case of Pro Senectute, donation culture).

On the contrary, in my opinion, it is not only without benefit, but even harmful to society in the long term.

Goals reached?

Now, do NFTs and the selected metaverses fulfill the goals of Pro Senectute beider Basel? Let’s first look at the goals around the NFTs:

NFT goals

A. Unique property?

In its media release, Pro Senectute beider Basel writes: “An NFT maps a digital certificate of ownership and thus represents a unique, non-copyable original on the blockchain.”

Let’s take this one step at a time:

Certificate of ownership: What rights one acquires to the work through the action is not clear from either the media release or the NFT website. My request for clarification was not answered.

Unique: Thereare up to 2512 copies of the individual works. Can one really speak of “unique”‽

Not copyable: The NFT stored on the public blockchain only points to a “normal” (also public) URL. A download (and thus the creation of a local copy) is therefore possible from any computer without restrictions.

Original: In the digital world, there is no difference between original and copy.

On the Blockchain: the works themselves are not on the Blockchain, only references and proofs of purchase.

In short: the sentence from the media release bears—generously speaking—barely any relation to reality.

B. Asset value?

Also mentioned in the media release are “unique virtual assets”. Again, this raises questions about the valuation of the NFT within a volatile or illiquid secondary market and thus whether the NFT really represents an asset.

I would not want the three most common NFTs even if gifted, even less so for money. (Nevertheless, I bought one of the NFTs — for analysis purposes).

C. Paper Wallet

The NFTs are sent as a “paper wallet“; a QR code printed on high quality paper for viewing the work and a scratch area which initially hides the information required for resale.

Such a paper wallet has the advantage that the buyers do not have to take care of the cryptocurrencies and crypto wallets (=online cryptocurrency account). However, it also has the disadvantage that one only finds out after a fee-based “resale” to oneself whether one has really acquired a right to this NFT or whether the same envelope with the same access data was simply sent out 4444 times.

Also unclear is how many hands the secrets under the scratch field passed through before the scratch was applied (contogeneration, transmission, printing process) and how many people could thus also lay a digital claim to the artwork. (The blockchain does not say who is the rightful owner now; any person who knows the secrets under the scratch-off can resell it on their behalf).

In response to my question, Michael Harr explained that he was prepared. A print shop had been chosen that also handled sensitive data (e.g. lottery tickets) and could guarantee confidentiality. In addition, further security measures were taken. The paper wallets also had some credit so that no additional costs would be incurred for the first transfer of ownership worth around one centime.

However, the question about the rights acquired with the NFT and the characteristics of the smart contract remained unanswered and thus unclear.

D. New channels?

Does this action really bring in additional revenue from “new channels”? Since the beginning of the year, the NFT market has slumped by 97%. Despite this, “the land costs have practically already been recouped” through the NFT sales, according to Harr.

Pro Senectute beider Basel will inform about the outcome after the end of the activity, which will last at least until spring. Only then we will have a chance to determine whether this has led to additional revenue or whether those willing to donate have simply changed their method of giving.

But even that conclusion will hardly show whether these new channels are sustainable or just a flash in the pan.

Metaverse goals

A. Participation in progress?

The media release motivates the creation of these “Metaverse branches” with “let[ting] the older generation actively participate [in] technological advances.”
Is this the sight of the future? (Splash screen for The Sandbox)
Both platforms try to motivate players to spend cryptocurrency on all sorts of in-game extras. If you are not careful, you can quickly lose a lot of money.

In particular, The Sandbox seems to be a Minecraft clone trimmed for monetization, coming across on the splash page with the combined charm of a back-alley gambling joint and a Formula-1 overall.
Monetization: You are not worthy to be saved unless you finish the level.
We beg to question whether these two rather bleak, English-only worlds with their obtrusive monetization, omnipresent advertising, and sometimes rather unintuitive interface are really (1) the ideal environment to lure seniors into and (2) give these platforms as well as the underlying cryptocurrencies legitimacy through one’s presence.
Decentraland is full of advertisements. Including advertisement for advertisements. And advertisement for NFTs. And then even more advertisement for NFTs.
The abilities to critically scrutinize, tend to decline with age (think of the inglorious grandparent scams). Exposing possibly cash-strapped seniors to such heavily monetized platforms seems dangerous, to say the least, especially if other participants on these platforms then try to lure these seniors with possible extravagant profits (through money games or NFT “investments”).

B. Prediction for 40 years?

In the shockingly uncritical SRF News article, Michael Harr’s target audience is quoted as “people who are 30 or 40 years old today will use when they themselves are of retirement age”.

I think it is extremely daring to try and predict today which technologies will still be relevant in 30 to 40 years.

Looking back, 40 years ago, the end of the Iron Curtain was unimaginable and the Internet in its current form had not yet been born; 30 years ago, the WWW was just one year old and known only to some insiders. Today, hardly anyone can imagine that smartphones with touchscreens have only been around for 15 years, much shorter than the forecast period.

It is impossible today to make predictions about whether a specific platform of a given technology selected now will even exist then, especially when even large platforms face an uncertain future.

C. Central location?

“They are central locations in the metaverse, comparable to downtown locations in the real world,” says Michael Harr, executive director of Pro Senectute beider Basel.

In the metaverse, you can be teleported to any possible coordinate at any time within a few seconds. At first glance, this seems to imply that the concept of “central location” completely loses its meaning we have from the real world. Nevertheless, there are significant price differences between properties at different locations. Researchers at the University of Basel, for example, have analyzed the prices of the original auction that was used to find many Decentraland “properties” their first owners five years ago.

They published their conclusions last year, long before the current Pro Senectute purchases: Buyers were willing to pay significantly higher prices for a “good location” in 2017.

Fabian Schär, one of the authors of the study, explains: “The metaverse is an attention economy. Similar to the physical world, those parcels that have a high density of visitors, i.e. are located near large squares, main roads or important districts, are particularly sought-after. In addition, parcels with memorable coordinates also fetch significantly higher prices. This aspect is reminiscent of markets for domain names where similar effects can be observed.”

Regardless of location, all land purchases in the Metaverse are high-risk investments, he adds. “As interesting as the subject matter may be, potential buyers of virtual land parcels must always be aware that they can lose everything.”

According to a recent study by Wemeta, the value of The Sandbox and Decentraland properties has plummeted by 80% and demand has also declined, in Decentraland by a factor of 6.

How “central” is the location really? The Pro Senectute properties in Decentraland are only 10% away from the “northern” edge.

The coordinate -38,120 doesn’t seem particularly memorable either, so that can’t be it either.

The Canadian lawyer’s office or the menstruation app “west” of the Pro Senectute location are also unlikely to attract many walk-in customers. Nor will the aforementioned abandoned Anarchy NFT Café with its viewing terrace or the NFT Discount with its pin-up girl storefront. The use of the buildings in the direction of “north” is unclear and in the direction of “east” is undeveloped steppe as far as the eye can see.

“Central?” Apparently not. Further research shows: The steppe to the east is actually a huge university campus. The map shows no points of interest, so I take a stroll. Some zig-zagging later, I discover an (empty) building with a periodic table and a lectern. But even that will hardly attract streams of visitors.

D. Reduce isolation?

In the press release, Michael Harr, the foundation’s manager, is quoted as saying: “We want to promote the integration of the older generation and reduce social isolation.”

The seniors I interviewed expressed their belief that such worlds would promote isolation instead. Some had already enjoyed using an online Jass app remotely. Together with a parallel audio or video call, this had almost recreated the pleasurable feeling of sitting at a table together.

For seniors who are no longer confident enough to operate a tablet, there are also approaches for senior-friendly video telephony solutions.

E. Experiences despite limitations?

“Thanks to VR glasses, people with disabilities can experience things that are not possible in analog. It is conceivable, for example, that an elderly person in a wheelchair can experience the view from a mountaintop thanks to VR glasses,” explains Michael Harr in a response to my inquiry.

A very laudable goal, but do we need a Metaverse for this? Back in 1978 (!), a 3D virtual tour of Aspen was created. Without having to raise from the armchair (or wheelchair), it was possible to explore the entire city. Completely without Metaverse. More than 25 years ago, the necessary technology became available on widely used computers.

The view from the top of the mountain (or even the way there) could be experienced without a metaverse, without anything but a web browser. Not every 3D representation has to be locked into a commercial platform. “Locking in” also aptly describes the minute amounts of data that can be stored for a Decentraland parcel; far too little for a realistic mountain panorama. (This limit also explains why the five year old world still shows only minimalistic graphics).

F. Digital course/consultation center?

“In the future, a virtual course center with meeting space for the elderly could become a reality in the Metaverse.”

The Decentraland property of Pro Senectute is 16×32 m². The (small-looking) auditorium mentioned above is twice the size; some form of classroom could certainly be accommodated in half of it. The question is rather, how would courses be held there? So far, there seem to be no mechanisms in Decentraland that support knowledge transfer, even ignoring the already mentioned very restrictive storage limits). It is also hard to imagine that better knowledge transfer than with specialized tools (or even just a video conference) will ever be possible in these metaverses.

Conclusion

The fundamental question is whether a world of hypercapitalism is the right environments to attract seniors into: Their more or less subtle ubiquitous monetization of almost every corner, their aspects of gambling, and their attempts at sensory overload, especially through omnipresent advertising does not seem a platform I would feel comfortable advertising to a wide range of seniors. Instead, if I had the say at an organization catering to a wide spectrum of elderly people, I would propagate a reduced, more comprehensible, intuitive and user-friendly environment, catering for the reduced receptiveness and critical faculties of age.

Seniors I interviewed would rather enjoy the sun than invest so much time in a confusing system. For digital communication, they would prefer the telephone or a video call. Incidentally, such a call is also an excellent basis for starting a joint online Jass.

None of these statements should be taken as endorsement to keep interested seniors from exploring online worlds, on the contrary. My respondents, if they had to visit one of the Metaverses, would prefer the more intuitive, natural environment of Second Life over Decentraland any day.

Many of the other statements of Michael Harr were — as explained above — hard for me to understand. Therefore I asked the Pro Senectute beider Basel for further information. I hoped that they could give me information about concepts or background considerations, the total costs and their financing. If the initial financing was “not from donations”, then where was it from? (Hopefully also not from the operation of the retirement homes or the earmarked public funds, the three together making up about 90% of the foundation’s budget). Likewise, I asked for information about what the features (and costs) of the smart contract were, as well as how the security of the production process of the paper wallet would be ensured. The response 1½ weeks later rarely addressed my specific questions. A commendable exception is the explanation of the paper wallets and that the wallets have been topped up with sufficient cryptocurrency so the buyer can transfer ownership once without going through further hoops or expenses.

As with many other projects in the blockchain environment, the question about who will benefit from the project remains unanswered: Will only the early entrants and the consultants earn anything, or will it add a sustainable value to our society.

Part of this ambiguity probably arises from the lack of clear distinction in communication between what is being worked on today and where Pro Senectute beider Basel sees itself in 30 or 40 years.

Many ambiguities could have been clarified by a statement such as, “With a portion of the maximum 300,000 francs from the NFT proceeds, we want to explore how we might best interact with seniors a few decades.” At present, neither such a statement nor apparently a sufficiently deep understanding of what the various envisioned technologies can and definitely cannot do seem to exist.

If hyped technology and its effects are only superficially understood, there is a great risk of incorrect assessments and wrong decisions. It remains to be hoped that, despite the signs to the contrary, the added value for society will prevail in this case. And perhaps there will be some money left over for the current generation.

Blockchain ecosystem

More posts in the blockchain ecosystem here, with the latest here:

• 

  The year in review2023-12-23

  This is the time to catch up on what you missed during the year. For some, it is meeting the family. For others, doing snowsports. For even others, it is cuddling up and reading. This is an article for the latter.

• 

  NFTs are unethical2023-07-18

  As an avid reader, you know my arguments that neither NFT nor smart contracts live up to their promises, and that the blockchain underneath is also more fragile and has a worse cost-benefit ratio than most believe. Similarly, I also claim the same for the metaverses built on top of them all. And that the… Read more: NFTs are unethical

• 

  Inefficiency is bliss (sometimes)2023-07-15

  Bureaucracy and inefficiency are frowned upon, often rightly so. But they also have their good sides: Properly applied, they ensure reliability and legal certainty. Blockchain disciples want to “improve” bureaucracy-ridden processes, but achieve the opposite. Two examples:

• 

  The FTX crypto exchange and its spider web2022-12-14

  Yesterday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried. It details the financial entanglements of FTX, Alameda Research and more than a hundred other companies and individuals. We have tried to disentangle these allegations somewhat for you.

• 

  Web3 for data preservation? (Or is it just another expensive P2P?)2022-11-19

  Drew Austin raises an important question in Wired: How should we deal with our accumulated personal data? How can we get from randomly hoarding to selection and preservation? And why does his proposed solution of Web3 not work out? A few analytical thoughts.

• 

  Rejuvenation for Pro Senectute through NFT and Metaverse?2022-10-24

  Pro Senectute beider Basel, a foundation to help the elderly around Basel, launched its NFT project last week and already informed about its Metaverse commitment beforehand. According to a media release, Michael Harr, managing director of the 15-million Basel-based company, wants to use the purchase of these “properties” in a “central location” in two online… Read more: Rejuvenation for Pro Senectute through NFT and Metaverse?

#Blockchain #NFT #Metaverse

Bitcoin Block Timing Statistics

Bitcoin wants to be a universal payment means, providing rapid transactions. Here is an analysis on the blockchain timing, based on their timestamps.

More on blockchain in this overview and in the simple, humorous, yet thorough article «Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blockchain».

Table of Contents

Toggle

• Data sets
  
  • Data set 0: Everything
  • Data set 1: All but genesis
  • Data set 2: 2010+
  • Data set 3: 2020+

  
  

• Negative durations (data set 0)
  
  • Timestamp accuracy estimation

  
  

• Block mining interval distribution (data set 3)
• Block confirmation delays

Data sets

Data set 0: Everything

This data set includes all 725 287 blocks created up to 2022-02-28 14:13 (all times UTC), the time at which the data was extracted.

Data set 1: All but genesis

Every start has its own teething problems. For example, the Bitcoin “genesis block” (the first block, numbered 0, the one without ancestors) was created on 2009-01-03 18:15:05, according to the timestamp embedded in it. The next block, number 0, was only created 5½ days later, 2009-01-09 02:54:25. The following 13 intervals range from around 1½ to 13½ minutes, in the expected range. Therefore, the first interval of 5½ days was removed from the data set.

However, the 15th interval, of just over a day (24:12:37), is included, as there are 3 more such events in 2009, dated in May and June.

Data set 2: 2010+

The year 2009 includes 9 intervals of 10 hours or more, which none of the other years have. Also, the entire blockchain history lists 152 intervals of more than two hours, 137 of which are in that “genesis year”. (These 2+ hour intervals continue into 2021, with two events listed there.) Therefore, a data set 2 is created, which includes all but the genesis year, 2009.

Data set 3: 2020+

A last dataset only includes the last roughly 26 months, ranging from 2020 to today (2022-02-28). This is meant to represent the current state, but might have a too narrow spread.

Negative durations (data set 0)

2 % of the blocks show a negative interval length. This is possible, as the timestamps inside the blocks are created by the winning miners themselves, and are in no way externally validated. Possible reasons for these negative interval lengths include unsynchronized clocks, not updating the time field while updating the hash, or someone purposefully manipulating the hash (although I do not see an obvious benefit for doing this).

The following table lists the number of negative intervals in a given year. Most of those intervals are one-off, i.e., while the timestamp at block i+1 may show a time before that of block i, the one at i+2 is again in the right order (i.e., after both i and i+1). The latter events are labelled as “double negative”. Three or four consecutive blocks without a time ahead of the first are labelled as “triples” and “quadruples”. Especially for the latter categories, it is more likely that the first block had a timestamp wrongly set into the future.

Annual number of blocks whose time puts them before their parent or ancestors.
We can clearly see that the number of backward timesteps in the past four years has greatly improved.

The following table lists the median and maximum size of these backward steps.

Annual median and maximum reverse time intervals (seconds accuracy) in the Bitcoin blockchain.
Up to 2015, maximum clock offsets of one to two hours were possible, with half of the backsteps in the one to two minute range. Since 2017, the median backward step is less than a minute, in many years only on the order of ten seconds. Maximum errors since 2017 never exceeded 32 minutes, often less than ten minutes.

Given that this is expensive high-tech equipment dealing with large amounts of money and being touted as the basis of the future of finances, document timestamping, and much more, it is baffling that time is not better synchronized, given that time synchronization with possible sub-second accuracy is a 1970’s technology, standard on most computers today.

Timestamp accuracy estimation

The section above is just to show potential sources of errors, as all analyses rely on the timestamps recorded in the blocks themselves, with no ground truth available. Assuming that the sizes of the backwards steps are a good first approximation of the clock errors, the maximum error for blocks minted before 2016 should not exceed two hours, for blocks minted afterwards, they should not exceed 30-40 minutes.

Over the entire lifetime of the Bitcoin blockchain, about 2 % of the intervals have a negative duration.

However, in recent times (data set 3: 2020+), only 308 out of 114 596 intervals have negative duration, less than 0.27 %, or, on average, 1 out of every 373 blocks. More than 90 % of those reverse steps in data set 3 are shorter than a minute; only 16 out of the 114 596 intervals (0.014 %) go back more than one minute. For data set 3, we can therefore safely assume that an overwhelming majority of intervals is accurate to a minute or less; also, for the other data sets, such an assumption likely holds true.

Block mining interval distribution (data set 3)

On the right, you see the probability distribution of the interval length over data set 0. As the distribution has some strong tails, the outermost 0.01 %, the shaded areas, have been horizontally enlarged by a factor of 1000. (Click on the image to see it in full resolution.)

The center 99.98 % of the distribution cover time differences between -58 minutes and +3 hours and 11 minutes (all data under this heading are rounded to minutes, no seconds). However, there is a 1:5000 chance (on average, about every 20 days), that an interval is outside of those boundaries, extending to between -1:59 and 25:08, or, roughly, -2 hours to +25 hours.

Other key data points: ±0 is at 2 %, +2 minutes at 19 %, +10 minutes (the Bitcoin target) at 65 %, +20 at 88 %, +30 at 96 %, +40 at 99 %, +1 hour at 99.73 % (i.e., more than once a day, on average, you have to wait more than an hour for the next block).

Data set 2 (2010+) still looks essentially the same at the lower end, but more benign at the higher end. The maximum is 6:51, just below 7 hours, the 99.99th percentile at 1:37. But again, the one hour mark is at 99.79 %, still about one interval of more than an hour every two days.

Data set 3 (2020+) shows further calming on both ends: Extremes are now -32 minutes and +2:19 hours, with the inner 99.98 % spanning -1½ to +1:45. The shaded areas only cover 11 intervals each, as the total number of intervals during these 26 months is only 114 595.

The average interval duration is about 9.8 minutes, very close to the 10 minute target. The median is at 6.9 minutes (actually, 6 minutes and 52 seconds)

±0 is at 0.27 %, +2 at 18 %, +10 at 64 %, +20 at 87 %, +30 at 95 %, +40 at 98 %; i.e., with the exception of ±0, they all moved left just slightly.

The mining process is a Poisson process; its interarrival time is 10 minutes. The associated Poisson distribution has the interarrival time at around 63 % (actually, at 1-1/e), which closely matches our observation.

Block confirmation delays

The rule of thumb to accept a block as “confirmed” for “normal” purposes is to wait until it reaches a depth of 6. (For important transactions or if there might be a powerful adversary involved, higher numbers such as 60 are recommended.)

If you submit a transaction now, you have to wait for this transaction to be incorporated into a block (which might or might not be the next block being added) and then wait for 5 more blocks to be mined.

As an approximation, we assume that it takes 6 intervals between submitting your transaction and it being considered “confirmed” for most purposes.

Therefore, the period of 6 intervals is also interesting. It’s distribution (based on data set 3, i.e. 2020+) is shown on the right.

The minimum 6-interval duration seen in the past 26 months is 2 minutes, the maximum 6:02 hours. The 99.98 % center ranges from to 0:07 to 3:44, with 2 % corresponding to 20 minutes, 22 % corresponding to 40 minutes; and 57 %, 81 %, 93 %, and 97.7 % corresponding to 60, 80, 100, and 120 minutes, respectively.

So, on average, on about 6 of the 240 daily intervals, you have to wait longer than 2 hours before your block is confirmed. Given that this 26 month dataset contains 112 intervals longer than 3 hours, on average, about once peer week you confirmation will take longer than 3 hours.

In summary, neither the block generation intervals, the likelihood of your transaction being included in a particular transaction, nor the duration of the confirmation interval are reasonably predictable. In my opinion, this alone puts serious question marks on the claim that Bitcoin should become a replacement for traditional money.

#Timestamps #Blockchain #Bitcoin

Marcel Waldvogel

2021-12-26 20:41:49

Transparent, Trustworthy Time with NTP and NTS

«Time is Money», as the old adage says. Who controls the time, controls all kinds of operations and businesses around the world. And therefore, controls the world. Today, we all take accurate time for granted. Even though, today, it is delivered over the Internet mostly unsecured. But this is easy to change.

Switching from NTP to NTS is as easy and important as moving from HTTP to HTTPS.

(Part 1 in the NTS series.)

Table of Contents

Toggle

• What could possibly go wrong?
• Reliable time
• Installing NTS capable software
  
  • Debian/Ubuntu
  • Fedora
  • FreeBSD
  • MacOS GUI
  • MacOS Command Line

  
  

• Configuring Chrony or NTPsec
• Raspberry Pi caveats
• Public NTS-capable servers
• More servers
• History
  
  • Why time is im­por­tant in today’s proto­cols

  
  

What could possibly go wrong?

In the old times™, accuracy in the order of decades (“during the reign of King Herod”) or years (“a boy of seven summers”) might have been good enough. Today, hours and minutes are the minimum for many processes and in some cases, even milliseconds are too coarse.

Anything from industrial control systems over (distributed) file systems to everything even remotely related to security depends on time and will break one way or another if time is wrong: HTTPS/TLS/X.509 certificates, PGP keys, DNSSEC, two-factor authentication, overwriting or expiring backups, and even vaccination certificates, to name just a few.

Reliable time

Different applications have different requirements on time: For some, such as rate measurement devices, a coherent pace may be important. For others, including certificate validity checks, the actual, absolute, time is key; they can live with uneven speeds of time advancing.

There might have been a time where exploring each application’s detailed reliability requirements might have been necessary. However, today, for the vast majority of everyday applications, the answer is easy: Just use authenticated NTP, aka NTS!

Installing NTS capable software

First, you need an NTS capable software. It appears that NTPsec and Chrony are currently the only choices. In this example, we use Chrony, but feel free to use NTPsec instead.

• GNU/Linux: Almost all distributions include NTPsec or Chrony prepackaged in a way that installing them will replace the preinstalled time synchronization service. However, only NTPsec>=1.2.0 and Chrony>=4.0 include NTS support.
  Debian 11 (bullseye; also buster-packports), Ubuntu 21.04 (hirsute), Arch Linux, Fedora 34 and newer are among the distributions including sufficiently new versions.
• Other Unix-like systems: Check for packages or build instructions; most BSD systems include a Chrony package.
• MacOS: Install ChronyControl (or, install Chrony with Homebrew and disable timed from launchd configuration).
• Windows: Apparently, there is no NTS software support available there.

Some example setups:

Debian/Ubuntu

apt install chrony # Uninstalls other NTP software

Fedora

Already installed, nothing to do!

FreeBSD

pkg install chronyecho chronyd_enable=YES >> /etc/rc.conf.local
The configuration file will live in /usr/local/etc/chrony.conf.

MacOS GUI

Download and install ChronyControl, then select Action → Install chrony. The configuration can be edited from the Gears menu in the window.

MacOS Command Line

Install Homebrew, then run the following commands:
brew install chronysudo launchctl disable system/com.apple.timedsudo tee << "EOF" /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.tuxfamily.chrony.plist<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>org.tuxfamily.chrony</string> <key>Nice</key> <integer>-10</integer> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/usr/local/sbin/chronyd</string> <string>-n</string> </array> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> </dict></plist>EOFsudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons# Only after you create /etc/chrony.confsudo launchctl start system/org.tuxfamily.chrony
The configuration file will be /etc/chrony.conf; the service will not start without it.

Configuring Chrony or NTPsec

Then, choose 3-4 NTS servers from the list of public NTS servers, below and add them to the configuration file (e.g., /etc/chrony/chrony.conf or /etc/ntpsec/ntp.conf), making sure that they have the nts flag set. For a configuration in Switzerland, the following lines might be added to the configuration file (syntax compatible with both Chrony and NTPsec):
server ntp.3eck.net iburst ntsserver ntp.trifence.ch iburst ntsserver ntp.zeitgitter.net iburst nts
If you use Chrony, you may want to consider adding the authselectmode prefer directive on a line of its own to disable non-NTS sources in the presence of NTS servers.

After your server chimes reliably, you can also consider removing the unauthenticated (non-NTS) sources (server, peer, and pool directives).

Raspberry Pi caveats

The popular Raspberry Pi computers lack a real-time clock, as do several other single-board or embedded computers, including most home routers. This means that on power-up, these machines do not have the faintest idea what time it is, not even the year or decade. This makes it impossible to verify the validity of TLS certificates, as is required for establishing a trustworthy HTTPS or NTS connection. (On those machines, you might have seen “Invalid certificate” warnings, especially if you only connect it to the network after you have already logged in.)

This results in a chicken-and-egg problem: The machine does not know the time, therefore, it cannot get a reliable time, as it relies on NTS verifying the validity period of the certificate.

If you can use Chrony, the easiest and most secure way out is to add the following configuration line:
nocerttimecheck 1
This instructs Chrony to not check the certificate validity time until it has set the clock the first time. Short of adding an RTC chip or GNSS (“GPS”) receiver, this is the most secure option possible. It beats the other option of adding enough non-NTS servers to make (entirely unauthenticated!) initial time setting possible. (If the time is ever maliciously off, it will never revert back to the real time!)

Public NTS-capable servers

Currently, the number of public servers with NTS support still seems very modest.

Therefore, I maintain a list of public NTS servers. As of 2023-08-12, it has been moved to its own page: Public NTS Server List.

More servers

NTS is an important upgrade to NTP. Hopefully, the number of NTP servers with NTS authentication will grow quickly. This should not be too hard, as all the infrastructure (e.g., Let’s Encrypt), tools, and know-how which has been used to migrate HTTP to HTTPS in the recent years can be reused. Upgrading an existing NTP server to NTS is even simpler as upgrading a web servers, as there are no problems with HTTP redirects and mixed content. (Basically, it is as easy as pointing NTPsec or Chrony to the private key and certificate chains.)

If (or when) you run a public server with NTS, please let me know, so I can add it to this list.

History

2021-12-28: Added/improved install instructions for various platforms; added some additional servers and outlined listing policy.

2021-12-31: Added ntp.br servers.

2022-01-08: Listed Linux distributions with NTS-capable software.

2022-01-10: Added 0xt.ca servers by agreement.

2022-01-11: Added time.signorini.ch by agreement.

2022-02-03: Added nts1.adopo.net, [url=https://www.jabber-germany.de]www.jabber-germany.de[/url], and [url=https://www.masters-of-cloud.de]www.masters-of-cloud.de[/url] by agreement.

2022-06-04: Added [url=https://www.ntppool.org/scores/3.220.42.39]virginia.time.system76.com[/url], [url=https://www.ntppool.org/scores/3.134.129.152]ohio.time.system76.com[/url], and [url=https://www.ntppool.org/scores/52.10.183.132]oregon.time.system76.com[/url] by agreement.

2022-08-02: Added [url=https://ntpmon.dcs1.biz/gpsd.php]ntpmon.dcs1.biz[/url] by agreement. Added ntp3.fau.de. Updated NL to production servers. Updated the paragraph below the table.

2022-09-04: Removed most 0xt.ca servers as these will be shutting down at the end of this month. time.0xt.ca will remain.

2022-09-26: Added [url=https://system76.com/time/]{paris,brazil}.time.system76.com[/url] by agreement.

2023-08-12: Moved list out of this post to the Public NTS Time Server List page.

Why time is im­por­tant in today’s proto­cols

Assuring consistent state at multiple sites is very hard in the presence of timeouts and errors. Most solutions require complex protocols, multiple round-trip times and/or large amounts of communication or storage. Therefore, instead of trying to achieve perfect synchronization such as two-phase commit, often a “soft state” approach is chosen, where the validity of state (e.g., credentials) expires after some well-defined period. This ensures that inconsistencies will self-heal, putting the burden on reliable time.

#Security #Timestamps #NTP #NTS

Why ninety-day lifetimes for certificates?

We’re sometimes asked why we only offer certificates with ninety-day lifetimes. People who ask this are usually concerned that ninety days is too short and wish we would offer certificates lasting a year or more, like some other CAs do.

^{letsencrypt.org}

How to block AI crawlers with robots.txt

If you wanted your web page excluded from being crawled or indexed by search engines and other robots, [url=https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.html]robots.txt[/url] was your tool of choice, with some additional stuff like <meta name="robots" value="noindex" /> or [url=https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Attributes/rel#nofollow]<a href="…" rel="nofollow">[/url] sprinkled in.

It is getting more complicated with AI crawlers. Let’s have a look.

Table of Contents

Toggle

• Traditional functions
• New challenges
  
  • Changes over time
  • Commercialization

  
  

• AI crawlers
• Control comparison
• Example robots.txt
• Poisoning [Added 2023-11-04]
• References

Traditional functions

• One of the first goals of robots.txt was to prevent web crawlers from hogging the bandwidth and compute power of a web site. Especially if the site contained dynamically generated context, possibly infinite.
• Another important goal was to prevent pages or their content from being found using search engines. There, the above-mentioned <meta> and [url=https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Attributes/rel#nofollow]<a rel>[/url] tags came in handy as well.
• A non-goal was to use it for access control, even though it was frequently misunderstood to be useful for that purpose.

New challenges

Changes over time

The original controls focused on services which would re-inspect the robots.txt file and the web page on a regular basis and update it accordingly.

Therefore, it didn’t work well for archive sites: Should they delete old contents on policy changes or keep them archived? This is even more true for AI training material, as deleting training material from existing models is very costly.

Commercialization

Even in the pre-AI age, some sites desired a means to prevent commercial services from monetizing their content. However, both the number of such services and their opponents were small.

With the advent of AI scraping, the problem became more prominent, resulting e.g. in changes in the EU copyright law, allowing web site owners to specify whether they want their site crawled for text and data mining.

As a result, the the Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol Community Group of the World Wide Web Consortium proposed a protocol to allow fine-grained indication of which content on a web site was free to crawl and which parts would require (financial or other) agreements. The proposal includes options for a global policy document or returning headers (or <meta> tags) with each response.

Also, Google started their competing initiative to augment robots.txt a few days ago.

None of these new features are implemented yet, neither in a web servers or CMS, nor by crawlers. So we need workarounds.

[Added 2023-08-31] Another upcoming “standard” is [url=https://site.spawning.ai/spawning-ai-txt]ai.txt[/url], modeled after robots.txt. It distinguishes among media types and tries to fulfill the EU TDM directive. In a web search today, I did not find crawler support for it, either.

[Added 2023-10-06] Yet another hopeful “standard” is the “NoAI, NoImageAI” meta-tag proposal. Probably ignored by crawlers as well for now.

AI crawlers

Unfortunately, the robots.txt database stopped receiving updates around 2011. So, here is an attempt at keeping a list of robots related to AI crawling.

Please let me know when additional information becomes available.

An unknown entity calling itself “Bit Flip LLC” (no other identifying information found anywhere), is maintaining an interactive list at DarkVisitors.com. Looks good, but leaves a bad taste. Use at your own judgment. [Added 2024-04-14]

Control comparison

Search engines and social networks support quite a bit of control over what is indexed and how it is used/presented.

• Prevent crawling by robots.txt, HTML tags, and paywalls.
• Define preview information by HTML tags, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, …
• Define preview presentation using oEmbed.

For use of AI context, most of this is lacking and “move fast and break things” is still the motto. Giving users fine-grained control over how their content is used would help with the discussions.

Even though the users in the end might decide they actually do want to have (most or all) of their context indexed for AI and other text processing…

Example robots.txt

[Added 2023-09-30] Here is a possible /robots.txt file for your web site, with comments on when to enable:
# Used for many other (non-commercial) purposes as wellUser-agent: CCBotDisallow: /# For new training onlyUser-agent: GPTBotDisallow: /# Not for training, only for user requests User-agent: ChatGPT-UserDisallow: /# Marker for disabling Bard and Vertex AIUser-agent: Google-ExtendedDisallow: /# Speech synthesis only?User-agent: FacebookBotDisallow: /# Multi-purpose, commercial uses; including LLMsUser-agent: OmgilibotDisallow: /

Poisoning [Added 2023-11-04]

A different, more aggressive approach, is to start «poisoning» the AI models; something currently only supported for images. The basic idea is to use adversary images, that will be misclassified when ingested into the AI training and will therefore try and disrupt the training data and the resulting model.

It works by subtly changing the image, imperceptible to the human. The result is, however, that e.g. a cat is misclassified as a dog, when training. If enough bad training data is ingested into the model, part or all of the wrongly trained features will be used. In our case, asking the AI image generator to produce a dog may result in the generated dog to look more like a cat.

The “Nightshade” tool that is supposed to be released soon, which has this capability, is an extension of the current “Glaze” tool, which only results in image style misclassification.
AI Poisoning example from the Glaze team via Ars Technica
Judge for yourself whether this disruptive and potentially damaging approach aligns with your ethical values before using it.

References

• Neil Clarke: Block the Bots that Feed “AI” Models by Scraping Your Web Site, 2023-08-23. [Added 2023-09-30]
• Benj Edwards: University of Chicago researchers seek to “poison” AI art generators with Nightshade, 2023-10-25, Ars Technica. [Added 2023-11-04]
• The Glaze Team: What is Glaze?, 2023. [Added 2023-11-04]
• Didier J. Mary: Blocquer les AI bots, 2023. [Added 2023-12-31]
• Richard Fletcher: How many news websites block AI crawlers?, Reuters Institute, 2024-02-22. [Added 2024-09-27]

#Privacy #AI

Solana Blockchain: Proof of History analogies

Here are some attempts to compare Proof of History (PoH), as used by the Solana blockchain, with Proof of Work (PoW). Comparisons to real-world activities, such as dice rolling or outer-space rubber-stamp throwing are also included.

More on blockchain in the simple, humorous, yet thorough article «Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blockchain». I also wrote a shorter Solana/Proof of History explanation in German 🇩🇪.

Please note: This post represents my understanding of how PoH works; I have not been able to get positive/negative feedback about it; I’m still looking forward to confirmations or corrections.

[Added 2022-03-20] Before we look at PoH, let’s revisit some of the PoW analogies, parallel dice rolling and rubber-stamp throwing. Then, the differences between the PoW analogies and their PoH equivalents, serialized dice rolling and rubber-stamp throwing. Plus, you will find a micro-blockchain analogy as well.

Table of Contents

Toggle

• Proof of Work
  
  • Technical description
  • Dice rolling analogy
  • Outer space rubber stamp throwing

  
  

• Proof of History
  
  • Technical description
  • Dice rolling analogy
  • Outer space rubber stamp throwing
  • Micro-Blockchain analogy

  
  

Proof of Work

Technical description

You may already be aware of the technical description of Proof of Work, as made popular by Bitcoin: A seemingly infinite army of processors tuned to perform SHA-256 calculations, repeatedly hashes the header of a candidate block, until a “small enough” value results.

“Small enough” is defined by the current difficulty, which is regularly adjusted (about every two weeks) such that the average time to mine a block remains at 10 minutes.

SHA-256 hashing (as every other cryptographic hash function) is a deterministic operation, so calculating the hash over the same block results multiple times will result in the same values. Therefore, the Bitcoin block header contains a Nonce field, which will be changed before every hash operation.

This operation can be fully parallelized, i.e., any number of hash processors can perform their calculations in parallel, without a need to coordinate.

Dice rolling analogy

At the current difficulty, about 120 x 10²¹ hash operations are required before a hash results meets the difficulty requirement (120 trilliard in the long scale; or 120 sextillion in the short scale). This is equivalent of rolling a dice with 120 trilliard sides.

As this is hard to imagine: If we divide the earth’s surface (510 million km²) by 120 x 10²¹, we get 42 cm². Thus, the earth could serve as an appropriate die, if each die side was 6 cm by 7 cm big.

(Ok, all right, it is still hard to imagine. But now, it is somewhat clearer that this is really an unbelievably humongous number.)

Outer space rubber stamp throwing

Another “useful” analogy might be to throw rubber stamps from space until they hit a randomly placed document’s 6 by 7 cm² stamp area (again, a chance of 1 in 120 trilliard per throw). This can be completely parallelized, given enough stamps and hands to throw them.

Proof of History

PoW combines consensus and progress into essentially a single mechanism. Solana, however, splits this into two:

• PoH is used to make and record progress at each node individually, while
• PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) is used to reach consensus, merging the partial histories.

Technical description

Proof of History aims to avoid the energy waste associated with Proof of Work. Hash computations can no longer be parallelized, therefore, there is no incentive to have more than one processor per node performing the calculations.

The hash operations are strictly serialized, i.e., it is impossible to begin the calculations necessary for the next hash before the calculations for the previous hash have ended.

Also, there is no shortcut. Let’s look at a counter-example: If each operation were a linear operation, e.g., an addition with a constant C or a multiplication with a fixed factor F, several steps could be combined. I.e., hundred steps could be performed at the same time by just adding 100*C or multiplying by 100*F. By their very design, cryptographic hash functions need to be non-linear, therefore, these shortcuts are impossible.

While creation is strictly linear and serial, verification, however, can be parallelized: Someone who has received a large number of these PoH fragments between two well-defined locations, can verify the accuracy of each of those fragments in parallel to all other fragments. (The verification of a single fragment would still require to go through the hashes strictly in sequence, though.)

Dice rolling analogy

Probably the least helpful (and entertaining) of these PoH analogies is dice rolling: You can roll the next die only after the previous was rolled.

Outer space rubber stamp throwing

More fun (if still somewhat outlandish, even literally) is it to have our space-faring blockchain enthusiasts throw auto-homing rubber stamps:

The way the rubber of the stamp is carved determines the aerodynamics of the falling stamp. Imagine, for a second, that the carving would affect the trajectory in the atmosphere in such a way, that the same carving results in the same landing destination, independent of where the stamp was thrown from and how fast it was thrown. Because our fairy tale rubber stamp aerodynamics are so complicated, nobody can determine the landing location without actually throwing the stamp and waiting for it to land.

Now, the PoH rule is to throw the next stamp only after the first one has landed, carving the previous stamp’s exact location into the new stamp’s rubber. This results in a pre-determined pattern of landing locations to be recorded by the stamps. Even though it is pre-determined, it cannot be calculated without actually throwing the stamps and waiting for each of them to land.

Micro-Blockchain analogy

A third analogy would be to look at what each mining node produces as a blockchain, with slightly changed rules:

• There is no endless dice rolling to create a new block, i.e., every “micro-block” is valid (otherwise said, you always roll a winning one, or “every block counts”)
• Only micro-blocks that have any transactions in them will be output, together with information about the number of skipped empty blocks. (This is all the information that is required to reconstruct those blocks that were skipped.)

This can be seen in the image on the right: The hash chain (H) makes continuous progress. If any transaction T arrives, it is included in the hash calculation and the result R output and recorded, ready for inclusion into the next actual blockchain block (which we could also call “macro-block”).

#PeerToPeer #Blockchain #Bitcoin #ProofOfWork #ProofOfHistory #Analogy

chrony NTS certificate reload

The chrony NTS daemon has no way to automatically reload its NTS certificate. A quick hack fixes this.

(This is part 5 in the NTS series. Did you already read part 1?)

In my setup, chrony inherits the certificate from a web server, which displays information and status. The web server manages certificates automatically using Let’s Encrypt and has no way of restarting chrony on certificate updates.

Restarting chronyd is also (currently) the only way to have it reload its NTS certificate. (Other key material can be reloaded without restarting the daemon, but not certificates or private keys.)
#!/bin/shfind /etc/chrony/keys/ \ -name signed.crt \ -newer /run/chrony/chronyd.pid \ -exec systemctl restart chrony \;
What does it do?

• It checks whether in the directory /etc/chrony/keys/ there is a file signed.crt (actually, find will search anywhere below the directory). That is the certificate file signed by the Let’s Encrypt CA.
• If that file is newer than /run/chrony/chrony.pid (the file containing the daemon’s process ID, written at chronyd starting time), it restarts the daemon (systemctl restart chrony).
• Therefore, the restart action will take place whenever the certificate has been updated after the last launch of the daemon.

Depending on your system, you will have change the paths, file names and command.

You should save this as an executable file (chmod 755) in /etc/cron.daily/, e.g., as chrony-reread-certificate.

#NTP #NTS

Marcel Waldvogel

2021-12-26 20:41:49

Transparent, Trustworthy Time with NTP and NTS

«Time is Money», as the old adage says. Who controls the time, controls all kinds of operations and businesses around the world. And therefore, controls the world. Today, we all take accurate time for granted. Even though, today, it is delivered over the Internet mostly unsecured. But this is easy to change.

Switching from NTP to NTS is as easy and important as moving from HTTP to HTTPS.

(Part 1 in the NTS series.)

Table of Contents

Toggle

• What could possibly go wrong?
• Reliable time
• Installing NTS capable software
  
  • Debian/Ubuntu
  • Fedora
  • FreeBSD
  • MacOS GUI
  • MacOS Command Line

  
  

• Configuring Chrony or NTPsec
• Raspberry Pi caveats
• Public NTS-capable servers
• More servers
• History
  
  • Why time is im­por­tant in today’s proto­cols

  
  

What could possibly go wrong?

In the old times™, accuracy in the order of decades (“during the reign of King Herod”) or years (“a boy of seven summers”) might have been good enough. Today, hours and minutes are the minimum for many processes and in some cases, even milliseconds are too coarse.

Anything from industrial control systems over (distributed) file systems to everything even remotely related to security depends on time and will break one way or another if time is wrong: HTTPS/TLS/X.509 certificates, PGP keys, DNSSEC, two-factor authentication, overwriting or expiring backups, and even vaccination certificates, to name just a few.

Reliable time

Different applications have different requirements on time: For some, such as rate measurement devices, a coherent pace may be important. For others, including certificate validity checks, the actual, absolute, time is key; they can live with uneven speeds of time advancing.

There might have been a time where exploring each application’s detailed reliability requirements might have been necessary. However, today, for the vast majority of everyday applications, the answer is easy: Just use authenticated NTP, aka NTS!

Installing NTS capable software

First, you need an NTS capable software. It appears that NTPsec and Chrony are currently the only choices. In this example, we use Chrony, but feel free to use NTPsec instead.

• GNU/Linux: Almost all distributions include NTPsec or Chrony prepackaged in a way that installing them will replace the preinstalled time synchronization service. However, only NTPsec>=1.2.0 and Chrony>=4.0 include NTS support.
  Debian 11 (bullseye; also buster-packports), Ubuntu 21.04 (hirsute), Arch Linux, Fedora 34 and newer are among the distributions including sufficiently new versions.
• Other Unix-like systems: Check for packages or build instructions; most BSD systems include a Chrony package.
• MacOS: Install ChronyControl (or, install Chrony with Homebrew and disable timed from launchd configuration).
• Windows: Apparently, there is no NTS software support available there.

Some example setups:

Debian/Ubuntu

apt install chrony # Uninstalls other NTP software

Fedora

Already installed, nothing to do!

FreeBSD

pkg install chronyecho chronyd_enable=YES >> /etc/rc.conf.local
The configuration file will live in /usr/local/etc/chrony.conf.

MacOS GUI

Download and install ChronyControl, then select Action → Install chrony. The configuration can be edited from the Gears menu in the window.

MacOS Command Line

Install Homebrew, then run the following commands:
brew install chronysudo launchctl disable system/com.apple.timedsudo tee << "EOF" /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.tuxfamily.chrony.plist<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>org.tuxfamily.chrony</string> <key>Nice</key> <integer>-10</integer> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/usr/local/sbin/chronyd</string> <string>-n</string> </array> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> </dict></plist>EOFsudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons# Only after you create /etc/chrony.confsudo launchctl start system/org.tuxfamily.chrony
The configuration file will be /etc/chrony.conf; the service will not start without it.

Configuring Chrony or NTPsec

Then, choose 3-4 NTS servers from the list of public NTS servers, below and add them to the configuration file (e.g., /etc/chrony/chrony.conf or /etc/ntpsec/ntp.conf), making sure that they have the nts flag set. For a configuration in Switzerland, the following lines might be added to the configuration file (syntax compatible with both Chrony and NTPsec):
server ntp.3eck.net iburst ntsserver ntp.trifence.ch iburst ntsserver ntp.zeitgitter.net iburst nts
If you use Chrony, you may want to consider adding the authselectmode prefer directive on a line of its own to disable non-NTS sources in the presence of NTS servers.

After your server chimes reliably, you can also consider removing the unauthenticated (non-NTS) sources (server, peer, and pool directives).

Raspberry Pi caveats

The popular Raspberry Pi computers lack a real-time clock, as do several other single-board or embedded computers, including most home routers. This means that on power-up, these machines do not have the faintest idea what time it is, not even the year or decade. This makes it impossible to verify the validity of TLS certificates, as is required for establishing a trustworthy HTTPS or NTS connection. (On those machines, you might have seen “Invalid certificate” warnings, especially if you only connect it to the network after you have already logged in.)

This results in a chicken-and-egg problem: The machine does not know the time, therefore, it cannot get a reliable time, as it relies on NTS verifying the validity period of the certificate.

If you can use Chrony, the easiest and most secure way out is to add the following configuration line:
nocerttimecheck 1
This instructs Chrony to not check the certificate validity time until it has set the clock the first time. Short of adding an RTC chip or GNSS (“GPS”) receiver, this is the most secure option possible. It beats the other option of adding enough non-NTS servers to make (entirely unauthenticated!) initial time setting possible. (If the time is ever maliciously off, it will never revert back to the real time!)

Public NTS-capable servers

Currently, the number of public servers with NTS support still seems very modest.

Therefore, I maintain a list of public NTS servers. As of 2023-08-12, it has been moved to its own page: Public NTS Server List.

More servers

NTS is an important upgrade to NTP. Hopefully, the number of NTP servers with NTS authentication will grow quickly. This should not be too hard, as all the infrastructure (e.g., Let’s Encrypt), tools, and know-how which has been used to migrate HTTP to HTTPS in the recent years can be reused. Upgrading an existing NTP server to NTS is even simpler as upgrading a web servers, as there are no problems with HTTP redirects and mixed content. (Basically, it is as easy as pointing NTPsec or Chrony to the private key and certificate chains.)

If (or when) you run a public server with NTS, please let me know, so I can add it to this list.

History

2021-12-28: Added/improved install instructions for various platforms; added some additional servers and outlined listing policy.

2021-12-31: Added ntp.br servers.

2022-01-08: Listed Linux distributions with NTS-capable software.

2022-01-10: Added 0xt.ca servers by agreement.

2022-01-11: Added time.signorini.ch by agreement.

2022-02-03: Added nts1.adopo.net, [url=https://www.jabber-germany.de]www.jabber-germany.de[/url], and [url=https://www.masters-of-cloud.de]www.masters-of-cloud.de[/url] by agreement.

2022-06-04: Added [url=https://www.ntppool.org/scores/3.220.42.39]virginia.time.system76.com[/url], [url=https://www.ntppool.org/scores/3.134.129.152]ohio.time.system76.com[/url], and [url=https://www.ntppool.org/scores/52.10.183.132]oregon.time.system76.com[/url] by agreement.

2022-08-02: Added [url=https://ntpmon.dcs1.biz/gpsd.php]ntpmon.dcs1.biz[/url] by agreement. Added ntp3.fau.de. Updated NL to production servers. Updated the paragraph below the table.

2022-09-04: Removed most 0xt.ca servers as these will be shutting down at the end of this month. time.0xt.ca will remain.

2022-09-26: Added [url=https://system76.com/time/]{paris,brazil}.time.system76.com[/url] by agreement.

2023-08-12: Moved list out of this post to the Public NTS Time Server List page.

Why time is im­por­tant in today’s proto­cols

Assuring consistent state at multiple sites is very hard in the presence of timeouts and errors. Most solutions require complex protocols, multiple round-trip times and/or large amounts of communication or storage. Therefore, instead of trying to achieve perfect synchronization such as two-phase commit, often a “soft state” approach is chosen, where the validity of state (e.g., credentials) expires after some well-defined period. This ensures that inconsistencies will self-heal, putting the burden on reliable time.

#Security #Timestamps #NTP #NTS

Why ninety-day lifetimes for certificates?

We’re sometimes asked why we only offer certificates with ninety-day lifetimes. People who ask this are usually concerned that ninety days is too short and wish we would offer certificates lasting a year or more, like some other CAs do.

^{letsencrypt.org}

Debugging NTS problems

Debugging is hard, debugging security protocols doubly so. And there are not many tools and how-to’s available for NTS yet. So, here’s a (short) list of NTS problems I have seen and some tricks for debugging them.

(This is part 4 of the NTS series. Have you already read part 1?)

Table of Contents

Toggle

• The network, your enemy
  
  • NTP packet loss
  • Medium-sized NTP packet loss
  • Source ports

  
  

• Certificate issues
• Additional resources

The network, your enemy

NTP packet loss

Already for plain NTP, it is known that sometimes, especially across transatlantic links, NTP packets sometimes magically disappear. Some people suggest that some ISPs are rate-limiting NTP packets to protect from DDoS. So, some issues you might run into with NTS are older than (and independent of) NTS.

Medium-sized NTP packet loss

NTS packets are longer than plain NTP packets. NTP packets that have been used in amplification DDoS attacks several years ago are also longer than plain NTP packets. So some ISPs are aggressively filtering NTP packets longer than usual. Thus, depending on the ISPs your packets travel through, NTS packets might be very unreliable or even impossible to transmit. If it is your own ISP doing the filtering, you can try to talk to them and have them remove these filter entirely or at least for your servers. Most NTP servers running today no longer can be abused for amplification attacks and there are better ways than just blindly filtering port 123 traffic. Also, Chrony does not support the parts of the NTP protocol that could be used for amplification. At all.

Source ports

Probably also in a (misguided) attempt at preventing DDoS attacks, some ISPs block packets from privileged ports (<1024) to the NTP port (123). Maybe some also only block port-123-to-port-123 traffic.

This problem might manifest itself that Chrony clients can talk to your server without problems, but packets from NTPd and NTPsec clients are all dropped.

In Switzerland, Sunrise is currently known to block all incoming packets from privileged ports to port 123. This is the reason time.signorini.ch is listed as “Chrony-only” in the public server list.

Certificate issues

Public online tests for HTTPS and several other protocols with TLS are well-known and easy to come by. However, if you think that NTS-KE could be the culprit, there seem to be no online tests available.

However, Miroslav Lichvar provided a helpful one-liner to mimic an NTS-KE client:
printf '\x80\x1\x0\x2\x0\x0\x80\x4\x0\x2\x0\xf\x80\x0\x0\x0' | \gnutls-cli -p 4460 --alpn=ntske/1 ntp.example.ch \--logfile=/dev/stderr | hexdump -C
For all NTS-KE implementations, you should see gnutls-cli listing the certificate chain. This should include the entire TLS chain; i.e., if using Let’s Encrypt, it should include the following three certificates:
Processed 128 CA certificate(s).Resolving 'ntp.trifence.ch:4460'...Connecting to '109.202.196.249:4460'...- Certificate type: X.509- Got a certificate list of 3 certificates.- Certificate[0] info: - subject `CN=ntp.trifence.ch', issuer `CN=R3,O=Let's Encrypt,C=US', serial 0x0366cc5bebce8b22d46ed99773b5cb293e21, RSA key 2048 bits, signed using RSA-SHA256, activated `2021-12-19 15:03:57 UTC', expires `2022-03-19 15:03:56 UTC', pin-sha256="YZ3NzoJSQofn3qJGVGxwr+zqK3TwKUkGKECRMUXDqKQ="Public Key ID:sha1:d440356a08558e52c97f3bc9a5c459b3ddd437c3sha256:619dcdce82524287e7dea246546c70afecea2b74f02949062840913145c3a8a4Public Key PIN:pin-sha256:YZ3NzoJSQofn3qJGVGxwr+zqK3TwKUkGKECRMUXDqKQ=- Certificate[1] info: - subject `CN=R3,O=Let's Encrypt,C=US', issuer `CN=ISRG Root X1,O=Internet Security Research Group,C=US', serial 0x00912b084acf0c18a753f6d62e25a75f5a, RSA key 2048 bits, signed using RSA-SHA256, activated `2020-09-04 00:00:00 UTC', expires `2025-09-15 16:00:00 UTC', pin-sha256="jQJTbIh0grw0/1TkHSumWb+Fs0Ggogr621gT3PvPKG0="- Certificate[2] info: - subject `CN=ISRG Root X1,O=Internet Security Research Group,C=US', issuer `CN=DST Root CA X3,O=Digital Signature Trust Co.', serial 0x4001772137d4e942b8ee76aa3c640ab7, RSA key 4096 bits, signed using RSA-SHA256, activated `2021-01-20 19:14:03 UTC', expires `2024-09-30 18:14:03 UTC', pin-sha256="C5+lpZ7tcVwmwQIMcRtPbsQtWLABXhQzejna0wHFr8M="- Status: The certificate is trusted. - Description: (TLS1.3-X.509)-(ECDHE-SECP256R1)-(RSA-PSS-RSAE-SHA256)-(AES-256-GCM)- Session ID: 7B:C9:66:88:E8:5B:90:0D:52:6C:0C:55:2D:A2:7E:C9:85:0A:21:AB:85:B5:B4:B9:71:52:A3:FE:71:A9:26:CD- Options:- Application protocol: ntske/1- Handshake was completed
One thing you should expect to see is the line highlighted above, “The certificate is trusted.”

When testing against a Chrony server, you will also get some 50 lines of hex dump, detailing the NTS-KE response. NTPsec servers do not seem to like the hand-crafted NTS-KE request message (the printf command above) and gnutls-cli will just report:
*** Fatal error: Error in the pull function.*** Server has terminated the connection abnormally.
NTPsec as a client will also provide extensive logging with the NTSc tag, which can also be helpful while diagnosing difficulties. On my system, these end up in /var/log/syslog. On systemd-based machines with Chrony, journalctl -xeu chrony is your friend. Your mileage may vary, though.

Additional resources

• NTPsec debugging guide

#NTP #NTS #Debugging