#factomize

Our Chief Architect, Paul Snow, attended The North American Bitcoin Conference (TNABC) in Miami this week. During his presentation he demonstrated how Factom lends scalable solutions. No matter how much data is entered into Factom, the Bitcoin footprint remains the same. Entities using Factom don't have to access all of Factom in order to track their info, this translates to a small memory/storage footprint for users.

He also clarified why permissionless systems need incentive mechanism like Factoids in our case and how these are converted to Entry Credits with a fixed price that users can budget for without concern for volatility in Factoid price.

Below are some pictures from the event.

Factom Interviews Our Chief Scientist, Brian Deery, has had a great interview on The Crypto Show discussing economics, Bitcoin, the Mike Hearn drama, and proposed fixes.

Paul Snow was interviewed by Rick Stoner on Doged Radio, it’s a two hour long interview where Paul goes in-depth about Factom, Factoids, Bitcoin and a lot more.

Koinify is shutting down, what about Factoids (FCT)? Following previous notice, Koinify is officially shutting down by Feb 15th, 2016. After that, all Koinify website functions and data, including wallets will be completely wiped out and no longer available. How does this affect Factom Software Sale contributors? It doesn’t affect them at all. To use or redeem your Factoids purchased on Koinify, you must use tools provided by Factom directly. Koinify.com does not provide any Factom access functions and none of your Factoids were ever stored on Koinify.

Most of the contributors should have by now redeemed their Factoids (FCT) either in our Wallet or onto Poloniex easy to use import tool. If you still haven’t done so look at our guides at http://factom.org/howto for instruction on how to install and use our command-line wallet, GUI wallet and the FactoidPapermill which can be used as a paer wallet.

You will need your Koinify 12 Word Master Passphrase to redeem your Factoids, this was shown to all software sale contributors at the time of purchase via a pop up window stating to write down the passphrase and store it in a safe place. Failure to do so would incur in the loss of Factoids as neither Koinify nor Factom are able to retrieve the passphrase.

Thanks for being an awesome and supportive community.

We are thrilled to announce that there have been over 100,000 entries in Factom so far. On December 30th the 100,000th entry was made into our blockchain marking an impressive milestone for us.

Another notable statistic is the number of blocks generated on the Factom network, we are nearing 17,500 at the time of writing.

Our software is being used progressively more by our partners and customers, after four months from the Factom Genesis we couldn’t be happier about the network usage and reliability. “Factomizing” on our network using Factom Chains is one of the advantages we offer compared to anchoring and time stamping every entry directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain.

We reached 100,000 entries in a very short timeframe and at a fraction of the cost of doing so directly on Bitcoin. Factom is working on providing a platform that can scale to million of entries per customer while keeping costs low and the Bitcoin blockchain bloat at bay.

This is a great way for us to end the year while we look forward to 2016 when we will deliver our 2nd and 3rd milestones, announce new partnerships and customers, as wells as helping make governments, businesses, and institutions easily auditable, transparent and honest. Stay tuned.

Thanks for being an awesome and supportive community. We wish you all a Happy New Year!

When we last left our furry friend, she was begging to join her co-felines in Factom. Many things have changed since then. Factom has gone into production and the software is available for accessing it. All this calls for new procedures for factomizing this little cutie!

Entry Credits, Factoids, and the Factom Binaries Entry credits are now required to factomize anything, factoids are required to acquire entry credits, and the Factom binaries must be installed on your computer.

Please see the Developer Guides at http://factom.org/howto for assistance with installing the Factom binaries, getting factoids, and using the factoids to acquire entry credits.

Preparing the Data Any digital data, but only digital data, can be factomized. So to capture our kitten for posterity, she must first be digitized. In our example we will be using the above picture which can be downloaded here. Right click on the picture in your browser and “Save Image As” to a location of your choosing on your computer. In our example we saved the image as FactomizeMe.png.

Basically, your kitten pictures are already digitized and ready to be factomized.

Making a Chain in Factom Next, you need to have a chain in Factom in which to store your entry. Our Process Integration Manager, D. Robert Baker, has created a Kitten chain for us all using the below command:

factom-cli mkchain -e "Kittens!" ec-wallet-address-name01 <Kittens

and received this response:

Creating Chain: 475fbcef5e3a4e1621ed9a6fda5840c1d654715e55a8f5e514af0fb879ce0aec

This is Factom giving us the Chain ID of the new chain it will create. This information is required to make an entry in this particular chain and is viewable via the Factom Explorer here.

Another important thing to note is that the Chain will not be available for use until the next 10 minute marker (0, 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 minutes past the hour) because that is when the Chain will be anchored into the blockchain.

Now that a Kitten chain exists, anyone, anywhere can factomize all the kittens they like and they can all frolic together, safe and unchanging forever in Factom. But, first we want to hash the kitten.

Hashing Kittens

Just kidding! Hashing just means transforming a string of bits (like a picture of a kitten) into a shorter fixed-length value that uniquely represents the original string. Our kitten picture is actually 597 thousand bytes of data. Hashing it will reduce it down to a mere 64 bytes. This is a much more efficient use of resources and just as reliable for verification purposes. Furthermore, Factom has a 10240 byte ceiling on the size of entries.

Hashes can be easily created using this web page.

Use the “Choose File” button to upload your picture file:

Click the “Convert file” button and you should get your kitten picture’s hash returned:

Just copy the hash (hex:) from the top line of the box:

23367562d1bc7d2748daf263f6e771b337427aad39fe852590c04975143d0c2b

Now you know what a hashed feline looks like!

Adding Kittens (Entries) to Factom It is very easy to add an entry to the Kitten chain by using the below command:

echo 23367562d1bc7d2748daf263f6e771b337427aad39fe852590c04975143d0c2b | factom-cli put -e “FactomizeMe.png” -c 475fbcef5e3a4e1621ed9a6fda5840c1d654715e55a8f5e514af0fb879ce0aec ec-wallet-address-name01

wich returns: 

Creating Entry: 21f7f9508207aff4aa198210d5dd997db90d954b383b47989403bd35796d7864

And we’re done! You can see the entry on the Factom Explorer here.

The top highlight is the Hash of the entry we have just submitted and the bottom one is the hash of the picture we have successfully factomized.

Now, if anyone inquires after the health of “Miss Whiskers”, we can verify with mathematical certainty that she was indeed happy and well... at a point in time.

Summary for Entering Your Kitten Picture into Factom

Step 1 - Hash your picture using this web page.

Step 2 - Enter your hash into the Factom Kitten Chain:

echo YourHash | factom-cli put -e “picturename” -c 475fbcef5e3a4e1621ed9a6fda5840c1d654715e55a8f5e514af0fb879ce0aec ec-wallet-address

We completed our software sale this morning with over 4.3 million Factoids sold. Paul Snow CEO of the Factom Foundation said this morning, “It has been incredibly humbling to receive such an enthusiastic welcome from the bitcoin community. The Factom Foundation wants to thank each of you for helping to secure the future of the Factom Project and allow us to bring our dream of more honest systems to fruition. Over the next few months we will continue to improve the Factom API and educate developers on how to incorporate Factom into their software”.

Whats next for the Factom Foundation? Factom will release a stable working BETA software product in Q3 2015. Developers and businesses can begin to build on top of Factom now. If you would like to learn how connect with us here.

As with any new system, user testing is a key to its long time stability and growth. If you’re interested in testing the software or want to run your own Factom server, please reach out directly.

I bought Factoids, now what? Factoids become usable and tradable software tokens with the release of the beta Factom client. Factom network will begin rewarding the federated servers after milestone 3 is complete and all 32 federated servers have been elected. Each customer will have a Factom wallet and can use their Factoids to buy Entry Credits or send them to fellow Factom customers. Many exchanges have expressed an interest in making Factoids tradable on their platform, so stay tuned for more partnership announcements.

Where do I learn how to build on Factom? You can find the full coding tool set on GitHub. You’ll also find useful links to developer tools and documentation. You can learn more about the community and connect directly with fellow developers at www.factom.org.

How will the end user redeem their Factoids? When the system goes live, there will be a basic command line wallet. With this wallet, users will be able to create a Factoid transaction. They can redeem Factoids for the Entry Credit Public Keys. The master passphrase can be entered into this wallet to create the crypto signatures needed to reassign the Factoids to other addresses or to purchase Entry Credits. Easier to use wallets will be developed later on.

How will users verify their software sale identity and receive on-chain Factoids? The purchase process already credits their identity with Factoids. The payment process sends the Factoid public key along with the bitcoin payment.  

The koinify wallet sent bitcoins to: https://blockchain.info/address/35gLt5EgB367enjSjyEDahhWWcy6p1MGf6 and each payment was tagged with an OP_RETURN value. This code: https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/tree/master/token_sale shows how the master passphrase was used to derive the public key in the OP_RETURN.

When the Factoid genesis block is created, all the people who sent in Bitcoins will be credited with the appropriate number of Factoids. Factoid wallets will be able to assign those to new Factoid addresses or redeem them for Entry Credits.

Is Factom building a Wallet? Yes, Factom is building a CLI wallet for Factoids. We are starting out with a rudimentary wallet. It will be usable by command line users and computer programs. During milestone 2 a storefront will be set up. These businesses will be able to use Factom without touching cryptocurrency.

What is the timeline of the chain going live? The Factoids will be issued with the genesis block. We have targeted that for Q3 2015.