Q: What is a Data Oracle? | Ask Doctor Bitcoin [Free, #16]
One of the fundamental building blocks for functional NFTs beyond the world of art is something called a Data Oracle... but what is it, exactly? Also: Thoughts on the passing of John McAfee.
Well, hello there!
It’s been a heck of a week for bitcoiners, marked by two high profile deaths: John McAfee and Mircea Popescu, both of which occurred under suspicious circumstances. The death of my friend and former coworker John literally hit the newswires moments after I hit send last week on the newsletter, and I’m still roiling about in my thoughts and emotions on it.
I’m certainly wasn’t as close to John as many in his life are, but our working relationship during and after our SiliconANGLE years left an indelible impression on me, as is (I’m sure) John’s presence did for anyone his paths crossed with.
I spoke with the Security Editor from SiliconANGLE, John Casaretto, just the other day, to see how he was faring and what his thoughts were. Casaretto first met McAfee when he interviewed him shortly after his return from Belize with the Sinaloa Cartel in tow, and grew closer with McAfee when he came to work with us penning a weekly column on security matters before and during his first run for President.
“One thing that you can say about McAfee is that he lived an extraordinary life,” Casaretto told me. “He was committed to being extraordinary in that way (not necessarily in the sense of excellence necessarily, but that he was going to live the way that he wanted).”
This echoed some of the same sentiments I put out on Twitter the day of the news breaking: “To know him wasn’t to love him, but to know him was to respect him. He was immensely intelligent, and a very complicated person.”
Casaretto also viewed the suicide reports as suspicious the moment he heard them (as did most who knew him).
“My first impression when I heard the news was until I see a body, I don't believe it,” said Casaretto.
I concur. I would be wholly unsurprised to see him show up on a Twitch stream from his freedom boat next week. He was not someone who I’d regard as suicidal in the least.
Casaretto, myself, and others who worked with McAfee over the years still maintain archives of his thoughts, interviews, and brainstorming sessions, and all of us still have a lot of unexpressed thoughts on the recent news of his death. You can trust I’ll be collecting a lot of this data and sentiment and releasing it here in the newsletter in future issues.
- Mark Rizzn Hopkins
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Blockchain Bulletin
Craig Wright awarded default judgment in UK Bitcoin white paper lawsuit. Dr. Craig Wright has been awarded a default judgment against anonymous Twitter user and host of bitcoin.org over the display of the Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin Whitepaper, according to CoinGeek.
Blockchain.com introduces support for human-readable addresses. It is now possible to send cryptocurrencies to human-readable addresses through a partnership with Unstoppable Domains, according to Blockchain.com.
John McAfee, antivirus mogul, crypto fugitive dies in prison. John McAfee died at 75 in a prison cell in Spain where he was awaiting extradition to the U.S. on tax charges related to his crypto dealings. He was best known for the antivirus software of the same name, the AP reported.
Blockchain Behind the Scenes
El Salvador offers $30 BTC to citizens opening government wallets. With the upcoming passage of the Bitcoin law in El Salvador, citizens who sign up for the official state Bitcoin wallet will receive $30 in BTC.
Marvel teams up with VeVe to offer NFT collectibles. Marvel is partnering with VeVe Digital Collectibles to turn its iconic comic book characters into collectible NFTs.
Other Blockchain Tidbits from Group!
An eulogy for passed OG Bitcoiner Mircea Popescu, the “Father of Bitcoin Toxicity.”
Paraguay and Panama to join El Salvador in declaring Bitcoin legal tender.
On the evergreen topic of the greenness of Bitcoin mining, I put out some Tik Tok videos to counter pop-science icon Hank Green’s disinformation about Bitcoin.
Blockchain Deep Dive: What are Blockchain Oracles?
We touched on this topic back in Issue #2 in the context of NFTs.
Technically, anything minting an NFT is a Data Oracle, but that’s an oversimplification of their purpose.
Blckchains are decentralized protocols for mitigating or removing the requirements for trust between counterparties.
They achieve this by having authoritative records of objectively provable data as part of the core functionality.
This chiefly includes: coin input sources, destination addresses, time stamps and block height.
To extend the functionality of blockchains to measure and record off-chain data and events, a smart contract will need a source to bring in off-chain data so that it can be evaluated and be governable.
This is required for applications like supply chain management, internet of things, Big Data governance and other forms of data integrity initiatives.
Any attempt to create a Data Oracle should take cypherpunk principles of federation and Byzantine Fault Tolerance into account or risk invalidation of their oracle in the ecosystem.
Technical Analysis: Still in the doldrums of sideways markets!
From VirtualBaconDAO’s Dennis Liu
Bitcoin still range-bound trading between $31,000 and $42,000.
No change to the trading strategy until it breaks above or below these support levels significantly.
Ethereum is showing mixed signals.
It’s strong on the USD $200 EMA, but less strong against BTC.