And Craig posted this: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/
But as the Economist reports:
- Mr Wright has also demonstrated this verification in person to The Economist—and not just for block 9, but block 1. Such demonstrations can be stage-managed; and information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully. Still, as far as we can tell he indeed seems to be in possession of the keys, at least for block 9. This assessment is shared by two bitcoin insiders who have sat through the same demonstration: Jon Matonis, a bitcoin consultant and former director of the Bitcoin Foundation, and Gavin Andresen, Mr Nakamoto’s successor as the lead developer of the cryptocurrency’s software (he has since passed on the baton, but is still contributing to the code).
Still, questions remain. Mr Wright does not want to make public the proof for block 1, arguing that block 9 contains the only bitcoin address that is clearly linked to Mr Nakamoto (because he sent money to Hal Finney). Repeating the procedure for other blocks, he says, would not add more certainty. He also says he can’t send any bitcoin because they are now owned by a trust. And he rejected the idea of having The Economist send him another text to sign as proof that he actually possesses these private keys, rather than simply being the first to publish a proof which was generated at some point in the past by somebody else. Either people believe him now—or they don’t, he says. “I’m not going to keep jumping through hoops.”
And Peter Todd reported that Core removed Gavin's commit access as a result:
https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/727078284345917441
What a mess.
Most of the crytpographic stuff is over my head too. I have only a superficial understanding of the 'proof' that Wright provided. But it is looking like it is pretty weak indeed: https://github.com/patio11/wrightverification
One thing about Dan Lyons' book - he hangs Gavin Andresen out to dry, going as far as calling him Rodney Dangerfield and pointing out that it was Netscape's IPO before profitability that set the stage for the modern tech ecosystem, whereby your ability to make money is irrelevant but your ability to get huge and consume resources is the gauge by which you are valued. Which I wouldn't really take as anything other than sour grapes, except I read Ben Horowitz's book and hated the fuck out of it, and Dan Lyons hates Ben Horowitz even more than I do. Dunno. I was left with the impression that A16Z are a bunch of pot-splashing rubes, and that because they splash the pot, the only people left in VC are pot-splashers.I'm mystified as to how this got past Andresen, though.
From following Andresen on Reddit, I get the impression that he is a good person, but that he is not a leader and doesn't feel comfortable as one. I sent him a PM back when it was clear that XT wasn't getting traction, before Hearn abandoned ship, begging him to let go of the one-time 20MB increase and embrace a much smaller max block size while miners seemed to be open to 8MB, and 2MB looked like a gimme. His actions in the community always seemed to be one step behind sentiment. He did a lot of good for bitcoin for a long time. Unfortunately, I think he passed the torch off to wrong folks. Popular opinion seems to be that he is a good coder, but not a great one.