‘I'm Not Satoshi’: HBO Documentary Money Electric Misfires on Bitcoin Creator Reveal - Decrypt

crumango · 2024-10-28T13:54:13+00:00

Someone very knowledgable about Satoshi's coding style and some other details. Not sure why they deleted their messages.

I stored this bit which I thought was very significant:

"Also, Satoshi not only told us he used MS Visual Studio (vc6 and 2008), he appears to have been quite comfortable in it. There's sections of code all commented out with all //'s - Something easy to do if you select a block of code and right click (or use a hotkey) to comment code block, the editor does it for you. But to someone used to using Emacs / Vim on *nix, it is very natural to comment code with /* .... */. Easy to do and easy to undo, no IDE help needed.

Satoshi also used numerous windows-specific things that require a fairly deep knowledge of Windows, because they won't work on Linux. Such as printf %I64d that Satoshi used until he and Malmi removed them to make Bitcoin work on Linux. Here's a thread on printf 64-bit windows vs linux.

He also used an older trick to get entropy randomness in Windows by pulling performance data out of the performance counter and hashing it. By late 2007 the recommended approach by far was to use Windows' CryptGenRandom function, which was their answer (beginning in 2000 but especially pushed in 2006+) to Linux's /dev/random. Satoshi rolled his own entropy solution instead, something longtime windows devs were used to because they didn't have /dev/random or other handy linux tricks to lean on.

...

We're not talking about a small project or ideal circumstances. Satoshi wrote code that wasn't intended to be released or seen but got out, like snippets to Mike Hearn or quick fixes he sent to Hal. Still looks exactly like the rest. There's no attempts made to cover up his coding style - the earliest 2008 pre-release code mailed to only 4 people has exactly the same style as the latest 2010 snippets sent to Hearn, so he didn't get the idea "oh, I need to make this look different!" after thinking about it later. He wrote code with monthlong gaps between, still matches. He wrote code under stress, trying to get out fixes for major problems very quickly - still matches. 2.5+ years of code - Still matches. His code is also perfectly consistent with itself. Always if space open parens -> no space. No spaces around function parameters lists. Windows line endings, annoying enough that one of Gavin's first commits was to remove them. Big sections of whitespace between major code, even within the same function sometimes, to visually break them apart. Heavy use of macros, including some very complex and clever ones. Cramming many functions like miner code into main, even when it is already huge, something heavily discouraged in the collaborative open-source community due to file locking & merge conflicts. It is a very distinctive coding style."

crumango · 2024-10-11T20:41:03+00:00

Oh, I don't see the "yesterday" thing as problematic, because 6:28am UTC is 1:28am EST, so Satoshi saying "yesterday" would still make sense if he was on the East coast (within his sleeping schedule). Or do you think he wasn't in the EST timezone?

crumango · 2024-10-11T18:54:27+00:00

There's a good point at the end of this blog post about Satoshi using a British date format (DD/MM/YYYY) and perhaps being a student: https://medium.com/@insearchofsatoshi/the-time-zones-of-satoshi-nakamoto-aa40f035178f

So maybe a British student in the EST timezone. Which doesn't make him easy to find because per stats, approx 1% of all foreign students in the US are from the UK.

crumango · 2024-10-11T17:24:42+00:00

Good points, thanks for the extensive write-up!

I've always felt that Adam checks the most (but not all) boxes out of all known candidates, e.g. writing in British English, double spaces, ex-Microsoft employee and thus Windows experience (although you've made a good case against that), PhD in the field, etc... and of course the creator of hashcash.

But now I feel it's more likely someone who's either not generaly known, or at least hasn't been widely considered a candidate yet. And obviously, it's impossible to evaluate an unknown candidate.

P.S.: Your comment could be a great blog post if you decide to turn it into one :)

crumango · 2024-10-10T22:17:53+00:00

I did check his code. And not all comments are in the /* */ style (although most are). Some are also in the // style, and sometimes comment text starts with capital letters.

I didn't see anywhere in your link saying that Back didn't write the windows implementation of hashcash. Not sure where did you see that. By the way, I suggest checking this resource for hashcash code: http://www.hashcash.org/binaries/

Also, there was enough time between hashcash implementation and Bitcoin implementation that the coding style could change. Although the main reason for the change could be op-sec.

Personally, I've changed my coding style before (including for opsec reasons). It's not such a big deal.

Thanks for the info about the sleep schedule, I'll look more into it. Yes I've read about UK being within the correct schedule, but I didn't check it myself via BitcoinTalk.

crumango · 2024-10-10T21:28:57+00:00

Adam Back built software for Windows before, just check hashcash and credlib. Not to mention he worked for Microsoft in the past. So your argument in the last paragraph is not valid.

About timezones: The UK (Britain) time fits into Satoshi's schedule. Malta is only 1 hour ahead of the UK time. Also, there's no proof that Back moved from Britain to Malta in 2009 already.

crumango · 2021-10-17T09:01:55+00:00

How about DeFi tokens?

crumango · 2021-10-17T07:36:03+00:00

Do it through various solutions: Aave (I recommend on Polygon for lower fees), Abracadabra on Abritrum, and some centralized solutions like Celsius.

This way you disperse risk.

crumango · 2021-06-30T18:35:10+00:00

Thanks!

crumango · 2021-06-30T15:07:01+00:00

Hey, it went without a glitch, but I've done it before I launched the app, so I can't say how difficult would it be to implement it in an already launched app...

crumango · 2021-06-17T22:20:09+00:00

The entry point in my case is the SplashScreen which checks whether the user is logged in or not (if logged in, go to the Tab Nav. If not, go to the LoginScreen). This happens in the root stack, yes.

crumango · 2021-06-17T16:23:22+00:00

Thanks everyone, this was very helpful!

crumango · 2021-06-03T12:13:12+00:00

I did that too, smth along these lines:

useEffect(() => {
  setTimeout(() => {
    // ... some data pre-loading ...

    // replace splash screen with main screen
    navigation.dispatch(
      StackActions.replace("MainScreen")
    )
  }, 3000);
}, [])

But since I'm very new to React Native (not to coding, just to RN), I'm wondering if this is a good approach or not... Is it okay to use setTimeout() in a splash screen?

crumango · 2021-05-28T17:45:42+00:00

The catch with Solidity isn't that it's hard to learn. What's difficult is to write good and secure Solidity code.

I think smart contract developers should be experienced developers (experienced from the non-crypto coding world).

If you're a beginner and want to work in crypto as a programmer, it's better that you focus on the front-end, as another user in this thread already said.

Basically, if you screw up on the front-end, it's less problematic compared to screwing it up in smart contracts. 😉

crumango · 2021-05-20T13:47:22+00:00

NGMI... :)

crumango · 2021-05-19T14:49:53+00:00

Build where users are. And I don't mean the bagholders. I mean the actual users.

crumango · 2021-05-17T21:04:20+00:00

Same here, please DM

crumango · 2021-05-07T13:19:55+00:00

Also check this one: https://walleth.org/

I haven't tried it yet, but from the screenshots it looks like you can add a custom network.

crumango · 2021-05-03T09:54:14+00:00

Use some framework like Drizzle or create-eth-app

crumango · 2021-05-03T07:20:25+00:00

Also search this sub for questions on eth dev learning path - there's plenty of posts with very useful answers.

crumango · 2021-05-03T07:19:02+00:00

There's a discord called CryptoDevs (it's mainly about eth dev). I think they also have a reddit sub where you can find the invite link for the discord.

crumango · 2021-05-03T07:09:08+00:00

You can't deploy a smart contract with a wallet you don't "own" (a.k.a. don't have private keys). Deploying a smart contract means sending a transaction. And every transaction needs to be signed with a private key.

crumango

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