It's the same in Factom. The hashes, and hashes are data, are stored forever - in Factom and the Bitcoin-Blockchain. But the data that is hashed is not stored by Factom. It has to be that way, because nobody would want to store personal data, like medical records, on a blockchain.

The sense is: Let's say a bank hashes transactions and places the hashes into Factom and Factom into the Bitcoin-Blockchain ---> one year or five years later the bank has proof that nothing was altered or deleted. If there would be a hash in Factom but the file is missing, it would reveal that data was deleted. If there is a file that doesn't match to the hash it was altered etc. Plus: It's also about organizing data and we talk about "big-data" here.

And Factom also can be used to hash access to data. Let's say you work for a bank and you log into your account - Factom can record that as hash (depends on the application, on how the bank uses Factom). And let's say you open a file and change it --> Entry into Factom. So it's not just about the data and hashes but also about responsibility. It makes it much harder to mess with data once it's recorded as hashes. And that is more powerful than most people think because it's not just about objective aspects like:


- Proof of Existence: a document existed in this form at a certain time.
- Proof of Process: a document existed and is linked to this new updated document.
- Proof of Audit: an updated document can be verified to have changed according to a set of rules.

...but also about the way people think and act. That's why it's called "honesty-system". It doesn't prevent dishonest behaviour, it doesn't make it impossible to manipulate or delete data. But Factom would reveal it.

To understand how powerful that is it needs some knowledge about how it's handled today and how much manipulation is going on everywhere on this world with data.

Nope, it doesn't work this way. The actual data is stored by the companies as it is currently in their datacenters. With factom they create a merkle tree of this data or hashes of each file (as they like and dependent on use case) and store it in the factom blockchain. If they do it in regular intervals, they have a proofable hashed history of their data. This can be used to either check the integrity of the current data, or to audit the status of data back in history.

I suggest to have a look at the documentation for further details: https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs

Someone is spreading rumours in the polo trollbox that factom is bankrupt. That doesn't really help our cause. Can we have a factom representative point out they've just raised 6 million in funding and are doing fine?

This guys makes us great favour they will stay out of the game. Let them dump it.

I'm guessing you longed xmr on the peak. Bad luck.

+1
This reminds me of a book I read called "The Legacy of Chernobyl" by Zhores Medvedev.
With Factom, one of the greatest Peacetime Nuclear Disasters could, conceivably, be prevented.

(From memory, so details will be off) In Chernobyl, they left in hot radioactive material in the reactors at the end of the year cycle. This was against regulations, and dangerous.

This was what started the meltdown. The reason it happened is in the Soviet system, the inspectors and Plant operators basically belonged to the same company - the government. And they both got a big fat bonus if all was well at the end of cycle. So, the inspectors overlooked the problem - so they could get paid as well.

How would factom affect this? If they had to hash the data? Im not sure.
Lets see... either
1)
A) at the time of inspection, they could fudge the data from the start so factom wouldn't affect it.
B) Factomizing data would prevent dishonesty here somehow (chime in guys?)

~OR~

2)
They would have to be honest because all the data leading up to the inspection was hashed so an impartial investigator would know they were lying if they said all was A-OK from whatever metrics they collect throughout the year.

Thanks for explaining! I get it now, I think. Makes sense. Pretty interesting stuff.

Yep, and looks like usage is continuing to grow:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RUZLxxoAfT3C5jIJ144DLYdztYe_sqrKqbTlZuD05-s/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=445871101

I like to say that factom is for securing and indexing data.

There are other things that you can do with data.  You can store it and you can serve it up.

Data storage in today's world is mostly a solved problem.  It is sitting on some hard drive or on some backup tape, or in someone's email inbox.  Finding the data that you need is the hard part, which is also part of the serving the data.  Someone needs to pay for a computer to be online and ready to hand you any data that you ask for within a few milliseconds.  This is much harder than having it available if and when needed with a few days of lead time. 

Knowing where to look is hard, and knowing if you found the right thing is even harder in today's world.  This is what we are trying to fix.


Think of a newspaper.  When something is published, the news gets widely distributed.  A year later, the newspaper will be harder to get ahold of.  You can't just go down to the corner store and pay a quarter and get a copy anymore.  This is analogous to the serving of the data getting harder.  If you need to get a copy, there are still organizations that retain that newspaper.  You can go down to the library and get old newspaper copies.  For even older newspapers, they have microfiche, which is a more awkward way to get the data.

Some people collect newspaper clippings.  Those clippings are subsets of the entire news system, but are individual proofs that something happened.  By it being on special paper, that makes it hard to forge, and if someone did forge a newspaper clipping, others could prove the negative by going to the library and showing that the clipping does not show up in the authoritative copy on the specified day.

newspaper clippings are like saving the merkle paths.  They prove the positive, but cannot prove the negative.  Public notices are a way to prove that the public was warned about something.  a clipping can prove the notice happened.  Conversely the entire history of publications is needed to show that a notice did not happen.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_notice



>the data is not guaranteed to be stored - so what is the reason to try to store hashes or anything with FCT, if it just may disappear ?

If you wanted a 10 year old newspaper, and went to the newspaper company, would you be terribly surprised if they did not have one available for you?

Lets go further and say that the newspaper company was bought out by a ne'er-do-well.  The newspaper companies new management is incapable of recalling the old newspapers in all the libraries around the world.  They can print new copies that rewrite history if you buy an updated reprinted historical edition at their new headquarters, but it can be proved that they changed history, because the copies in the libraries still exist.



Apologies if this example seems rushed, because it is.


>would the company be able to "restore" their data (the proofs) regardless?

This is why you would run a full factomd node.  It has all the data captured by factom and can generate all proofs.  If you absolutely need to have the data in the future, just store it yourself.  It self validates against bitcoin, so your counterparties do not need to trust your data integrity procedures.


>The actual data is stored by the companies as it is currently in their datacenters.

If the data is small enough (<10Kib) and needs to be public, it can go directly into an Entry.  Most entries, though will be securing private data I suspect though, so yes, just signed hashes with metadata.


ps. bitcoin does not promise to store things forever either.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2983/is-pruning-transaction-history-implemented-in-satoshis-bitcoin-client


also, https://medium.com/@BrianDeery/i-love-negative-feedback-632f8ee780ff  for those just joining us.

Do you guys have any questions you would like Paul to answer on the crypto show tonight?