Undertaking Spartacus: An Act of Solidarity For Julian Assange

This text is featured in Bitcoin Journal’s “The Inscription Challenge”. Click on here to get your Annual Bitcoin Journal Subscription.

Bitcoin has for many of its lifetime been seen as a financial community, whereby customers can ship and obtain the native token BTC. Given the great value appreciation since its inception in 2009, the financial good additionally turned a retailer of worth — a way by means of which somebody might retailer their worthwhile work hours in order to not have them debased and as a substitute expertise a rise of buying energy moderately than a loss.

Not all customers are alike, nevertheless. Regardless of the recognition of those financial narratives, some outcasts have used Bitcoin for all types of functions all through time. Most notably, Julian Assange, a now-famous journalist and political prisoner, creator of WikiLeaks, used Bitcoin for various causes, together with as a proof-of-life mechanism and a verifiable proof-of-publishing. To Assange, Bitcoin was and nonetheless is far more than a distributed financial system that solves the double-spending drawback inherent in digital money. For the journalist, Bitcoin can function far more, and whereas he battles for his life, others have joined him in that mission.

Now, earlier than diving into the intricacies of what Bitcoin is and might be to Assange and his supporters, let’s take a step again and see what the journalist has executed with this digital coin for the reason that first time his NGO embraced bitcoin.

In 2010, shortly after the publishing of U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks within the notorious Chelsea Manning leaks, Assange’s group was reduce from the worldwide banking system as Financial institution of America, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal stopped serving the web platform. That actuality led Assange to undertake bitcoin, and in June 2011 WikiLeak’s Twitter account introduced they’d begin accepting bitcoin donations.

Apparently, WikiLeaks voiced curiosity in adopting bitcoin a lot sooner than June 2011, and in accordance with posts in then-popular discussion board BitcoinTalk, Satoshi discouraged Assange from pursuing that route in December 2010. Their purpose? “Bitcoin is a small beta group in its infancy. You wouldn’t stand to get greater than pocket change, and the warmth you’ll deliver would doubtless destroy us at this stage.” WikiLeaks patiently waited one other six months earlier than accepting bitcoin.

Sarcastically, Assange would later reward the U.S. authorities for allegedly issuing this coordinated assault, which in fact led to WikiLeak’s embrace of bitcoin and subsequently resulted in a capital appreciation in greenback phrases of over a thousand %. It’s each attention-grabbing and comical that the very fact WikiLeaks obtained locked out of the mainstream monetary system for merely publishing leaked paperwork would make them a significantly better monetary scenario — one by which they didn’t must ask permission and will take pleasure in nice financial beneficial properties in greenback phrases. Poetic.

In September 2014, Assange would begin hinting on the different attainable use instances he noticed for Bitcoin, which, given his tone and supply, leads one to imagine he was far more keen about that than monetary hypothesis — nevertheless massive the beneficial properties could possibly be with the financial use case:

“Bitcoin is an especially vital innovation, however not in the best way most individuals assume. Bitcoin’s actual innovation is a globally verifiable proof of publishing at a sure time. The entire system is constructed on that idea and lots of different programs can be constructed on it. The blockchain nails down historical past, breaking Orwell’s dictum of ‘He who controls the current controls the previous and he who controls the previous controls the long run’.”

A few years later, using Bitcoin as a timestamping server for WikiLeaks paperwork started to emerge, albeit it wasn’t clear if it was WikiLeaks itself doing the timestamps or grassroots activists. A Reddit consumer posted on r/WikiLeaks that somebody had timestamped the hashes of some WikiLeaks torrent recordsdata, doubtless utilizing OpenTimestamps — an open supply software created by Bitcoin developer Peter Todd for this objective.

Gabriel Shipton, movie producer and Assange’s brother, talked with Bitcoin Journal concerning the early days of his brother’s interactions with bitcoin:

“Julian acknowledged in 2011 the facility of bitcoin to construct ‘an mental scaffold’ for civilization, a protocol that may permit any reference to human mental contributions to be independently verified, with out counting on any group. Bitcoin so vastly excited him not solely as a consequence of it being probably the most censorship-resistant method of publishing attainable, but additionally of what it supplied: The power to assemble an incredible marvel of data, an important software in humanity’s wrestle in opposition to ignorance.”

Assange’s thought course of on Bitcoin use instances is significant not solely as a result of they make clear a very novel use for the decentralized community, but additionally due to how early they had been uttered. Assange noticed this potential over a decade in the past, however it wouldn’t be till the discharge of Ordinals that this use case can be popularized in a significant approach.

Ordinals, launched on Bitcoin mainnet at the beginning of 2023, permits anybody to effortlessly add arbitrary knowledge to a Bitcoin block at any given second. As soon as that knowledge is added, it inherits Bitcoin’s immutability and safety, and might obtain Assange’s imaginative and prescient of a verifiable proof-of-publishing at that second. Inscriptions go even additional. Along with simply housing a timestamp enabling proof-of-publishing, which customers tried with torrent tracker recordsdata as early as 2016, Ordinals permits the direct publishing of the info itself on Bitcoin. Not solely is there an immutable document of the time and date in block top phrases, there may be now additionally the likelihood to publish the precise contents of the article or torrent hyperlink itself. A brand new period of blockspace utilization for Bitcoin.

Naturally, we’ve seen the launch of this new protocol result in a complete slew of JPEGs being revealed in blocks. Within the early days, some had been simply random memes, however not lengthy after its launch, inscribers began getting subtle, growing recursion methods, and even teleburning Ethereum-based NFT collections. Now, practically a full yr later, Ordinals have spun a completely new ecosystem in Bitcoin, enabling all completely different sorts of inventive and software program developments to happen on the “mom chain”.

Nonetheless, some tasks started to emerge that attempt to cater to Assange’s imaginative and prescient from approach again in 2014. These tasks differ in form, dimension, and type, however all appear to hunt Bitcoin and the probabilities caused by Ordinals to really do one thing greater than speculate on the photographs and movies revealed on Bitcoin.

Most notably, a undertaking emerged in October 2023 that sought to allow anybody on the planet so as to add to Bitcoin the cables revealed within the leaks that initially locked WikiLeaks out of the worldwide monetary system again in 2010. Because of Ordinals, this undertaking was capable of permit not solely the timestamping of the cables, however the precise inscribing and storing of the unadulterated content material itself. Undertaking Spartacus turned Bitcoin right into a type of Library of Alexandria — one that can’t be altered or destroyed, irrespective of how highly effective the adversary.

On this case, the leaks expose struggle crimes by america navy and authorities, and expose info that stand in stark distinction to the principle narratives pushed by the media and the federal government itself about what was taking place on the bottom within the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

13 years after these cables turned a journalist right into a political prisoner, this grassroots undertaking emerged to face in solidarity with Assange and declare, “I’m Assange”. Alluding to the well-known “I’m Spartacus” scene within the 1960 film Spartacus, Undertaking Spartacus invitations Bitcoin customers from all around the world to say “I’m Assange” and inscribe into Bitcoin these cables that kickstarted every thing.

Undertaking Spartacus goals to take a stand towards freedom of knowledge and data, making it unattainable for anybody to mess with the info that Assange risked his life to make public. The journalist at the moment faces potential extradition to the U.S., regardless of being an Australian citizen and never having dedicated the alleged offenses on U.S. soil. The result of the extradition course of stays unsure, and considerations proceed to develop concerning his future and whether or not he’ll ever regain his freedom.

Undertaking Spartacus’ web site gives a public interface by means of which any individual can “inscribe” –– Ordinals jargon for including knowledge to Bitcoin –– a struggle log. There appear to be no charges related to this motion other than community charges, a crucial element to any transaction submitted to the Bitcoin community. The web page additionally encompasses a “donate” button, which opens up a panel by means of which customers can optionally ship bitcoin to Assange’s trigger. Donations are mentioned to go towards supporting the next organizations: Freedom of the Press Basis, The Data Rights Undertaking, and Reporters With out Borders.

Bitcoin Journal spoke with the nameless creators of the expertise behind Undertaking Spartacus, who shed some mild on the method and mission:

“Every struggle log a consumer inscribes by means of Undertaking Spartacus is a file containing the unique content material from one of many 76,911 Afghan Struggle Diary logs. We selected the Ordinals protocol for its widespread adoption, even in its infancy, as a typical for immutable knowledge storage, and just because we imagine Bitcoin is probably the most immutable and uncensorable expertise for this use case. As every log is inscribed, its knowledge is embedded into Bitcoin to be propagated and simply discovered by any of the various Bitcoin and Ordinals shoppers. We see this use case for Bitcoin to be important for human rights and freedom, and we hope that you’ll stand with Julian Assange by storing this delicate knowledge on Bitcoin with us.”

Upon navigating to the web site, the consumer finds an enormous rectangular button on the principle web page, studying “Publish Struggle Log”. Upon clicking, the method of inscribing a struggle log is triggered. The consumer is given the choice to decide on what number of logs to inscribe, with a most of 300 struggle logs per transaction. The consumer can then choose the transaction price, based mostly on which a complete quantity for fee is calculated. Upon hitting “proceed”, the consumer is then presumably redirected for fee.

The creators of Undertaking Spartacus gave the recordsdata a graphical remedy by selecting SVG recordsdata, which nonetheless include the uncooked log knowledge as a remark area, whereas giving the consumer a strategy to simply view the knowledge. The undertaking takes a spin on Ordinals’ common use case of digital artifacts to give attention to full knowledge finality on a decentralized chain of knowledge, run by tens of 1000’s of nodes in tons of of various jurisdictions around the globe.

On this sense, as Assange as soon as envisioned, Bitcoin has certainly turn into greater than only a monetary asset — it’s now a beacon of hope for these preventing in opposition to the suppression of reality and the distortion of historical past.

This text is featured in Bitcoin Journal’s “The Inscription Challenge”. Click on here to get your Annual Bitcoin Journal Subscription.

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