A few hours ago we archived the complete text of a story we published in September—one I wrote on the date of Bill Cosby’s sentencing—onto the Ethereum blockchain and the IPFS network. And there it will remain, beyond the reach of any adversaries of the free press, for as long as the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS persist; a period which I venture to guess will last as long as the current internet, at the very least.
All this sounds a little bit dramatic but to our knowledge, this is the very first story ever archived by a U.S. publication straight onto to the Ethereum blockchain.
This marks the end of a long journey for Popula, and for our benefactors at Civil, and for me as a journalist. (For a technical clarification of the methods used to achieve this feat, please see this post from Civil’s Walker Flynn.) And the beginning, too, because we have a lot more archiving to do. In the coming days other publishers on the Civil network will start using this tool alongside Popula, as well.
In the spring of 2016, when I covered the trial of Bollea v. Gawker in St. Petersburg, my fellow reporters and I were writing about the naked greed or the anti-press sentiments of Hulk Hogan, or the judicial system in Florida, or the courtroom shenanigans, every day. This whole puppet show we were dutifully reporting on. But in truth we had no idea what we were even looking at, because the real story was about the producer of the show, who went unmentioned throughout: The billionaire Peter Thiel, who’d bankrolled the whole charade and many other lawsuits besides in order to destroy Gawker, a publication that had mocked and criticized his politics, his business failures and his seasteading plans with relentless wit and vitriol.
In a darkly amusing twist, everything I wrote about the trial also disappeared from the internet some months later, in a corporate reshuffling that resulted in the demise of the archives of Death and Taxes, the politics and culture site that had commissioned my work through their editor in chief Brian Abrams. We’ll be archiving those pieces as well.
The ramifications of these developments will be long felt, I believe and hope. Grateful thanks to Walker Flynn, Toby Fox, Robert Okrzesik, Dan Kinsley and Mike Young at Civil, to Tom Scocca at Hmm Daily, to David Moore at Sludge, to Matthew Iles and Lillian Ruiz at Civil, to Nicole Bode at the Civil Foundation, to Old Town Media, and to Melissa Short and Joe Lubin at ConsenSys for making it happen.
Now I’m off to make sure that the blockchain never forgets this day.
UPDATE: This post updated at 3:48PM PST 12/20/18 to add link to technical clarifications from Civil’s Walker Flynn.
Maria Bustillos
Each comment or response costs a tiny ETH fee of 5.0E-5 (about 5¢ in Ethereum cryptocurrency), payable from your Metamask.io wallet (the wallet is free, and takes just a moment to add to your browser). This system helps protect Popula conversations from trolls, fakers, Cambridges Analytica and other malign influences.
If you haven’t got any ETH yet and you’re a Popula subscriber, please write to hey@popula.com with your subscriber email address and MetaMask wallet address, and we’ll send you a little bit to get started! It’s pretty easy and a lot of fun to use, Yay.
If you’d like to learn more about cryptocurrency, Ethereum, and how Popula is using these new technologies to help protect speech rights and the free press, please visit our FAQ page.
We’re having trouble checking your subscriber status. Try refreshing the page.
Welcome! To leave a comment, you’ll need to log in, and also have your MetaMask wallet ready with some ETH cryptocurrency available.
It’s easy! Just visit metamask.io to install an in-browser MetaMask wallet. If you’re a new subscriber, write to hey@popula.com for $2 in free ETH crypto!
Thank you for being a Popula subscriber! As a subscriber, you may leave comments, but you have to be logged in as commenter here first. This is an additional login—the login for your commenting privileges—and you’ll stay logged in after you log in the first time.
We’ve sent an email to your registered address at … with your commenting details. Please follow the directions in the email to open your commenting privileges and then come back here to leave your first comment!
Thanks for registering! Please log in and you can get started commenting.
You need to connect to the Main Ethereum Network before you can leave a comment. Click on your MetaMask icon so the window pops up, then select ‘Main Ethereum Network’ from the network-chooser dropdown at the top.
You’re logged in and ready to leave comments! All you need is a MetaMask wallet and a little ETH cryptocurrency, just like with our microtipping system.
If you know what MetaMask is and have it installed, activate MetaMask and refresh:
Each comment costs 5¢ in Ethereum cryptocurrency to post! Just write your comment and click the green button. Thank you, Popula subscriber, for joining us in the new world of cryptoeconomics! Please don’t forget to set your wallet address in order to receive tips on your comments.
Alas! commenting is not yet available on your mobile device. Each comment costs a little ETH cryptocurrency to post, and for now that requires a regular computer.
So please go to your laptop, install the MetaMask browser plugin, and hold forth!