LikeInAMirror: Nick Szabo is (probably) Satoshi Nakamoto
The wordpress blog LikeInAMirror has two posts made by an anonymous author who has provided his or her email address, [email protected]. Grey has offered anyone who wants help running the analysis he did can contact him. He also asks for evidence the supports or opposes his thesis.
In the more recent post, uploaded Mar 11 2014 and titled Occam's Razor: Who is most likely to be Satoshi Nakamoto?, Grey outlines the facts known about Nick Szabo:
NS is an exceptionally brilliant academic at the intersection of computer science, law, and economics. He invented Bitgold, he invented Smart Contracts. The term “genius” is likely appropriate.
NS had been working (alone) on a decentralized digital cryptocurrency project since 1998, provisionally named Bitgold. He is one of a handful to have done research in this niche topic before Bitcoin. Others include Wei Dai, Hal Finney, Adam Back, and David Chaum.
In April 2008, a few months before the original Bitcoin announcement, he seemed to have reached a tipping point in his work, and publicly asked for help “coding up [a demonstration]” [0].
Days after the publication of the original Bitcoin whitepaper, NS went and post-dated all public mentions of his research so as to appear posterior to the Bitcoin announcement [1] [2].
The original Bitcoin paper makes no mention of NS’s research, whereas it is largely based on it. Instead, it cites a few people who appear to have inspired NS’s research [3].
The Bitcoin paper was initially released on the Cryptography Mailing List, which NS was very familiar with. It took the form of a scientific paper, respectful of all academic conventions, which points to an academic.
NS became completely silent about his research after asking for help in April 2008.
When asked about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, NS made a reply that implied he knew his identity [4]. NS never replied when asked directly if he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
The timing of the forum posts of Satoshi Nakamoto indicates he was located in the EST timezone, the same as NS [5].
An analysis of the content-neutral expressions found in the Bitcoin whitepaper indicates a match with NS’s writing tics, at a level that only has a one in a thousand chance to be a coincidence [6].
After the release of the Bitcoin proposal and then software, NS stayed silent for a long time about it, whereas it was the realization of his life project. One would have expected him to get at least a little excited about that.
An analysis of the stylometric characteristics of the Bitcoin whitepaper indicates a stronger match for Nick Szabo than for other researchers involved with cryptocurrencies, such as Wei Dai, Hal Finney, David Chaum or Adam Back.
Grey stops to explain that he or she took writing samples of the candidates listed directly above, along with a writing sample from Leah McGrath Goodman (used as an outside reference point), and compared histograms of word length frequency and character frequency with the original white paper. In both cases, Nick Szabo had the highest correlation.
Grey also explained that says commentors were concerned his analysis could be flawed. Grey said that they need to accept he underlying hypothesis laid out in original post. According to the analysis, Nick Szabo is one in a thousand who could have written a paper using all the expressions analyzed.
Sources:
[0] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html#3741843833998921269
[1] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html
[2] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html
[3] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
[4] https://twitter.com/AdrianChen/status/407542548844929025
[5] http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/
[6] http://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-nick-szabo/
The first post was made on December 1, 2013. The author ran reverse technical analysis on the Bitcoin whitepaper and then searched the internet for matching patterns. The author then evaluated the "fitness" of the matches found. The search led him to Nick Szabo's blog. Nick Szabo is known to have been developing a mechanism that would enable a decentralized digital currency which eventually would become bit gold. Bit gold's architecture is the precursor to Bitcoin's (is that true?). According to a generally accepted Bitcoin origin story, Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer scientist who found out about Szabo's bit gold and found a way to improve upon it. Szabo has denied being Nakamoto. This post propositions Szabo, possible with one or more collaborators, is Satoshi Nakamoto.
...an open, unbiased search of texts similar in writing to the Bitcoin whitepaper over the entire Internet, identifies Nick’s bit gold articles as the best candidates."
The author notes it would not be surprising if many people talking about Bitcoin online in 2008 used similar phrases because the community was small, but the author has further evidence. Running analysis on Szabo's paper and comparing it to Nakamoto's shows strong matches for content neutral expressions.
Here's a breakdown of the analysis from the post:
Repeated use of “of course” without isolating commas, contrary to convention (“the problem of course is”)
Expression “can be characterized”, frequent in Nick’s blog (found in 1% of crypto papers)
Use of “for our purposes” when describing hypotheses (found in 1.5% of crypto papers)
Starting sentences with “It should be noted”(found in 5.25% of crypto papers)
Use of “preclude” (found in 1.5% of crypto papers)
Expression “a level of “ + noun (“achieves a level of privacy by…”) as a standalone qualifier
Content-bearing terms that have common synonyms in the field and thus could easily have been expressed in a different way:
Expression “timestamp server”, central in the Bitcoin paper, used in Nick’s blog as early as January 2006
Repeated use of expression “trusted third party”
Expressions “cryptographic proof” and “digital signatures”
Repeated use of “timestamp” as a verb
Not all of Szabo's unusual wording can be found in the Bitcoin paper. The Britishism "favour" is used. This could indicate the paper had multiple authors. Or, since all the paper is written in American English except for this one word, it could have been a deliberate attempt to add confusion.
The mention of Wei Dai's b-money and hashcash--note both were not direct inspirations for Bitcoin--but does not mention Szabo's bit gold. Is this true?
The author also cites the lack of public reaction by Nick, who'd been trying to develop this idea, when Bitcoin launched.
Many of Szabo's posts on his Bitgold blog have been retroactively post dated to appear to have occurred closer to Bitcoin's launch.
Author concludes that either Szabo worked with collaborators to improve on bit gold's shortcomings, or an engineer contacted Szabo after coming up a reworking of bitgold.
In April 2008, months before the Bitcoin paper was published, Szabo posted this on his blog:
“[bit gold] would greatly benefit from a demonstration, an experimental market (with e.g. a trusted third party substituted for the complex security that would be needed for a real system). Anybody want to help me code one up?” - Nick Szabo
Sources:
[0] http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
[1] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html
[2] http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/548/469
[3] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html
[4] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html
[5] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html#3741843833998921269
Links:
https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-nick-szabo/
https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/