Following is the latest version of best block hash shortening with a practical application for naming time-sensitive entries in the end.
Motivation
To write less and still grasp it all.
Demo
See the following block text-only block with its height and hash including the “shortened kode” sk and the new “anecdotal kode” ak. Available live at
https://anyone.eu.org/niceblack.txt although from now only with ak code.
Both codes have the same octet in the end. Explained in https://anyone.eu.org/skm.txt
An example which includes both follows:
_|_| _|_| _|_|_|
_| _| _| _| _|
_|_| _|_| _|_|
_| _| _| _| _|
_|_| _|_| _|_|_|
_| _| _| _|_|_|_|
_| _| _|_| _|
_|_|_|_| _| _|_|_|
_| _| _|
_| _| _|_|_|
,--- .123 4567 89ab cdef ---,
| .. .... .... .... .... .f |
| 1. ...1 64ea 5622 1a9b 1f |
| 2. 6512 2cd3 dcd9 75fa 2f |
| 3. aac. 1.47 3ea4 c883 3f |
'=== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==='
sk: c883 94
ak: 841. 94
What happens
All of the “doublets” (double octets) shown above are XORed to get ak.
See https://anyone.eu.org/bitcoin.txt and look for “shortform” there. It was the first thought of mine, some years ago.
Practical use
To describe SHA256 sum of any data one would make an ak of the hash, XOR it with ak of a Bitcoin block and publish the result widely including the block height. The string is much shorter than the original 32 octets but allows checking with full 32-byte hashes (one of the block and the other of input data) whenever needed and promotes running Bitcoin nodes in order to locally query for the full block hash.
Old example using sk
See http://anyone.eu.org/ws and https://anyone.eu.org/ws/883417-c1a4a4.txt for a current example.
New example using ak
See https://anyone.eu.org/as/ and https://anyone.eu.org/as/883438-53c655.txt
fin
I will be happy for feedback since I have never heard any complaint other than 16777215 (0xFFFFFF) is a too small number.