It’s thought that the Bitcoin Blockchain can serve multiple purposes aside from keeping records of  transactions. Ideas mooted so far include a universal passport and a censorship-resistant messaging service. Develop Amir Taaki has now put forward a new idea for the Blockchain – a platform for whistleblowers to anonymously leak information or files and get paid in Bitcoin.

Called Darkleaks, it’s essentially a decentralized black market where anyone can sell information, such as trade secrets, government secrets, proprietary source codes, Hollywood movies, military intelligence, celebrity sex photos, proof of government corruption and other data that can be beneficial for the public.

The idea for Darkleaks came from members of unSystem, a crypto-anarchist collective. Taaki mentioned that aside from the Blockchain, Darkleaks was built out of another proof-of-concept, PayHub, which has the same premise as Darkleaks.

How it works

The leaker selects a document to be leaked, which is then broken into segments, with each segment hashed and a Bitcoin address generated using the hash as a secret key. From the public key created, a new key is generated to encrypt each segment. These segments are then released for public download with the list of Bitcoin addresses.

The system uses a trustless and provably fair mechanism to prove the authenticity of the document. The leaker chooses a date and the number of chunks to be released when announcing the leak. Based on the hash at the time, some provably fair random numbers are chosen to select segments to be unlocked. This step allows the community to verify the authenticity of the document so they can decide whether they want to pay to see the remaining encrypted segments. The buyer then sends a specified amount of Bitcoins to the given addresses and waits for the leaker to claim the payment from the private key and release the public key so the files can be decrypted.

Darkleaks’ open-source software is currently in alpha and you can view the code on GitHub.

Taaki is hopeful that Darkleaks will open new opportunities for the Blockchain.

“I think the idea is widely applicable, so I hope by putting this out there with Python bindings that the community starts to use this concept in novel and interesting ways,” Taaki stated.

Image credit: Darkleaks