From the very start, BiblePay has been embedding BiblePay verses into each block of the blockchain.
I ran across a radio interview from June 2018 with Luke and Togo and it got me thinking about the verses embedded in BiblePay. Had all the Bible verses actually been embedded into the blockchain? So, how many verses are actually embedded into the BiblePay blockchain? From block 1 to 123200, 8 random verses were embedded into the blockchain. The blockchain contained all the verses of the Bible at height 123906 when Revelations chapter 22, verse 21 was added. Up to block 123200, that was the only verse that was missing before the cutover from 8 verses (random) to 7 verses (consecutive, sequential). Even until today (Dec 14, 2019), Rev. 22:21 still has only 6 insertions into the blockchain while the next insertion count is 17. The biggest count of a single verse is 86 with that being Leviticus (Lev) 2:9.
Starting from block 123201, the verses picked changed to sequential and the number of verses became 7.1
No doubt, the number 7 has Biblical significance and something Rob uses a lot in the code such as 7 minute block times.
getblock
Did you know in BiblePay, one of the cool hidden features is the getblock command? Unlike Bitcoin which forces you to look at the block hash, BiblePay has a getblock feature which let’s you enter the height number after it to get the block details. As I am not a blockchain programmer, getting the block data out of BiblePay was much simpler. I just ran a looping batch script (DOS batch file LOL!) that gave me the data for each block up to the present. Thanks to BiblePay for this cool little hidden gem. It makes blockchain analysis that much easier!
References
1.4.2.4-Mandatory Upgrade for TestNet: Modify POBH-Evo to produce consecutive chained bible verses. We now produce 7 consecutive verses from the starting point. This allows the user who does a ‘getblock height’ to actually read the passage coherently.
I hope people have noticed the chained bible verses are now consecutive and the txlist double click shows these also.))
I wrote on Bitcointalk:
For those interested in Prophetic Math and the number 7. This might help explain in more detail the Biblical connection of 7 and why Rob chose a block time of 7 minutes even though it doesn’t divide evenly into a 24 hour period.
Nice! And in addition to the sabbatical cycle, the Shemitah and Jubilee cycle, the 7 day work week, I also believe in the ‘7000 year’ Messianic Age theory; the theory that spans from Adam to the end of the Millenial reign of Christ (before we enter into a new period- eternity with Jesus).
In this theory, the age is broken into 4 dispensations: 2000 years for Noahanic (Adam to Noah), 2000 years from Abraham to Jesus (The Law, the time of Moses), and 2000 years for the Church Age (The age of grace), and finally the Messianic Kingdom (1000 years).
I believe that the Star of Bethlehem passed over Israel when Adam was born (in about 4000 BC), then again around 1500 BC (star software can show the exact date, but I believe Abraham was about 99 years old – approx the time God made the covenant), then again in 4 BC (2 years before Jesus was born, while the three wisemen were journeying), then again in 2016 (the end of the Obama presidency, roughly the end of the church age). I believe it appears ‘as a sign and wonder in the sky’ approx. 2 years before something major takes place (IE 70 years from the reinstatement of Israel brings you to that date in our current Church Age).
So if you are like me, I look forward to the fulfillment of the 6000 years very soon (this is similar to saying, when will Daniels 70th week start)?
God has an accurate clock, and I believe this is another cycle. If I’m wrong we still actually have a little room in between Daniels 69th and 70th week, and the length of a “strong” generation, so I’m not setting any date (to imply it has to be 2 years after the star passed over Israel last); I think the bible clearly tells us no mans knows the day or hour; and the “sign” is just that – a sign of the end of the church age. We are to pay attention to the signs however, to be zealous for the Lord and know when we are in the “season” of his return.
Rob, can you explain how the KJV verses interact with bbpminer and the nomp pool? Does the miner pick the sequential verses?So let me try to explain the way the KJV bible interacts with the hash algo.
Rob replied:
Bitcoin uses Sha256 to hash the transactions. Dash also uses Sha256 to hash the transactions. We use Sha256 to hash the transactions.However the blockheader is hashed with X11 in Dash and in BiblePay.However what is different about BBP, is we use POBH to hash each X11 potential solution (we have a layer on top of X11).The POBH hash dictates which starting verse (out of the 32,000 bible verses) the winning hash refers to.Verses N-N+7 are just sequential pointers from the winning hash.So basically, the miner already knows the sha256 hash of the transactions s/he is mining. They then pick an X11 hash for the blockheader.Then they call POBH repeatedly with this new changing X11 hash, and POBH returns a hash (with no verses).Mining is simply repeating these steps until a POBH hash is found lower than the target.The verses only come into play when you go to Look at them. We basically say, what verse is pointed to from this POBH hash?Then we can display verses 1-7 (using the sequential pointer) from the solved hash from pointer
EDIT: I forgot to explain something. We have two levels of verses: mining verses and display verses. The Display verses are only accessed when you go to look at them.The Mining verses however do come into play when POBH is trying to calculate its hash. Depending on the bits inside the X11, the hash function will call certain algos inside the POBH class to calculate a POBH hash based on the text of the verses in play that are referenced by the X11 bits (So yes POBH does use verses, but they are invisible and never seen during the calculation of the POBH hash).I wish I could look into the server for more root causes of the errors you show, but I am still of the opinion that if the error rate is < 10% we don’t really have a problem.You could potentially ask MIP to look at that but thats if he is free.I feel my next endeavor has to do with shoring up Two things I don’t like to the full extent about POBH (I like POBH from a CPU mining perspective, but Im referring to POBH 2.0):1) I would like POBH to be absolutely impossible to port to a GPU. This is something I’m working on in the background, as I feel we need to break any potential white hat hackers who try to crack POBH 1.0. (Another words, I don’t ever want any hackers to be able to earn BBP from a GPU while the rest of us are running on a cpu. This is a proactive step Id like to take now.) This is also something I believe every CPU coin went through – and to my knowledge they all eventually failed as cpu algos – if the coin itself became successful (IE successful monetarily speaking) – Im not sure about the status of cryptonote. Do we have any solid statuses on surviving cpu algos that stood the test of time and still remain cpu algos to this day?2) I would still like the core client to mine by itself without an external cpuminer, and at the same exact speed as the external miner. I did like the ability to have a ‘full node’ with everything in it – the way we had it before. But we had to go through this current pain to add stratum/nomp to our infrastructure first, to get stratum in the mix.
Download Resources
This contains the the MP3 of the radio show episode (please visit the link above and see if it works first) and verses.accdb (Microsoft Access tables and query).
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CN-gyr79pvcIG8pQqHSTe4C4JrAAoE46
- The verses are not specific to a book, but can cross books or chapters, as long as they are sequential.
Interestingly, some blocks contain less than 7 verses. They happen to be verses at the end of the Bible, Revelations Chapter 22.
Block 123906 and 129040 has only three verses from the Bible. Revelations Chapter 22, Verse 19-22 ((133981 (5 verses)
140552 (6 verses)
146492 (4 verses)
148753 (6 verses) [↩]