Notable, another project Samuel Piltch and I worked on together was our attempt at breaking into a space neither of us knew much about, Blockchain. Our goal was to take the 12 hours to learn as much as we could, and re-imagine notaries.

Although some of the marketing material suggests Notable is a substitute for copyright (we’re not lawyers the jargon is not our strong suit), I’d argue what we were trying to design was a new paradigm in notaries. Our thinking was that given notaries are already entrusted with certifying legal documentation, what if we turned the traditional blockchain consensus model on its head. Instead of verifying transactions, individual notaries would be verified against each other, and their documents would be considered valid. This models the current consensus algorithm we currently use in real life called “trust.”

Our other idea of how to shake up the notary business was to implement a different type of signature. Instead of verifying a statement or a document. Notable allowed the user to upload any file and receive an encoded string which would then be sent to the notary to be “notarized.” The notary would have no clue what the content of the document was, making it perfect for confidential documentation, but given a unique private key generated for the uploader, could be instantly verifiable as being owned by the uploader. This meant that proof of ownership (for things like copyright or patents) no longer needed to be publicly disclosed until required (like in a court). This further protects IP while still retaining a public record of its filing.

Unfortunately, Sam and I were just too green to nail down the concept in the 12 hours afforded to us. Hopefully, in the future, I’ll have a moment to revisit this idea since I enjoyed the concept.

If you'd like to work on Notable, shoot me an email