Separable Items
In an ideal, rational world, there would be no need for separable items. No combination of bits on a computer is inherently dangerous, but... there are parts of the world governed by people who believe that some information should not be allowed to freely circulate in their jurisdiction. Since a central concept of the blockchain includes public dissemination of a consistent global public record, it is inevitable that persons innocent or malicious will1illegally, or even legally
record something on the blockchain which is illegal in some jurisdiction. Rather than attempt to fight local censorship laws or extend their reach globally, the Assign Onward blockchain incorporates the concept of "Separable Items" - items which are included in the blockchain by their hash, and thus can be separated (and censored) without impacting other portions of the blockchain's integrity checking.
Without censorship considerations, the blockchain would be served in its entirety to all jurisdictions, but when certain information in the blockchain is objected to by certain jurisdictions, then servers outside those jurisdictions may provide a "scrubbed" blockchain which removes the offending data before sending blocks into the restrictive jursidictions. Note that transactional data, such as public keys, share amounts and signatures, are not separable items and hopefully should not run afoul of censorship concerns.
The item type code includes a bit which indicates separability of the item.2in this example the 0x40 bit was used to indicate separability. Serious consideration is being given to moving that bit higher to free up space in the single byte codes for more (twice as many) non-separable items.
This is a block which contains all items, none separated:
87 01 AB 01 87 02 01 00 87 03 00 00 87 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 87 11
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 58 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 87 12 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00
00 00 87 13 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 87 30 06 54 E2 92 B6 31 61 C7 31 4F
54 61 6F 20 4F 6E 65 20 41 20 2D 20 54 65 73 74 69 6E 67 20 6C 65 76 65 6C 20 6F 6E 65 2C 20 73
69 6D 70 6C 65 20 70 72 6F 74 6F 63 6F 6C 2E 20 20 53 69 6E 67 6C 65 20 72 65 63 6F 72 64 65 72
2C 20 74 65 73 74 20 63 68 61 69 6E 20 41 2E
This is the same block with the separable item (C7 31 4F...) replaced with its hash (06...):
87 01 7A 87 02 01 00 87 03 00 00 87 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 87 11 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 58 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 87 12 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
00 87 13 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 87 30 06 54 E2 92 B6 31 61 06 90 ED 0D
37 60 8A F1 89 6B 31 E8 C8 24 30 7C 7C EE D6 56 83 96 47 74 76 E9 45 5A 57 DA 66 42 C8
Assign Onward
3 June 2018
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