LifeHash provides a beautiful visual representation of any digital hash. It was designed as an adjunct method for recognizing cryptocurrency keys and seeds, supplementing current computer algorithms as well as visual methods for examining digital hashes, such as looking at the first and last characters.
LifeHash is particularly useful for airgapped architectures, where data is being passed from one device to another using QR codes (or even by hand data entry). A LifeHash can help a user to quickly assess that the data was the same on either side of the gap.
However, LifeHashes have many potential uses, as outlined here.
LifeHashing Data
A LifeHash can be generated for any data, provided that it’s first SHA-256 hashed, then converted to a LifeHash. Possibilities include:
- Deep Links.
- DIDs.
- Private Keys.
- Public Keys.
- QRs.
- Seeds.
- URLs.
In all these situations, the goal is to show a LifeHash alongside a non-human-readable piece of data, whether it be an identifier, a URL, or a signature, and then to show it again at some future time: when the data is displayed again, when it transferred to another device, or when it used again. By verifying that the LifeHashes look the same, perhaps matching a printed copy of the LifeHash, and by using that to supplement other methods of comparing the data, the user can be assured that the data is the one they intend to use and that it has not changed.
Example. A user receives a digital identifier (DID) for a user. They can generate a LifeHash and check it against a trusted public catalog of DIDs. After they put it in their address book, they can later verify that LifeHash still looks the same when they interact with the DID, to ensure that no one has changed the contents of their address book since its entry.
Example. A web site offers a QR code for sending it Bitcoins and backs that up with a LifeHash. After reading the QR code, the user can check the LifeHash on their own device to make sure it matches.
LifeHashing Computations
LifeHashes may also be used to verify computations that might be occurring on different devices:
- Calculations.
- Checksums.
- Signatures.
In these situations, the goal is to check that the results on two different devices match, without having to entirely depend on a digital object such as a checksum or the applications that check those objects. These calculations could have been made asynchronously (such as checking a checksum that was created when a code distribution was created) or synchronously (such as double-checking that two computers have made the same calculation of a multi-sig address or even a bill).
Example. After receiving a software distribution, a user uses
sha256sum to verify its provenance, but also visually compares the
LifeHash of the checksum with one presented on the website himself.
Demonstrations
Remember that you can quickly LifeHash a UTF-8 string or a SHA-256 hash on LifeHash.info.