The GitHub company, owned by giant Microsoft, plans to store a backup of the Bitcoin source code under the iceberg in the Svalbard islands, Norway in the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic. The code is guaranteed to be safe for up to 1,000 years for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The project will begin at the end of April 2020.
The move is part of the GitHub Archive Program, where all source “snapshots” of source code stored on GitHub’s servers since February 2, 2020 will be backed up. All are stored on film rolls along 1 kilometer, periodically.
To smooth the project, GitHub collaborated with the Software Heritage Foundation, the Arctic World Archive and Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. Code storage is specifically assisted by a Norwegian company, Piql.
Film rolls will be stored in a steel container, then placed underground as deep as 250 meters.
It so happened that in Svalbard there was a former coal mine. Its position is not far from Global Seed Vault, which is a storage place for thousands of species of plant seeds.
The ambitious projects of GitHub and Global Seed Vault are more or less similar, that is, in anticipation of the earth’s chaotic nuclear war or perhaps an asteroid that threatens human life.
For GitHub, it is important to back up the source of the Bitcoin code, because the worst case scenario for the Earth in the future could destroy the Bitcoin source code that is stored electronically on thousands of computers in the world today, including GitHub.
In addition to the Bitcoin source code, the source code for the Lightning Network protocol will also be stored in the same place, in addition to the source code Dogecoin and Ethereum. The Internet Archive Foundation and the Long Now Foundation support the effort, including a number of scientists and historians.
“I think there is a possibility that in the future, the electronic record [Bitcoin-Red source code file] will be lost. Obviously very fragile. Preserving some things in hard copy is definitely very helpful, “said Wladimir van der Laan, lead developer of Bitcoin.
A number of restrictions
However, there are a number of limitations that may be found on that step. Van der Laan said, from the perspective of programmers in the future, say more than 100 years from now, such source code might not be special enough, because it needs a special context.
Jason Teutsch Founder Ethereum Truebit believes the same. According to him, it must also include an explanation and context of the source code, which includes social, economic, regulatory and various research records that describe motivation and resources.
“Even in the end the development of the source code, eventually becomes more important than the code itself,” he said.
