 etchablock.com

ID: cool-data-embedded-in-the-bitcoin-blockchain/etchablock-com

Ciro Santilli 36  Updated 2025-04-24  +Created 2025-03-24

etchablock.com was presumably an inscription service that allowed people to pay to have Base58 messages inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The service failed to gain popularity and not much is known about it. justdropped.com marks the domain as having expired on 2013-02-03.^[ref].

The first known mentions of the service date back to December 2011, when it started self-advertizing in the blockchain around tx 8ffacbb18f63576fe323cbf2acc6c4c01c86aadf13d8352cfdd39d91916d98c8 block 156164 (2011-12-05) by repeating the following 3 messages 80 times:

11EtchABLockDotComGivesYouXZHcYVz
11BLockChain1mmortaLityXXXXYRZD5m
11VisitEtchABLockDotComNowXTbeZZ9

decoding to:

etchablock.com gives you blockchain immortaility. Visit etchablock.com now.

The website was down as of 2021, and there were no decent archives unfortunately: web.archive.org/web/20130301000000*/http://etchablock.com/.

Some surviging online mentions include:

www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/s9cra/comment/c4d5x9b/ Gold, Silver, and Bitcoin spot prices are now only a call (or text) away (2012-04-14) suggests that the creator is a "Jonathan Ryan Owens" since user jonathanryanowens comments:
Aside from Bitcoinduit, which was the first project we worked on for the purpose of investigating the inner workings of the bitcoin network and double spend threats? Ok.. here's a few: We developed custom bitcoin signing agents (etchablock.com), we did the first facebook bitcoin wallet (yougotcoin.com), we have our own custom c++ libraries that completely reimplement bitcoind for our own applications, we have an actual working double spend detection and alerter infrastructure, and also a coming slew of apps related to microlending and fixed exchange services..
Some profiles:
- bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=22299
bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53752.msg651512#msg651512 says on 2011-12-15:
Try etchablock.com!
by user TT.
dune.com/queries/3857233 has a random looking commented out mention of etchablock.com on the SQL

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