Civil-Backed News Site Archives Article on Ethereum Blockchain

A U.S. news article has been stored in its entirety onto the ethereum blockchain, in what its writer claims is a world first.

Maria Bustillos, editor with the journalist-owned Popula news site, announced Monday that she had archived an article originally published in Death and Taxes magazine onto the ethereum and the IPFS protocol.

As a result, the article will be preserved "For as long as the blockchain and IPFS persist."

Bustillos told CoinDesk that the goal of storing news articles irrevocably on a blockchain is one she has been pursuing as far back as 2012-2013, when she began writing about bitcoin.

The article was stored with the aid of blockchain journalism startup Civil and its engineers.

The process of actually storing the article was carried out using MetaMask, and turned out to be far easier than expected.

Bustillos said she was done archiving the article within half an hour.

Going forward, every article published on Popula will be stored on the blockchain, typically about 90 days after publication.

Bustillos emphasized the difference between storing the full text of the article on ethereum and storing a digital signature as a hash on the IPFS network.

"Digital signatures are important, but without absolute full-text archives to a broadly distributed public blockchain that anyone can join, and anyone can download, your work is still vulnerable," she explained.