In summary
- OrdinalsBot and Project Spartacus started a project to register the Afghanistan War Diary on the Bitcoin Blockchain, with support from Gabriel Shipton.
- The project seeks to preserve more than 76,911 uncensored articles from the War Records, allowing users to participate in the minting starting December 12.
- The relationship between WikiLeaks and Bitcoin dates back to 2010, when WikiLeaks began accepting donations in Bitcoin following the blocking of its traditional financial services.
Bitcoin startup Ordinals, OrdinalsBot, and Project Spartacus—a group of anonymous bitcoiners and self-proclaimed cyberpunks—are reviving efforts to register the Afghanistan War Diary using the Ordinals protocol.
The revival, focused on preserving the War Records on the Bitcoin network, is supported by Assange Campaign Chairman Gabriel Shipton, who noted the importance of safeguarding the Afghanistan War Diary for future generations.
“Obviously having all that data stored on-chain, immutable forever, is very important for our society to learn from our mistakes,” Shipton told Decrypt in an interview.
“That’s what Julian was always about, publishing these secrets so people can understand what happened, what happened, and hopefully make corrections in their institutions and their society.”
Shipton partnered with Ordinalsbot to list 76,911 uncensored War Records articles on the Bitcoin network. Starting December 12, Ordinalsbot will relaunch the effort, allowing users to participate in the Afghanistan War Diary Mining.
“Having this information on the Bitcoin Blockchain really takes Julian’s legacy and WikiLeaks’ legacy to the next level,” Shipton said. “The Afghanistan War Diary is no longer in a service that could go down.”
Image: Spartacus Project
The Afghanistan War Diary
The Afghanistan War Diary, or Afghanistan War Records, is a collection of more than 91,000 classified US military documents leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst. USA, in July 2010.
Covering the events of 2004-2010, the records reveal information about the Afghanistan War, including military operations, intelligence, covert missions and civilian casualties, and reframed how the public understood the war in Afghanistan, transparency and modern warfare.
One of the main criticisms of WikiLeaks for publishing the Afghanistan War Logs in 2010 was that it would put lives in danger if they were published. In anticipation of this, Assange made plans to protect the identity of the people mentioned in the documents, Shipton said.
“I think what’s really lost in this story is that Julian created technology to help redact these massive files, redactions that were previously not available to these journalists who were redacting names, because they couldn’t do that with these files,” he said. Shipton to Decrypt.
He continued: “Julian developed technology to protect people, and these publications eventually put an end to this war. So I think those benefits really outweigh those accusations.”
Assange was arrested in 2019 after Ecuador revoked his asylum, ending nearly seven years in its embassy in London, and faced extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing classified documents. In June, Assange accepted a plea deal and was released from Belmarsh Prison in London. In November, US Representatives Thomas Massie and James McGovern asked President Joe Biden to pardon Assange before leaving office.
“A pardon would remove the precedent established by the plea agreement and send a clear message that the US government under your leadership will not attack or investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs,” the Congressmen wrote.
The Afghanistan War Diary is the latest of the high-profile enrollments orchestrated by the Ordinalsbot team. In March, founding member of the legendary Wu-Tang Clan, Ghostface Killah, used the platform to release a collection of music-themed Ordinals Inscriptions.
That same month, Ordinalsbot collaborated with Marathon Digital Holdings to mint Runestone, the largest Ordinal subscription to date at 4MB. The Runestone inscription was sent to a wallet purportedly belonging to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Recording the War Diary on the Bitcoin Blockchain
Named after the famous Roman gladiator-turned-rebel leader, “Project Spartacus” is an initiative to permanently inscribe the Afghanistan War Records, initially published by Julian Assange, on the Bitcoin blockchain.
“It’s in the name too—Project Spartacus—you’re standing up, and every Bitcoiner is standing up alongside Julian,” Ordinalsbot co-founder Toby Lewis told Decrypt. “It’s how they can share a piece of history that is very controversial but considered very important, especially by Bitcoiners. It’s a moment in time.”
As of October 2023, 2,000 such registrations were registered during the initial phase of the project before it stalled. Starting next week, WikiLeaks followers will be able to choose how many Afghanistan War Diary articles they want to mint in packs of 1, 5, 20, 50 or 100.
Inspired by Stella Assange’s presentation on Project Spartacus at the Bitcoin Conference in 2023, Ordinalsbot co-founder Brian Laughlan said the Ordinalsbot team came together to revive the stalled Afghanistan War Diary initiative.
Image: Spartacus Project
“The project was stalled for a while due to technical reasons. The previous team, overwhelmed or unable to continue, finally moved on,” Laughlan said. “Through our contacts at Bitcoin Magazine, we connected with Gabriel and were honored to intervene. We were ready to reconnect the project and empower it with ready-made services.
Laughlan emphasized his belief that ordinals could be used as a tool for immutable, censorship-resistant data storage beyond NFTs. He added that minting Afghanistan War Diary inscriptions is free, with collectors paying Bitcoin network fees.
“To be clear, this is not about making money, our service fee only covers the costs,” Laughlan added.
A long relationship between Bitcoin and WikiLeaks
For Shipton, bringing the Afghanistan War Diary to Bitcoin follows a long relationship between WikiLeaks and Bitcoin since the early days of the Cryptocurrency, when WikiLeaks began accepting donations.
One of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s last messages before he disappeared in 2010 was about WikiLeaks and the group turning to Bitcoin after their financial services were cut off.
In 2017, following rumors that he had died, Assange debunked those rumors by reading the latest Bitcoin block hash during an online chat.
“WikiLeaks was able to continue paying for its servers, for its staff, and everything in Bitcoin,” Shipton said. “Bitcoin was their currency of operation, and they had the largest state on the planet, the most powerful state, completely ousting them, and they were able to survive and continue publishing.”
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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