Granted Patent B2

US 12,354,081 · App. 17/788,276 · Granted Jul 8, 2025

Inventor: Steven Coughlan (London, GB)

Assignee: nChain Licensing AG

G06Q20/367H04L9/0861H04L9/3226

Abstract

Claims (36)

1. A computer implemented method of implementing an addressing service for transactions associated with a distributed ledger, wherein an alias comprising a sequence of characters including a domain name is provided for a client among one or more clients associated with the addressing service, the alias being specific to the client, each client being provided with a respective alias, the method implemented by one or more processors associated with the addressing service, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining or accessing a plurality of seed words, each being a word in a language;

for a given alias associated with a given client among the one or more clients, encoding the alias and applying a hash function to the encoded alias to obtain a hash value;

extracting a first series comprising a sequence of characters from the hash value;

determining a set of possible seed words from the plurality of seed words based on the first series;

determining at least one seed word from the set of possible seed words, the at least one seed word representing a code for the given alias; and

providing the code to the client associated with the given alias;

receiving a code and an alias from a recipient client among the one or more clients associated with the addressing service; and

granting a transaction when the received code matches a code and alias combination as according to the distributed ledger.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the first series is a first series of integers.

3. The method of claim 1 comprising receiving an input representing a number of words for the given client and determining the at least one seed word for the code associated with the given alias.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the hash function is re-applied to the obtained hash value to obtain a further hash value, the further hash value providing a further series; and the code provided to the client is determined based on the further series.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the further series is a further series of integers.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein the hash function is further reapplied at least once, each further reapplication being to a respective previously obtained further hash value, and the code provided to the client is determined based on a series extracted from one of the further hash values.

7. The method of claim 4 further comprising the steps of: updating a machine readable resource associated with the addressing service, the machine readable resource being provided at or accessible from a predictable or known location associated with the addressing service, the machine readable resource comprising: one or more instructions for accessing or obtaining a public address associated with a given alias, the public address used for facilitating transactions associated with the alias; and an entry specifying a number of hashes required to produce one or more series for the code associated with a given client.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising providing an entry associated with the domain name in a directory, the entry specifying the number of hashes required to produce the one or more series for the code associated with a given client.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising,

identifying a plurality of variations of the given alias;

for each variation identified, encoding the variation and applying the hash function to the encoded variation to obtain a variation hash value;

extracting a second series from the variation hash value;

comparing the second series with the first and/or one or more further series associated with the given alias;

based on a collision criterion, disregarding one or more of the first and/or further series for determining a code for the given alias.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the first and/or second and/or further series are series of integers.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein the collision criterion is a Levenshtein distance between the respective series being compared.

12. A computing device, comprising:

at least one a-processor; and

memory including executable instructions that, as a result of execution by the at least one processor, causes the computing device or system to perform a computer-implemented method of implementing an addressing service for transactions associated with a distributed ledger, wherein an alias comprising a sequence of characters including a domain name is provided for a client among one or more clients associated with the addressing service, the alias being specific to the client, each client being provided with a respective alias, the method implemented by one or more processors associated with the addressing service, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining or accessing a plurality of seed words, each being a word in a language;

for a given alias associated with a given client among the one or more clients, encoding the alias and applying a hash function to the encoded alias to obtain a hash value;

extracting a first series comprising a sequence of characters from the hash value;

determining a set of possible seed words from the plurality of seed words based on the first series;

determining at least one seed word from the set of possible seed, the at least one seed word representing a code for the given alias; and

providing the code to the client associated with the given alias;

receiving a code and an alias from a recipient client among the one or more clients associated with the addressing service; and

granting a transaction when the received code matches a code and alias combination as according to the distributed ledger.

13. The computing device of claim 12 wherein the computing device is a digital wallet.

Assignments (2)

Priority Claims (1)

Continuity (1)

References Cited (13)