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Somewhat related: does there exist a technology where I can encrypt something in a manner that it can only be decrypted after a specific future date? If theoretically possible, what would it take for something like that to exist? ie. "We'd need an authority to broadcast some ongoing pseudorandom number generator that can be trusted" or whatnot.





What you're describing is a time-lock puzzle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-lock_puzzle) and there are ways to do it but none of them are perfect


Not necessarily requiring encryption: Shoot it into space on a carefully calculated trajectory. Alternatively, send it as a laser pulse towards something that will reflect it back at the right time.

a smart contract on solana.

Surely you would have to store something off-chain in order for it to be inaccessible until a given point in time.

Unless you can predict the future, I'm not sure how you would generate a key that would be unknowable now but generally available in the future.


You might be on to something there.

I was thinking of encrypting a secret in the structure of a Rust program so it can only be decrypted by compiling and running it.


? Where's the time component there

Compiling a rust program!

Can’t you just fork the chain?



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