ICON Foundation:

ICON’s public blockchain used by Seoul Citizens Hall — appointing 162 members of its ‘Policy Communications Team’, another use-case of blockchain based public certificates.

As a followup to the recent collaboration with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, ICON revealed that the Seoul Citizens Hall has appointed its Policy Communications Team on the ICON blockchain. The 162 appointments come in the form of timestamped ICX transactions with an embedded certificate image in the data field, and can be found here.

In ICON’s previous demonstration with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, appointments in plain text format were recorded on the ICON blockchain. This time around, the Seoul Citizens Hall has embedded images into ICX transaction data fields. This is done by running images through a base64 encoder, which effectively turns an image file (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc.) into a long string of text. The base64-encoded string below is used to render the Twitter icon you see on the top left hand corner of this page.

data:image/png;base64,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

The significance of this development is twofold.

  1. Regarding ICON, this collaboration with the Seoul Citizens Hall is yet another example of two of ICON’s biggest strengths – networking and finding use cases for its public chain. As a result of this demonstration, more than 160 people are going to go home and tell their family and friends about how their appointment to the Policy Communications Team was recorded on the ICON public blockchain.
  2. Regarding general public blockchain usage, timestamping images is a legitimate use case because it allows users to store tamperproof documents, receipts, and even important photographs “forever”.

If you’re interested in timestamping an image on the ICON blockchain, here’s how you can do it in four simple steps.

  1. If necessary, resize the image file so it’s under 200KB in size.
  2. Run the image file through a base64 encoder.
  3. Make an ICX transaction with the ICONex wallet, and paste the encoded data string in the data field.
  4. View your transaction on the ICON tracker.

Here’s an ICX transaction showing a photo I took at the park yesterday.

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