Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto, this figure in the virtual currency space that is one of the most famous, even without knowing who he (or she) really is. This time, another stylometry study conducted by Zy Crypto determined that Gavin Andresen is the person behind Satoshi Nakamoto. Andresen says that he is not.
Is Gavin Andresen Satoshi Nakamoto?
According to stylometry results, Gavin Andresen is Satoshi. Stylometry studies are related to the analysis of the way in which an author writes. It takes into account how often particular word occurs, how phrases are used, and it includes other important lexical tools. Once the information is gathered, it uses statistics to determine whether two different text have been written for the same individual or not.
After analysing different emails and comments that have been sent by Satoshi and information published by Gavin Andresen, the study revealed that he is the real Satoshi. But he is not convinced about that, and he commented on the matter:
“My opinion of the accuracy of stylometry dropped significantly after reading this,” he wrote on Twitter.
My opinion of the accuracy of stylometry dropped significantly after reading this https://t.co/L3JzJ1h7QH
— Gavin Andresen (@gavinandresen) June 1, 2018
For example, some of the texts show that Gavin’s GitHub blogs have similar low distances to Bitcoin’s white paper and also to Satoshi’s emails and comments in several forums.
Additionally, and something interesting to mark is that, Gavin Andresen’s writings are much more similar to Satoshi’s white paper than comparing the Bitcoin white paper with Satoshi’s comments on forums.
Of course, there are some limitations to the current study, as market by Zy Crypto. It is possible to be measuring the style of genre rather than that of the authorship. But it is also important to come up with a way that would allow to standardise the datasets to remove noise and eliminate biases.
Moreover, and according to the study, the C++ style of programming that Satoshi had is very similar to the programming style of Gavin Andresen.
Correlation does not mean causation which is also important to remember when analysing these studies. The result can be linking these two individuals, but the facts can only be proven with other tools and these are just estimations.
