Traditional realtime collaborative editors such as etherpad and google docs use Operational Transformation algorithms which require a central server to resolve divergences when multiple clients alter the same part of the document. These algorithms require the server and client to run the same algorithm often forcing implementers to choose suboptimal designs to avoid duplicating the client and server implementations. Here we present a consensus-finding algorithm based on the Bitcoin Blockchain and a working implementation in a realtime collaborative editor with all algorithmic logic on the client side. We further explore use of encryption to prevent the server from reading the content it stores and adaptations of the algorithm for WYSIWYG editing.
