Knowledge Base

Overview

Truestamp’s internal ledger is publicly browsable. Anyone, signed in or not, can explore it through three page families: the block explorer at /blocks (index) and /blocks/<block_id> (per-block detail), the entropy observation pages at /entropy and /entropy/<observation_id>, and the real-time timeline visualization at /timeline. Together with the public beacons page these are the discoverable, human-readable windows onto the data whose semantics are described in item commitment vs block commitment. All three are linked from the site navigation’s System section (alongside Beacons), and all of them update live: new blocks, new entropy observations, and new public-blockchain commitments appear on the page as they happen, without a refresh.

The block index at /blocks

/blocks is the entry point for browsing the Truestamp blockchain. The page opens with an embedded strip of the live timeline (blocks plus the Stellar and Bitcoin commitment lanes) and a link to the full /timeline page.

The rest of the page is the block list itself, newest first, loading more entries as you scroll. Each row shows the block’s identifier and timestamp, the number of items committed in it (when the block contains any), and badges marking its public-blockchain commitments (Stellar, Bitcoin) plus a genesis badge on the very first block in the chain. Signed-in visitors additionally see per-block counts of their own items and their team’s items. New blocks are finalized roughly once a minute when items are being timestamped, and each one streams into the top of the list in real time.

Block detail at /blocks/<block_id>

Every block has a permanent public detail page. Its header presents the block’s identifiers, each with a one-click copy control: the block ID, the block hash, the Merkle root, the previous block hash (linked to the previous block’s page, or marked as the genesis block), and the block’s timestamp. The same header carries a two-step verification indicator (the block itself, then its public-blockchain commitment), a Verify Proof link that opens the public verify page for the block, a Download Proof menu, a View Linked Beacon link to the block’s beacon permalink at /beacons/<block_hash>, and a Raw Contents toggle that reveals the block’s full canonical JSON with a copy control. The indicator has two steps rather than three here because the page’s subject already is the block, so there is no separate step for being folded into one. A collapsed signature card lets you check the Ed25519 signature over the block hash, and a static timeline strip centers the surrounding chain activity on this block’s moment in time.

The Download Proof menu offers the proof bundle as JSON or as binary CBOR, each in two variants. A complete download also carries the record of how the proof’s signing key was introduced, so the file stands alone; that record rides along whenever the block carrying it has itself been publicly committed. A compact download leaves it out for a smaller file, which means the key’s introduction cannot be checked from that file on its own. Both variants carry the same signature and verify against it, and a compact download’s filename is marked so the two are easy to tell apart.

A proof download requires the block to be covered by at least one public-blockchain commitment. Until then the page explains that a proof will be available once the next epoch commit completes; see epochs for how batches of blocks are committed. If Truestamp cannot issue the proof at that moment even though the block is committed, for example because it cannot sign it just then, the page says the proof is temporarily unavailable and to try again later, rather than reporting a failure; an observation page does the same. A submission window of three cards (previous, current, next) places the block between its neighbors, and when the block is still awaiting its own commitment the page walks the chain forward to the next committed block, showing any intermediate blocks (or, when there are none, the time gap between the two) and that committed block’s public-blockchain commitment details. A Stellar commitment entry links the ledger and the transaction on the StellarChain explorer, shows the transaction’s memo hash in hex and Base64, and provides a copyable curl command that fetches the memo straight from Stellar’s public Horizon API. A Bitcoin commitment entry shows the Bitcoin block height, timestamp, and transaction hash.

The page also lists what the block contains. An Entropy Observations section enumerates the entropy observations captured into the block, each with its source, its source-specific identifier (a Bitcoin block height, a NIST pulse index, or a Stellar ledger sequence), its capture time, and a link to the observation’s detail page. Observations captured from a real-time stream also carry a warning badge when the source’s own timestamp differs from capture time by more than five minutes; polled observations omit that badge, because there the gap reflects the polling cadence rather than the source’s clock. An items section is scoped to the viewer: signed-in visitors see the items their team submitted into this block, while anonymous visitors see only items whose visibility is public. Pasting a malformed block ID redirects to the search page, which auto-detects identifier formats; an unknown but well-formed ID returns you to /blocks.

Entropy observations at /entropy

/entropy lists every entropy observation Truestamp has captured from its external sources (the NIST Randomness Beacon, the Bitcoin blockchain, and the Stellar ledger), newest first by capture time, with more entries loading as you scroll. The page opens with an embedded timeline strip showing the three entropy lanes feeding the blocks lane, and new observations stream into the top of the list live as they are captured.

Each observation has a permanent detail page at /entropy/<observation_id>, titled by its source. The header shows the observation ID, the capture method (real-time streaming or periodic polling), and the capture time, along with the same Verify Proof, Download Proof (complete or compact, JSON or CBOR), and Raw Contents controls used on block pages. Its verification indicator has three steps rather than the block page’s two: the observation itself, the Truestamp block that carries it (a link through to that block’s page), and the public-blockchain commitment. The body presents the raw entropy payload with a toggle between canonical JSON (the exact bytes that were hashed) and a pretty-printed view, the entropy hash and observation hash, and, when the source publishes a timestamp of its own, a time delta section that compares it against Truestamp’s capture time with a plain-language interpretation of the difference. A collapsed signature card verifies the Ed25519 signature over the observation hash. A proof download becomes available once the observation is committed into a block; the verification stages then continue to strengthen live on the page as Stellar and Bitcoin commitments land for that block. For what each verification level means, see verification levels.

The live timeline at /timeline

/timeline is a full-page, real-time visualization of the interplay between Truestamp and its external chains. The vertical axis is absolute time with “now” at the top, auto-scrolling one tick per second. Lanes run left to right: a time axis, the three entropy source lanes (Bitcoin, NIST, Stellar), an items lane aggregating submissions into ten-second buckets, the Truestamp blocks lane, and the commitment lanes (Stellar, Bitcoin). Connecting edges flow forward in time, from entropy observations into the block that captured them, from item buckets into the blocks that committed them, and from blocks out to their public-blockchain commitments, so you can watch a submission become part of a block and that block become publicly committed.

The canvas holds roughly the last hour of activity. Scroll to pan back through it, pinch or use Ctrl/Cmd+scroll to zoom the time scale, and hover any marker for details. The page is fully public; signing in additionally enables click-through from a block or entropy marker to its detail page. The smaller timeline strips embedded on the /blocks and /entropy pages are the same visualization with a reduced set of lanes, and clicking through from those strips works for everyone.

Limitations

The explorer shows the public side of the ledger: blocks, their hashes and signatures, their public-blockchain commitments, and entropy observations are visible to everyone, but item content is not. Anonymous visitors see an item listed on a block page only when its owner made it public, and even then the listing is identifying metadata, not the underlying data.

The explorer is evidence of submission timing, not of creation time. A block page proves what was committed in that block’s submission window, in line with the submission window guarantee; it says nothing about when listed data was originally created or by whom. And these pages are the public, browser-facing surfaces only: programmatic access to blocks and related records goes through the authenticated APIs, and independent verification of a downloaded proof bundle needs no Truestamp service at all, as described in how to verify a proof.