Entropy source
One of the three independent public systems Truestamp captures unpredictable randomness from, the NIST Randomness Beacon, the Stellar ledger, and the Bitcoin blockchain, each yielding entropy observations with its own proof bundle subject type (entropy_nist, entropy_stellar, entropy_bitcoin).
Overview
An entropy source is one of the three independent public systems Truestamp captures unpredictable randomness from: the NIST Randomness Beacon, the Stellar ledger, and the Bitcoin blockchain. Each source has its own capture mechanism (HTTP polling for NIST pulses, a server-sent-event stream for Stellar ledgers, a WebSocket stream for Bitcoin blocks with REST polling as backfill) and can be enabled or disabled independently, so a problem at one source never blocks the others. Every captured value becomes an entropy observation and is folded into a block’s Merkle tree; when an item is submitted, the newest observation captured from each source is the one that item names as a witness. A proof of an observation names its source in the bundle’s top-level type key (entropy_nist, entropy_stellar, or entropy_bitcoin) and binds the matching t type code into the signed payload: 30 for NIST, 31 for Stellar, 32 for Bitcoin. See the proof bundle format. See entropy sources for what each source publishes and why these three were chosen.