Knowledge Base

Browse the concepts behind Truestamp. Follow the links between concepts, or search across everything.

Tagged: entropy

Blockchain

Public Ledger Explorer The public ledger explorer pages, no account required - the /blocks index and /blocks/<block_id> detail with commitment chain and proof downloads, the /entropy and /entropy/<observation_id> observation pages, and the real-time /timeline visualization of entropy, items, blocks, and commitments.

Entropy

Entropy Verification Levels The two verification levels of a Truestamp entropy observation, internal hash and signature recomputation versus external re-checking against the original public source, how both apply when an observation rides in an item proof as a witness, and the clock delta between publication and capture. External Entropy Sources How Truestamp captures unpredictable public entropy from the NIST Randomness Beacon, the Stellar ledger, and the Bitcoin blockchain, folds each observation into a block's Merkle tree and commits it as a witness in each item's own fingerprint, strengthening the submission window guarantee. Printing a Beacon as a Proof-of-Life Artifact How to print a Truestamp beacon as a lectern sheet or a lanyard badge so a photograph or recording that shows it cannot have been made before the beacon existed, covering the three form factors, the QR code target, printer settings, and the limits of what the paper proves. Public Entropy Beacons The public /beacons page that exposes a finalized Truestamp block hash as verifiable public randomness, the beacon fields and chain-link, the derived fairness tools, and how to download and verify a beacon proof. Public Randomness Beacons What a public randomness beacon is, the security properties that make it trustworthy (unpredictability, bias-resistance, public verifiability, availability), and how Truestamp folds public entropy into publicly verifiable blockchain evidence. Time Page The full-screen /time page, live Truestamp server time beside the latest entropy beacon, with a device clock delta, a sub-second subdial tuned to camera frame rates, a QR link, and an ambient rail streaming captured entropy into the next beacon, so a recording carries layered timing evidence.

Glossary

Beacon A public, verifiable snapshot of the Truestamp chain, the hash of a finalized or committed block published on the public /beacons page as verifiable randomness and a moment-in-time marker, with four fields (id, hash, timestamp, previous_hash) and a stable permalink per hash. Bitcoin A public proof-of-work blockchain Truestamp uses two ways, capturing new Bitcoin block hashes as entropy observations and committing epoch roots into a transaction OP_RETURN output, which appears in a proof bundle as a commitments entry with chain bitcoin and a regtest, testnet, or mainnet network. Entropy observation A captured record of unpredictable public entropy from the NIST Randomness Beacon, the Stellar ledger, or the Bitcoin blockchain, hashed, Ed25519-signed, folded directly as a Merkle leaf into a Truestamp block, and named as a witness by the items submitted after it. 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). NIST Randomness Beacon The US National Institute of Standards and Technology public randomness service publishing cryptographically signed random pulses about once a minute in a tamper-evident chain, one of Truestamp's three entropy sources, captured by HTTP polling and re-verifiable by chain and pulse index. Public randomness beacon A service that periodically publishes unpredictable, bias-resistant, publicly verifiable random values everyone can observe; Truestamp both consumes external beacons such as the NIST Randomness Beacon as entropy and acts as one itself through the public /beacons page. Stellar A public blockchain Truestamp uses two ways: Stellar ledger closes are captured as entropy observations, and epoch roots are committed as a transaction MEMO_HASH, appearing in a proof bundle as a commitments entry with chain stellar and a network of testnet or public. Verification level One of the two independent checks on an entropy observation - internal verification recomputes the stored hash and Ed25519 signature offline, external verification re-fetches the value from the original public source, and the merged summary adds the Merkle inclusion check. Verification summary The combined pass/fail report over every verification layer of an entropy observation (data hash, Ed25519 signature, Merkle inclusion, external source); it passes only when no individual check fails and marks the Merkle step skipped, not failed, until the observation is committed. Witness A public record that already existed when a subject was submitted and that the subject's composite fingerprint commits to, opening the submitted-after edge of the submission window; the registry is the head block plus one entry per captured entropy source, plus the signing-key event.

Library

Interoperable Randomness Beacons (NIST CSRC) NIST CSRC project defining an interoperable public randomness beacon that emits signed, hash-chained 512-bit full-entropy pulses every 60 seconds over a REST API, with the Beacon 2.0 format and NISTIR 8213 reference.

Product

Global Search How the search page at https://www.truestamp.com/search auto-detects what you paste (26-character item ID, block/beacon/entropy UUID, 32-128 hex digest, or free text over names, descriptions, and tags) and returns grouped items, blocks, beacons, and entropy observations with team-aware visibility.

Verification

Proof Claims by Availability Claims matrix for a Truestamp item proof, which of eight claims (bytes existed, unchanged, both submission-window edges, signature, key binding, ledger position, entropy freshness) hold from the bundle alone, from public chains and sources, from a pinned keyring, from the ledger, or never.