Knowledge Base
Browse the concepts behind Truestamp. Follow the links between concepts, or search across everything.
Tagged: timestamping
20
Library
A Hybrid Approach to the Problems of Time-Stamping
UPB Scientific Bulletin paper surveying simple, linking, and distributed time-stamping schemes, their back-dating and verification weaknesses, and a hybrid multi-authority design using control time-stamps.
Anagram and Cipher Priority Claims
How 17th-century natural philosophers (Galileo, Huygens, Hooke, Newton) staked priority on a discovery by first publishing it as a dated anagram or letter-count cipher: a hand-built hide-and-bind commitment revealed later.
Blockchain vs Traditional Timestamping Methods (ScoreDetect Blog)
ScoreDetect blog article contrasting blockchain timestamping with traditional TSA/RFC 3161 timestamping across security, speed, scalability, cost, immutability, transparency, Merkle-tree batching, hybrid systems, and legal admissibility.
Blockchain-based Infrastructure for Proof of Existence in eGovernment
Vizzarri (2020) CEUR paper proposing a Bitcoin blockchain proof-of-existence scheme for eGovernment documents using OP_RETURN hash records, contrasted with centralized, decentralized, and distributed trusted-third-party systems.
Carbon Dating the Internet Archive with OpenTimestamps
Peter Todd's primary-source account (May 2017) of timestamping about 750 million Internet Archive files with OpenTimestamps: SHA1 digests read from the archive's own metadata, aggregated through a calendar server into a Merkle tree, and committed in a single Bitcoin transaction.
Cornerstones, Foundation Deposits, and Time Capsules
How dated, sealed deposits (Mesopotamian foundation pegs, Egyptian foundation deposits, Masonic cornerstones, and modern time capsules) bind an inscribed record into a tamper-evident context to prove provenance, authorship, and a not-later-than date.
Design of a Secure Timestamping Service with Minimal Trust Requirement
1999 UCL Crypto Group paper (Massias, Serret Avila, Quisquater) on the Belgian TIMESEC timestamping service: round-based Merkle trees, hash-linked round values, and newspaper publication to minimize trust in the authority.
How Does OpenTimestamps Work (r/Bitcoin discussion)
A Reddit r/Bitcoin thread explaining how OpenTimestamps proves data existence using SHA-256 hashes, calendar-server Merkle aggregation, .ots proof files, and Bitcoin blockchain commitment.
How The Bitcoin Blockchain Is Fighting Fraud In Guatemala's Presidential Elections
Bitcoin Magazine feature on Simple Proof, which used OpenTimestamps and the Bitcoin blockchain to timestamp Guatemala's 2023 election tally sheets, creating tamper-evident proof-of-existence records citizens could independently verify.
How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document
Haber and Stornetta's 1991 Journal of Cryptology paper founding cryptographic digital timestamping via hashing, digital signatures, hash-linking chains, and distributed-trust witnessing.
Improving the Efficiency and Reliability of Digital Time-Stamping
Bayer, Haber, and Stornetta 1993 paper introducing hash trees (Merkle trees) to batch digital time-stamp requests, reducing storage and verification cost and enabling time-stamp renewal to extend signature lifetimes.
Linked Timestamping (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia overview of linked timestamping: hash chains and Merkle trees that link time-stamps into a tamper-evident order, avoiding private keys, with history, standards, and blockchain publication.
OpenTimestamps
OpenTimestamps: an open, free standard for Bitcoin-backed proof-of-existence timestamping (client-side hashing, calendar-server Merkle aggregation, .ots proofs), with a feature comparison against Truestamp.
Poor Man's Copyright
The folk practice of mailing a sealed copy of your own work to yourself so the postal postmark serves as a dated third-party proof the contents existed by that date, with its copyright, authorship, and timestamping limits.
Proving the Integrity of Digital Evidence with Time
Chet Hosmer's 2002 IJDE article arguing that trusted, auditable, UTC-traceable timestamps must bind who, what, and when to preserve the integrity of digital evidence for forensic and legal use.
Sealed Deposits with Learned Societies
How scientists secured priority by lodging a dated, signed sealed note with a learned society (the French pli cachete, the Soleau envelope), fixing a date without disclosing the content until the seal was opened.
Stuart Haber - Wikipedia
Wikipedia biography of cryptographer Stuart Haber, co-author of the 1991 linked digital time-stamping work with Scott Stornetta, cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper and foundational to blockchain.
The First Blockchain or How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document
Decentralized Thoughts article by Ittai Abraham on the 1991 Haber-Stornetta digital timestamping scheme: hash chaining, Merkle trees, trusted repositories, and its influence on Bitcoin.
Timestamping with OpenTimestamps, FOSDEM 2024
FOSDEM 2024 slide deck on OpenTimestamps: a decentralized, trust-minimized protocol that proves data existed at a point in time by Merkle-aggregating hashes through calendar servers and committing to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Towards More Reliable Bitcoin Timestamps (arXiv)
Short paper by Szalachowski (2018) showing Bitcoin block timestamps are miner-manipulable, and proposing external trusted timestamping authorities and SSL/TLS reference times to bound a block to a provable time window.