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Timestamping On The Blockchain

Founders and developers of new timestamping platforms shed light on how bitcoin's decentralized, irrefutable ledger has altered the landscape of the Electronic Signature industry.

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“business models built on distributed systems will have to be very, very different than the types of businesses that have been built to-date. The whole concept of a distributed system, of course, is to disintermediate the centralized forces that once did such good business controlling information, flow and access. And so brand new business models will have to emerge in order to deliver on the promise of distributed systems AND create sustainable businesses.”
— – BlockSign co-creator and CTO, Andras Szalai

Trusted Timestamping, the process of securely keeping track of the creation and modification time of a document, is an indispensable tool in the business world. It allows interested parties to know, without a doubt, that a document in question existed at a particular date and time. By design a Bitcoin transaction includes a date and time, held on the Blockchain. By including a cryptographic digest of a file you can later certify that the data existed at that time.

From signing important documents like mortgage deeds and insurance contracts, to claiming contest winnings, to creating patents and even claiming scientific discoveries, there is no limit to the uses of this basic business functionality. Prior to the internet it was time and labor intensive.

“for many businesses the cost and time savings associated with being able to enter into agreements and sign contracts securely online is something that saves a lot of money (i.e. billions of dollars annually). I’d say that we actually think more about the +400 days it takes to resolve contract disputes… in the developed world. And we think about how much it costs for the average person or small business to establish their credit and reputation and how that impacts their ability to do business, especially internationally. And those are the types of issues that we think the massive record-keeping advances of the blockchain promise to solve..”
— – Szalai

BlockSign, a free and anonymous service, was designed with legal documents in mind. The platform allows multiple signatories within a single PDF document.  Andras Szalai, co-creator of BlockSign told BNC, “People are signing business agreements with it. And that’s why our focus, and a lot of the new product that we’re developing, is concentrated on empowering people to do business in a way that maximizes some of the innate benefits of Bitcoin and the blockchain — transparency probably chief among them.”

Despite their current free business model, Szalai seems focused on growing the business. “We are releasing a set of products in the coming months that will be premium product offerings. I would imagine that we will always have a full roster of free services.”

In contrast Dr. Bela Gipp, founder and co-developer of OriginStamp states;

“Creating evidence to prove the truth shouldn’t cost anything.”

OriginStamp can sign any file type, and they also offer an API for developers. Perhaps the most unique feature is a verification URL. By creating a unique URL and mentioning it in a publication, news articles, or report, the timestamp can easily be verified by readers. It is likely the fastest and easiest way to verify a timestamped document offered by anyone.

“We introduced this feature to allow including the url to scientific publications,” said Dr. Gipp, “I had the idea for developing this service while doing my PhD research at UC Berkeley several years ago. I was frustrated by the lack of an easy and free solution for researchers to tamperproof timestamp knowledge such as preprints of publications in order to prove originality and discourage plagiarism.”

The platform appears to have found a niche in academic circles, according to Dr. Gipp, “There is constant growth. From only one timestamp per day in the beginning to now more than 100 timestamps a day.”

Financial growth is another matter. OriginStamp charges nothing for its services, accepting donations instead. Dr. Gipp explains, “I believe that this service is most beneficial if it is offered free of charge. […] It is non-profit and will always remain non-profit. The operating costs are only a few dollars a year. I receive my income as a professor at the University Konstanz, Germany.”

ProofOfExistence (PoE) seems to be taking the opposite approach;

“We charge 5 millibits for each document, and the cost of proving the document and running the site is below that.”
— -Manuel Aráoz, founder and developer of PoE.

PoE allows any file format to be signed on their site, and they also offer an API service. Although 5 milliBits per signing (about $1.10 USD at the time of this writing) is usually much less expensive than many legacy alternatives for timestamping a document, it clearly makes their service among the most expensive blockchain-based solutions.

By charging for its services, PoE has been able to develop its API. Aráoz explains the service, “Almost any application can be plugged into that. An app I’d love to see built (or build myself) is an email-only interface for the service (allowing you to prove documents by attaching them and forwarding them to an email address).”

When asked what the service has been used for, Aráoz offered some of the most creative uses we’d heard yet;

“Some have reported using PoE as a way to timestamp scientific papers or ideas, certify communications, verify software integrity, and some more peculiar uses like proving the existence of a whole human genome. I know 2 or 3 of them are using the API to integrate PoE to their services. The most recent one is an actual human notary, who provides decentralized blockchain proof of existence along with his own trusted signature.”

Although no one is making a guarantee, the consensus is that these timestamps will hold up in a court of law. Before blockchain solutions became available it was widely accepted that Electronic Signatures were valid and legally binding, in the majority of countries around the world. BlockSign appears to have done the most research on the subject:

“BlockSign complies with the requirements of the U.S. Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act of 2000 (ESIGN) and Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA).” -The BlockSign website FAQs

It is also widely accepted, among the financial security industry, that timestamping using the bitcoin blockchain is a more reliable than a centralized solution. As the the OriginStamp website states:

“The blockchain was designed to be tamper proof. If they could be manipulated than the whole currency would be worthless.”


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