The document discusses trusted timestamping via the Bitcoin blockchain. It introduces Originstamp, a service that uses the blockchain to prove a data record existed at a certain point in time and has not been manipulated since. A live demo is shown of hashing a document and recording it on the blockchain to establish an immutable timestamp. Potential applications discussed include journalism, research data, insurance, and digital libraries.
OriginStamp: Trusted Time Stamping via the Bitcoin Blockchain
1. Trusted Timestamping
via the Bitcoin Blockchain
Prof. Dr. Bela Gipp
www.gipp.com
Bela@Gipp.com
Twitter: @BelaGipp
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2. Agenda
• What is trusted timestamping?
• What are blockchains? Why and how do we use them?
• Our service OriginStamp
• Q & A
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3. Projekt Teams
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Data & Knowledge Engineering Group at Uni Wuppertal OriginStamp AG
www.dke.uni-wuppertal.de www.originstamp.com
12. Blockchain vs. Bitcoin
“[Blockchain] is to Bitcoin, what the internet is to email. A big
electronic system, on top of which you can build applications.
Currency is just one.”
—Sally Davies, FT Technology Reporter
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13. Blockchain Concept
The blockchain is a public distributed record (ledger) of all
transactions that occurred in a cryptocurrency network.
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Source: Wikipedia
14. Characteristics
• Distributed
• Secure by design
• Collaboratively maintained
• Open source protocol
• “Cryptographic proof instead of trust” (Nakamoto, 2008) (independent of centralized
authority, banks or governments) à Tamperproof using hashing.
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Source: Wikipedia
15. Why are Blockchains Tamperproof?
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Source: unknown
16. Cryptographic Hash Functions
Hash
function:
Takes any string
as input
Fixed-size output
(we’ll use 256
bits, SHA-256)
Efficiently
computable
Security
properties:
Collision-
resistant
Hiding property
Puzzle-friendly
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17. Hashing Demo via OriginStamp.org
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18. Why does Bitcoin work?
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Security of
blockchain
Value of
currency
Health of
mining
ecosystem
19. With OriginStamp, you can prove that
1
a data record already existed at a certain
point in time
2
and that the record has not been
manipulated since then
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20. Our Approach using the Blockchain
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30. Current Users or Originstamp.org
• Journalists e.g. from
to timestamp photo and video evidence
• Researchers to timestamp
research data and
preprints
• Insurance
• Patent lawyers
• Several timestamps per minute –
4.000.000+ timestamps since 2012
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31. Potential use cases in the are of digital libraries
• Preprinting services such as zenodo & arXiv?
• The Wayback Machine by Internet Archive
• Paper submission systems such as Easychair or the Open Journal
Systems (OJS)
• …
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