Making the most of OpenTimestamps

While technically you can manually timestamp a file yourself, it’s far quicker and easier to make use of ( https://opentimestamps.org) OpenTimeStamps. To get started visit the website and drag the file you wish to stamp into the field named Data to Timestamp, then click Stamp. The website will generate a file with the extension .ots. Save this file to your hard drive. You can verify it at any time by visiting the website again and dragging it into the section marked TimeStamped Data.

The website recommends using the opentimestamps-client to verify files, as this is more secure. To get started open Terminal and run git clone https://github.com/opentimestamps/ opentimestamps-client , then change to the

directory with cd opentimestamps-client . Install the necessary dependencies by running sudo

apt-get install python3-pip then sudo pip3 install

-r requirements.txt . Run ots stamp myfile.txt where myfile.txt is your chosen file to sync with the OpenTimeStamps server and stamp it.

To verify signatures, you must first be running a full Bitcoin node on your machine. This can use up a lot of space and bandwidth as by default it downloads the entire Bitcoin blockchain to your machine. You can however use pruning mode to reduce this. See https://bitcoin.org/en/full

node for more information. Once your Bitcoin node is running, execute

ots verify myfile.txt.ots on the OpenTimestamps signature file to verify it.

Simply drag a file into ‘Data to TimeStamp’ to generate a signature. Anyone can verify the signature using the website or the opentimestamps-client.