Author: Andrew Poelstra 2022-06-14 20:33:01
Published on: 2022-06-14T20:33:01+00:00
In an email to the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, a victim of undiscussed horrific abuse responded to Peter, claiming that his emails were disruptive trolling and ignoring the importance of real timestamping. The victim noted that since the start of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has been used to write timestamps that remain intact despite malicious action to arbitrary systems and records. They expressed concern that the OpenTimestamps (OTS) system does not accomplish this and questioned its prominence. However, they were cautioned to be cautious with tone and when assuming bad faith, as the model of OTS is dead-simple, well-documented, and has been running for years while providing significant value to many people. After talking to a few people offline, the victim believed that the issue might come down to the way that people interpret "timestamping." If one believes that "timestamping" means providing a verifiable ordering to events, then OTS does not accomplish this, nor has it ever claimed to. If one thinks that "timestamping" means proving that some data existed at a particular time, then this is precisely what OTS does. The victim apologized for contributing to a thread that was getting out of hand but hoped that this explanation could help the different parties see where the confusion was.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T22:13:28.679769+00:00