The OpenTimestamps standard is a recent development for blockchain timestamp proofs. It allows to demonstrate that certain information, as documents or digital signatures, exists before a certain date.

Unlike traditional solutions (RFC 3161/ANSI X9.95, RFC 4998), it achieves this without trusted third parties or long-term maintenance needs. And unlike first-generation blockchain approaches, without their costs.

By employing an open industry standard instead of proprietary formats, different organizations can collaborate, while users can share tools and knowledge between various solutions.

At Signatura we have been working on OpenTimestamps support to make a more efficient use of the Bitcoin blockchain, and today’s release completes this goal.

To put it simple, much of what needed many Bitcoin transactions before, it is now possible with a single one of these. For example, you and other users can timestamp multiple documents using the same Bitcoin transaction. You can read our previous post on the topic to learn how it works.

Another advantage of using this standard is that by looking at the blockchain it used to be possible to know when and with whom everyone was signing their documents (date and signers’ public keys were available in the Bitcoin transaction). That is no longer the case, from now on your privacy is assured and new documents will require a receipt to be manually verified.

The receipt includes all signatures, timestamps and steps needed for a complete audit trail of the signing process. In short, we traded receipt-less auditability for privacy and scalability.

Besides this main feature, Signatura now timestamps each signature and not just the finished signing process as it used to, its user interface was translated to Ukrainian (thanks Oleg!), and it will soon have more interesting updates to tell you about. :)