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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

You don't need a "blockchain" for timestamps. There have been timestamping services for years.[1] There's a standard: RFC 3161. Many of the SSL cert providers also have a timestamping service.

Timestamping would be very useful if Google used signed timestamps to determine provenance. Scraper sites should be outranked by the original source.

[1] https://freetsa.org/index_en.php

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You need a blockchain for decentralised timestamps. That is because a blockchain is basically a slow clock. Its not easy to spoof as you would need to spoof the Proof of Work. Any existing signature relies on a 3rd party trusted clock (like symantecs signing service for Authenticode).

In the white paper it's literally called the "timestamp server" and that is its sole function. Timestamping transactions in a decentralized environment.

You could have stopped at

> You don't need a "blockchain"

Sure, but then I wouldn't have learned something!

The obvious rebuttal to your claim is that those services are all centralized.

His claim was:

> You don't need a "blockchain" for timestamps.

He didn't say anything about whether the timestamp services were centralized or not.

So saying "ha, but they're centralized!" is not a rebuttal.

But that's a disingenious argument. The main reason people claim that the blockchain is a good use for timestamps is that nobody can be bribed, or hacked, to change the results.

Given that the blockchain does not solve for human error, the argument for true immutability is not necessary a strict positive.

Well hey, I have and will go on record saying that the Blockchain isn't a panacea for everything - but if you do want to claim that you did X at time Y, a big blockchain is a pretty good way to register that claim.

(Note that I didn't say prove that you ddi thing X at time Y...)

Except in the case of the etherium fork.

True, but that's less of a concern for timestamps, right? You can always point to the original pre-fork chain.

You can use timestamps from multiple services on the same data. There are many RFC 3161 timestamp services run by different organizations in different countries.

Wordpress could use time-stamping services to prove provenance on postings. That would be useful if Google paid attention to the timestamps.

The obvious rebuttal is, do they need to be decentralized?

To prevent any one party from being able to deceive others about the timestamp.

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