Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Why OpenTimestamps does not "linearize" its transactions

From: "Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2022 21:16:55 -0400

On 6/14/22, Andrew Poelstra <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 01:15:08PM -0400, Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One
> Victim of Many via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>> I'm replying to Peter, skipping the other emails.
>>
>> I perceive all these emails as disruptive trolling, ignoring the
>> importance of real timestamping, while handwaving about things that
>> are roughly false and harmful.
>>
>> Since the start of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has been used to write
>> timestamps that stay intact despite malicious action to arbitrary
>> systems and records, showing the earliest on-chain publication of
>> data. It seems misleading that OTS does not do that, when it is such a
>> prominent system.
>>
>
> Please be cautious with tone and when assuming bad faith. I don't believe
> that Peter is trolling. Also, as politely as I can, when something like
> OTS whose model is dead-simple, well-documented, and has been running for
> years providing significant value to many people, comes under attack for
> being underspecified or failing to do what it says ... this is a
> surprising claim, to say the least.

Thank you for your reply, Andrew. I don't think Peter is trolling, but
I do suspect some body like a spy agency of strengthening the
timestamping solutions that have nonces in their merkle trees,
avoiding usability for storing public records in a way that could be
verified by anonymous and censored third parties.

> After talking to a few people offline, all of whom are baffled at this
> entire conversation, I think the issue might come down to the way that
> people interpret "timestamping".
>
> If you believe that "timestamping" means providing a verifiable ordering
> to events, then of course OTS does not accomplish this, nor has it ever
> claimed to. If you think that "timestamping" means proving that some
> data existed at a particular time, then this is exactly what OTS does.
>
> Personally -- and I suspect this is true of Peter as well -- I have always
> read the word as having the latter meaning, and it never occurred to me
> until now that others might have a different interpretation.

I looked some into the history of timestamping and I see that what you
are saying is the academic norm.

I don't see OTS as proving the data existed at a particular time,
because the proof is held in a document the user must protect. I
understand somewhat now that it is designed for users who can actually
protect that data sufficiently.

I do reiterate that it is blindingly easy to pin a public hash to the
bitcoin blockchain that asserts the earliest publication of a document
or collection of documents, and that this is desperately needed, to
protect the accuracy of history when it is not safe.

I worry that this form of "rfc timestamping" misleads its users into
believing the timestamps of their documents are preserved. These kinds
of user interaction issues can be very dangerous.

I would recommend uploading .ots files to chains with cheap storage,
such as arweave or bitcoin sv. This way people can prove which one was
first, when there is more than one. For that to work, we need a norm
of how and where to do it, so that users look in the same place, and
it is the people who make the public services and standards, that set
that norm.

Thank you for your reply, and I apologise for my poor support.

It is obvious that Peter has put incredible hard and long work into
providing OTS to the community in a clean and robust fashion, and that
is always very wonderful, and I have very thoroughly failed to
acknowledge that.