sign-to-contract: how to achieve digital notarization with zero marginal cost

This thesis has been realized for the obtention of the Master's in Mathematical Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano.

Abstract

Proving that data existed prior to a certain time is helpful in several situations. Thanks to systems achieving distributed consensus without relying on a trusted third party, like Bitcoin, it is possible to enhance the security of such timestamps. OpenTimestamps is a protocol defining a standard for creating timestamps and, in addition, it provides a scalability solution. Currently, an improvement concerning elliptic curve commitments has been proposed. We aim to give an exhaustive overview upon this new scheme, its implications and motivations, culminating in the development of a real world application.

Related material

• Blog post on sign-to-contract;
• Electrum timestamp plugin (switch to branch s2c to include sign-to-contract timestamping).