Command line utility for opentimestamps
Deprecated in favour of timestamp
Generate a root digest from the files in <DIRECTORY> and submit it to some number of calendar servers. Saves pending timestamp to pending_XXX.ots
go_merkle_ots -d <DIRECTORY> -c <CALENDAR_URL> -c <CALENDAR_URL> -c <CALENDAR_URL>
After enough time has passed, the calendar servers will each submit a BTC transaction committing to the submitted root hash, as explained in this post. Once at least one of these TXs has 6 confirmations, the pending timestamp can be upgraded by running:
go_merkle_ots -d <DIRECTORY> -u pending_XXX.ots
The attestations returned by the calendar servers are verified by go_merkle_ots using a light btc client.
The files in the directory must not be changed, as otherwise the merkle root will be different from when it was submitted to the calendar servers.
Timestamp proofs for every file in <DIRECTORY> will be saved into a directory proof_HEIGHT where "height" is the lowest BTC block height committing to the root hash (depending on which calendar server submitted first). The proofs can be individually verified on, e.g., opentimestamps.org, or using one of the command line utilities for verifying opentimestamps, e.g., ots-cli.js.
Generate timestamp proofs for all drafts of research papers (ideally with your name in the document somewhere), to prove their contents were known to you before some point in time.