DBBASIC

Notary

This server keeps an append-only list of digests and the moment each was first seen. Lodge one now, and at any point in the future anybody can confirm that the data it was computed from already existed by then.

It holds 2 digests and no content whatsoever. There is no field for a file, no code path that would accept one, and nothing here worth stealing. That is the design, not a stage it will grow out of.

Check a digest

Or drop a file here to hash it.
It is hashed by your browser and never uploaded — no request leaves this machine, and this server never learns anything about it.

Lodging one

Lodging a digest here requires an account or a service key. Checking one does not, and never will.

POST /objects/action_notarize
{"digest": "<hex>", "algorithm": "sha256", "label": "optional note"}

Submitting the same digest twice returns the original record and its original time. A later submission cannot make something earlier, so nothing here can walk a timestamp forward.

What this is for

Anchoring the head of a ledger somewhere its own server cannot reach, so rewriting history means also rewriting a record held elsewhere.
A contract, a photograph before an insurance claim, source code at a release, experimental data before it is analysed.
Anywhere somebody may later need to say this existed then, and here is an independent party that saw it.

What this proves

This exact digest is recorded here, and therefore the data it was computed from existed no later than that moment.
The record is public and append-only: it can be checked by anyone, at any time, without an account.

What it does not prove

WHO created the data. Anybody can notarize anybody's digest.
That the submitter owned it, wrote it, or had any right to it.
That the data did not also exist much earlier. This is an upper bound on its age and nothing more.
Anything about the CONTENT. This notary never saw it and cannot say what the digest is of.

This notary's clock being right and its operator being honest. Trusting one notary is trusting one party -- which is a large improvement on trusting yourself, and is not the end of the argument. Anchor a digest with several independent notaries and forging it means compromising all of them.