Timestamps on the Safe Network

[mav]

Following on from this post about timestamps in NRS which summarizes the current thoughts as

@JPL

Timestamps

Timestamps are a very human way of placing content in its temporal context, but difficult to achieve in a network that knows nothing of time. Some ideas:

Could timestamps be reliable if based on a section (elder/adult) or close group consensus?

NRS only resolves the site name. Updating AD objects does not store a timestamp either.

Would be a major change. Leave timestamps for application layers.

Perhaps could be managed off-network with third-party service, eg Opentimestamps.org, but maybe dangerous to depend on external services.

Time (if used) should enhance version, not supplant it.

Could time be factored into node age? If an elder is consistently out of time with the group they lose age.

Could be a tolerance on each time stamp which introduces an uncertainty that reflects what is fairly known?

Maybe the size of the Safe Network itself could be used instead of actual clock/calendar time.

"There already is a section timestamp similar to a Lamport clock [A simple algorithm used to determine the order of events in a distributed computer system]. But time is weird and does not work very well”.

Section chain network wide is a tree structure. So we can go back to any point in section time.

One thing I noticed was not yet discussed was how bitcoin manages timestamps. It’s a crucial part of the mining algorithm (since blocks are intended to be 10m apart the network needs to be able to measure time). There’s a great summary of how it works and the risks on Jameson Lopp’s blog Bitcoin Timestamp Security.

Any other ideas on how time might be used on the Safe Network?

[neo]

I had suggested a long time ago that there will become specialised servers such as equivalent of NTP servers for Apps to query and use.

The idea would be that they return the time signed with their keys to verify the record. The APP would send value field to be included so that the signed time can be associated with say the hash of a document to prove the document existed at that time.

Thus a creation time for a file could be added to the directory entry for the file or as user supplied meta data for the chunks/file.

Obviously this can be gamed but at least there is a way to prove something with that hash was signed at this time by the authority of one or more (equivalent of) NTP servers.

And this is only useful for APPs.

I still believe that if the protocols for comms and storage can exclude the need for time (clock) then it will be more robust and less prone to issues