Subscribe to the WordProof Academy
Curious about how WordProof works, what it does and the concepts behind it? Subscribe to the WordProof Academy and receive an email when a new video is published. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
The main idea of blockchain is decentralization. Bitcoin is a well-known use case of blockchain technology: you hold your Bitcoin in a wallet only you have access to with a special key, the ‘Private Key’. With this wallet, you can execute transactions, like sending Bitcoin. Working with keys and wallets is difficult for many people.
Timestamping your content works almost the same as sending a Bitcoin transaction. From your blockchain wallet, you send a transaction that contains the hash (or ‘fingerprint’ of your content) of the content you’re timestamping.
With a Bitcoin transaction, you send Bitcoin from your wallet to someone else.
With a WordProof transaction, you timestamp the hash via a blockchain transaction. This transaction is not a transfer from person to person, but a transaction with WordProof. This timestamp transaction can be done with your own blockchain account or with WordProof’s account.
What blockchain account to choose?
If it’s just about the proof of existence, then it is sufficient to timestamp your content on any blockchain account that doesn’t necessarily belong to you. After all, a hash of your content is published in the blockchain, so you can always prove that the content existed at the specific moment the blockchain transaction occurred.
If you want to prove that YOU are the one who places the timestamp yourself, then it makes sense to timestamp with your OWN blockchain account. It’s a bit of extra work to set this up, but the benefit is that you can connect your identity (or the identity of your organization) to your timestamps.
In both cases, timestamps can be placed completely automatically with WordProof Timestamp.
If you place timestamps manually, you need to sign each new post or post update with your blockchain wallet. See it as manually putting your autograph. This is not easy.
The easier solution is to use WordProof’s automatic service for timestamping content. After publishing any type of content, your content is timestamped on the blockchain automatically. In the settings, you can choose exactly which types of content you want to timestamp automatically; for example, your posts, your pages, or maybe your e-commerce products?
Key Management
You might want to know: “How can WordProof timestamp automatically on my behalf, on my blockchain account? Doesn’t’ WordProof need that very secret private key for this?”. That’s a great and fair question!
If you create a blockchain account yourself, only YOU have the private key to your account. Some blockchains support the possibility of allowing a third party to execute ONE specific type of action on your account. In this case, you grant the WordProof service the permission to timestamp on your account. See it as giving someone access to specific data in your Facebook account.