Will it be possible to do what Factom does on Safenet?

[urrtag]

@Sonder

how would Safenet hash or store a simple document like a birth certificate that can be time stamped and not changed without leaving a trail of them changes.

I don’t get why you need a time stamp for that? An authority would just do the same thing as they are doing in real life, sign it. After all all i need to know is if that document is valid (certified by that authority) or not (you could also sign it by yourself to make sure the authority can’t change it).

The same goes for contracts, all parties sign it digitally. Afterwards you can make sure it’s real by validating all signatures.

Also a time stamp would only guarantee that the document was created before the time stamped date but not the validity of the document, you could also have it changed before the time stamp.

[TylerAbeoJordan]

@Sonder

but you can surely nail it down to the day?

I agree, this seems quite plausible that a global ‘date’ could be determined easily by consensus and assigned to events as they occur to create a useful historical record.

[oetyng]

I think we’re talking across each other here regarding a couple of the parts at least.

Time based on a consensus versus time based on centralized authority.

Make use of existing consensus infrastructure or create a new.

Use some other, non-centralized source of time.

@neo

All the needs humans have for time can be implemented with an trusted APP. The sections do not need it.

They don’t need the data either.
The network is there for the users, not for itself.

Use cases for needing proof of when something happened… unless SAFE somehow lessened it’s ambitions for how important it will be in the world, then it is obvious just by looking at anything we do in society.

Overlay networks with their own consensus logic can be created for anything.
But not only will the wheel be invented again, the consensus logic that the network provides is and will be exceptional.

The nodes storing the data needs to be the ones verifying when it was stored. It is the most intuitive way. Maybe there are other ways, but it all seems very contrived, just to be able to say that we don’t touch time, as if it was something contagious. I think it still needs to be shown how a piece of data could be verified to be have been stored within a time span, without the storing agent being involved in that?

Time is just a measurement, a calculation based on some physical property. The problem with time is not founded in physics or natural law, it is founded in our current technical limitations, which currently makes it something sketchy and unreliable to work with if anything in network was to be based on it.
But it is not to be used by the network (as it is not needed), it is just a calculation output for the users to consume at their discretion.
Only reason the network would do it, is because it would be the best actor for it. I.e. it would produce best results at lowest cost. It is just sane.

Time is even more related to math and physics than economy is, but the network has no problem of getting 'dirty" by being fundamentally involved with dealing with economy - like pay the developer and other quite fuzzy concepts. (What is something worth? Quite an undertaking to measure that “accurately”).

I think it has a lot to do with preferences of the designers, about what the focus and purpose of the network should be.

But again, I am definitely not saying that the network internals should be based on time in any way. I think the fact that it will not, has often been misunderstood as time in any form would be detrimental to conceive of. Those are two very different things.

[neo]

@oetyng

The nodes storing the data needs to be the ones verifying when it was stored

This is not what the use cases given before of documents (contracts) needing proof of when stored. When I store my file on disk now, I don’t get a time authority to prove that time either. So yes, for storing data, if the time is desired then I agree there is no need for a “authority” to sign time, but that is not what I was talking of when you replied after me and seemed at the time to be a reply to me.

This is why I didn’t dismiss the RFC, but it has issues for contract timing.

But as another posted contract time stamp will be ex-network anyhow.

@oetyng

Use cases for needing proof of when something happened… unless SAFE somehow lessened it’s ambitions for how important it will be in the world, then it is obvious just by looking at anything we do in society.

And the RFC cannot provide this proof. Since such proof has to be accurate to a second, which is often required by some systems, eg IOT which will over take humans.

@oetyng

Only reason the network would do it, is because it would be the best actor for it. I.e. it would produce best results at lowest cost. It is just sane.

The lowest cost is simply to use the time supplied by the person storing it. But (SAFE) files don’t have time at this stage anyhow (AFAIK) so there is currently no cost with storing time (no code and no data fields)

So yes if we want all data chunks/objects to have a time stamp then we need to add a field to each and every data chunk/object and get some form of consensus. eg the RFC. But as far as the network is concerned it has to be just another piece of agreed data and not used to make sloppy protocol programming. The only need for time in protocol programming is various forms of timeout for error recovery etc.

tl;dr

@oetyng

Those are two very different things.

I now see where you are coming from and feel that we are not that far different in views. My concern was this “timestamp of contractual or legal documents” using the network protocol.