Install opentimestamps-client with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• ots-git-gpg-wrapper

Project history

Peter Todd announced OpenTimestamps in September 2016 as a scalable, trust-minimized, distributed timestamping scheme using Bitcoin. The design separates the timestamp proof format from any single web service: calendars aggregate commitments, Bitcoin supplies the public time attestation, and clients can later verify proofs against the blockchain.

The client repository packages the everyday tooling around that protocol: stamping files, upgrading pending timestamps, verifying proofs, and integrating timestamps into PGP-signed Git commits. The Git integration work targeted a software-supply-chain problem: a commit signature proves who signed a commit, while a timestamp helps show when that signature existed.

Adoption history

OpenTimestamps appealed to users who wanted blockchain-backed proof-of-existence without putting whole documents on-chain or trusting a single timestamping authority. Public calendar servers made ordinary timestamp creation cheap and fast, while local verification with Bitcoin Core kept the trust model understandable for security-sensitive users.

The client remained niche compared with general signing tools, but it developed a small ecosystem of protocol implementations in Python, JavaScript, Java, and Rust. Its strongest adoption story is in release engineering, archival proof, research-notebook integrity, and Git-history timestamping rather than broad consumer file sharing.

How it is used

Users run commands such as `ots stamp`, `ots verify`, and Git wrapper commands to create proof files, complete pending attestations, and check that a file or commit existed before a Bitcoin block time. Verification can use a local Bitcoin Core node, including a pruned node, so the proof does not depend on the original calendar server staying online.

The package’s `ots-git-gpg-wrapper` executable is especially package-nerdy: it composes Git signing, GPG signatures, and timestamp proofs so release commits can carry both identity and time evidence.

Why package nerds care

This package sits at the intersection of packaging, cryptography, and reproducible provenance. It is small, but it gives maintainers a way to attach time evidence to source releases, commits, and artifacts without inventing a full transparency log.

Timeline

• 2016-09: OpenTimestamps was announced as a Bitcoin-backed timestamping protocol.
• 2016-09: Git integration was documented as a way to timestamp PGP-signed commits.
• 2020s: client release notes continued to refine Git extraction, cache locations, timestamp display precision, and verification behavior.

Related projects

• Related projects include opentimestamps-server for calendar services, python-opentimestamps for protocol primitives, java-opentimestamps, javascript-opentimestamps, Bitcoin Core, GnuPG, and Git.

Sources

• https://github.com/opentimestamps/opentimestamps-client
• https://github.com/opentimestamps/opentimestamps-client/blob/master/doc/git-integration.md
• https://github.com/opentimestamps/opentimestamps-client/blob/master/release-notes.md
• https://opentimestamps.org/
• https://petertodd.org/2016/opentimestamps-announcement
• https://petertodd.org/2016/opentimestamps-git-integration