prove-yourself

Notes on delayed disclosure and verifiable claims

Question. Can a person record a claim today, keep it private for a while, and later let anyone verify what was originally recorded?

Method

  1. The author writes a claim and signs its canonical attestation with an Ed25519 key. Optional public-account references help connect that key to the author.
  2. A random 32-byte salt is included before hashing. The published commitment identifies the claim without making short claims easy to guess.
  3. If delayed disclosure is requested, the attestation is encrypted for a future drand round.
  4. After that round occurs, the claim can be decrypted. A verifier checks the signature and recomputes the commitment.

Terms

Commitment
A SHA-256 digest that binds the author to one exact attestation while hiding its contents.
Timelock encryption
Encryption whose decryption material does not exist until a specified future event.
drand
A distributed randomness beacon. At each scheduled round, its operators jointly publish a value that can unlock ciphertext prepared for that round.
Proof
The public metadata needed to locate, open, and independently verify the attestation.