frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Show HN: A tool to privately timestamp a claim and reveal it on schedule

https://prove-yourself.sebmellen.com/
1•sebmellen•50m ago
I built my first startup around an optimistic but extremely naive idea: if you get scientists to timestamp their work on a blockchain, and then couple that timestamp with a protective license, you would stop IP theft. This would then allow scientists to collaboratively share data or inventions without fear of being undercut, and thereby usher in a golden age of science.

prove-yourself is a tool that extracts of some of what we built into a simple CLI and web app that lets you:

- Write a statement (a prediction, a claim, a hash of a file) and sign it with a local Ed25519 key

- Tie the signing key to your accounts (GitHub, Twitter, HN, etc.) by posting a signed statement

- Encrypt the signed statement to a future round of drand, so the decryption key doesn't exist anywhere until the time you picked, using timelock encryption

- Anchor the commitment in an Ethereum transaction and on IPFS, so there's a public record it existed by that date

- Let anyone decrypt and verify it after the reveal, without you (or any server of mine) being involved

prove-yourself runs as a CLI or in the browser via WASM. Nothing leaves your machine, although if you use the hosted playground, your private attestation will be posted to IPFS and the Ethereum Sepolia testnet through my server.

Comments

miladyincontrol•44m ago
This just sounds like OpenTimestamps or "Proof of Existence" but with extra steps.
sebmellen•34m ago
Hey, thanks for the comment! That's fair. The commitment/timestamping part is essentially the same idea. But try to think of prove-yourself like a framework around an anchoring service, whether that service is OpenTimestamps or an Ethereum transaction.

With OpenTimestamps or Proof of Existence, you can timestamp a private claim, but revealing it later remains optional. So if you were to make predictions about 20 different things, you could privately timestamp each prediction and only reveal the predictions where you were correct.

With prove-yourself, the signed claim is published as time-locked ciphertext that uses drand (https://drand.love/) to make the ciphertext automatically decryptable at a given point in the future. After the chosen drand round, anyone can decrypt and verify the claim without the cooperation of the originator.

As I alluded to earlier, you could take prove-yourself and use OpenTimestamps as an anchoring backend.

The harness is all you need (mostly)

https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/github-copilot/the-harness-is-all-you-need-mostly/
1•yruzin•35s ago•0 comments

Oxide Joins Anthropic's Project Glasswing

https://oxide.computer/blog/oxide-anthropic-project-glasswing
1•lwhsiao•1m ago•0 comments

AE Studio Recruiting Pirates

https://ae.studio/jobs/pirate
1•adtse•3m ago•0 comments

Preventing agents from cheating on our custom SWE-Bench

https://www.superconductor.com/blog/preventing-agent-cheating
1•arjun810•4m ago•0 comments

Schools are adding pepper-spraying drones to help combat active shooters

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/07/28/schools-are-adding-pepper-spraying-drones-help-c...
2•zdw•6m ago•0 comments

I'm Sorry, Dave

https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-m-sorry-dave-380ec27d
2•duck•6m ago•0 comments

Dead branches do not return: 16-element monoid from the Jacobian counterexample

https://instantial.substack.com/p/what-survives-after-the-inverse-is
1•groverbennett•8m ago•0 comments

Why Performance Improvements Compound

https://wilburhimself.github.io/blog/62-performance-optimizations-compound/
1•wilburhimself•9m ago•0 comments

Allostatic Load

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allostatic_load
1•rzk•12m ago•0 comments

Parallel JSON parsing on the GPU with compute shaders

https://github.com/friendlymatthew/slurpjson
2•birdculture•14m ago•0 comments

Leeaky Catches hidden fees draining your travel budget

https://leeaky.vercel.app/
2•Elijah908•16m ago•0 comments

External security scan of your own IP, in your terminal

https://qsa.sh/
2•tuxxin•18m ago•0 comments

Coordinated cyberattack disrupts water utilities in 30 Minnesota communities

https://statescoop.com/coordinated-cyberattack-disrupts-water-utilities-in-30-minnesota-communities/
2•ironyman•18m ago•0 comments

Unacceptably terrible support from Claude Services

2•Madmallard•19m ago•0 comments

Mercedes-Benz faces potential ban in the US due to Senate moves

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a73234160/mercedes-benz-potential-ban-us-policy/
2•teleforce•19m ago•0 comments

Banning AI will not make it go away

https://vishal.rs/essay/banning-ai-will-not-make-it-go-away
2•vishalontheline•21m ago•0 comments

A New Way That a Cow's Inner World Shapes Earth's Atmosphere

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-way-that-a-cows-inner-world-shapes-earths-atmosphere-20260727/
2•Jimmc414•22m ago•0 comments

We need more than a metaphor

https://www.fightforthehuman.com/we-need-more-than-a-metaphor-here-are-testable-diagnostics-for-c...
2•gpi•23m ago•0 comments

Hong Wang Wins 2026 Fields Medal, the Third Woman

https://www.quantamagazine.org/hong-wang-wins-2026-fields-medal-the-third-woman-ever-20260723/
2•Jimmc414•23m ago•0 comments

Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Timeline of the July 2026 Incident

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/28/anatomy-of-a-frontier-lab-agent-intrusion/
3•Jimmc414•23m ago•0 comments

Are You Not Entertrained

https://entertrained.app/
2•allenc•24m ago•0 comments

Johnson and Johnson offers up to $5.5B to settle baby powder lawsuits

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyqnz52rp6o
3•tchalla•24m ago•0 comments

Apple please cache my music

2•zirkuswurstikus•26m ago•0 comments

OpenAI Rogue Agent Hacked Account at Modal, Reuters Says

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-28/openai-rogue-agent-hacked-account-at-a-second-...
2•htrp•26m ago•1 comments

Mage a Lightweight, Research-Friendly Multimodal Model Family

https://microsoft.github.io/Mage/
2•nmstoker•29m ago•0 comments

Welteislehre: World Ice Theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre
2•Teever•30m ago•0 comments

Why Carbon Capture Can't Conceivably Solve Climate Change

https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/
3•gmays•34m ago•0 comments

Underwater Oxygen Loss Threatens Earth's Stability, Researchers Warn

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/underwater-oxygen-loss-threatens-earths-stability-researchers-warn
31•littlexsparkee•35m ago•16 comments

Data Centers Approved /Solar Farms Rejected -Virginia

https://virginiamercury.com/2024/12/03/data-centers-approved-solar-farms-rejected-what-is-going-o...
2•mistercaz•36m ago•0 comments

Orchid – The assistant that never sleeps

https://orchid.ai
2•lucknite•37m ago•0 comments