Radix building blocks - File notarization (live)

Introduction

Thanks to the storage immutability and time-stamping capabilities of the public DLT, notarization is one of the most commonly referenced use-cases outside of transactional services. This article will describe how to create a basic notarization flow using the Radix ledger:

1.Alice uploads file
2.File gets notarized
3.Alice sends the file to Bob
4.Bob uploads the file
5.Bob verifies that Alice was the one who notarized the file

Note: in this example, we are using a method that is not advisable for large-scale deployments as it also reduces the available key-space and creates higher probabilities of key clash. This is not a problem for the use case directly but creates a wider issue for the network if used for billions of files.

How it works

Here we take advantage of the fact that a file can be hashed into a seed, and this seed can then be used to generate a private/public key-pair that maps to an address on the Radix ledger. This simple function means that the same file will always generate the same key pair; allowing anyone with the file to also find the public address.

All transactions in Radix are timestamped, both by multiple logical clocks and with a wall-clock timestamp. On the Alpha network this wall clock time is not consensus validated, but it will be on the Beta network, meaning that timestamps can be trusted to almost the same level as transactions consensus.

Data transactions, therefore, allow the storage of information on the ledger, which can be easily read by any client that requests it, and timestamps those transactions in a human-readable way.

Setup

The following steps use the publicly available Radix tools, with an imagined simple web application built on top of it.

Step 0

Alice has a file that she wants to notarize. She opens a web app and uploads the file to it.

Step 1

The web app hashes the file and uses that hash as the deterministic seed for the file’s Account/Identity on the Radix ledger. The web app then queries that account address on the ledger to see whether there is a ‘Claimed’ message going on that account.

Step 2

If no ‘Claimed’ message is found, the system sends its own 'Claimed' message to the Account.

The 'Claimed' message can be anything Alice wishes it to be and can either be encrypted using the Account's public key or be left as an unencrypted message. If encrypted using the Account's public key, it can be decrypted later by anyone who also has the original file, but not by someone who doesn't.

The 'Claimed' message may also include Alice's public key so that she can prove that she was the person who claimed the account at a later date.

Step 3

Alice shares the file (plus, optionally, her public key and signature) with Bob. He performs Steps 0 and 1 as well, but the web app will now return Alice's 'Claimed' message, plus the timestamp of the original transaction. If Bob also supplies Alice's public key and signature, it's simple to verify that Alice was definitely the claimer.

Extensions

This example can be extended by Bob also sending a 'Claimed' message to the document Account, with his public key included. Now both Bob and Alice can verify they have copies of the original documents, and on what time/date those copies were notarized.

This can also be further extended by Bob and Alice sending signed messages from their own Accounts, using their Radix Identities, and encrypted using the document's account public key. Now they can also make a simple legal contractual agreement, linked to the notarized document.

Conclusion

While being one of the most basic use cases on Radix, using only seeded accounts and messages, it clearly shows how much easier it's to create such dApps on Radix, by merely using client logic and APIs instead of complex and expensive smart contracts.

In future iterations, we will see how the usage of account ownership, multi-signature accounts, and other tools can be used to improve the constraints allowing features such as ownership transfers and its acceptance by third parties.

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