This package provides the otsd daemon, a calendar server which provides
aggregation, Bitcoin timestamping, and remote calendar services for
OpenTimestamps clients. You do not need to run a server to use the
OpenTimestamps protocol - public servers exist that are free to use. That said,
running a server locally can be useful for developers of OpenTimestamps
protocol clients, particularly with a local Bitcoin node running in regtest
mode.
You'll need a local Bitcoin node with a wallet with some funds in it; a pruned
node is fine. While otsd is running the wallet should not be used for other
purposes, as currently the Bitcoin timestamping functionality assumes that it
has exclusive use of the wallet.
Install the requirements:
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
Create the calendar:
mkdir -p ~/.otsd/calendar/
echo "http://127.0.0.1:14788" > ~/.otsd/calendar/uri
dd if=/dev/random of=~/.otsd/calendar/hmac-key bs=32 count=1
The URI determines what is put into the URI field of pending attestations returned by this calendar server. For a server used for testing, the above is fine; for production usage the URI should be set to a stable URL that OpenTimestamps clients will be able to access indefinitely.
The HMAC key should be kept secret; it's meant to allow for last-ditch calendar recovery from untrusted sources, although only part of the functionality is implemented. See the source code for more details!
To actually run the server, run the otsd program. Proper daemonization isn't
implemented yet, so otsd runs in the foreground. To run in testnet or
regtest, use the --btc-testnet or --btc-regtest options. The OpenTimestamps
protocol does not distinguish between mainnet, testnet, and regtest, so make
sure you don't mix them up!
To use your calendar server, tell your OpenTimestamps client to connect to it:
ots stamp -c http://127.0.0.1:14788 -m 1 FILE
OpenTimestamps clients have a whitelist of calendars they'll connect to automatically; you'll need to manually add your new server to that whitelist to use it when upgrading or verifying:
ots -l http://127.0.0.1:14788 upgrade FILE.ots
If your server is running on testnet or regtest, make sure to tell your client what chain to use when verifying. For example, regtest:
ots --btc-regtest -l http://127.0.0.1:14788 upgrade FILE.ots
Tip: with regtest you can mine blocks on demand to make your timestamp confirm
with the generate RPC command. For example, to mine ten blocks instantly:
bitcoin-cli generate 10
By default otsd binds to localhost, and isn't really designed to be exposed
directly to the public. For production usage we recommend using a reverse
proxy; an example configuration for nginx is provided under the
contrib/nginx directory of this repo.
python3 -m unittest discover -v