height 23745 of 23745 on the network. 9 peer(s) connected, 77 in its peer directory; 1041 block(s) followed and 865 pulled in by sync since this follower started. Caught up: this follower holds every block any peer has claimed, so every panel below is the whole chain. Genesis 1cf8655125cc1bbb…, producers genesis.
What this follower is, locally
Following 7 seed(s) — their addresses are not published here, for the reason the peer table gives. Its store is held under its own Cerberus lease — no other node’s store is opened, touched or stopped.
How a GodCypher timestamp works
A GodCypher timestamp fixes one earthquake in time from several directions at once: the observatories that located it, the national time laboratories, Roughtime signatures, GodCypher’s counter-validator over a USGS earthquake window, and a three-party envelope that keeps the raw evidence. This page is the whole of the logic.
The three-party envelope
Who the parties are. The printer is the host that made the timestamp. The archive keeps the record. The witness is the independent third. The archive and witness keys are held privately.
A hybrid encapsulation to each. Each party has a key for ML-KEM-768 combined with X25519, and the envelope encapsulates a fresh shared secret to each of the three. Breaking one party’s share needs both the lattice scheme and the elliptic curve broken.
One key from all three. HKDF-SHA-256 derives the AES-256 key from the three shared secrets together. Its info input is a SHA-256 commitment over the version, the suite, every party id, every party public key and all three ciphertexts. Binding the ciphertexts means a substituted encapsulation cannot derive the same key; binding the public keys means the key belongs to these three key holders, not to anyone who presents their ids.
AES-256-GCM, with the parties as additional data. The version and the three ids are authenticated with the ciphertext, so an envelope cannot be re-attributed to other parties.
All three or nothing. Opening needs every party’s secret key. Any one alone, or any two together, recover nothing: the missing shared secret is a whole key’s worth of unknown.
Why post-quantum here. Ciphertext can be recorded today and decrypted the day a large quantum computer exists. A signature only has to hold until it is checked; a sealed secret has to hold for as long as it is kept. So the envelope that holds the raw evidence is the hybrid one.
What is sealed. The raw evidence behind one timestamp: every observatory’s whole answer, every national laboratory’s SNTP packet as it came off the wire, every Roughtime response, and the countersign’s mix salt. The record publishes what was concluded from them; the envelope keeps what they said.
The Urdarbrunn counter-validator
What is countersigned. For a timestamp, its record digest. Urdarbrunn, GodCypher’s counter-validator, signs that digest together with the digest of a USGS earthquake window, with the printer’s hybrid key (Ed25519 and ML-DSA-65). Over a block, the same counter-validator signs a fold of every cryptographic commitment the block carries.
The beacon. A SHA-256 over one published USGS feed window: its address, the time USGS says it published it, and every earthquake in it by id, origin time, magnitude, latitude, longitude and depth at a fixed rounding. The window that holds this earthquake is used when there is one: the hour feed if it carries the quake and enough earthquakes, otherwise the day feed.
Why it proves non-antedating, and from which moment. A digest that commits to an earthquake cannot be computed before that earthquake happens, so the countersign could not exist before the earthquakes in its window. The feeds roll: almost every earthquake in a window was already public in the window before it, so the moment USGS published the window is shown as “published by” and never as a proven bound.
The eight-newest rule. Both routes use the same rule: the bound is the oldest of the eight newest earthquakes in the window (on the catalogue route, of the eight newest matched, less the five-second tolerance), so it never rests on one earthquake and moving it later would take eight guessed at once. That makes an honest bound looser by design than the newest earthquake, typically by tens of minutes in a busy day window.
Why it is not an upper bound. Nothing in the countersign says how late it was made. The upper bound comes from elsewhere: the Roughtime servers that signed the digest, the national laboratories that judged the printer’s clock, and the chain anchor once one is submitted.
The independent re-fetch. A verifier fetches the window itself; it never takes the printer’s copy on trust. The live feed keeps no archive and moves on about once a minute, so after that the verifier reads every earthquake of the window from the permanent USGS catalogue instead. Every earthquake the catalogue holds must match the hashed values within its revision tolerance, or nothing is confirmed; a withdrawn one is not counted; a repeated id is refused. The bound is then the catalogue’s own origin of the oldest of the newest eight matched earthquakes, less the five-second tolerance, so that moving it later would take eight earthquakes guessed before they happened. A verifier that reaches neither the feed nor the catalogue says so, and does not pass.
| Outcome | When |
|---|---|
| confirmed | The signature verifies over this timestamp’s digest and this window, and the verifier’s own re-fetch reproduces it: the live feed while it still serves the window, or the permanent USGS catalogue, where every earthquake it holds must match the hashed values within the revision tolerance. On both routes the bound is the oldest of the eight newest earthquakes (on the catalogue route, of the eight newest matched, less five seconds). |
| refuted: signature | The countersign does not verify under the key it names, or it names a key other than the printer that sealed the timestamp. |
| refuted: subject | The countersign is over another digest. A countersign cannot be moved from one timestamp onto another. |
| refuted: window | The window digest does not recompute from the earthquakes the countersign publishes, it repeats an event id, a re-fetch of the same window disagrees, or the catalogue positively holds no such earthquake. |
| refuted: self-contradicting date | The countersign’s own dates cannot all be true: it claims to be made before its window, the window claims publication before its own newest earthquake, or a date is later than the verifier’s clock. This catches only a proof that contradicts itself. A printer with an honest clock that countersigns late is not caught, and needs no catching: a late countersign only weakens its own bound. |
| not confirmed: not re-fetched | The offline checks pass, but nobody re-fetched the window. Never reported as a pass. |
| not confirmed: unreachable | Neither the feed nor the catalogue could be read. The verifier says so rather than passing. |
| not confirmed: thin window | The window holds too few earthquakes to be unpredictable, or fewer than eight match the catalogue, so the lower bound is not established. |
| not confirmed: beyond tolerance | The catalogue holds one of the window’s earthquakes with values beyond the revision tolerance. It is not dropped: the window is not the one USGS published, and nothing is confirmed. |
| flagged: stale window | The window’s newest earthquake is older than the timestamp’s own, or the window is hours older than the record. Not a failure: the bound it gives is real and weaker, and the verifier says so. |
| not countersigned | The feed could not be read when the timestamp was made. The record carries the reason; the timestamp is still made. |
How the layers combine
| Layer | What it is | What it bounds or proves |
|---|---|---|
| The observatories | At least two independent location solutions of the same earthquake, from USGS, EMSC, GFZ GEOFON, INGV and GeoNet. | No earlier than the earthquake. |
| The national laboratories | SNTP readings of the printer’s clock against national time laboratories when the record was made. | How far the record’s own time can be from UTC. Unsigned. |
| The seal | An Aegis Gemini signature, Ed25519 and ML-DSA-65, by the printer, over the digest. | Who made exactly this record. |
| Roughtime | Signed times from Roughtime servers whose nonce is derived from the digest. | No later than the signed time, on each server’s word. |
| Urdarbrunn | The GodCypher countersign over the digest and a USGS window. | No earlier than the eighth-newest earthquake in the window, on both routes. A lower bound only. |
| The sealed evidence | The raw answers behind the record, sealed three-of-three. | Kept, and openable only by all three parties together. |
| The chain anchor | A transaction carrying the digest, once submitted. | No later than the block. Not submitted yet. |
Each layer is checked on its own and reported on its own: one layer’s pass never stands in for another’s. A GodCypher timestamp is a timestamp anyone can re-check. It is not a legal instrument and claims no legal standing.
What runs today, and what is a library
| Part | Today |
|---|---|
| The Urdarbrunn countersign on each timestamp | Runs on every timestamp the poller makes, whenever a USGS window can be read. |
| The raw evidence sealed to three parties | Runs on the printing host once the three party keys are configured there. Until then each timestamp says “not sealed: GodCypher parties not configured”. |
| Opening sealed evidence | A command. It needs the printer’s, the archive’s and the witness’s secret keys together. |
| Re-fetching a countersign window | Runs when a verifier asks: node scripts/jord.mjs verify with --refetch. |
| Urdarbrunn over a block | A command (strblk countersign). No block carries a proof. |
| The classical three-secret GodCypher provider | A library. Nothing calls it. |
| The chain anchor of a timestamp | Built and not submitted. Every anchor is pending. |
| Consensus | Nothing. No block reads a timestamp, a countersign or a sealed bundle, and a node that never saw one is correct. |