Blind Notary: Chain of Trust
By Anton Pyrogovskyi • 3 minutes read •
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The ability to trust the authenticity of documents is vital, especially when it comes to signing important agreements. That’s where Blind Notary (repo) comes in, a tool designed to seamlessly blend the strengths of both Web2 and Web3. Blind Notary enables in-band identity, communication, analysis, and signing between the signatories of confidential documents and aims to provide a straightforward, user-friendly experience that ensures privacy, traceability, and secure communication throughout the signing process. Today I would like to briefly cover creating a reliable way for people to trust each other’s digital signatures using something called a chain of trust.
What is a Chain of Trust?
Think of a chain of trust like a series of linked hashes. Each hash represents a fingerprint of a document or message, and they’re all connected in a way that makes it really hard for anyone to mess with them without being noticed.
How Does It Work?
Here’s a simple breakdown of how Blind Notary keeps everything traceable and secure:
Hashing the Message: When you have a document or message that needs a digital signature, we first create a unique “fingerprint” of it using SHA-1 hashing. This fingerprint is called the “message content hash.”
Linking the Messages: To make sure each message is connected to the one before it, we create a “chain of trust hash.” This is done by combining the fingerprint of the last message with the fingerprint of the current one. It looks like this:
Chain of Trust Hash = SHA-1(Last Message Content Hash + Current Message Content Hash)Keeping Everything Honest: By linking documents this way, if someone tries to change anything, it would break the chain and change the hashes of the subsequent messages. This makes it easy to spot any tampering.
Why Does This Matter?
The chain of trust is all about making sure everyone can trust the documents they’re signing and receiving. Here’s why it’s important:
Security: By linking each document to the next, we make sure that the entire history of documents is safe from tampering. This means you can trust that the signatures are genuine.
Trust Between Parties: When you’re negotiating or signing agreements, it’s crucial to know that the other party’s signature is legitimate. Blind Notary helps build that trust.
Easy Verification: If you ever need to check that a document hasn’t been altered, you can quickly verify it by looking at the last hash in the chain of trust.
Wrapping Up
Blind Notary is all about making digital signatures something you can rely on. By using a chain of trust, we ensure that signatures are secure and trustworthy so you can feel confident that the signatures you see are the real deal.
Stay tuned for more updates!