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What is meant by Notarisation on Blockchain?

"Trust is not acquired by force. Nor can it be achieved through declarations alone. Trust has to be earned with concrete actions and gestures." - John Paul II

Recording and validating information has always been a necessity for human beings since ancient times. The notarisation of a document, an act or simply a declaration is a procedure that is usually entrusted to and carried out by an independent authority that not only registers and preserves the act, but also verifies the information in case of controls or disputes. In Italy, this role is entrusted almost in all cases to notaries, in some cases service providers or certification bodies may guarantee the notarization and verifiability of information.

But what does notarization mean today?

With the arrival of blockchain, the concept of notarization is evolving, making the figure of the notary or auditor even more important. At its base is the possibility of registering any kind of information on distributed registers that allow it to be expressed digitally. These cannot be modified and, depending on the case, can be consulted by anyone.

In 2020, 64.2 Zettabytes of data were created or replicated (about 95% of all data that ever existed until 2000), in 2021 about 79 Zb and we expect to hit the 180 Zb ceiling in 2025. In this ocean of ever-creating and ever-moving data, Blockchain is beginning to play a key role.

Notarisation through this new paradigm becomes a fundamental and official fraud prevention process and assures the parties to a transaction that the data exchanged is authentic and reliable. For the first time in the history of mankind, verification of information can take place without the need for a verification body or auditor, but simply through a few simple steps.

How notarisation works via Blockchain

As already mentioned, the Blockchain is the only technology to date that can provide a tool to independently verify when and by whom a specific piece of information has been declared.

Suppose you received a traceability event expressed through the GS1 EPCIS 2.0 standard and your company communicates to you:

"This information was declared by our systems on Gnosis Chain with public key 0xb51027806df817cfedc0cca55f94bc906077704e on 20/04/2022 at 20:21."

Suppose the traceability event is this:

If this information were shared without certification in the blockchain, there would be no way to verify it:

  • Who declared the information;
  • When the information was declared;

The only option is to trust the company in question and hope that they have not tampered with the data after their declaration or that they have not associated these data with another company.

If this data is instead shared with a Blockchain certification then anyone could have the ability to verify it themselves, on this page you can view the notarisation summary.

But in case we do not trust the information written on the summary page, knowing only the traceability event and the public key that notarised the data, I can check when it was declared and whether it corresponds to the information received.

To do this it will be necessary to introduce two fundamental concepts:

  • Hash
  • Blockchain Explorer

Hash: what it is and how to calculate it

When we talk about blockchain, we also and above all talk about 'hash'. The hash is a particular cryptographic function that, given an input, returns an output consisting of a series of numbers and letters of fixed length that are closely related to the input data. These functions are based on the fundamental principle that it is impossible to find a different input data that returns me the same output hash. Put simply, if I insert a piece of data into a hash function, I get a series of letters and numbers that I cannot get by inserting another piece of input data.

In our example we will use a public SHA256 function through an online tool:

Please note: If you want to check this yourself before pasting the trace event into the tool that calculates the hash, you must first remove all spaces and underscores, you can do this very quickly using the following online tool.

Blockchain Explorer: what it is and how to use it

One of the pillars of the blockchain is the so-called Blockchain Explorer.

Blockchain Explorers are services, typically free of charge, that allow you to view all transactions and filter data through queries looking for information on Public Keys, Smart Contracts, Tokens etc. There are several Blockchain Explorers and typically there are more than one for the same Public Blockchain. There are several Blockchain Explorers and typically more than one for the same Public Blockchain. In fact, many companies offer the explorer as a service to increase the transparency of their platforms.

The Gnosis Chain Blockchain Explorer can be reached from the following address. Once inside the portal you can search for all transactions made by the reported public key(direct link here)

From here it will be possible to identify by means of the timestamp the transaction on which the information was recorded (i.e. the GS1 EPCIS event).

How to verify Hash

Through the transaction page on the Blockchain Explorer(link here), it is possible to view all the information associated with the transaction, such as when the transaction was made and what data was exchanged. From here I can see how well the data on the date and time of the transaction matches up with what was shared:

From this second screen, also present on the transaction page, it is possible to check whether the hash, and consequently the information, is the same as that declared on the shared date:

From this second screen, also present on the transaction page, it is possible to check whether the hash, and consequently the information, is the same as that declared on the shared date:

The hash matched the one we had calculated and the one on the summary page. Through these operations we then verified the following statement: "This information was declared by our systems on Gnosis Chain with public key 0xb51027806df817cfedc0cca55f94bc906077704e on 20/04/2022 at 20:21".

Data traceability

Through the practical example we have seen how it is possible to share data giving anyone the possibility to check who made the declaration and when it was made.

When we receive data, be it a report or for example sensor measurements related to agriculture or Industry 4.0, we must always trust that that data has not been tampered with after it has been declared. For example, although there is a lot of talk about traceability in agribusiness, this is a concept that can be applied to any process that produces a result whose history or origins we want to preserve. As you can imagine, this definition does not only cover physical processes, but thanks to the spread of the internet and the enormous possibility of sharing it, the concept can also be applied to digital data or the results of calculations or algorithms.

To implement 🖐 Trusty in your company. contact us here.

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