Economic Primitive
Markovian Protocol / Bitcoin Timestamping

OpenTimestamps Live

OpenTimestamps is the open standard for trustless Bitcoin timestamping, maintained by Peter Todd. Markovian does not compete with it, Markovian consumes it. Every COMMIT root is submitted to the public OTS calendars and carries a standard .ots proof, so "Bitcoin-anchored" stops being a claim about the Markovian chain and becomes an artifact anyone can verify against Bitcoin itself, with no trust in Markovian.

COMMIT roots, anchored through OpenTimestamps

A COMMIT produces a Merkle root. Markovian submits the raw root to the public OTS calendars, which batch it into a Merkle tree and write a single root to Bitcoin. The returned proof links the COMMIT root through that tree to a Bitcoin block. Only the hash is ever sent, never the data.

// Markovian submits a COMMIT's merkle_root to the public OTS calendars stamp(merkle_root) // alice, bob, finney, catallaxy // each calendar batches it into a Merkle tree and writes ONE root to Bitcoin. // a .ots proof links: your root -> aggregated tree -> Bitcoin block. // anyone verifies against Bitcoin, no calendar, no Markovian, no trust ots verify <merkle_root>.ots

Provenance, not truth

An OpenTimestamps proof establishes that data existed before a Bitcoin block time. It commits to a hash and nothing more. It makes no claim about whether the data is correct, which is exactly the Markovian claim. Provenance, not truth, holds on both layers.

The OTS proof is a second, independent witness sitting beside the Markovian chain record. The two anchors are adversary-disjoint: an OTS proof can be replayed against Bitcoin L1 with stock tooling even if Markovian is offline.

A real proof, verifiable against Bitcoin

The record below is a real COMMIT root submitted to all four public OTS calendars. The .ots downloads straight from the public verifier and checks with the unmodified ots client. The Bitcoin attestation attaches at the next calendar aggregation block; the proof upgrades automatically.

OpenTimestamps Proof, Bitcoin Mainnet
anchorBitcoin mainnet (OP_RETURN, Merkle-aggregated)
calendarsalice.btc · bob.btc (opentimestamps.org) · finney (eternitywall) · catallaxy
commit merkle_rootab1f55694ab6078fcccc6526ef401d7596b446029d04d69a53d6fb4a146e0c61
verify commandots verify ab1f5569....ots
statuscalendars committed bitcoin attestation upgrading

Why Markovian stands on OpenTimestamps

OpenTimestamps already does Bitcoin timestamping for free, accountless, with a decade of trust behind it. Competing with it would be a losing fight. Consuming it borrows Bitcoin's neutrality and that established trust, and lets Markovian add what OTS does not carry: a BN128 Pedersen ZK commitment, the canonical markovian-provenance/v1 record, and native interop with the other doors, W3C VC, A2A, MCP, ERC-8004, and C2PA.

The same COMMIT, two anchors: the Markovian chain for the structured record and the doors, OpenTimestamps for a stock-verifiable Bitcoin proof.

Check it without trusting this page

Download the .ots and run the unmodified OpenTimestamps client against Bitcoin. The public verifier returns the provenance record behind the same root, with no account and no dependency on this site.