We are excited to announce that anchoring is now available on the Dock network. Anchoring allows users to store a digest of one or more credentials (or any files) on our blockchain, so that they are associated with immutable timestamps and hence can be proven to have been created at a certain point of time. By enabling this feature, we are providing users with an expanded ability to audit the credentials issued and timestamp any documents.
How It Works
Let’s say that a professional association issues credentials to members who have completed a continuing education program. The issuer can use Dock’s anchoring feature to hash (generate digital fingerprints) the credentials that they have created and issued. The hash is unique to the data contained within the file, and is then posted to Dock’s blockchain, creating an “anchor”. The anchor constitutes the credentials’ proof of existence - the information that demonstrates that the credentials, in their original form (as reflected in the hash), existed when the block containing the anchor was created.
Since the hash is stored in our blockchain, this proof of existence is immutable and stored in a decentralized manner. As the credentials themselves do not have to be stored in the blockchain - only their hashes are - their existence can be proven while their contents are kept private. And while the above scenario uses professional credentials as an example, anchoring can be applied to any documents whose existence before a certain point of time needs to be verified.
Our anchoring feature can be accessed through the Dock SDK or the network UI. Both options allow users to anchor a single document at a time, or anchor multiple documents in a batch by forming a Merkle tree. These anchors can then be queried from the blockchain, and their time of posting can be learned.
What’s Remaining on the 2020 Roadmap
We are gearing up to swap the current ERC20 DOCK tokens in favor of our own mainnet tokens. The overview of the migration process, incentives offered to participating token holders, and details on token swap logistics are now available on our blog.
The team is also preparing for the second phase of Dock’s PoA mainnet, in which we will introduce governance to the network. In addition, we are in the process of defining our 2021 roadmap and will be sharing it with our community soon.
