So, abstract theorists may be able to construct secure protocols which do not rely on accurate, reliable timestamps, but even if their proofs are irrefutable, they will also have to admit: it’s easier to implement and understand these things with reliably accurate timestamps.
Reliability implies (and in a distributed open system, requires) security. Shockingly, NTS/NTP wasn’t officially adopted until 2020, but it’s there now and in the spirit of reusing well worn, well proven, widely understood protocols with many reference implementations already available, I’d say that for the initial design sketch of “a world safe for decentralized persona, communities, and anything else” RFC 8915 is a good starting point. RFC 8915 - Network Time Security for the Network Time Protocol
There’s also the more capable, less widely implemented, proposed secure PTP standard: draft-ietf-ntp-nts-for-ptp-00
As with all things in a durable architecture sketch, systems should be developed in a modular fashion wherein NTS, NTS4PTP, and any other suitable protocols may be implemented alternatively or in parallel where appropriate, anything that meets the criteria of reliable/secure suitably accurate timekeeping will do.
So, any node participating in the overall federated infrastructure shall:
- securely maintain an accurate sense of time, to such precision as is appropriate for the functions being performed
- upon demand, as appropriate, provide proof to cooperating nodes of their current time value
- use (dis)provably accurate time in such protocol exchanges as benefit from accurate timestamps
- appropriately ignore, reject or flag as inaccurate any communication or record which is proven to be timestamped inaccurately
It’s a small, but important component of the infrastructure.
Obliquely applicable lyrics:
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
And you run, and you run
To catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around
To come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way
But you’re older
Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation
Is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over
Thought I’d something more to say
- Pink Floyd