Disclaimer
Is this plugin open source? Yes — GPL-3.0
Is this plugin completely free? Yes — sealing, anchoring and verification are free and unlimited (optional paid cloud preservation of originals exists)
Is this plugin vibe-coded beyond the author’s ability to comprehend how it works? No
Community Directory: nanalStamp
Hi everyone — I built a plugin for people whose notes may one day need to be proven: research logs, invention records, lab notebooks, journals.
Years from now, when a patent attorney, an auditor, or a data-integrity inquiry asks “prove this existed on that date” — the modification time on your own disk is not evidence. A stamp in that day’s public records is.
nanalStamp seals your notes with tamper-evident timestamps, dual-anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain and an RFC 3161 trusted timestamp authority. It seals automatically as you write, and sealing, anchoring and verification are free, unlimited, forever (sealing needs a free account — just an email; verification needs nothing at all).
Privacy first — here is exactly what leaves your device, and what never does:
| Free | Paid | |
|---|---|---|
| Your note text | Never uploaded | Encrypted on your device, then preserved in WORM cloud storage |
| File & folder names | Hashed only — never readable | Hashed only — never readable |
| What the proof uses | SHA-256 hashes, nothing else | SHA-256 hashes, nothing else |
| Where originals live | Local git archive — every sealed version, automatic | Local git archive + WORM (write-once, read-many) cloud — nobody, including us, can alter or delete it; deleting your account destroys the key (crypto-shredding) |
| Analytics / telemetry | None | None |
A timestamp only proves that something existed — the preserved original is what shows what existed. That’s why every sealed version is archived locally even on the free plan. The README lists every host the plugin can contact and when; the source is public (GPL-3.0), every release is built from the tagged source, and I verify the published bytes match a local build — you can diff them yourself.
Two proofs, not one:
| Proof | The question it answers | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Existence | “Did this content exist at that time?” | The note’s SHA-256, anchored into that day’s Bitcoin block (OpenTimestamps) and an RFC 3161 trusted timestamp — two independent roots of trust |
| Continuity | “Was this really written day after day — or assembled last night?” | An unbroken hash chain: every entry commits to the previous one, and each day’s state is anchored into that day’s block |
The second proof is the one examiners and auditors actually probe — and it’s why you can only start building it today, never retroactively.
How the continuity proof works:
Think of it as the dated-and-witnessed paper lab notebook, rebuilt for Obsidian — except the witness is a public record no one controls. Every entry commits to the one before it: insert, remove or reorder anything, and every hash after it breaks. And an anchor cannot be placed into a block that was already mined — so a “six months of lab work” history cannot be minted overnight.
Here’s what it looks like on a real note — both anchors, and the version history:
Anchoring runs daily: the RFC 3161 timestamp confirms right at anchoring; the Bitcoin anchor confirms a few hours later. And to be precise about what this proves: existence and continuity — not authorship, and not that the work itself is correct.
Already running an ELN or lab-notebook vault? Keep it.
nanalStamp imposes no structure. If you’ve built your workflow on community ELN vaults, Templater, Dataview dashboards, or a Zettelkasten, keep all of it — the plugin sits underneath and seals your notes as you write, whatever they look like. Your templates stay yours; we just add the proof and the preservation.
For teams and corporate research labs:
Team plans add, on top of everything above:
- One team evidence chain — every member’s sealed notes under a single, auditable history
- A shared work inbox inside Obsidian — assign work, reply, read receipts
- Research-project evidence mapping and auto-issued monthly digest reports, archived in WORM storage
One honest scope note: the work inbox is collaboration data — task titles and statuses are shared with your team through the service, like in any task tool. Your note content still never travels as anything but hashes (plus the optional encrypted originals).
“Prove our lab did this work, continuously, across the whole team” becomes a report you download, not an archaeology project.
Verification doesn’t require trusting me. Sealing does require the service — that’s who chains and countersigns your fingerprints day after day — but verification never does. Every proof checks out with standard open-source tools — sha256sum, any OpenTimestamps client, openssl ts -verify — or a downloadable verifier. If nanalStamp disappeared tomorrow, your proofs would still verify.
Free vs paid:
| Free | Lite | Pro | Max | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (yearly) | $0 | $9.90 | $21 | $35 |
| Sealing · dual anchoring · verification | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Local git archive of originals |  |
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| Encrypted WORM cloud storage | — | 1 GB | 10 GB | 30 GB |
| Max size per attachment | 25 MB | 100 MB | 200 MB | 300 MB |
| PDF certificates · submission packages | — | |
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What those last two are: a PDF certificate is a human-readable certificate of one note’s proof (what existed, since when, anchored where). A submission package is a single zip bundling the originals, the full proof chain and a standalone verifier — made to hand to an auditor, a patent attorney or a court, and checkable without us.
Team plans: $45/yr + $25/yr per seat (minimum 3 seats). All payment happens on the website — nothing inside Obsidian. International cards, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported.
Getting started (about 2 minutes):
- Install nanalStamp from Community plugins — desktop only for now (the local archive needs filesystem access; mobile is planned)
- Create a free account in the plugin settings and pick the folders you want sealed
- Just write. Notes seal automatically as they settle, and each day’s seals are anchored that same day — RFC 3161 immediately, Bitcoin within hours
Links:
- Community plugin: search “nanalStamp” (or
proof/timestamp) in Community plugins - Store page: nanalStamp - Obsidian Plugin
- Source: GitHub - hskwak82/nanalstamp-obsidian: nanalStamp — Obsidian research-note sealing & tamper-evidence plugin · GitHub (GPL-3.0)
- Site: https://nanalstamp.com
The one thing this system cannot do is go back in time. Day 1 of your chain is today — or never.
I’d love feedback, especially on the first-run experience. If anything about the privacy model is unclear, ask me anything — that part is the whole point.