<p>It just means that blocks, and consequently block-hashes, are widely distributed among a large community of completely independent entities. In this case, the community of Bitcoin nodes / Bitcoin users.</p>
<p>Any nodes that perform timestamping (mining) have to widely publish the hash in this way in order to be paid for their work.</p>
<p>What helps make the time-stamping immutable is 1) The size, distribution and relative anonymity of this community. 2) The use of a link to a previous block where the link takes the form of a hash of the previous block.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-24T15:52:45.947Z
2022-07-24T15:52:45.947Z
RedGrittyBrick
<p>In section 3.Timestamp Server of the Bitcoin whitepaper it says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The solution we propose begins with a timestamp server. A timestamp
server works by taking a hash of a block of items to be timestamped
and widely publishing the hash, such as in a newspaper or Usenet post</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am confused by the meaning of the sentence in regards to &quot;widely publishing the hash&quot;. I am not sure if the correct way to interpret this is, the seed / genesis block should be widely published or that a function of the server is to repeatedly publish each block that gets timestamped.</p>

<hash><genesis-block><timestamp>
Hash publication - Bitcoin whitepaper Section 3 Timestamp server
user1086516
# Hash publication - Bitcoin whitepaper Section 3 Timestamp server

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-07-24)

In section 3.Timestamp Server of the Bitcoin whitepaper it says:

> The solution we propose begins with a timestamp server. A timestamp
> server works by taking a hash of a block of items to be timestamped
> and widely publishing the hash, such as in a newspaper or Usenet post

I am confused by the meaning of the sentence in regards to "widely publishing the hash". I am not sure if the correct way to interpret this is, the seed / genesis block should be widely published or that a function of the server is to repeatedly publish each block that gets timestamped.

**Tags:** hash, genesis-block, timestamp


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2022-07-24. Score: 0 | Accepted answer

It just means that blocks, and consequently block-hashes, are widely distributed among a large community of completely independent entities. In this case, the community of Bitcoin nodes / Bitcoin users.

Any nodes that perform timestamping (mining) have to widely publish the hash in this way in order to be paid for their work.

What helps make the time-stamping immutable is 1) The size, distribution and relative anonymity of this community. 2) The use of a link to a previous block where the link takes the form of a hash of the previous block.


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