About Time Stamp

Expression of Time Stamp

For blocks, seals, signatures and etc, mitum uses yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.* +0000 UTC expression and yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.*Z as standard.

All other timezones are not allowed! You must use only +0000 timezone for mitum.

For example,

• When converting timestamp to byte format for generating block/seal/fact_sign hash

convert the string 2021-11-16 01:53:30.518 +0000 UTC to bytes format

• When putting timestamp in block, seal, fact_sign or etc

convert the timestamp to 2021-11-16T01:53:30.518Z and put it in json

To generate operation hash, mitum concatenates byte arrays of network id, fact hash and byte arrays of fact_signs.

And to generate the byte array of a fact_sign, mitum concatenates byte arrays of signer, signature digest and signed_at.

Be careful that the format of signed_at when converted to bytes is like yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.* +0000 UTC but it will be expressed as yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.*Z when putted in json.

How many decimal places to be expressed?

There is one more thing to note.

First at all, you don’t have to care about decimal points of second(ss.*) in timestamp.

Moreover, you can write timestamp without . and any number under ..

However, you should not put any unnecessary zeros(0) in the float expression of second(ss.*) when converting timestamp to bytes format.

For example,

• 2021-11-16T01:53:30.518Z is converted to 2021-11-16 01:53:30.518 +0000 UTC without any change of the time itself.

• 2021-11-16T01:53:30.510Z must be converted to 2021-11-16 01:53:30.51 +0000 UTC when generating hash.

• 2021-11-16T01:53:30.000Z must be converted to 2021-11-16T01:53:30 +0000 UTC when generating hash.

Any timestamp with some unnecessary zeros putted in json doesn’t affect to effectiveness of the block, seal, or operation.

Just pay attention when convert the format.