Getting started with Photon.
Photon gives your files a tamper-proof timestamp. Drop in an assignment, essay, lab report, or any file you want to prove you had on a certain day — Photon records that moment in a way that cannot later be changed or backdated, by you or anyone else.
How to use Photon
Frequently asked questions
How is my data protected?
Your files are stored privately in your Photon account. They are never put onto the blockchain, never shared with other users, and never made public. Only you (and a super-admin at Photon, for support purposes) can see them. They are encrypted in transit and at rest in Google Cloud Storage.
The only thing Photon ever publishes is a fingerprint of your file — a short code derived from the file's contents. That fingerprint is mathematically one-way: it cannot be reversed to recover your file, your filename, or anything about what the file contains.
What is a blockchain?
A blockchain is a public ledger — like a shared notebook that thousands of computers around the world keep identical copies of. Every few minutes, a new page is added. Once a page is added, it can't be changed, because everyone already has a copy of the old version.
That property — once it's written, it's written forever — is what makes a blockchain useful for timestamping. If we put a tiny record into page 840,000, and that page was added on 22 April 2026 at 3:15 pm, then anyone, forever after, can verify that the record existed by that moment.
What does Photon actually do to store an immutable record?
When you stamp a file, Photon does this:
1. It calculates a SHA-256 hash of your file. This is a 64-character fingerprint. Change a single comma in the file and the fingerprint looks completely different. Two different files will never (in practice) produce the same fingerprint.
2. Photon batches your fingerprint together with many other people's fingerprints and combines them into one summary fingerprint (called a Merkle root). This is how Photon can stamp thousands of files without cluttering up the blockchain.
3. That summary fingerprint is published into a Bitcoin transaction. Once the transaction is confirmed in a block, the fingerprint of your file is, through that summary, locked into the blockchain forever.
4. Photon gives you a small proof file (with the extension .ots) that records exactly how your file's fingerprint connects to that Bitcoin block. You can hand that proof file to anyone — a lecturer, a court, a reviewer — and they can verify independently, without trusting Photon at all.
What does this have to do with Bitcoin? Do I need cryptocurrency?
No — you do not need any cryptocurrency, wallet, or account of any kind on Bitcoin to use Photon. You never buy or hold Bitcoin. You never pay in Bitcoin. Photon is not a cryptocurrency product.
Photon uses the Bitcoin blockchain purely as a trusted, worldwide, can't-be-rewritten notice board for timestamps. Bitcoin happens to be the most secure and widely-verified public ledger on Earth, which is exactly the property we need to prove "this existed at this moment". Photon pays the tiny transaction fee on your behalf and batches many stamps together to keep the cost near zero.
From your perspective: you upload a file, you get a timestamp you can later prove. The Bitcoin part is plumbing.
Can someone find my file on the blockchain?
No. Your file is not on the blockchain — only a fingerprint is, and the fingerprint is one-way: nobody can work backwards from it to your file. Your file stays on Photon's private storage, visible only to you.
Even if someone had your fingerprint, they couldn't discover your filename, your file's contents, who uploaded it, or anything else. The fingerprint only becomes meaningful if someone already has a copy of the original file and wants to check whether it matches.
Why would a student use this?
The main use is proof of when you wrote something. If you finish your essay on Monday night, stamp it with Photon, and a week later your work is questioned — maybe a classmate's suspiciously similar draft surfaces — you have independent, cryptographic evidence that your version existed on Monday night at that exact time. No screenshots, no "file created" metadata that can be edited, no trusting a particular cloud provider's timestamp.
Other common uses: lab notebooks, code submissions, creative work, research drafts, sensitive correspondence.
How long does stamping take?
Your file shows up immediately with a "pending" status. The full Bitcoin confirmation typically takes one to three hours, because Photon waits for the next batch to be published and then waits for the Bitcoin network to include it in a block. This delay does not affect the timestamp itself — the stamp proves the file existed when you uploaded it, not when Bitcoin confirmed it.
What happens if I delete my file?
Deleting the file removes it from Photon's storage. The stamp record (the fingerprint and the Bitcoin proof) is kept so that if you still have the original file on your own computer, you can always re-verify it. Without the original file, the stamp on its own is not useful — it's evidence about a file, not a copy of it.
Is Photon free?
Yes — the free plan includes a generous amount of storage and stamps, which is plenty for a typical student's coursework. Paid and institution plans are for heavier use and organisations that want to manage many accounts together.