Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta Describe a Cryptographically Secured Chain of Blocks

Publication · North America · Top Moment

A Surety 'Universal Registry Entries' notice circled in red in the classified pages of The New York Times of 19 August 2018 — the weekly published hash chain that has run since 1995 on Haber and Stornetta's scheme. Stuart Haber's conference badge is visible behind the newspaper. Photograph reproduced in 'The First Blockchain, or How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document,' Decentralized Thoughts, 5 July 2020.

A key moment in the development of blockchain technology and, thus, NFTs, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta described a cryptographically secure chain of blocks, presented at CRYPTO ’90 and published in 1991. This moment, along with David Chaum’s 1982 dissertation, essentially introduced the concept of blockchain technology. The research would lay the groundwork for what would eventually become blockchain technology. Haber and Stornetta developed a novel method for timestamping digital documents using a cryptographic hash function. This novel approach resulted in an immutable chain of blocks that maintained the integrity and chronological order of digital records. These ideas have obviously become foundational to any blockchain-based activity, including NFTs.

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.