Ethereum just turned 10. But before Ethereum, another protocol called TLSNotary was using cryptography to increase trust on the internet, to make the internet more peer-to-peer, censorship resistant, and verifiable.

In 2013, the internet was very different from today. Bitcoin was one of the most exciting and revolutionary ideas around. It wasn’t strictly a financial asset or “digital gold.” It was more open-ended. A potential gateway for other cryptographically enabled tools. This context formed the original motivation for TLSNotary, which was to build a mechanism to help free “Bitcoin from the harassment of the banks.” (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=173220.0)

TLSNotary aimed to do this by leveraging the same cryptographic protocol that secures the modern internet: TLS. It grew up alongside the web, working in parallel with the technology that powers most of today’s online activity.

This blog post contains the instructions for the TLSNotary workshop we present at DefCon 2025. The workshop aims to introduce participants to TLSNotary, covering its use in both native Rust and browser environments.

We are publishing these instructions beforehand so you can prepare (see Pre-Workshop Setup), and they are also very useful for people who can't attend in person.

This blog post contains the instructions for the TLSNotary workshop we presented at DevCon 2024. The workshop aimed to introduce participants to TLSNotary, covering its use in both native Rust and browser environments.

TLSNotary is a protocol which allows people to export data from any web application and prove facts about it to a third-party in a privacy preserving way.