An alternative to WIPO Proof
By BlockchainSignLast updated
WIPO Proof no longer exists. The World Intellectual Property Organization stopped issuing tokens on 31 January 2022 after concluding the service had not found enough demand. If you are here because you used it, this page covers what your old tokens are still worth and what to use instead.
What happened
WIPO launched WIPO Proof in 2020 as a digital timestamping service: submit a file, receive a tamper-evident token proving the file existed at that moment. It was attractive for one obvious reason — it came from WIPO, the UN agency that administers international IP treaties. Institutional weight is hard to manufacture, and WIPO had it by default.
In September 2021, following a review as part of its planning and budget exercise, WIPO decided to discontinue the service. Token generation ended on 31 January 2022. The stated reason was lack of demand; commentary at the time also pointed to the number of private-sector alternatives that had appeared.
What your existing tokens are worth
Two things are true and worth separating.
Your old tokens are still valid. A WIPO Proof token is a cryptographic artefact, not a subscription. WIPO's own guidance is that tokens remain valid indefinitely and can be verified using equivalent timestamping platforms or standard open-source utilities. Nothing about the shutdown invalidates a token you already hold.
But you cannot make new ones, and the dashboard has an end date. WIPO committed to five years of continuity for existing account holders — dashboard access, verification, premium certificate generation, provided free of charge. Counting from the January 2022 cutoff, that window closes around January 2027.
If you have tokens in a WIPO Proof account, the sensible move is to export everything — tokens, certificates, and the original files they cover — and store them somewhere you control, before you have to think about it under pressure.
What to replace it with
| WIPO Proof | BlockchainSign | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Discontinued January 2022 | Active |
| New timestamps | Not possible | Yes |
| Who vouches for it | WIPO, as an institution | A public blockchain, as a record |
| Verification depends on | The issuer's infrastructure | An Ethereum transaction anyone can read |
| If the provider stops | You are reading that page now | Certificates still verify |
| Your file | Hashed, hash submitted | Hashed in your browser, hash submitted |
| Cost | Per token | $3.00–$9.99 per certificate |
The shutdown carries a lesson worth taking seriously when you pick a replacement: an institution's reputation does not survive its budget review. WIPO Proof's value came from WIPO vouching for it, so when WIPO stopped, the ongoing service stopped with it.
A blockchain timestamp is structured the other way round. The proof is a transaction in a public ledger that no single organisation operates. We write your payload hash into the input data of its own Ethereum transaction, so it is readable on Etherscan with "View as UTF-8" by anyone, forever, with no client software and no account. If this company shut down tomorrow — the exact thing that happened to WIPO Proof — your certificate would still verify.
An honest note on institutional weight
We cannot replace what WIPO gave you in credibility. A UN agency's name on a certificate carries weight with a judge, an examiner or a counterparty that a startup's does not, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
What a blockchain timestamp offers instead is that the verification does not rest on anyone's reputation at all. The transaction is either in the ledger or it is not, and anyone can check which. Different kind of trust, arrived at from the opposite direction.
If institutional backing is what you specifically need, look at national options — France's e-Soleau at INPI is a state-run equivalent — and note that they generally require you to deposit the file itself.
What neither ever proved
WIPO Proof, like every timestamping service, proved that a file existed at a time and had not changed. It did not prove who created it, and it did not create any right. That has not changed with the technology: see proof of existence vs proof of authorship.