Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?(blog.mollywhite.net)
blog.mollywhite.net
Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?
https://blog.mollywhite.net/is-acceptably-non-dystopian-self-sovereign-identity-even-possible/
287 comments
Even without considering the social benefits of trust, from an economic perspective, trust is often enormously, ridiculously efficient compared to distrust. If I need to borrow my neighbor's weed whacker, I don't need to determine its value (plus interest and opportunity cost) and write up a contract and register collateral on the world's slowest and least efficient database, I can just say, hey, mind if I borrow this? Trust and reputation are force multipliers.
Trust is an ideal to strive towards but the unfortunate case is that its reliability quickly starts to strain with scale. I'd argue the economy at large is held together not by trust but by reputation, curation, regulation and threat of lawsuits and jail time. With the last concentrating trust in legal institutions, overall reducing trust burden.
In many countries, the richest companies operate unethically, with impunity because the legal system is in the pocket of a corrupt few in power. In such countries trust in institutions is nonexistent. In developed economies, regulatory capture still leads to inequities and gross inefficiencies.
Today on the internet, reviews and product search results can no longer be trusted. For a very long while, buying from a large class of products on Amazon was a gamble. A breakdown in reputation and curation.
Computing environments were originally high trust, a property they could not retain at scale. Encryption, https everywhere, anti-ad tracking, secure VMs, gated app stores, "Don't trust the client" designs, onion routers, anti binary blobs are technologies and principles which reduce the need for trust. Technologies like DRM, copy protection rootkits and Trusted Computing are corporations communicating their lack of trust in humans inhumanly.
There's always some minimal amount of trust necessary. The optimal minimum generally decreases with scale. Hawala might seem an exception but closer inspection shows it depends on shared belief systems, local interactions on reputation networks and honor; memes which reduce trust burden at scale.
I'd also argue bitcoin isn't about trust but about issues which arise with open permissions and no centralized enforcement mechanism. Its throughput issues addressed by "layer 2" solutions, as decentralized credit networks (from a dispute and authority perspective), actually have fair overlap with honor based informal money transfer systems but without the centuries to have ironed out issues.
In many countries, the richest companies operate unethically, with impunity because the legal system is in the pocket of a corrupt few in power. In such countries trust in institutions is nonexistent. In developed economies, regulatory capture still leads to inequities and gross inefficiencies.
Today on the internet, reviews and product search results can no longer be trusted. For a very long while, buying from a large class of products on Amazon was a gamble. A breakdown in reputation and curation.
Computing environments were originally high trust, a property they could not retain at scale. Encryption, https everywhere, anti-ad tracking, secure VMs, gated app stores, "Don't trust the client" designs, onion routers, anti binary blobs are technologies and principles which reduce the need for trust. Technologies like DRM, copy protection rootkits and Trusted Computing are corporations communicating their lack of trust in humans inhumanly.
There's always some minimal amount of trust necessary. The optimal minimum generally decreases with scale. Hawala might seem an exception but closer inspection shows it depends on shared belief systems, local interactions on reputation networks and honor; memes which reduce trust burden at scale.
I'd also argue bitcoin isn't about trust but about issues which arise with open permissions and no centralized enforcement mechanism. Its throughput issues addressed by "layer 2" solutions, as decentralized credit networks (from a dispute and authority perspective), actually have fair overlap with honor based informal money transfer systems but without the centuries to have ironed out issues.
Then the solution is clearly to reduce scale where possible.
Many of the things that scale is being forced into don't actually increase their net benefit to the people with scale (usually it is the opposite when you consider the requisite slavery/coups/wars/etc. to provide the infrastructure and labour), merely the amount that can be extracted by some centralized entity.
Many of the things that scale is being forced into don't actually increase their net benefit to the people with scale (usually it is the opposite when you consider the requisite slavery/coups/wars/etc. to provide the infrastructure and labour), merely the amount that can be extracted by some centralized entity.
Now, let's say that you have a car that you'd like to put in a "social car-sharing app." Those participating get an opportunity to make some money, those without cars would benefit from having an increased supply, and your city would benefit because that would mean that the increased utilization of the car fleet would lead to less parking spaces being needed.
Question: how would you do that without rent-extracting middlemen? And even if you are willing to accept a middlemen, why do you think this type of service is not available today? Assume that all the legal barriers for it could be removed - your insurance policy gives you exemption to this and you can have a standard contract defining what would happen in case someone driving your car got involved in an accident, or if you car got stolen by a driver, etc.
If you think that doing that with a car is too complicated, or if you are a cycling advocate: same thing, but for bikes.
Just to make my point explicit: the idea of "trustlessness" is not to get rid of the "trust" in the existing activities that can be handled at the local/"human" scale. The idea is to be able to enable these kind of activities at the higher levels that the institutions (formal or informal) can not cover. If there are things that we can do without a blockchain, great! But think of all the applications that can not be done at all today just because we don't have the tools to enforce the "rules" at a larger scale.
Question: how would you do that without rent-extracting middlemen? And even if you are willing to accept a middlemen, why do you think this type of service is not available today? Assume that all the legal barriers for it could be removed - your insurance policy gives you exemption to this and you can have a standard contract defining what would happen in case someone driving your car got involved in an accident, or if you car got stolen by a driver, etc.
If you think that doing that with a car is too complicated, or if you are a cycling advocate: same thing, but for bikes.
Just to make my point explicit: the idea of "trustlessness" is not to get rid of the "trust" in the existing activities that can be handled at the local/"human" scale. The idea is to be able to enable these kind of activities at the higher levels that the institutions (formal or informal) can not cover. If there are things that we can do without a blockchain, great! But think of all the applications that can not be done at all today just because we don't have the tools to enforce the "rules" at a larger scale.
How do you deal with a dispute about a messy car? Or if the car pickup had no gas? Or a disputed theft of personal possessions?
Middleman add value by dealing with edge cases and aggregating trust. They aren’t pure rent extractors.
We had hyper well defined ride sharing system with clear rules unbiased rules, high anonymity, focused on individual providers prior to Uber and Lyft- Taxis. People hated it, as it was rife with little abuses. Uber, Lyft, and similar provide a ton of value by brokering trust between the provider and rider.
Middleman add value by dealing with edge cases and aggregating trust. They aren’t pure rent extractors.
We had hyper well defined ride sharing system with clear rules unbiased rules, high anonymity, focused on individual providers prior to Uber and Lyft- Taxis. People hated it, as it was rife with little abuses. Uber, Lyft, and similar provide a ton of value by brokering trust between the provider and rider.
Up until 4 years ago, there was no practical way to have a money exchange without a middleman. Today we have all the Uniswap-style decentralized exchange who makes more transaction volume than all of the other centralized exchanges, and do it without wash trading, and no operator can steal or embezzle the funds.
To get this, all it was needed was to have a protocol, namely the Automatic Market Maker system popularized by Uniswap.
Protocol is what we need, not platforms.
One protocol being developed to deal with conflict resolution is https://kleros.io. A decentralized car sharing company could work initially just like a regular car-rental company, by having the renter providing an deposit to cover for damages and refunded when the vehicle is returned in acceptable conditions. In case of small disputes, a pre-arranged third party works as a arbiter. And in the case where there are some serious problems, actual courts and the "traditional" institutions should be there to execute their role.
To get this, all it was needed was to have a protocol, namely the Automatic Market Maker system popularized by Uniswap.
Protocol is what we need, not platforms.
One protocol being developed to deal with conflict resolution is https://kleros.io. A decentralized car sharing company could work initially just like a regular car-rental company, by having the renter providing an deposit to cover for damages and refunded when the vehicle is returned in acceptable conditions. In case of small disputes, a pre-arranged third party works as a arbiter. And in the case where there are some serious problems, actual courts and the "traditional" institutions should be there to execute their role.
The only real difference between an Uber and a taxi from a customer POV is the price. Not sure what trust has to do with it.
I don't even know what the price of a taxi is anymore. That is the least important difference!
An Uber or a Lyft will actually show up - and quickly - when I call it; will actually take me where I want to go without wasting time running up the meter; and will actually charge me in a fair and predictable way, which does not involve dickering with the driver or unexpectedly having to find a bunch of cash because the card reader is "broken".
All of these things can be reasonably summarized as forms of trustworthiness.
An Uber or a Lyft will actually show up - and quickly - when I call it; will actually take me where I want to go without wasting time running up the meter; and will actually charge me in a fair and predictable way, which does not involve dickering with the driver or unexpectedly having to find a bunch of cash because the card reader is "broken".
All of these things can be reasonably summarized as forms of trustworthiness.
Not to mention that if Über really provided "tons of value", they would've been profitable by now. But they only got popular because they have Softbank subsidizing riders for over 10 years already.
Do Getaround/Zipcar/Turo not fit what you’re talking about?
They lease their own fleets, no? I am talking about the a system where individuals can put their own vehicles in the "market" for others to use.
Edit: Okay. I am checking Turo now, I wasn't aware of them. Still, they are a middleman between car owner and driver, right? How do they make money?
Edit 2: Reading from their website, it seems like they are focusing on being a rental aggregator. All the talk about "building your business" seems to indicate their cars are not from individual owners that actually use the car. So, no, I wouldn't say they qualify as an alternative to what I am talking about.
Edit: Okay. I am checking Turo now, I wasn't aware of them. Still, they are a middleman between car owner and driver, right? How do they make money?
Edit 2: Reading from their website, it seems like they are focusing on being a rental aggregator. All the talk about "building your business" seems to indicate their cars are not from individual owners that actually use the car. So, no, I wouldn't say they qualify as an alternative to what I am talking about.
This is an important observation. Your neighbour trusts you because of the relationship you have with them, your membership in the same group (home ownership in a neighborhood), proximity and availability (they know where you live and can contact you easily if they want the weedwhacker back), and you already have collateral in play (ownership of your home and reputation in the community).
The key to building trust online is to recreate some of these aspects. You should have an identity in the community that you belong to and you should own assets under that identity so you can’t easily abandon it and start somewhere else with your ill gotten gains. Communication amongst members of the community should be easy and common. There should even be shared ownership of community assets and the community should provide services to its members.
I imagine this looking something like a discord server combined with some of the hosting features of FB like image sharing, posts, groups, etc. You’d also need a built in token that could be used within the community but also exchanged on a broader network of federated communities.
The key to building trust online is to recreate some of these aspects. You should have an identity in the community that you belong to and you should own assets under that identity so you can’t easily abandon it and start somewhere else with your ill gotten gains. Communication amongst members of the community should be easy and common. There should even be shared ownership of community assets and the community should provide services to its members.
I imagine this looking something like a discord server combined with some of the hosting features of FB like image sharing, posts, groups, etc. You’d also need a built in token that could be used within the community but also exchanged on a broader network of federated communities.
Even further if your neighbor totally trusts you you can just go grab it and they will know that it will be back where it belongs, fully fueled/charged and maintained when needed.
This drive to atomize humanity and make all relationships fungible is insane, and the only benefit is it allows long distance fuedalism.
This drive to atomize humanity and make all relationships fungible is insane, and the only benefit is it allows long distance fuedalism.
Trust isn't necessary for lending tools to your neighbor, pure self-interest is good enough. Cultivating good relationships with people who know where you sleep is just good sense, and looking out for your neighborhood is mutual aid. Next to reason, trust is inconsequential in such a situation.
Slowest and least efficient.. you realize some blockchains update in seconds? For a low value proposition like borrowing a lawnmower you dont need the most secure public network on earth to do it. You use the right blocchain for the right applications.
The problem with trust, is that its awesome until it aint. When we are deaing with gov policy, billions of dollars, war, your life savings,etc a break in trust is beyond costly, making the use cost of a slower but secure blockchain the responsible thing to do.
The problem with trust, is that its awesome until it aint. When we are deaing with gov policy, billions of dollars, war, your life savings,etc a break in trust is beyond costly, making the use cost of a slower but secure blockchain the responsible thing to do.
So war on the blockchain? That sounds like a good example of what is meant by "dystopian." Imagine a world where whether Ukraine gets to stay sovereign or becomes part of Russia is determined by a global consensus of the wealthiest wallet addresses on a blockchain. It's like you took democracy, but got rid of the elements of constitutional republicanism that mitigate the weaknesses of democracy, leaving only the weaknesses. Except not really, because that would be a plain tyranny of the majority of unique human persons and this is a tyranny of a majority of wealth, which may only be a tiny number of people. I guess it's more like returning to feudalism, except the lords and kings no longer have to raise armies and fight each other. The richest coalition just wins automatically.
> Imagine a world where whether Ukraine gets to stay sovereign or becomes part of Russia is determined by a global consensus of the wealthiest wallet addresses on a blockchain.
Actully, this is basically what’s happening in your example.
The citizens of the wealthiest countries are participating in the war by sending armaments and aid to Ukraine. The majority of the world’s citizens* are sitting it out or providing some amount of assistance to the Russian side, mainly through commerce.
It’s not on the blockchain, but essentially wealth is “voting”.
FWIW I’m far, far from being a blockchain supporter. I’m just addressing your example.
* yes, at the UN the majority states voted against Russia, but if you look by populations, the west won an “electoral college” victory on the topic.
Actully, this is basically what’s happening in your example.
The citizens of the wealthiest countries are participating in the war by sending armaments and aid to Ukraine. The majority of the world’s citizens* are sitting it out or providing some amount of assistance to the Russian side, mainly through commerce.
It’s not on the blockchain, but essentially wealth is “voting”.
FWIW I’m far, far from being a blockchain supporter. I’m just addressing your example.
* yes, at the UN the majority states voted against Russia, but if you look by populations, the west won an “electoral college” victory on the topic.
I think the point is that it’s just a change of venue for making consensus; the roles don’t change.
A small number of people with lots of resources choose whether a large number of people with few resources fight each other to the death.
GGP implied that war was something a blockchain could “fix”, but GP argues that it, at best, it maintains the status quo.
In my opinion, it’s a little worse than the status quo because at least before those with few resources got some small say in the matter via their elected representatives.
A small number of people with lots of resources choose whether a large number of people with few resources fight each other to the death.
GGP implied that war was something a blockchain could “fix”, but GP argues that it, at best, it maintains the status quo.
In my opinion, it’s a little worse than the status quo because at least before those with few resources got some small say in the matter via their elected representatives.
> Slowest and least efficient.. you realize some blockchains update in seconds?
Imagine if when you pushed the “buy now” button on Amazon it took seconds for the transaction to complete. You’d stop using Amazon.
Imagine if when you pushed the “buy now” button on Amazon it took seconds for the transaction to complete. You’d stop using Amazon.
It already does take seconds. Sometimes even minutes or hours. When you click "buy now", Amazon optimistically pretends the order completed instantly, and queues a backend job to charge your card. If your card is declined, you get an email some time later.
It's almost as if they use trust to be efficient.
I agree it's inefficient, but, um, that happens to me all the time when I'm in a part of my house where the Wi-Fi doesn't reach very well, and I still go to that part of the house and
I still use Amazon in it. Waiting 10 seconds for an order confirmation is not a big deal if the result is I can get a rice cooker shipped to my house within 24 hours.
> The problem with blockchainers
It's hard to take any of what you say seriously when you start a comment with such a blanket statement.
Also, I think I've already seen your type of "argument" so many times, I think I am able to just play the whole tape by just pointing out to previous comments I've made:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195939 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31545427 (trustlessness is not about "eliminating trust")
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463534 (Yeah, you are right that there is no such thing as an "ideal" world. What you are missing is that also applies to the anti-crypto mentality, who think that just because they were born in a place with functional institutions, they think that is the natural state of things. It's good when institutions work, but they are not perfect and we need to prepared for the times when they fail.)
It's hard to take any of what you say seriously when you start a comment with such a blanket statement.
Also, I think I've already seen your type of "argument" so many times, I think I am able to just play the whole tape by just pointing out to previous comments I've made:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195939 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31545427 (trustlessness is not about "eliminating trust")
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463534 (Yeah, you are right that there is no such thing as an "ideal" world. What you are missing is that also applies to the anti-crypto mentality, who think that just because they were born in a place with functional institutions, they think that is the natural state of things. It's good when institutions work, but they are not perfect and we need to prepared for the times when they fail.)
Then fix your institutions. Do you believe you can solve a human problem by forcing a technical solution? Don’t you think you will have to end up duplicating the very same institutions (possibly with more friction, less oversight and ways to appeal)? And if you go full freedom and anarchy, then drop into chaos until command economy next door eats you for lunch?
Besides, we are talking about attitudes very much in countries with more or less functional institutions.
Also, edited first paragraph to be less dogmatic. This is my subjective opinion.
Besides, we are talking about attitudes very much in countries with more or less functional institutions.
Also, edited first paragraph to be less dogmatic. This is my subjective opinion.
See, I know that I can keep up this by simply linking to previous comments. This one is from one year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906731 (Tell me how a dissenting Russian or Chinese would go around "fixing their institutions")
Edit: Though I do agree that BTC has failed and I now think that Ethereum (the blockchain, not saying anything about Ether as a "currency") is more suited to this, here is something from 8 years ago!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8413908
Edit: Though I do agree that BTC has failed and I now think that Ethereum (the blockchain, not saying anything about Ether as a "currency") is more suited to this, here is something from 8 years ago!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8413908
Personally, even if my opinions have not shifted at all (which barely ever happens), I practice having to express them again so that I find more eloquent ways of doing so. Once they solidify enough, I might write an essay I could mention I wrote, but in most scenarios I wouldn’t refer someone to my own quotes out of respect.
I hold others to the same standard, so for the record I’m not reading links to your own comments.
Imagine people talking by a water cooler; yes I know roughly your view, and you know mine, but it doesn’t mean you should mandate me to hear quotes of yourself recorded at this same water cooler in the past instead of responding.
I hold others to the same standard, so for the record I’m not reading links to your own comments.
Imagine people talking by a water cooler; yes I know roughly your view, and you know mine, but it doesn’t mean you should mandate me to hear quotes of yourself recorded at this same water cooler in the past instead of responding.
> I might write an essay
Even if I went through all the trouble of writing an essay, it would be a simple collage of all these arguments, maybe organized in some more coherent form. For what? Those "in favor" would just not see anything new, those "against" it would just use it to nitpick and create strawmen in an attempt to keep their worldview intact.
I'd rather keep the discussion focused on the parts that can be addressed directly to avoid this.
> I practice having to express them again so that I find more eloquent ways of doing so.
I've gotten to the point where I discussed this with so many people that I ran out of ways of conveying the same idea. I am not putting the links out of snark. I am putting them because they already express the same idea that I would've typed out anyway. Would you feel better if I simply copied-and-pasted these responses?
> Imagine people talking by a water cooler; yes I know roughly your view, and you know mine.
I am not telling you to listen to all the battle cries or the "put downs" that have been recorded. I was using these links as a way to advance the conversation to a point where we can actually establish the differences. Can you imagine if everybody only wanted to debate something if they re-hashed all their priors?
Even if I went through all the trouble of writing an essay, it would be a simple collage of all these arguments, maybe organized in some more coherent form. For what? Those "in favor" would just not see anything new, those "against" it would just use it to nitpick and create strawmen in an attempt to keep their worldview intact.
I'd rather keep the discussion focused on the parts that can be addressed directly to avoid this.
> I practice having to express them again so that I find more eloquent ways of doing so.
I've gotten to the point where I discussed this with so many people that I ran out of ways of conveying the same idea. I am not putting the links out of snark. I am putting them because they already express the same idea that I would've typed out anyway. Would you feel better if I simply copied-and-pasted these responses?
> Imagine people talking by a water cooler; yes I know roughly your view, and you know mine.
I am not telling you to listen to all the battle cries or the "put downs" that have been recorded. I was using these links as a way to advance the conversation to a point where we can actually establish the differences. Can you imagine if everybody only wanted to debate something if they re-hashed all their priors?
> See, I know that I can keep up this by simply linking to previous comments.
As long as you don't mind that nobody but you is convinced at the end, perhaps
As long as you don't mind that nobody but you is convinced at the end, perhaps
You are missing the point. I know the people arguing based on these old misconceptions are not going to be convinced anyway. I am linking to previous comments to avoid having to re-hash the same pointless argument every time.
Sometimes I dream of a argument recogniser that just maps out an argument on an argument map and hashes it out more or less like you just did. With the goal of not endless rehashing of the same iteration like some stuck genetic algo in a local optima, but rather moving forward as some kind of warm start.
I think there's something to this and have been thinking about this for a while too. Just today tried to see if diff.me was available, sadly it's not.
I was thinking something like a git repo with a flat file in it. You list your beliefs / opinions / things you think are facts in a structured way (maybe a tree like structure) going all the way back to some "root". Then you can easily diff this file with someone else and see where you agree and differ. Changing someone's mind could just be a pull request :)
I was thinking something like a git repo with a flat file in it. You list your beliefs / opinions / things you think are facts in a structured way (maybe a tree like structure) going all the way back to some "root". Then you can easily diff this file with someone else and see where you agree and differ. Changing someone's mind could just be a pull request :)
I made an argument and asked questions at the end, leaving it for someone objecting to provide a constructive answer.
Oh yes, I think you made an excellent contribution by pulling up past arguments and trying to continu the conversation. I was just observing it and noting how nice itd be in general if this were automatic
It's easy enough to have a discussion about you which you don't take seriously
An anti-vaxxer might respond the same way to "the problem with anti-vaxxers," hoping to make sure that nobody discusses the very real problems with them
It's generally okay if people being criticized don't want the people speaking about them to think poorly of them.
It's generally okay if a person being criticized believes that what's said to them can be rebuffed with canned content.
You go ahead and tell everyone that the reason you're polluting with a dysfunctional casino is "you weren't born with functional institutions" if you like
Every notice how anti-vaxxers have canned responses that they think landed, but nobody else does?
An anti-vaxxer might respond the same way to "the problem with anti-vaxxers," hoping to make sure that nobody discusses the very real problems with them
It's generally okay if people being criticized don't want the people speaking about them to think poorly of them.
It's generally okay if a person being criticized believes that what's said to them can be rebuffed with canned content.
You go ahead and tell everyone that the reason you're polluting with a dysfunctional casino is "you weren't born with functional institutions" if you like
Every notice how anti-vaxxers have canned responses that they think landed, but nobody else does?
Did you notice your rhetoric is so poor that you could not address any actual argument? You did nothing except (a) resorting to throw false accusations hoping that this is enough to discredit your "opponent" and (b) "othering" via an absurd analogy?
If you only tried to reason properly and read at least part of what has been discussed before, you'd find out that:
- I am not in favor of BTC. I think it worked as a proof-of-concept for a system to transfer value without intermediaries, but it has failed as a currency - no privacy, too expensive, too volatile and its fixed supply makes it unworkable as money.
- I am not in favor of PoW. There are cheaper and more efficient ways to secure a blockchain and we are close to make a switch.
- I am not in favor of all these token projects that create opportunities for speculation but are not connected to real economic activity.
My "thing" is using crypto for payments and small-scale banking as an alternative for the global financial system [0]. So, unless you think that the status quo is "good", you will have a better shot at changing my mind if you show me a superior solution to the problem we are trying to tackle. Trying to dismiss me and my work with self-righteous, sophomoric rhetoric does not help anyone and does not solve anything.
[0]: https://hub20.io/about
If you only tried to reason properly and read at least part of what has been discussed before, you'd find out that:
- I am not in favor of BTC. I think it worked as a proof-of-concept for a system to transfer value without intermediaries, but it has failed as a currency - no privacy, too expensive, too volatile and its fixed supply makes it unworkable as money.
- I am not in favor of PoW. There are cheaper and more efficient ways to secure a blockchain and we are close to make a switch.
- I am not in favor of all these token projects that create opportunities for speculation but are not connected to real economic activity.
My "thing" is using crypto for payments and small-scale banking as an alternative for the global financial system [0]. So, unless you think that the status quo is "good", you will have a better shot at changing my mind if you show me a superior solution to the problem we are trying to tackle. Trying to dismiss me and my work with self-righteous, sophomoric rhetoric does not help anyone and does not solve anything.
[0]: https://hub20.io/about
I disagree - trust is a bug in technical systems. Maintaining trust has a really high cost and is an obvious and common single point of failure.
Take TLS - wouldn't it be nice if we could have the same system without certificate authorities?
The thing is - like everything else, trust is a tradeoff. Bitcoin folks will discard it at any cost. Sometimes discarding it is not worth the cost. That doesn't mean adding trusted third parties is a good thing, just that it is often the lesser evil.
Take TLS - wouldn't it be nice if we could have the same system without certificate authorities?
The thing is - like everything else, trust is a tradeoff. Bitcoin folks will discard it at any cost. Sometimes discarding it is not worth the cost. That doesn't mean adding trusted third parties is a good thing, just that it is often the lesser evil.
But that is in technical systems. More or less it’s an equivalent of defending your home, or using password auth: there are humans motivated to increase their well-being at your expense (at the expense of the environment, and so on).
This tech seems often to be pushed onto human society as a whole, though. It’s like giving up on solving the underlying issues that give humans the above-mentioned motivation to betray each other, and instead baking into the fabric society an assumption that it’s human nature to be this way.
This tech seems often to be pushed onto human society as a whole, though. It’s like giving up on solving the underlying issues that give humans the above-mentioned motivation to betray each other, and instead baking into the fabric society an assumption that it’s human nature to be this way.
The tech (money) has already been adopted by human society as a whole though. So it's not about pushing tech onto human society, but upgrading the existing tech.
> It’s like giving up on solving the underlying issues that give humans the above-mentioned motivation to betray each other, and instead baking into the fabric society an assumption that it’s human nature to be this way.
Not all humans are that way, but those who desire power tend to be. I simply don't trust those in power to manage the money properly. It's too much power for anyone to wield. This is not theory; the historical record is damning for fiat money.
Also, as the world has become more globalized, a world reserve currency has emerged. It makes trade easier if everyone has $USD on hand. However, other countries shouldn't have to trust in the good faith in the U.S. government just to engage in global commerce.
> It’s like giving up on solving the underlying issues that give humans the above-mentioned motivation to betray each other, and instead baking into the fabric society an assumption that it’s human nature to be this way.
Not all humans are that way, but those who desire power tend to be. I simply don't trust those in power to manage the money properly. It's too much power for anyone to wield. This is not theory; the historical record is damning for fiat money.
Also, as the world has become more globalized, a world reserve currency has emerged. It makes trade easier if everyone has $USD on hand. However, other countries shouldn't have to trust in the good faith in the U.S. government just to engage in global commerce.
> those who desire power tend to be
People who desire power are often, unfortunately, the very kind I mentioned: seeking to secure themselves and easily corrupted. Sadly, power still converts to money, and less than scrupulous corporations and kleptocracies are always knocking at your door to offer a big chunk for turning a blind eye and to infect with corruption.
Again, the core problem is not that we are allowing that to happen. The problem is that some people want to do force others into finite zero-sum games and win—and if these people are already well-off, and especially in a civilization without shortage of resource (which should presumably be slowly arriving), the only reason they would want to do that is mental issues and deep-seated insecurities, distrust and fear for own financial safety.
This motivation will find its way no matter how many checks and verifications you institute. It manifests itself by people stealing other peoples’ stuff, people seeking power to enrich themselves unjustly (and in less lucky countries, using violence and pervasive control to maintain that power), corporations dumping waste into the environment and imbuing every living thing with microplastics and PFAS, etc. etc.
People who desire power are often, unfortunately, the very kind I mentioned: seeking to secure themselves and easily corrupted. Sadly, power still converts to money, and less than scrupulous corporations and kleptocracies are always knocking at your door to offer a big chunk for turning a blind eye and to infect with corruption.
Again, the core problem is not that we are allowing that to happen. The problem is that some people want to do force others into finite zero-sum games and win—and if these people are already well-off, and especially in a civilization without shortage of resource (which should presumably be slowly arriving), the only reason they would want to do that is mental issues and deep-seated insecurities, distrust and fear for own financial safety.
This motivation will find its way no matter how many checks and verifications you institute. It manifests itself by people stealing other peoples’ stuff, people seeking power to enrich themselves unjustly (and in less lucky countries, using violence and pervasive control to maintain that power), corporations dumping waste into the environment and imbuing every living thing with microplastics and PFAS, etc. etc.
The thing is, it is not always a bug and it does not always help to give the decision out of your own hands.
E.g. I would really trust myself to decide which products should stay in my Online Shop and which I want out. I don't need (or even want) a public append-only structure that is out of my control. For me the blockchain is good for all usecases where I would in real life use a notary. And that is not many use cases.
E.g. I would really trust myself to decide which products should stay in my Online Shop and which I want out. I don't need (or even want) a public append-only structure that is out of my control. For me the blockchain is good for all usecases where I would in real life use a notary. And that is not many use cases.
In the real world we operate as humans. And it seems this desire amongst crypto enthusiasts for decentralised trust is easily disproved. As a consumer, I want recourse. I want protections. I want humanity to protect me when I make mistakes. This isn’t going away until robots rule the earth. Perhaps one day, but there will be war before this is reality.
Right, but that cuts both ways.
As a consumer you want due process and fairness, protection from arbitrary punishment etc.
You want trust for all the things you mentioned, those are reasonable goals. They do come at a cost (the system could be abused), and you wouldnt want to add more trust points unless you were getting something of value out of them
As a consumer you want due process and fairness, protection from arbitrary punishment etc.
You want trust for all the things you mentioned, those are reasonable goals. They do come at a cost (the system could be abused), and you wouldnt want to add more trust points unless you were getting something of value out of them
"Take TLS - wouldn't it be nice if we could have the same system without certificate authorities?"
Absent that thing existing, this is a demonstration of the value trust provides!
Absent that thing existing, this is a demonstration of the value trust provides!
But even with Bitcoin you're super reliant on trust in (a) the technology not to be broken or compromised and (b) the system that supports the actual world outside of crypto (i.e. actual resources that matter).
Every few months, my credit card blocks one of my purchases because its statistical algorithm decides it looks sketchy and wants me to respond to a verification email. How is this any more trusting?
Both systems recognize the existence of fraudulent actors, and handle the problem in different ways. Blockchains use cryptographically-signed transactions, so merchants get no information they can use against you. Credit cards hand your credentials over to every merchant and try to fix their fundamental insecurity by flagging unusual transactions, insuring against losses, and issuing new credentials when bad actors get them (which brings lots of associated hassle, that I've gone through a couple times in the last few years). Bank transfers handle the problem by simply delaying full access to the money, at least for larger amounts, until banks on both ends have checked everything.
The same applies to more complex systems. Blockchains try to build systems with extreme transparency and security (and sometimes fail at that). Traditional finance builds systems reliant on centralized actors, and adds lots of regulation, oversight, and incentives such as criminal penalties to keep those actors in check (and sometimes fails at that).
We certainly should strive for a more idealistic future. But legacy banking/finance is not doing that. Blockchain platforms at least provide the possibility of building something new that's better; on top of an open trustless platform, you can build your own system assuming whatever level of trust and altruism you like.
Two examples on Ethereum: optimistic rollups are more scalable second layers, in which withdrawals work more like bank transfers: withdrawals aren't cryptographically verified, but have a delay during which anyone can submit proof of fraud. A more idealistic example is Gitcoin, in which people donate to public goods and the money is allocated with a quadratic funding system.
Both systems recognize the existence of fraudulent actors, and handle the problem in different ways. Blockchains use cryptographically-signed transactions, so merchants get no information they can use against you. Credit cards hand your credentials over to every merchant and try to fix their fundamental insecurity by flagging unusual transactions, insuring against losses, and issuing new credentials when bad actors get them (which brings lots of associated hassle, that I've gone through a couple times in the last few years). Bank transfers handle the problem by simply delaying full access to the money, at least for larger amounts, until banks on both ends have checked everything.
The same applies to more complex systems. Blockchains try to build systems with extreme transparency and security (and sometimes fail at that). Traditional finance builds systems reliant on centralized actors, and adds lots of regulation, oversight, and incentives such as criminal penalties to keep those actors in check (and sometimes fails at that).
We certainly should strive for a more idealistic future. But legacy banking/finance is not doing that. Blockchain platforms at least provide the possibility of building something new that's better; on top of an open trustless platform, you can build your own system assuming whatever level of trust and altruism you like.
Two examples on Ethereum: optimistic rollups are more scalable second layers, in which withdrawals work more like bank transfers: withdrawals aren't cryptographically verified, but have a delay during which anyone can submit proof of fraud. A more idealistic example is Gitcoin, in which people donate to public goods and the money is allocated with a quadratic funding system.
> Bank transfers handle the problem by simply delaying full access to the money, at least for larger amounts, until banks on both ends have checked everything.
They are doing it for good reasons, presence of malicious agents (money launderers, etc.) exploiting trust requires it. (In fact, I’d argue banks are getting away with not doing it enough with very moneyed customers.)
Blockchain does not eliminate this need in current age—either equivalent institutions would have to be reproduced all anew, or we need to end the motivations that make people want to exploit financial system in the first place.
And if we do address the latter (the only sustainable solution in the long run), then what is the benefit of blockchain and all? Isn’t it just pure overhead then?
They are doing it for good reasons, presence of malicious agents (money launderers, etc.) exploiting trust requires it. (In fact, I’d argue banks are getting away with not doing it enough with very moneyed customers.)
Blockchain does not eliminate this need in current age—either equivalent institutions would have to be reproduced all anew, or we need to end the motivations that make people want to exploit financial system in the first place.
And if we do address the latter (the only sustainable solution in the long run), then what is the benefit of blockchain and all? Isn’t it just pure overhead then?
> what is the benefit of blockchain and all?
The design space is way bigger, so you can create better solutions. “Trust institution X” is a special case.
I can open a position on my favorite DEX (trusting the DEX administer, which can be a centralized authority, not to push an upgrade that drains my balance) and also trust that my position can be liquidated (due to incentives for anybody to submit the liquidation transaction, thereby not having to trust that a centralized liquidation bot won’t have somehow failed at that exact moment).
You could design a brokerage system where accountholders must trust the broker with personal details like SSN, etc, but don’t have to trust the broker not to disable buy/sell buttons due to solvency issues.
The design space is way bigger, so you can create better solutions. “Trust institution X” is a special case.
I can open a position on my favorite DEX (trusting the DEX administer, which can be a centralized authority, not to push an upgrade that drains my balance) and also trust that my position can be liquidated (due to incentives for anybody to submit the liquidation transaction, thereby not having to trust that a centralized liquidation bot won’t have somehow failed at that exact moment).
You could design a brokerage system where accountholders must trust the broker with personal details like SSN, etc, but don’t have to trust the broker not to disable buy/sell buttons due to solvency issues.
> don’t have to trust
There we go again. Why are we avoiding trust?
There we go again. Why are we avoiding trust?
Bitcoins inception was on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis. The genesis block mentions it. What bitcoin enthusiasts don't trust are objectively untrustworthy institutions. That's it. It's real straight forward.
Bitcoin institutions are objectively untrustworthy and most people involved in Bitcoin have no real choice but to rely on them. I trust, say, Citibank more than Bitfinex.
You dont need bitcoin exchanges.
Given the huge number of people who only transact using exchanges, and the usability improvements of doing so, that may technically be true, but probably isn't too helpful. For most people they are inseparable in practice. Worrying about the trustworthiness of the major bitcoin players is practical.
Absolutely! Dont trust institutions is the message.
I suppose that was an original message for Bitcoin, but the current state with various institutions serving in trust-based roles for so many users, Bitcoin doesn't seem to have met that goal.
The users who out of practical concern are considering between trusting Citibank and Bitfinex, will benefit from chosing the one that's regulated.
The users who out of practical concern are considering between trusting Citibank and Bitfinex, will benefit from chosing the one that's regulated.
At this point, I too would not recommend anyone put their life savings into crypto. Especially given the clearly powerful astroturfing campaign against it. But where can you put it? The banks are not trust worthy, they caused the financial crisis. Real estate, I guess. No wait, real estate being corrupt is what got bitcoin started in the first place.
Only if you want to lose all your assets when the taxman turns up for their cut.
They don’t take Bitcoin and in any sensible sovereign nation never will.
They don’t take Bitcoin and in any sensible sovereign nation never will.
The reality is that as you move up the social hierarchy in modern human society, trust tends to vanish and is ultimately viewed as something only a rube would rely on. This is why contract law exists, doesn't it?
For example, in the upper tiers of corporations all employment is on a contract basis. Nobody at these levels trusts they will be treated fairly and given a severance package if they are fired, without an explicit contract stating the terms and conditions of employment. Contracts are renewed or renegotiated every few years, right? In contrast, entry-level employees never get contracts, they can be fired at will with no warning or severance, at least in the United States where union power is very limited, relative to Europe.
Similarly, look at the prevalence of marital contracts that imply a lack of trust among the parties, i.e. the famous pre-nuptial agreement regarding how the net wealth of the couple will be divided up in the event of a divorce. There's a zero-trust situation that's increasingly common.
It's true that a society where nobody trusts anyone else and all are suspicious of each other's motives is not a very healthy society, but isn't this also the assumption of the economic theorists who claim all humans are basically little more than rational autonomous self-improving algorithms, with net assets being the benchmark of success?
For example, in the upper tiers of corporations all employment is on a contract basis. Nobody at these levels trusts they will be treated fairly and given a severance package if they are fired, without an explicit contract stating the terms and conditions of employment. Contracts are renewed or renegotiated every few years, right? In contrast, entry-level employees never get contracts, they can be fired at will with no warning or severance, at least in the United States where union power is very limited, relative to Europe.
Similarly, look at the prevalence of marital contracts that imply a lack of trust among the parties, i.e. the famous pre-nuptial agreement regarding how the net wealth of the couple will be divided up in the event of a divorce. There's a zero-trust situation that's increasingly common.
It's true that a society where nobody trusts anyone else and all are suspicious of each other's motives is not a very healthy society, but isn't this also the assumption of the economic theorists who claim all humans are basically little more than rational autonomous self-improving algorithms, with net assets being the benchmark of success?
> This is why contract law exists, doesn't it?
When I worked with non-trivial (>$1m) contracts, I learned that the sooner you start pointing to contract language, the sooner the relationship breaks down. “Working with” partners through shortfalls and giving second chances resulted in much more long term success than sticking to the letter of the contract.
Part of the reason, I think, is simple human relationship-building. And a big part of that is trust. Trust and credit also play into it directly - the vendor knows we didn’t penalize them when they delivered a feature a month late, so they’re willing to surge when we have a requirement pop up that needs fixing quicker than we agreed to.
When I worked with non-trivial (>$1m) contracts, I learned that the sooner you start pointing to contract language, the sooner the relationship breaks down. “Working with” partners through shortfalls and giving second chances resulted in much more long term success than sticking to the letter of the contract.
Part of the reason, I think, is simple human relationship-building. And a big part of that is trust. Trust and credit also play into it directly - the vendor knows we didn’t penalize them when they delivered a feature a month late, so they’re willing to surge when we have a requirement pop up that needs fixing quicker than we agreed to.
> This is why contract law exists, doesn't it?
Or it exists so that everyone makes sure that everyone else understands the words/concepts being used in the same way.
What does (e.g.) "full payment on final construction" mean? Well, it depends on who you ask. Contracts there to (hopefully) make sure everyone is agreeing to the same transaction.
Or it exists so that everyone makes sure that everyone else understands the words/concepts being used in the same way.
What does (e.g.) "full payment on final construction" mean? Well, it depends on who you ask. Contracts there to (hopefully) make sure everyone is agreeing to the same transaction.
> The reality is that as you move up the social hierarchy in modern human society, trust tends to vanish and is ultimately viewed as something only a rube would rely on. This is why contract law exists, doesn't it?
I thought about this in such framing, too.
My observation was exactly this: in “higher classes” it looks like trust is implied, and in lower classes everybody is verified.
My logic, however, runs such that we need to elevate the entire society to that level, rather than drop it to the level of “rubes” you mention.
I.e., treat everyone as a respectable individual—a mentally healthy person tends to behave the way they are perceived by others—and by working on general well-being eliminate mental constructs that push people to secure themselves at the expense of others. Does this make sense?
I thought about this in such framing, too.
My observation was exactly this: in “higher classes” it looks like trust is implied, and in lower classes everybody is verified.
My logic, however, runs such that we need to elevate the entire society to that level, rather than drop it to the level of “rubes” you mention.
I.e., treat everyone as a respectable individual—a mentally healthy person tends to behave the way they are perceived by others—and by working on general well-being eliminate mental constructs that push people to secure themselves at the expense of others. Does this make sense?
You hit the nail on the head with this comment. And not only is trust a feature, it’s a requirement for society. It’s a deep part of human nature to trust, and trust can’t be removed from how people manage to function in groups.
The problem is scale. If society only had 400 people, the 390 people that were not scammers could remove the 10 people who are scammers from their economic system manually.
If you create a online store, one million strangers could connect to it. You need a way to understand who is a scammer in that situation.
If you create a online store, one million strangers could connect to it. You need a way to understand who is a scammer in that situation.
That problem is actually solved though. There are plenty of online stores where you can create an account and buy something via invoice after it got delivered to you. This works just fine.
This is true, and why all political ideologies fail. They can't cater for scale, or when they do, they do so by tyranny, which also fails eventually.
Blockchain/Bitcoin has already been thoroughly corrupted, so ironically will prove itself to be entirely untrustworthy before it even gets established as whatever wonderful thing is assumed is still coming from it.
Blockchain/Bitcoin has already been thoroughly corrupted, so ironically will prove itself to be entirely untrustworthy before it even gets established as whatever wonderful thing is assumed is still coming from it.
Who has bitcoin been corrupted by?
The exchanges. Clearly and factually.
If I use my private key to send a transaction to your public key, the exchanges have no say in it. You can choose who to trust. If some exchange is corrupted, just don't use it.
The price of the coin is being manipulated by the exchanges, no matter if you use it or not. One exchange in particular (Bitfinex) is helping to keep the largest fraud scheme in history (Tether/USDT) around.
I dont understand what you mean. Is there somewhere I can read about this?
For a straightforward start, this guy piles on a bit, but also holds a lot of the history/evidence on record too:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Bitfinexed
Thank you.
However that's not bitcoin being corrupted, he suggests that tether, and an exchange are corrupted.
When people use USD for crime, is USD corrupted?
However that's not bitcoin being corrupted, he suggests that tether, and an exchange are corrupted.
When people use USD for crime, is USD corrupted?
Corruption is probably a bad description. It is more like what happened to Tulips during Tulip Mania, or Beanie Babies during that bubble. Beanie Babies are not "corrupted". They are "associated" with a bubble. Crypto as a whole is becoming increasingly associated with zero sum scams like Ponzi/MLMs. And it is partially due to the fee extraction entities that are making a profit of off the "investor's" cash.
I mean Mt Gox was almost a decade ago. Bad people try to do bad things with other peoples money.
That's the value in bitcoin though. You dont need to use these exchanges. If you're smart, you dont trust large institutions of any kind with your money.
That's the value in bitcoin though. You dont need to use these exchanges. If you're smart, you dont trust large institutions of any kind with your money.
That mitigates these risks for people who are able to have an in-depth understanding of Bitcoin, which is in itself extremely complex and requires tons of prior knowledge. Everyone else has to trust someone with their crypto needs and is left to be fleeced with no recourse at all. As of now, that merely replaces the group that profits disproportionately with a crypto bros and the like.
While certainly not wanting to ruing the humorous undertones here, just for the benefit of other readers it's important to point out that the lack of third party trust has a very specific meaning.
Take for web for example. It is trustless in the same manner. There is no third party (apart from the web browser and the server) that you need to trust in order for you to view a web page. There is no International Web Organization that you need to procure permission from in order to set up a web server. You just start it. (And, conversely, also why so much bad actors exist on the web.)
This is fundamentally a different system than for example all economic transactions, apart from cash. This is why some people argues against the cashless society for not being trustless, and also what the people who experiment with private monetary systems study.
Take for web for example. It is trustless in the same manner. There is no third party (apart from the web browser and the server) that you need to trust in order for you to view a web page. There is no International Web Organization that you need to procure permission from in order to set up a web server. You just start it. (And, conversely, also why so much bad actors exist on the web.)
This is fundamentally a different system than for example all economic transactions, apart from cash. This is why some people argues against the cashless society for not being trustless, and also what the people who experiment with private monetary systems study.
Web is not trustless
DNS is part of the web and it is a federated/heirarchical 3rd party trust model you need to route your named traffic to the right server, often managed by states. It's super important to understand, this is why authoritarian governments can still hide what citizens can experience on the internet
DNS is part of the web and it is a federated/heirarchical 3rd party trust model you need to route your named traffic to the right server, often managed by states. It's super important to understand, this is why authoritarian governments can still hide what citizens can experience on the internet
Certificates are required pretty much for any websites nowadays. IIRC it has to do with TLS, so basically all https websites. Those certificates are ultimately based on a trusted third party. So web is not trustless, not even close.
It's a symptom of our mentally ill society trying to rationalize why in 2022 we haven't solved a bunch or practical problems and yet every year we get new iterations of the IPhone, AI in cars, new services in apps, ect... We start from an idea that Moore's Law somehow correlates with social progress but I think that tremendously remains to be seen. There's a noted relationship between teen suicides and social media (on phones) and one-for-one computing in education hasn't produced the generation of Einsteins and Mozarts that it thought it might in the 70s and 80s. I think crypto is the human imagination trying to bridge the gap between our social arrangements and technological progress and I think at its core that is a good thing. We need to dream big if we're going to build a livable world but that also requires discipline and that's something we're severely lacking in society.
I think there's a sort of person that thinks to themselves, "I want all the benefits of living in an advanced society without actually being obligated to participate in said society." I can't help but think this is a kind of sickness. Self-Determination doesn't necessarily exclude social obligation it only dictates that I might not be tyrannized by these obligations.
There's a kind of, "e-person" who is the perfect Cartesian. The new existentialist who reaps the benefits of a globalized society and what is their sacrifice to the world-machine? --Just their continued existence; nothing more.
Without being crude we used to call those people tramps until Charlie Chaplin taught us to be nice to poor people.
I think there's a sort of person that thinks to themselves, "I want all the benefits of living in an advanced society without actually being obligated to participate in said society." I can't help but think this is a kind of sickness. Self-Determination doesn't necessarily exclude social obligation it only dictates that I might not be tyrannized by these obligations.
There's a kind of, "e-person" who is the perfect Cartesian. The new existentialist who reaps the benefits of a globalized society and what is their sacrifice to the world-machine? --Just their continued existence; nothing more.
Without being crude we used to call those people tramps until Charlie Chaplin taught us to be nice to poor people.
Don't know what people you talked to, but I'm active in one of the biggest DAOs for 10 months and it's 99% about trust.
> Trust is a feature, not a bug
Why do people always misunderstand "trustless"?
Being ABLE to trust somebody is a good thing. Being REQUIRED to trust somebody is a problem.
Why do people always misunderstand "trustless"?
Being ABLE to trust somebody is a good thing. Being REQUIRED to trust somebody is a problem.
That argument is not that clear if you state it in the converse. Being able to operate with nobody trusting you is potentially a problem. Being required to be trusted by at least somebody is arguably a good thing.
> Being required to be trusted by at least somebody
That's in no way related to what I wrote and to the concept of trustless is security.
That's in no way related to what I wrote and to the concept of trustless is security.
Let me phrase it this way: “being required to trust somebody” being a problem is the underlying problem. Why are there untrustworthy people in society?
I'm not following.
You will not find trust _in people_ anywhere in modern society.
Banks certify transactions, governments certify identity. We can go on and on here. Whole swathes of law around this topic too lol (see: fraud).
Crypto isn't about not trusting people, it's about not needing to trust strangers.
Some of them are scams, ironically, but when there's money involved... well it's pretty stupid to _just_ trust people.
Unless I've missed something?
You will not find trust _in people_ anywhere in modern society.
Banks certify transactions, governments certify identity. We can go on and on here. Whole swathes of law around this topic too lol (see: fraud).
Crypto isn't about not trusting people, it's about not needing to trust strangers.
Some of them are scams, ironically, but when there's money involved... well it's pretty stupid to _just_ trust people.
Unless I've missed something?
Trust is everywhere. I eat at a cafe being trusted to pay later. In South Korea, I am trusted to have paid for my ticket upon entering the train (no one ever checked it). I trust every person I stroll past in a dark alley to not rob me at knifepoint. I am trusted by my customers to not deliver a backdoored codebase (yes, there is the letter of the contract, but really it comes down to interpersonal trust since they cannot verify it themselves). Etc., etc.
>Aren’t we sort of codifying malicious intent, instead of trying to remove it from the equation? Whom would this serve?
Define malicious intent.
What and whome one person is willing to trust will always be different than another person. This is a hard truth that we will never work around. Culture vs Culture, family vs family, idea vs idea. We can't get rid of conflict or therefore 'malicious intent' and by extension we can't (or shouldn't) bank on trust. I think the better way to deal with our very real human differences is to look past them in the spirit that all of us are creations of a higher power, and thus working together is in everyone's greatest interest.
Money as a medium of exchange is a very powerful concept It holds the idea of an IOU that can transcend our differences in the spirit of building a better world. But in order for that to happen money needs to be fungible, else our differences will enviably tear it apart.
Perhaps when the dollar was backed by gold this concept was more or less true, but central banks undermined that, hense the pull towards extreme decentralization.
>There is place for verification in the interim, such as maintaining security of your home, but if we are looking ahead (as blockchain enthusiasts do) we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans. NOT TREATING IT AS SOME SORT OF DEFAULT IS A GOOD START.
I must disagree with this concept.
To treat it in a trusted manner is to ignore the fact that we have insurmountable differences and therefore those differences will raise their ugly heads elsewhere and tear our hopes for peace apart.
Rather to start with the presupposition that these differences exist, but that we will create a form that transcends them for the better of all is imo the ideal.
Define malicious intent.
What and whome one person is willing to trust will always be different than another person. This is a hard truth that we will never work around. Culture vs Culture, family vs family, idea vs idea. We can't get rid of conflict or therefore 'malicious intent' and by extension we can't (or shouldn't) bank on trust. I think the better way to deal with our very real human differences is to look past them in the spirit that all of us are creations of a higher power, and thus working together is in everyone's greatest interest.
Money as a medium of exchange is a very powerful concept It holds the idea of an IOU that can transcend our differences in the spirit of building a better world. But in order for that to happen money needs to be fungible, else our differences will enviably tear it apart.
Perhaps when the dollar was backed by gold this concept was more or less true, but central banks undermined that, hense the pull towards extreme decentralization.
>There is place for verification in the interim, such as maintaining security of your home, but if we are looking ahead (as blockchain enthusiasts do) we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans. NOT TREATING IT AS SOME SORT OF DEFAULT IS A GOOD START.
I must disagree with this concept.
To treat it in a trusted manner is to ignore the fact that we have insurmountable differences and therefore those differences will raise their ugly heads elsewhere and tear our hopes for peace apart.
Rather to start with the presupposition that these differences exist, but that we will create a form that transcends them for the better of all is imo the ideal.
I agree. Trust is fundamental to human society, and without it we can't function. No matter how many fancy technological solutions you layer on top.
I think there's a deeper problem that you're ignoring. The desire for trustless systems didn't materialize out of nothing, as has been pointed out many times in the cryptocurrency discussion space. Some of it is surely coming from a libertarian angle of absolute personal freedom to avoid the "unfair" regulation from the government, to avoid the compulsions the state imposes on each of us in order to grant us the rights it does. I think that's a very small part of it though.
I think most of the desire for "zero-trust" comes from a disillusion of the current parties seen as trusted. I can at least say that this is what drives the desire within me. It's very hard to see the fairness in paying taxes when I see the people labeled the most trustworthy abuse the system to hide money in tax havens all while using their entrusted positions to lead the economy of the world into an ever deepening hole. When we see the actors labeled "trustworthy" acting maliciously, it becomes hard to trust the system that calls them "trustworthy".
I go to work every day where I'm asked to ignore my own instincts and instead do whatever some faceless "process" claims is the right thing to work on. I'm asked to ignore the horrible state of our products and instead focus on the massive piles of money we shovel in the door from out entrusted position as a financial institution. Meanwhile I can turn on the TV to see the very same people talk about how they just couldn't have known that billions were being stolen from my government because it's just so hard to be a bank. That shit does stuff to your trust in other people and I'm not alone in that disillusionment.
In that light I think the discussion makes much more sense, even if it doesn't make it any more helpful. Trust is still important, but the current method of obtaining trust, and the by extension people we imbue with it, is broken. For someone in the middle of that, it becomes very logical to discard the whole thing like a junior rewriting a legacy business app.
I think there's a deeper problem that you're ignoring. The desire for trustless systems didn't materialize out of nothing, as has been pointed out many times in the cryptocurrency discussion space. Some of it is surely coming from a libertarian angle of absolute personal freedom to avoid the "unfair" regulation from the government, to avoid the compulsions the state imposes on each of us in order to grant us the rights it does. I think that's a very small part of it though.
I think most of the desire for "zero-trust" comes from a disillusion of the current parties seen as trusted. I can at least say that this is what drives the desire within me. It's very hard to see the fairness in paying taxes when I see the people labeled the most trustworthy abuse the system to hide money in tax havens all while using their entrusted positions to lead the economy of the world into an ever deepening hole. When we see the actors labeled "trustworthy" acting maliciously, it becomes hard to trust the system that calls them "trustworthy".
I go to work every day where I'm asked to ignore my own instincts and instead do whatever some faceless "process" claims is the right thing to work on. I'm asked to ignore the horrible state of our products and instead focus on the massive piles of money we shovel in the door from out entrusted position as a financial institution. Meanwhile I can turn on the TV to see the very same people talk about how they just couldn't have known that billions were being stolen from my government because it's just so hard to be a bank. That shit does stuff to your trust in other people and I'm not alone in that disillusionment.
In that light I think the discussion makes much more sense, even if it doesn't make it any more helpful. Trust is still important, but the current method of obtaining trust, and the by extension people we imbue with it, is broken. For someone in the middle of that, it becomes very logical to discard the whole thing like a junior rewriting a legacy business app.
I heard the opinion where people don’t want to pay taxes that they don’t think do something good, and because the government can freeze their accounts if they don’t pay then they believe it’s unfair.
Presumably, there’s understanding that one cannot participate in a complex web of interdependencies that is advanced human society without giving up complete freedom, due to the presence of the aforementioned malicious actors.
So I don’t understand why not assume other people—whom one without immense hubris would assume to be equally smart—and whom hopefully one voted for, directly or not—have struggled with it and arrived at a solution that works? And if one legitimately thinks it’s a bad solution and cares enough about it, why not attempt to fix it instead? Is this a failure of democracy? Could it be that it moves too slowly for the modern age? Or is there a belief in some underlying conspiracy due to which democracy is not a democracy and no change is possible?
Regarding rogue agents exploiting the system to avoid paying taxes, I don’t think should be a factor that affects my decision on whether I should pay taxes (like what a criminal does shouldn’t be my guiding principle).
What I would agree on is that there’re people incentivised to attempt to benefit at someone else’s cost, and that those people exist everywhere including corporations, institutions, and the government. I’d also agree that, regarding government specifically, it’s worse because such malicious actors are incentivised to actively seek power because power converts to money very well. It’s a truly regrettable state of affair, because government corruption leads to corruption elsewhere. I think part of the issue is democracies being liable to be influenced by kleptocracies in other countries, who funnel unjustly extracted money into Western economies much to the benefit of individuals at the receiving end.
I just don’t think this can be solved technically, we either work on people not being jerks or we will have them find ways to be jerks regardless of any checks, barring complete thought control and predictive crime enforcement dystopia.
---
As another analogy, it’s like a distinction between the spirit and the letter. The spirit is the guiding principle, and the letter is a lossy way to express it. Automatic conversion between the spirit and a letter is not possible: this is a philosophical issue adjacent to the hard problem of consciousness; one human not being able to convey to another human the entirety of what they think or feel, words being always interpreted through another mind’s lens.
Whether the letter can be expressed on paper or as a smart contract, the letter is never going to be equal fidelity to that of the spirit, and for understandable reasons (such as “fallible humans have written it”) should never have precedence over the spirit.
So I wish we invested the effort that goes into inventing higher and higher fidelity letters into, say, alleviating whatever pushes people to violate the spirit in the first place. It’s a much more complex meatspace problem, though.
Presumably, there’s understanding that one cannot participate in a complex web of interdependencies that is advanced human society without giving up complete freedom, due to the presence of the aforementioned malicious actors.
So I don’t understand why not assume other people—whom one without immense hubris would assume to be equally smart—and whom hopefully one voted for, directly or not—have struggled with it and arrived at a solution that works? And if one legitimately thinks it’s a bad solution and cares enough about it, why not attempt to fix it instead? Is this a failure of democracy? Could it be that it moves too slowly for the modern age? Or is there a belief in some underlying conspiracy due to which democracy is not a democracy and no change is possible?
Regarding rogue agents exploiting the system to avoid paying taxes, I don’t think should be a factor that affects my decision on whether I should pay taxes (like what a criminal does shouldn’t be my guiding principle).
What I would agree on is that there’re people incentivised to attempt to benefit at someone else’s cost, and that those people exist everywhere including corporations, institutions, and the government. I’d also agree that, regarding government specifically, it’s worse because such malicious actors are incentivised to actively seek power because power converts to money very well. It’s a truly regrettable state of affair, because government corruption leads to corruption elsewhere. I think part of the issue is democracies being liable to be influenced by kleptocracies in other countries, who funnel unjustly extracted money into Western economies much to the benefit of individuals at the receiving end.
I just don’t think this can be solved technically, we either work on people not being jerks or we will have them find ways to be jerks regardless of any checks, barring complete thought control and predictive crime enforcement dystopia.
---
As another analogy, it’s like a distinction between the spirit and the letter. The spirit is the guiding principle, and the letter is a lossy way to express it. Automatic conversion between the spirit and a letter is not possible: this is a philosophical issue adjacent to the hard problem of consciousness; one human not being able to convey to another human the entirety of what they think or feel, words being always interpreted through another mind’s lens.
Whether the letter can be expressed on paper or as a smart contract, the letter is never going to be equal fidelity to that of the spirit, and for understandable reasons (such as “fallible humans have written it”) should never have precedence over the spirit.
So I wish we invested the effort that goes into inventing higher and higher fidelity letters into, say, alleviating whatever pushes people to violate the spirit in the first place. It’s a much more complex meatspace problem, though.
>there’s understanding that one cannot participate in a complex web of interdependencies that is advanced human society without giving up complete freedom
The problem is, that web is not just a neutral thing that arises organically, it's a bloated mess of faceless coercion that is disproportionally manipulated by a minority.
It used to be that a tribe agreed not to kill or cheat each other and defend against common threats, that's something very basic that I have trouble imagining anybody not wanting. There were manipulators and status seekers, always, but they were forced to divide their attention between the thousands and thousands of tribes and sub-tribes, if I percieve my tribe to be controlled by a trump or a biden or a putin, I can always take my family and go elsewhere, at no more cost than the price of the trip and the risk I'm accepting by leaving the tribe.
Fast forward through 10K years of agriculture, and we're sheep. Lovecraftian faceless horrors called states divide up the entire earth into 200 divisions or so, the vast majority of which are irrelevant (except in deploying violence against you :)), about 10 or 15 control pretty much 99% of what you do. The size acts as a force multiplier for manipualtors and status seekers: Now only the best trumps and bidens and putins compete to govern you, and the winner, as they say, takes all. They can do whatever the F U C K they can, let me tell you, quite honestly and coming from a guy who appreciates democracy and misses it in his country, that democracy is a laugable excuse of a government scheme. You can tell your bullies you hate them? Great, but I'm betting they already know. You can whine and threaten to get them out of the office ? that's it ? you spend a whole 2 or 4 or 6 years raging at a bunch of people and getting other people to rage with you and other people to rage against you, so that, finally, the bullies can "only" bully you as much as they already have, and not more ? and this the best case scenario that you can only get if you're good at convincing people your cause is worthy ? Is this your local optima ?
There is no feedback, the massive inertia of millions and millions of obedient drones serve to condition and dampen any single insurrection. The contradictory feedback of the huge and impotent masses all cancel each other in an orgy of destructive interference, and what remains is the will of the rulers. The coordination overhead asymmetrically influnces those trying to live in freedom, and favors those trying to crush it.
Words alone can't express how I despise and loath hierarchical societies. Words alone can't express how I loath complex huge things that are out of my control and harm me. I don't think that feelings can be serialized into strings, but if they can, it would take me a very large one to express all the myriad and subtle ways that I hate nation states.
>I don’t understand why not assume other people—whom one without immense hubris would assume to be equally smart
I don't think intelligence play into it, at least not the kind of intelligence I respect. Smart people are bullied all the time. Smart people had 10K years to fix the massive clusterfuck that is hierarchical societies or toss them into the dirstiest toilet, and they couldn't. It would be the height of hubris to assume you can succeed where billions failed.
>Is this a failure of democracy?
No, it's a failure of people being dumb enough to think that the social protocls and algorithms that fared well in networks of N=100, struggled in networks of N=1000 and absoultely tore themselves apart in networks of N=10000, can scale well to networks of N=10000000 and above. Anything that doesn't respect the underlying reality is doomed to repeatedly live in fear and failure and die in confusion, and the reality is that distributed systems are hard. It's even harder when the processors were never built to operate like this. You're trying to reinvent ants and bees with primates, and failing so hard that the result is not recognisably any of them.
"Democracy" is a bandaid, a flawed ideal that can never work, and makes things worse by making you think you're doing something.
>I just don’t think this can be solved technically
Correct, it's solved by not being large clusterfuck of coercion and control, by being small and simple and beautiful, by recognizing the fundamental limits to cooperation that being flesh and blood enforces on you, and respecting them.
>work on people not being jerks
You can't. Being a jerk is encoded in your DNA. Life competes. Life meta-competes: competes at the level of the rules of competition itself, to bend and distort it in their favor, the meta-game. Life at its very core is the aspiration of a single celled asshole to convert the entire universe into more versions of itself, it began so, and it remains so.
The only way to emulate altruism, to hack it onto a system after the fact, is to make selfish assholery more expensive than selfless altruism, always. Sometimes that would make sense, like within the boundaries of your gene pool, few people, I love to imagine, think about deceiving and coercing their flesh and blood, and fewer still actually go along all the way.
But that natural familiar affection declines exponentially as the genetic diff grows, and you have to resort to complement it with artifical measures. The problem with artifical measures, though, is that they are second-class citizens, they are never as convincing and natural as natural inlicnations. It's an uphill fight. Invent laws and rules and regulations and constitutions and religions and mainfestos Till The Cows Come Home, you can't put them in the DNA, and DNA is what life is, and what a thing is what a thing does. So it is an arms race: I invent a God today to tell people to be nice to each other, and tomorrow a smooth-talking smooth-brained asshole manages to convince people God Ackshually wants us to do his bidding instead, I invent democracy the day after tomorrow to convince people that everybody matters, and by the weekend that same breed of smooth-talking smooth-brained assholes find the exploit.
Unless, and until, every single nerve signal going in or out of a brain is subject to your rules (by dystopia, by utopian merging of all human minds into one, by anything), you don't have rules, you have suggestions, protocols, paradigm. "Would you please agree not to fuck with me ?", maybe I will, who knows, I'm not my best self all the time, and there are worse. Why put yourself with a bunch of strange assholes and bet your wellbeing on them obeying a buggy protocol they are never truly compelled to follow ?
The problem is, that web is not just a neutral thing that arises organically, it's a bloated mess of faceless coercion that is disproportionally manipulated by a minority.
It used to be that a tribe agreed not to kill or cheat each other and defend against common threats, that's something very basic that I have trouble imagining anybody not wanting. There were manipulators and status seekers, always, but they were forced to divide their attention between the thousands and thousands of tribes and sub-tribes, if I percieve my tribe to be controlled by a trump or a biden or a putin, I can always take my family and go elsewhere, at no more cost than the price of the trip and the risk I'm accepting by leaving the tribe.
Fast forward through 10K years of agriculture, and we're sheep. Lovecraftian faceless horrors called states divide up the entire earth into 200 divisions or so, the vast majority of which are irrelevant (except in deploying violence against you :)), about 10 or 15 control pretty much 99% of what you do. The size acts as a force multiplier for manipualtors and status seekers: Now only the best trumps and bidens and putins compete to govern you, and the winner, as they say, takes all. They can do whatever the F U C K they can, let me tell you, quite honestly and coming from a guy who appreciates democracy and misses it in his country, that democracy is a laugable excuse of a government scheme. You can tell your bullies you hate them? Great, but I'm betting they already know. You can whine and threaten to get them out of the office ? that's it ? you spend a whole 2 or 4 or 6 years raging at a bunch of people and getting other people to rage with you and other people to rage against you, so that, finally, the bullies can "only" bully you as much as they already have, and not more ? and this the best case scenario that you can only get if you're good at convincing people your cause is worthy ? Is this your local optima ?
There is no feedback, the massive inertia of millions and millions of obedient drones serve to condition and dampen any single insurrection. The contradictory feedback of the huge and impotent masses all cancel each other in an orgy of destructive interference, and what remains is the will of the rulers. The coordination overhead asymmetrically influnces those trying to live in freedom, and favors those trying to crush it.
Words alone can't express how I despise and loath hierarchical societies. Words alone can't express how I loath complex huge things that are out of my control and harm me. I don't think that feelings can be serialized into strings, but if they can, it would take me a very large one to express all the myriad and subtle ways that I hate nation states.
>I don’t understand why not assume other people—whom one without immense hubris would assume to be equally smart
I don't think intelligence play into it, at least not the kind of intelligence I respect. Smart people are bullied all the time. Smart people had 10K years to fix the massive clusterfuck that is hierarchical societies or toss them into the dirstiest toilet, and they couldn't. It would be the height of hubris to assume you can succeed where billions failed.
>Is this a failure of democracy?
No, it's a failure of people being dumb enough to think that the social protocls and algorithms that fared well in networks of N=100, struggled in networks of N=1000 and absoultely tore themselves apart in networks of N=10000, can scale well to networks of N=10000000 and above. Anything that doesn't respect the underlying reality is doomed to repeatedly live in fear and failure and die in confusion, and the reality is that distributed systems are hard. It's even harder when the processors were never built to operate like this. You're trying to reinvent ants and bees with primates, and failing so hard that the result is not recognisably any of them.
"Democracy" is a bandaid, a flawed ideal that can never work, and makes things worse by making you think you're doing something.
>I just don’t think this can be solved technically
Correct, it's solved by not being large clusterfuck of coercion and control, by being small and simple and beautiful, by recognizing the fundamental limits to cooperation that being flesh and blood enforces on you, and respecting them.
>work on people not being jerks
You can't. Being a jerk is encoded in your DNA. Life competes. Life meta-competes: competes at the level of the rules of competition itself, to bend and distort it in their favor, the meta-game. Life at its very core is the aspiration of a single celled asshole to convert the entire universe into more versions of itself, it began so, and it remains so.
The only way to emulate altruism, to hack it onto a system after the fact, is to make selfish assholery more expensive than selfless altruism, always. Sometimes that would make sense, like within the boundaries of your gene pool, few people, I love to imagine, think about deceiving and coercing their flesh and blood, and fewer still actually go along all the way.
But that natural familiar affection declines exponentially as the genetic diff grows, and you have to resort to complement it with artifical measures. The problem with artifical measures, though, is that they are second-class citizens, they are never as convincing and natural as natural inlicnations. It's an uphill fight. Invent laws and rules and regulations and constitutions and religions and mainfestos Till The Cows Come Home, you can't put them in the DNA, and DNA is what life is, and what a thing is what a thing does. So it is an arms race: I invent a God today to tell people to be nice to each other, and tomorrow a smooth-talking smooth-brained asshole manages to convince people God Ackshually wants us to do his bidding instead, I invent democracy the day after tomorrow to convince people that everybody matters, and by the weekend that same breed of smooth-talking smooth-brained assholes find the exploit.
Unless, and until, every single nerve signal going in or out of a brain is subject to your rules (by dystopia, by utopian merging of all human minds into one, by anything), you don't have rules, you have suggestions, protocols, paradigm. "Would you please agree not to fuck with me ?", maybe I will, who knows, I'm not my best self all the time, and there are worse. Why put yourself with a bunch of strange assholes and bet your wellbeing on them obeying a buggy protocol they are never truly compelled to follow ?
> I don't think intelligence play into it, at least not the kind of intelligence I respect. Smart people are bullied all the time. Smart people had 10K years to fix the massive clusterfuck that is hierarchical societies or toss them into the dirstiest toilet, and they couldn't. It would be the height of hubris to assume you can succeed where billions failed.
I disagree. We have had parts of society dominate other parts, using them as workforce and such, since humanity historically had A) insufficient resources and capabilities to improve general well-being, and B) insufficient ethical standards to care to do so.
Ethics have been evolving (abolition of slavery, etc.), so clearly (B) is not static. And now, with automation and strong renewable energy sources, we may (or should) be rapidly approaching post-scarcity, addressing (A). The result of it all is a qualitatively new state for humanity.
In such a state, the dog eat dog calculus you describe is thinking in the past, I’d expect better from a technologically progressive mind.
Regarding biological need for competition, I’ll need to think about it but immediately it strikes me that there should be enough ways left to compete fairly.
Regarding bullying, I suffered from being bullied in early years, and I have grown to see my bullies for what they are: mentally traumatized people. The same trauma carries over to people seeking personal security at the expense of others or the environment, resulting in unethical or malicious behavior. Thus the need to improve baseline well-being (and especially mental health) across the board, to stop people being traumatized and passing it on by traumatizing their peers and children.
I disagree. We have had parts of society dominate other parts, using them as workforce and such, since humanity historically had A) insufficient resources and capabilities to improve general well-being, and B) insufficient ethical standards to care to do so.
Ethics have been evolving (abolition of slavery, etc.), so clearly (B) is not static. And now, with automation and strong renewable energy sources, we may (or should) be rapidly approaching post-scarcity, addressing (A). The result of it all is a qualitatively new state for humanity.
In such a state, the dog eat dog calculus you describe is thinking in the past, I’d expect better from a technologically progressive mind.
Regarding biological need for competition, I’ll need to think about it but immediately it strikes me that there should be enough ways left to compete fairly.
Regarding bullying, I suffered from being bullied in early years, and I have grown to see my bullies for what they are: mentally traumatized people. The same trauma carries over to people seeking personal security at the expense of others or the environment, resulting in unethical or malicious behavior. Thus the need to improve baseline well-being (and especially mental health) across the board, to stop people being traumatized and passing it on by traumatizing their peers and children.
Maybe this explains to a great degree why so many blockchain big names are Russian speakers! Because in Russia, we see trust as a bug, and any necessity to develop trust to anyone as an obstacle (because we know people really can't be trusted).
There are high-trust and low-trust societies out there.
Majority of the world lives in low-trust societies and this is culturally, not economically driven, so unlikely to change fast. Globalisation means these people will permeate - through migration too, but mostly, through cross-border economic activities - all high-trust societies, too, so very quickly people who rely on trust and trust others will either be scammed out of all their lives, or resort to a niche role by picking their interacting parties so diligently they will be cut off from most economic and social activity, and become irrelevant.
So, for the modern world, trust is a bug indeed (and no i don't think blockchain will help this, or anything at all).
There are high-trust and low-trust societies out there.
Majority of the world lives in low-trust societies and this is culturally, not economically driven, so unlikely to change fast. Globalisation means these people will permeate - through migration too, but mostly, through cross-border economic activities - all high-trust societies, too, so very quickly people who rely on trust and trust others will either be scammed out of all their lives, or resort to a niche role by picking their interacting parties so diligently they will be cut off from most economic and social activity, and become irrelevant.
So, for the modern world, trust is a bug indeed (and no i don't think blockchain will help this, or anything at all).
> Trust is a feature, not a bug.
It's a feature of the system, precisely because it replaces trust in shaky institutions.
I trust strong cryptography. I don't trust governments not to abuse their power. I don't trust corporations not to maximize profits at our expense.
It's really simple. I don't believe in any system that requires trusting either governments or corporations. A good system will necessarily work despite them.
> we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans. Not treating it as some sort of default is a good start.
Trust is inherently selective and small scale. You trust specific individuals that you personally know, not all of humanity. Even that trust is easily broken.
Compare that to modern computer and internet technology where servers are expected to receive input from any other computer on earth. The technological equivalent of children being encouraged to talk to strangers.
It's a feature of the system, precisely because it replaces trust in shaky institutions.
I trust strong cryptography. I don't trust governments not to abuse their power. I don't trust corporations not to maximize profits at our expense.
It's really simple. I don't believe in any system that requires trusting either governments or corporations. A good system will necessarily work despite them.
> we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans. Not treating it as some sort of default is a good start.
Trust is inherently selective and small scale. You trust specific individuals that you personally know, not all of humanity. Even that trust is easily broken.
Compare that to modern computer and internet technology where servers are expected to receive input from any other computer on earth. The technological equivalent of children being encouraged to talk to strangers.
I don’t think we can get rid of locks on our doors (metaphorically and literally) right away, but I do think we should invest more effort into making them obsolete (by raising general well-being, ensuring psychological security; treating people as trustworthy is a factor, since we are primed to behave the way we are perceived) than into making more and more sophisticated locks all around us.
>Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly.
It's about building robust systems. A system that assumes counterparties are trustworthy will fail in the case they aren't (as demonstrated clearly in modern OS/web architecture), whereas a system that assumes counterparties are not trustworthy will not fail in that case.
> we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans.
This is the same premise as communism and has proven to be a complete failure: it's not possible to change human nature. Even with a massive propaganda and brainwashing apparatus like the Chinese education system.
It's about building robust systems. A system that assumes counterparties are trustworthy will fail in the case they aren't (as demonstrated clearly in modern OS/web architecture), whereas a system that assumes counterparties are not trustworthy will not fail in that case.
> we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans.
This is the same premise as communism and has proven to be a complete failure: it's not possible to change human nature. Even with a massive propaganda and brainwashing apparatus like the Chinese education system.
I agree that current technical systems must not assume trust, for as long as we have malicious agents. IMO we should not let this be baked into the fabric of human society though.
And for the record, I believe it is possible to achieve what I am talking about in conditions and general spirit of market and capitalism. Suppressing personal choice (USSR- and China-style) is not the way to get there, it is in fact the opposite—making people feel psychologically secure enough to not feel compelled to be malicious is one thing; forcing them into constraints that prevent them from being malicious does not solve the issue and only obscures it (and besides, party elites will always be free to be whatever they want).
In fact, it is the parallels between blockchain-based social system and some emerging Chinese realities (social karma, etc.) that worry me.
And for the record, I believe it is possible to achieve what I am talking about in conditions and general spirit of market and capitalism. Suppressing personal choice (USSR- and China-style) is not the way to get there, it is in fact the opposite—making people feel psychologically secure enough to not feel compelled to be malicious is one thing; forcing them into constraints that prevent them from being malicious does not solve the issue and only obscures it (and besides, party elites will always be free to be whatever they want).
In fact, it is the parallels between blockchain-based social system and some emerging Chinese realities (social karma, etc.) that worry me.
you can trust people all you want. take iou's, accept people at their word, etc -- the existence of trustless systems does nothing to negate this. for everyone you don't trust, you can use a blockchain.
> we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans.
i don't even know what to say when people say things like this. we should strive for good will and cooperation, but we must be prepared for situations where there is none. this is like arguing against allowing people to put locks on doors. when you create situations where distrust is disallowed, defecting becomes the winning strategy.
> we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans.
i don't even know what to say when people say things like this. we should strive for good will and cooperation, but we must be prepared for situations where there is none. this is like arguing against allowing people to put locks on doors. when you create situations where distrust is disallowed, defecting becomes the winning strategy.
Have you ever been in places where locking your bike is perceived as a slight sign of disrespect? It is for a good reason; you have basically just labeled all people there as possible thieves.
I am not arguing that we metaphorically and literally need to do away with locks right now, but that we can and should apply effort in the direction that makes them obsolete as preventative measures. I want to live in a place where I do not need them.
The existence of trustless systems does not make distrust mandatory, it is such systems becoming mandatory that bothers me, as well as the effort spent into developing more and more robust trustless systems—as opposed to trying to make those very systems obsolete by eliminating the underlying motivations that push people to exploit trust.
I am not arguing that we metaphorically and literally need to do away with locks right now, but that we can and should apply effort in the direction that makes them obsolete as preventative measures. I want to live in a place where I do not need them.
The existence of trustless systems does not make distrust mandatory, it is such systems becoming mandatory that bothers me, as well as the effort spent into developing more and more robust trustless systems—as opposed to trying to make those very systems obsolete by eliminating the underlying motivations that push people to exploit trust.
> Have you ever been in places where locking your bike is perceived as a slight sign of disrespect? It is for a good reason; you have basically just labeled all people there as possible thieves.
the internet is a single, collapsed point in space. your bike is accessible through this aleph, to all of the most skilled bike thieves in the world, forever. the internet might have been different in the past and may yet be different in the future, but if we are going to have a truly global universally-accessible network, we are going to need systems that are built for an adversarial environment.
the internet is a single, collapsed point in space. your bike is accessible through this aleph, to all of the most skilled bike thieves in the world, forever. the internet might have been different in the past and may yet be different in the future, but if we are going to have a truly global universally-accessible network, we are going to need systems that are built for an adversarial environment.
Same logic applies no matter how many people there are. Instituting pervasive checks on everything and distrust by default is not different from failed attempts at communism as exemplified by USSR and China.
i genuinely cannot comprehend the logic behind this statement. nobody is forcing you to use these systems, so you seem to have some emotional discomfort with other people having the ability to protect themselves. what is your alternative? forced trust, dependence on third party authorities?
> nobody is forcing you to use these systems
The general sentiment from blockchain enthusiasts I talked with is that conventional system is obsolete and must be superseded by what they’re building ASAP. If you are OK with blockchain and adjacent tech being a niche, then I don’t really have anything to object to (whatever floats your boat and all that).
> what is your alternative? forced trust, dependence on third party authorities?
No… I sort of spent a while describing it in my original comment.
The general sentiment from blockchain enthusiasts I talked with is that conventional system is obsolete and must be superseded by what they’re building ASAP. If you are OK with blockchain and adjacent tech being a niche, then I don’t really have anything to object to (whatever floats your boat and all that).
> what is your alternative? forced trust, dependence on third party authorities?
No… I sort of spent a while describing it in my original comment.
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Everyone is a potential threat, that's the whole point of trust in the first place. If that wasn't the case, trust (in terms of safety) wouldnt even be a thing.
Not if you reframe it as the absence of mistrust, trusting being the natural state.
Trusting blindly is not a natural state. We evolved in the ecosystem you see around you. In freak cases, eg. the dodo bird, you can see what happens when blind trust meets competition.
I think this is why it is problematic these days. Trust in simple terms would be trusting your local community but not the 'outside' world. But now we're trying to make the whole world one community, so who to distrust? Everyone, because you don't actually really know many people at all 'inside' your community. Everyone is inside and outside at once.
It feels like blockchain is trying to be a solution for the 'global community' that can't trust itself, but will never solve that problem because it's inherently an unsolvable utopian dream.
It feels like blockchain is trying to be a solution for the 'global community' that can't trust itself, but will never solve that problem because it's inherently an unsolvable utopian dream.
Isn’t it fundamentally an artifact of scarcity? What if with technological advances in automation and energy sources humanity were approaching a world without it?
> Their core motivation to benefit at others’ expense is to me indicative of mental health issues, possibly caused by insecurity and upbringing trauma.
Could we avoid armchair diagnoses? For society to function we need to maintain the polite fiction that one's actions are determined solely by their will.
Could we avoid armchair diagnoses? For society to function we need to maintain the polite fiction that one's actions are determined solely by their will.
You're right on a lot of things here, (I appreciate the slightly humorous, gratuitous take on bad actors having had a bad upbringing) but you seem to be inverting the flaws in the no-trust paradigm into a trust-but-verify paradigm based on an assumption of implicit goodness which is no more borne out by reality than the assumption of implicit evil.
Maybe it makes more sense to look at it all through a different lens. Classical, post-mercantile liberal economics, - that is, liberalism - is entirely built around a framework for dealing with the question of establishing trust between parties: Individuals do not have to establish trust, or agree with each other, or be friends, if they certify that they acquiesce to a system where the market is well regulated. In exchange they get the advantage of being in a market where trade can be a non-zero game that advantages both parties. The problem with crypto as it stands has something to do with unregulated markets, something to do with bad actors, but a lot more to do with the fact that no one has yet come up with a use for deflationary currency that's something other than a zero-sum game.
Maybe it makes more sense to look at it all through a different lens. Classical, post-mercantile liberal economics, - that is, liberalism - is entirely built around a framework for dealing with the question of establishing trust between parties: Individuals do not have to establish trust, or agree with each other, or be friends, if they certify that they acquiesce to a system where the market is well regulated. In exchange they get the advantage of being in a market where trade can be a non-zero game that advantages both parties. The problem with crypto as it stands has something to do with unregulated markets, something to do with bad actors, but a lot more to do with the fact that no one has yet come up with a use for deflationary currency that's something other than a zero-sum game.
I need time to digest your point, but one note—participants certifying acquiescence to the system still involves trust: as in, you agree to the rules of this mini-game, but I trust that you actually follow them. I suspect that such default meta-trust is sort of important, like presumption of innocence; and if there are people who violate it, then we should throw more resources at treating the underlying causes rather than eliminating symptoms. So far blockchain-based trustless tech to me seems instrumental at treating the symptom only (and I can see how it detracts resources from treating the cause), thus I am wary of it.
This is a thoughtful treatment of some of the issues. I worked on digital identity in govt, and sovereign identity is considered seriously there. The concepts in the article force the question of what things like security, dystopian, and scalable mean, among others.
If I were to articulate the gap in perspectives, it would be that it is between the engineering view of solving problems (e.g. Vitalik's "soul bound tokens") and managing them - that is, to extract value from a dynamic, in the case of existing legacy paper/card identity schemes today.
Arguably, in a society, all value is created from risk, where someone takes on the risk of an outcome and someone pays them to hold it while reaping the benefits of whatever thing has exposure to the failure. It's imperfect on purpose, as it allows for flexibilty and non-binary failure modes, and it lets people manage (or extract value) from the shifting risk, where the result is an Economy. When you just solve a problem - let's say we had these perfect soul based tokens, where there was no ambiguity or repudiation for anything, you are depriving people of the very thing we have evolved to be good at, which is judge and collaborate to trade in risks. It's not desirable precisely because instinctually people get they don't want to become solved problems and known quantities.
Digital identity is a very nuanced power struggle going on in the background within government and industry, as identity is the substrate to a certain type of economy, and who wouldn't want to be the controller of that? The better case is having ephemeral identities and just price in insurance to transactions, much like interest rates on credit, but less centralized, and with more exposure to volatility of real life - just like other crypto solutions.
The people writing about this stuff in the crypto community are still sounding out some things for the first time, but just because they are doing so doesn't mean they are the first to consider them. When I worked on an actual govt digital identity and currency product, I pissed off the execs because I said their design didn't pass "the hookers and blow test," which is that if you can't use the payment and identity scheme for grey market transactions, nobody is going to adopt it. Not because they are vice ridden manaics, but because the human animal knows when it is in captivity and it will find ways to resist it.
This is the same reason that central bank digital currencies are going to be an economically inferior good, and create dangerous black markets that produce the dystopian corruption that idealists seem to be trying to avoid, as 1/3 of people just aren't going to trust them. Sure, you can impose the schemes, but if you have ever spent time in an authoritarian regime, you know that the culture is completely debased and anything-goes behind closed doors becase the rules themselves are arbitrary and selectively enforced, because the arbitrariness creates a sense of illigitimacy where there is nothing to trust or believe.
The stupidity of technocracies is illigitimate, and it breeds contempt and corruption. This may seem meta compared to the implementation details of some nerdy key management protocol, but I'd argue if you haven't thought these other parts through, crypto really is just some naive kids building a bike shed to fill with shaved yaks and thinking they're reinventing democracy and freedom.
If I were to articulate the gap in perspectives, it would be that it is between the engineering view of solving problems (e.g. Vitalik's "soul bound tokens") and managing them - that is, to extract value from a dynamic, in the case of existing legacy paper/card identity schemes today.
Arguably, in a society, all value is created from risk, where someone takes on the risk of an outcome and someone pays them to hold it while reaping the benefits of whatever thing has exposure to the failure. It's imperfect on purpose, as it allows for flexibilty and non-binary failure modes, and it lets people manage (or extract value) from the shifting risk, where the result is an Economy. When you just solve a problem - let's say we had these perfect soul based tokens, where there was no ambiguity or repudiation for anything, you are depriving people of the very thing we have evolved to be good at, which is judge and collaborate to trade in risks. It's not desirable precisely because instinctually people get they don't want to become solved problems and known quantities.
Digital identity is a very nuanced power struggle going on in the background within government and industry, as identity is the substrate to a certain type of economy, and who wouldn't want to be the controller of that? The better case is having ephemeral identities and just price in insurance to transactions, much like interest rates on credit, but less centralized, and with more exposure to volatility of real life - just like other crypto solutions.
The people writing about this stuff in the crypto community are still sounding out some things for the first time, but just because they are doing so doesn't mean they are the first to consider them. When I worked on an actual govt digital identity and currency product, I pissed off the execs because I said their design didn't pass "the hookers and blow test," which is that if you can't use the payment and identity scheme for grey market transactions, nobody is going to adopt it. Not because they are vice ridden manaics, but because the human animal knows when it is in captivity and it will find ways to resist it.
This is the same reason that central bank digital currencies are going to be an economically inferior good, and create dangerous black markets that produce the dystopian corruption that idealists seem to be trying to avoid, as 1/3 of people just aren't going to trust them. Sure, you can impose the schemes, but if you have ever spent time in an authoritarian regime, you know that the culture is completely debased and anything-goes behind closed doors becase the rules themselves are arbitrary and selectively enforced, because the arbitrariness creates a sense of illigitimacy where there is nothing to trust or believe.
The stupidity of technocracies is illigitimate, and it breeds contempt and corruption. This may seem meta compared to the implementation details of some nerdy key management protocol, but I'd argue if you haven't thought these other parts through, crypto really is just some naive kids building a bike shed to fill with shaved yaks and thinking they're reinventing democracy and freedom.
Visiting Copenhagen I pondered on those points too. Denmark seems to be a society that firmly embraced “centralized digital currency” - even the beggers have POS terminals and if you _request_ a cash payment at a restaurant people look at you funny.
But they have this “Freetown” of sorts right smack in the center of their capital, where you can buy illegal stuff with cash.
There’s no guards, no police posted at the entrance. People are just kinda OK with all that. You live a highly structured civilized life, but then a metro stop away you enter this place where people are selling weed on the streets and you can probably get other funky stuff.
And seems to be quite stable thing - they’ve had it for like 50 years or so.
Maybe thats what we need - unregulated places where societies can try out different things that are not accepted at large?
Maybe digital currencies in the future would incorporate that? A friend is working for a VMWare project where the etherium based crypto has an “escape hatch” built in with some allowance for “cash like” transactions … maybe something like that would work?
But they have this “Freetown” of sorts right smack in the center of their capital, where you can buy illegal stuff with cash.
There’s no guards, no police posted at the entrance. People are just kinda OK with all that. You live a highly structured civilized life, but then a metro stop away you enter this place where people are selling weed on the streets and you can probably get other funky stuff.
And seems to be quite stable thing - they’ve had it for like 50 years or so.
Maybe thats what we need - unregulated places where societies can try out different things that are not accepted at large?
Maybe digital currencies in the future would incorporate that? A friend is working for a VMWare project where the etherium based crypto has an “escape hatch” built in with some allowance for “cash like” transactions … maybe something like that would work?
What I actually suspect is that the move toward drugs legalization in places like Canada and experiments with decriminalization of cocaine and heroin are a way to normalize using electronic payments (e.g. interac) for those black market goods, which brings them into the fold of centralized economic control and removes a key use case for cash. However the liberalization is a trap intended to set the stage for CBDCs, as once cash is fully marginalized, what will you pay in when the people in the govt change their mind about legalization?
Forget drugs for a moment, what about meat, gas, ammunition, and other normal things that are being reclassified as decadent luxuries you apparently don't "need," or "deserve," according to whoever "they" are. It's not enough for them to live virtuously according to their values, they need to police you first, and fly around in private jets while they do it. Seeing the institutions behind identity, government, and payments from the inside has persuaded me that the conspiracy theorists are just people in denial of what they have discovered, because they can't face the consequences of how serious it really all is. The architects of this don't care what anyone believes, they just need for members of any potential resistance to keep doing nothing to stop it. For good men to do nothing, as they say.
Cryptocurrencies were and remain necessary beacuse they represent a limit on state power in an era of previously unimaginable total surveillance tech, and this limit makes leviathanists and technocrats apopleptic. That's also why the arguments against crypto always seem to have a shrill whinge of cant about them - as they're based on accusations of blasphemy against the pillars of offical technocratic narrative, and the arguments themselves aren't powerful or persuasive.
Not only do we need cryptocurrencies, we need to establish boundaries on the dominion of people in governments, as without those boundaries, we're in for a totalitarian hell not even fiction could prepare us for, imo.
Forget drugs for a moment, what about meat, gas, ammunition, and other normal things that are being reclassified as decadent luxuries you apparently don't "need," or "deserve," according to whoever "they" are. It's not enough for them to live virtuously according to their values, they need to police you first, and fly around in private jets while they do it. Seeing the institutions behind identity, government, and payments from the inside has persuaded me that the conspiracy theorists are just people in denial of what they have discovered, because they can't face the consequences of how serious it really all is. The architects of this don't care what anyone believes, they just need for members of any potential resistance to keep doing nothing to stop it. For good men to do nothing, as they say.
Cryptocurrencies were and remain necessary beacuse they represent a limit on state power in an era of previously unimaginable total surveillance tech, and this limit makes leviathanists and technocrats apopleptic. That's also why the arguments against crypto always seem to have a shrill whinge of cant about them - as they're based on accusations of blasphemy against the pillars of offical technocratic narrative, and the arguments themselves aren't powerful or persuasive.
Not only do we need cryptocurrencies, we need to establish boundaries on the dominion of people in governments, as without those boundaries, we're in for a totalitarian hell not even fiction could prepare us for, imo.
Some good points. I think a major problem is with the word "identity",
is that there are always (at least two) meanings that may or may not
intersect. We have self-regarding identities and other-regarding
identities. The set of things we define about ourselves that includes
beliefs, intentions, secrets and so on may be (for secrets must be)
disjoint from the set of things others attribute to us, reputation,
observed history, expectations and so on - though a mature, well
integrated, social person could be expected to have a high
intersection.
If we try to conflate those kinds of identity problems arise because people who are young, vulnerable, transient, in crisis need to be able to revise both kinds. Unless we are wanted criminals we have a right to be forgotten. And we all have a right to change our minds about things and re-invent ourselves.
I think we don't yet have a mature enough understanding of what identity really means for human beings to get successful digital mileage except in a few limited applications like payment systems or session management. Perhaps that's why the concept of "identity politics" is so prominently at play.
If we try to conflate those kinds of identity problems arise because people who are young, vulnerable, transient, in crisis need to be able to revise both kinds. Unless we are wanted criminals we have a right to be forgotten. And we all have a right to change our minds about things and re-invent ourselves.
I think we don't yet have a mature enough understanding of what identity really means for human beings to get successful digital mileage except in a few limited applications like payment systems or session management. Perhaps that's why the concept of "identity politics" is so prominently at play.
> right to be forgotten
1984 had a pretty good argument why it’s dystopian to tell people they are not allowed to remember or continue believing something.
1984 had a pretty good argument why it’s dystopian to tell people they are not allowed to remember or continue believing something.
> 1984 had a pretty good argument why it’s dystopian to tell people
they are not allowed to remember or continue believing something.
Its a good book. It should also be tempered with a little Jane Austen, about the tyranny of unshakable reputation. My take is it's the "telling people what they are allowed to do" part that is dystopian. To that extent all laws are dystopian. However we do it all the time and obtain great wider benefit. For example, bad money choices might lead someone into insoluble debt, they declare bankruptcy, and seven years later that is deleted from public records so they can make a fresh start. In reality a "right to be forgotten" is more of a right to be forgiven. Asking that people forgive and discount past wrongs is not the same as poisoning and torturing them in a basement until their minds are wiped, as in some demonic MK-UTLTRA shitshow.
Its a good book. It should also be tempered with a little Jane Austen, about the tyranny of unshakable reputation. My take is it's the "telling people what they are allowed to do" part that is dystopian. To that extent all laws are dystopian. However we do it all the time and obtain great wider benefit. For example, bad money choices might lead someone into insoluble debt, they declare bankruptcy, and seven years later that is deleted from public records so they can make a fresh start. In reality a "right to be forgotten" is more of a right to be forgiven. Asking that people forgive and discount past wrongs is not the same as poisoning and torturing them in a basement until their minds are wiped, as in some demonic MK-UTLTRA shitshow.
People can remember all they want… It’s the permanent digital record indexed by search engines, available at the tip of your fingers anywhere anytime - that is the problem.
I'd rephrase that it's the powerful agents dicating what them searchable indexes can find beyond what the algorithms doing the finding can do that's the real problem.
Add in the notion that the police and other important agencies can find a lot more than the Public can, because safety... and continue to completely break democracy while pretending you're doing all this for the greater good (where "for good" actually means "for concentration of power")
Add in the notion that the police and other important agencies can find a lot more than the Public can, because safety... and continue to completely break democracy while pretending you're doing all this for the greater good (where "for good" actually means "for concentration of power")
I think the right to be forgotten applies to digital records, I might be missing the context here though.
Digital records are an extension of the mind.
No they are not. They are a physical medium more akin to physical records than they are the mind.
This is such a ridiculous take it’s hard to take it seriously.
What about retention periods? About about paper copies? Should no data anywhere be regulated because it is somehow this nebulously and poorly defined “extension of the mind?”
This is such a ridiculous take it’s hard to take it seriously.
What about retention periods? About about paper copies? Should no data anywhere be regulated because it is somehow this nebulously and poorly defined “extension of the mind?”
> What about retention periods? About about paper copies? Should no data anywhere be regulated because it is somehow this nebulously and poorly defined “extension of the mind?”
and extremal counterpoint to this viewpoint is that all data be regulated because it's all digital and in the cloud.
just consider banning paper and pencils
and extremal counterpoint to this viewpoint is that all data be regulated because it's all digital and in the cloud.
just consider banning paper and pencils
Your liberty to extend your mind ends where my dignity begins.
[deleted]
no, it ends where my own mind begins.
the problem here is the "collective mind" aka the cloud of collectively constructed digital information
the problem here is the "collective mind" aka the cloud of collectively constructed digital information
> I said their design didn't pass "the hookers and blow test," which is that if you can't use the payment and identity scheme for grey market transactions, nobody is going to adopt it. Not because they are vice ridden manaics, but because the human animal knows when it is in captivity and it will find ways to resist it.
"Nobody is going to adopt it" is an extreme opinion. People have resentments about society but most are minor. Few enough people feel captive that most continue as members of significant societies. The degree to which people feel resentment and pursue extreme "solutions" is a complex variable. Some societies succeed better than others in meeting needs without needing a cryptocurrency.
> The stupidity of technocracies is illigitimate, and it breeds contempt and corruption. This may seem meta
The phenomena that you are describing here are resentments about characteristics of people or of society (or of a particular society). These resentments are unlikely to find a solution in another even more dubious techno-financial construct for which literally no one will ever care except for the value that credulous people ascribe to it.
> I'd argue if you haven't thought these other parts through, crypto really is just some naive kids building a bike shed to fill with shaved yaks and thinking they're reinventing democracy and freedom.
Yes, I do agree.
> the arbitrariness creates a sense of illigitimacy where there is nothing to trust or believe.
Problems of "illegitimacy", trust, and belief, are not going to be solved by cryptocurrency. In fact, the cryptocurrency movement has no trust and no credibility at all.
"Nobody is going to adopt it" is an extreme opinion. People have resentments about society but most are minor. Few enough people feel captive that most continue as members of significant societies. The degree to which people feel resentment and pursue extreme "solutions" is a complex variable. Some societies succeed better than others in meeting needs without needing a cryptocurrency.
> The stupidity of technocracies is illigitimate, and it breeds contempt and corruption. This may seem meta
The phenomena that you are describing here are resentments about characteristics of people or of society (or of a particular society). These resentments are unlikely to find a solution in another even more dubious techno-financial construct for which literally no one will ever care except for the value that credulous people ascribe to it.
> I'd argue if you haven't thought these other parts through, crypto really is just some naive kids building a bike shed to fill with shaved yaks and thinking they're reinventing democracy and freedom.
Yes, I do agree.
> the arbitrariness creates a sense of illigitimacy where there is nothing to trust or believe.
Problems of "illegitimacy", trust, and belief, are not going to be solved by cryptocurrency. In fact, the cryptocurrency movement has no trust and no credibility at all.
This is probably one of the most interesting comments I’ve ever read. Can you share more details about the digital identity and currency product you were working on and for which government was it intended for?
Thx. I can be candid because I'm not talking about any institution or client in particular, but there has been more than one and less than six I've worked on directly as a security architect over the last 15-20 years. The details of the identity or currency aren't really that interesting, as if you understand federation protocols and maybe some standard cryptogrphic/security protocols with tokenization, the implementations are compositions of those.
However, what I can say is that engineers are not lawyers, so we tend not to understand the regulatory systems in place, and the lawyers you would need to untangle this stuff aren't technologists. That's changing post-covid, where western governments in general are taking a "so sue me," approach to imposing technology and mandates over top of privacy norms and regulations, and there is a young generation of lawyers who grew up online (and with cryptocurrency, bitcoin is 11 years old now) who can pick up things like protocols.
The vaccine passport system and covax was quite a gambit as it was an international digital id scheme intended to subsume other efforts that had stronger technical requirements. The central bank digital currency (CBDC) stuff we're hearing about now is an artifact of a few related factors, but what CBDCs are really going to look like in my opinion is the CUC in cuba, or a kind of government/public sector scrip, or the peso in argentina or venezuela that has an official dollar peg and price controls, but there's a huge grey market for USD. Reality is from a state perspective, power is zero sum and human suffering is just managable, and the technology changes of the last two decades have sidelined government as an authority, so they're all trying to reassert themselves. It's going to look clumsy and dumb and it will destroy a lot of wealth and value, but they don't care so long as they think they have secured the reins.
Of course, nobody ever secures the reins so the demand for authority is infinite, but that doesn't stop anyone from trying. Economists, politicians and so-called experts who tell you they can manage an economy don't tell you the part where they run it in to the ground and rule over the ashes, as once you give them secured control, it doesn't matter how well it works. Their promises and arguments are to persuade you to give in to them, because their logic reduces to, if we have power, what do we need your consent and approval for?
If I were hedging, I would figure out what the grey market commodities will be in response to a CBDC that doesn't pass the H&B test I described above. Precedents I would reference would be times in history where govts declare a "bank holiday" and replace bank deposits with treasury bills, or seize deposits of FX and reserve currencies and "buy" them from citizens with the new pegged currency with greater national controls.
The scenario I speculate about is NZ/AU/CAN use a long weekend or "banking system outage," to replace citizen cash deposits with the new CBDC with the flick of a switch and the stroke of a pen, similar to India banning certain cash denominations and taking high denomination bills out of circulation. Assets that facilitate capital flight out of these places will be at a premium, imo. (good news for the art, wine, jewelry, collectables, precious metals, equine, super cars, and other portable alternative asset markets, imo. The big auction houses will probably do well this year.)
Dark stuff, but you spend enough time in security, and everything is within a degree or two of these historic sea changes.
However, what I can say is that engineers are not lawyers, so we tend not to understand the regulatory systems in place, and the lawyers you would need to untangle this stuff aren't technologists. That's changing post-covid, where western governments in general are taking a "so sue me," approach to imposing technology and mandates over top of privacy norms and regulations, and there is a young generation of lawyers who grew up online (and with cryptocurrency, bitcoin is 11 years old now) who can pick up things like protocols.
The vaccine passport system and covax was quite a gambit as it was an international digital id scheme intended to subsume other efforts that had stronger technical requirements. The central bank digital currency (CBDC) stuff we're hearing about now is an artifact of a few related factors, but what CBDCs are really going to look like in my opinion is the CUC in cuba, or a kind of government/public sector scrip, or the peso in argentina or venezuela that has an official dollar peg and price controls, but there's a huge grey market for USD. Reality is from a state perspective, power is zero sum and human suffering is just managable, and the technology changes of the last two decades have sidelined government as an authority, so they're all trying to reassert themselves. It's going to look clumsy and dumb and it will destroy a lot of wealth and value, but they don't care so long as they think they have secured the reins.
Of course, nobody ever secures the reins so the demand for authority is infinite, but that doesn't stop anyone from trying. Economists, politicians and so-called experts who tell you they can manage an economy don't tell you the part where they run it in to the ground and rule over the ashes, as once you give them secured control, it doesn't matter how well it works. Their promises and arguments are to persuade you to give in to them, because their logic reduces to, if we have power, what do we need your consent and approval for?
If I were hedging, I would figure out what the grey market commodities will be in response to a CBDC that doesn't pass the H&B test I described above. Precedents I would reference would be times in history where govts declare a "bank holiday" and replace bank deposits with treasury bills, or seize deposits of FX and reserve currencies and "buy" them from citizens with the new pegged currency with greater national controls.
The scenario I speculate about is NZ/AU/CAN use a long weekend or "banking system outage," to replace citizen cash deposits with the new CBDC with the flick of a switch and the stroke of a pen, similar to India banning certain cash denominations and taking high denomination bills out of circulation. Assets that facilitate capital flight out of these places will be at a premium, imo. (good news for the art, wine, jewelry, collectables, precious metals, equine, super cars, and other portable alternative asset markets, imo. The big auction houses will probably do well this year.)
Dark stuff, but you spend enough time in security, and everything is within a degree or two of these historic sea changes.
I don't understand what you mean by "all value comes from risk." Could you give examples? I don't understand how, say, the value of some food you buy at a grocery store comes from risk.
Also, you say that "instinctually people get they don't want to become solved problems and known quantities," but at least a large subset of the population wants to be famous. And it seems like being trusted by people you know has its benefits too?
Also, you say that "instinctually people get they don't want to become solved problems and known quantities," but at least a large subset of the population wants to be famous. And it seems like being trusted by people you know has its benefits too?
The way I think of it, risk of accident of the delivery truck, the risk of the farm getting their crops ruined, risk of insolvency or net x day term payments, risk of loans taken out to cover patented seeds, risk of expired food.
If nobody wanted to take the risk to plant each time given the potential ROI, you wouldn't get grocery items?
(I'd consider this a random example https://www.callifd.com/uploads/1/3/0/7/130789654/chili_pepp...)
If nobody wanted to take the risk to plant each time given the potential ROI, you wouldn't get grocery items?
(I'd consider this a random example https://www.callifd.com/uploads/1/3/0/7/130789654/chili_pepp...)
Okay, but if you reduced or eliminated one of the risks, doesn’t the food still have the same value as before? It seems like the risk is something like a cost, to be optimized away if you can without reducing value. And it isn’t the only cost.
Would you mind giving an example of an ephemeral identity solution?
My first name asserted in a conversation is one, as it's sufficient to define an endpoint for a low value transaction. 1:1 with cash or bitcoin is easy, because it's a straight retail transction. It only gets complicated when you have an intermediary. Identity is mainly a problem for dealing with intermediaries, and not for people who want to do things.
This is a great write-up for introducing some of these concepts.
For those who want to go deeper, highly recommend reading up more on
DIDs https://w3c.github.io/did-use-cases/ Verifiable Credentials: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/
Some people working in the space to follow: https://twitter.com/kimdhamilton https://twitter.com/IdentityWoman https://twitter.com/ChristopherA
Also highly recommend this paper by Fennie Wang and Primavera De Filippi: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3524367 ( Self-Sovereign Identity in a Globalized World: Credentials-Based Identity Systems as a Driver for Economic Inclusion )
Self-sovereign identity has some great use cases, even if it does not solve Sybil attack problems. Further, being able to establish identity at all is still a major problem in many places in the world and a barrier to financial inclusion.
For those who want to go deeper, highly recommend reading up more on
DIDs https://w3c.github.io/did-use-cases/ Verifiable Credentials: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/
Some people working in the space to follow: https://twitter.com/kimdhamilton https://twitter.com/IdentityWoman https://twitter.com/ChristopherA
Also highly recommend this paper by Fennie Wang and Primavera De Filippi: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3524367 ( Self-Sovereign Identity in a Globalized World: Credentials-Based Identity Systems as a Driver for Economic Inclusion )
Self-sovereign identity has some great use cases, even if it does not solve Sybil attack problems. Further, being able to establish identity at all is still a major problem in many places in the world and a barrier to financial inclusion.
This essay introduces Self-Sovereign Identity very nicely! Even deeper deep dive into this topic :
Sybil attacks are not solved with the "Soul" bound reputation approach. This was mathematically proven some years ago by Harvard University phd student Sven[0]. See his impossibility results on "weakly beneficial Sybil attacks" and "single report responsiveness property". The blockchain crowd has not yet discovered this, fake identities are an unsolved problem.
Startups be aware. European Commission now has an official "26 000 000.00 EUR" "estimated value" open offer for SSI wallet solutions [1]. Prior for basic service called "EBSI" was 35 million, won by IBM Hyperledger. That now works, Dev API [2]. Upcoming Europe directive states that by 2024 all citizens can apply for a digital identity, if they want one.
(self-promotion..) State-of-the-art: Delft University trustless SSI solution with running code and field-tested zero-knowledge proofs. Scientific publication "A Truly Self-Sovereign Identity System", published at IEEE LCN conference[3]. Disclaimer: we got the government contract for doing privacy-first digital identity. We integrated our own Tor-fork based on UDP for solid privacy with verifiable credential stack, see Github deep link [4].
[0] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4907301/Seuken_S... [1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:309685-2022:TEXT:EN... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/E... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.00415.pdf [4] https://py-ipv8.readthedocs.io/en/latest/basics/identity_tut...
Sybil attacks are not solved with the "Soul" bound reputation approach. This was mathematically proven some years ago by Harvard University phd student Sven[0]. See his impossibility results on "weakly beneficial Sybil attacks" and "single report responsiveness property". The blockchain crowd has not yet discovered this, fake identities are an unsolved problem.
Startups be aware. European Commission now has an official "26 000 000.00 EUR" "estimated value" open offer for SSI wallet solutions [1]. Prior for basic service called "EBSI" was 35 million, won by IBM Hyperledger. That now works, Dev API [2]. Upcoming Europe directive states that by 2024 all citizens can apply for a digital identity, if they want one.
(self-promotion..) State-of-the-art: Delft University trustless SSI solution with running code and field-tested zero-knowledge proofs. Scientific publication "A Truly Self-Sovereign Identity System", published at IEEE LCN conference[3]. Disclaimer: we got the government contract for doing privacy-first digital identity. We integrated our own Tor-fork based on UDP for solid privacy with verifiable credential stack, see Github deep link [4].
[0] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4907301/Seuken_S... [1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:309685-2022:TEXT:EN... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/E... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.00415.pdf [4] https://py-ipv8.readthedocs.io/en/latest/basics/identity_tut...
In the case of bitcoin, isn't Sybil prevented by requiring a majority hash rate? I think I don't understand what attack you're considering in this context.
> being able to establish identity at all is still a major problem in many places
Are you sure? Where? And why would the tried and tested methods for establishing identity not work in those places?
Are you sure? Where? And why would the tried and tested methods for establishing identity not work in those places?
There is a certain company that may or may not be bought by $43 billion, depending on its ability to determine how many of its users are actual humans.
But they could easily change that by requiring everyone to submit their government ID. Look at Facebook's Real Name Policy [0], which was already not well received. Determining if the users are actual humans is easy, doing it without any loss of privacy is hard, because at in some part of the trust chain, a person has to provide proof to some trusted organization they are human.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_cont...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_cont...
Sure. But isn't what you are describing exactly the point of the sovereign/decentralized identity trilemma?
Anyway, the point is not even that Twitter needs to be able to identify its users. Twitter just needs to get rid of its bot problem. To solve that problem, they could simply charge their users $5 and promise to refund if after some vetting period (by their fraud detection and other users). The downside of this approach, of course, is that it would deter not just bots but also a large number of legitimate users who wouldn't be interested in paying to sign-up.
Anyway, the point is not even that Twitter needs to be able to identify its users. Twitter just needs to get rid of its bot problem. To solve that problem, they could simply charge their users $5 and promise to refund if after some vetting period (by their fraud detection and other users). The downside of this approach, of course, is that it would deter not just bots but also a large number of legitimate users who wouldn't be interested in paying to sign-up.
Yes, quite sure as I worked several years on this problem and I am speaking from my direct experience of working with and speaking to financial and micro-finance institutions in 80+ countries (see my profile). A majority of the institutions I spoke with had establishing identity as their #1 problem.
Methods existing in one place (e.g. the United States) does not mean that those methods are established and/or will work in another place (e.g. Sierra Leone). This is a multi-faceted problem that involves government, infrastructure, and technology.
Further, there are improvements to be made even in the U.S. For instance, I cannot digitally establish my identity with several providers. Why? Because I do not and have never used credit and those providers rely on the "3 questions" KYC check via a credit bureau.
Methods existing in one place (e.g. the United States) does not mean that those methods are established and/or will work in another place (e.g. Sierra Leone). This is a multi-faceted problem that involves government, infrastructure, and technology.
Further, there are improvements to be made even in the U.S. For instance, I cannot digitally establish my identity with several providers. Why? Because I do not and have never used credit and those providers rely on the "3 questions" KYC check via a credit bureau.
From a first read, the following problems I see in this critique:
- The trilemmas do not need to be solved. They just need to be acknowledged when you are designing your application so that people can understand the types of trade-offs being made. In cases where sybil-resistance is not a requirement, you can build a system that gives you privacy and decentralization. When sybil-resistance is required, you just need to think if you prefer a system that sacrifices privacy or if it sacrifices decentralization. Depending on the use-case, one might be preferred over the other.
- "Security practices are hard, no one will do it properly, they will rather have some expert that can do it for them". Well, if you don't want to deal with security hygiene, you delegate. Just like the majority of people will rightfully prefer to have a bank to manage most of their funds, one could still envision a future where service providers will act as a proxy to anything that requires "your" identity(ies).
In general, the thing that upsets me with all of anti-crypto/anti-web3 people is that they fall into the same trap as the maxis: they start from this ridiculous notion that "web3" is about creating a Highlander solution (there can be only one!) and that this solution needs to satisfy all constraints, otherwise it rubbish and needs to be discarded. The important thing by having decentralized identities (and decentralized technology in general) is that it gives new options for whole new classes of applications that do not exist. No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine.
- The trilemmas do not need to be solved. They just need to be acknowledged when you are designing your application so that people can understand the types of trade-offs being made. In cases where sybil-resistance is not a requirement, you can build a system that gives you privacy and decentralization. When sybil-resistance is required, you just need to think if you prefer a system that sacrifices privacy or if it sacrifices decentralization. Depending on the use-case, one might be preferred over the other.
- "Security practices are hard, no one will do it properly, they will rather have some expert that can do it for them". Well, if you don't want to deal with security hygiene, you delegate. Just like the majority of people will rightfully prefer to have a bank to manage most of their funds, one could still envision a future where service providers will act as a proxy to anything that requires "your" identity(ies).
In general, the thing that upsets me with all of anti-crypto/anti-web3 people is that they fall into the same trap as the maxis: they start from this ridiculous notion that "web3" is about creating a Highlander solution (there can be only one!) and that this solution needs to satisfy all constraints, otherwise it rubbish and needs to be discarded. The important thing by having decentralized identities (and decentralized technology in general) is that it gives new options for whole new classes of applications that do not exist. No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine.
Everything you say is very reasonable until:
> No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine.
which is probably true in reality, but still something I'd like to challenge.
Every technology that ends up being totalitarian/expansive starts out with "Nobody is being forced to....". I am sure when automobiles first appeared it seemed obvious that "nobody is being forced to drive them", and yet the other day a poster here was absolutely indignant with me for suggesting it might be possible not to have one.
I read hundreds if student essays that literally begin with the line:
"Today, life without the internet would be impossible."
You're right, many (maybe most) technologies do reach a healthy balance with alternatives and legacy systems. But certain "infrastructural" technologies tend to expand aggressively. I think money systems are among them, at least if the number of times I have heard someone say "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide.
(Though often, when one hears these little maxims repeated verbatim, over and over and over, I come to suspect they are not the authentic views of the speakers, but propaganda injected into public discourse.)
> No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine.
which is probably true in reality, but still something I'd like to challenge.
Every technology that ends up being totalitarian/expansive starts out with "Nobody is being forced to....". I am sure when automobiles first appeared it seemed obvious that "nobody is being forced to drive them", and yet the other day a poster here was absolutely indignant with me for suggesting it might be possible not to have one.
I read hundreds if student essays that literally begin with the line:
"Today, life without the internet would be impossible."
You're right, many (maybe most) technologies do reach a healthy balance with alternatives and legacy systems. But certain "infrastructural" technologies tend to expand aggressively. I think money systems are among them, at least if the number of times I have heard someone say "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide.
(Though often, when one hears these little maxims repeated verbatim, over and over and over, I come to suspect they are not the authentic views of the speakers, but propaganda injected into public discourse.)
> "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide.
If anything, if you (like me) would like to avoid a cashless society the you have yet another reason to be in favor of decentralized technologies.
"Cashless Society" is just Newspeak for "Total Economic Surveillance". It implies a world where corporations and governments alike have full visibility over what everyone else is doing. Blockchain-based systems already provide an alternative (Monero) where privacy is respected. In a world where Governments and Corporations can conspire to eliminate cash and extend their reach even more over our liberties, I think we should at least try to support an alternative.
If anything, if you (like me) would like to avoid a cashless society the you have yet another reason to be in favor of decentralized technologies.
"Cashless Society" is just Newspeak for "Total Economic Surveillance". It implies a world where corporations and governments alike have full visibility over what everyone else is doing. Blockchain-based systems already provide an alternative (Monero) where privacy is respected. In a world where Governments and Corporations can conspire to eliminate cash and extend their reach even more over our liberties, I think we should at least try to support an alternative.
I agree with you. The anonymity and casual fluidity preserving aspects
of digital currencies are the reasons I support them enough not to be
"anti-crypto". My objections are primarily on ecological grounds with
respect to proof of work. I have other views on a "crypto-web-3.0",
but that's a different story.
That's just students repeating cliches. Most kids are trying to write what they think the grading authority will reward.
One can live a pure cash no internet life even in SF.
One can live a pure cash no internet life even in SF.
One can win the lottery, but we shouldn't base anything on the assumption that we will or that it's likely.
At some point being technically possible no longer matters since you have to go so out of your way to do it that virtually no one will do it.
Such expressions as the students use are warranted when that point is reached.
At some point being technically possible no longer matters since you have to go so out of your way to do it that virtually no one will do it.
Such expressions as the students use are warranted when that point is reached.
I’m not sure how one would secure stable housing or employment without a bank account, email address, etc., but if you mean “physically survive on scavenged and gifted food and water, and sleep outdoors or in temporary shelter,” then…sure, I guess?
Currently live in stable housing via Venmo but cash in an envelope would do the trick. Don't need email.
As a web3 critic, my criticism is not that there can be only one, it is that all the proposed web3 stuff that I read about is just an existing thing with extra steps.
If I were to build a blog system I would not store the blog posts in a local merkle tree. Why not? Because a regular database has more benefits. Now why would I want to store the data on a decentralized public merkle tree (blockchain)? I don't want my blogs data to be public, I want *an adjustable view" into non-public, editable and deletable data, which is what we have now. This is one case where the status quo is not only totally fine as you phrased it, but it is superior (to me at least).
The issue I have with web3 is not that it is a new idea, it is that to me it sounds like yet another solution in search of a problem. People who have/are invested in crypto-tokens have a huge incentives to fool themselves into believing you actually can/should solve every problem using the technology of the blockchain.
If it is an problem that people can delete things use an append-only-log/merkle tree. If it is an problem that you want to have a centrally agreed upon public state, open a public API to that append-only-log. If it is a problem that people can neither trust you, nor each other to be a faithful keeper of logs, decentralize it wit consesus algorithms and end up with something like a block chain.
Now this chain of problems is something that fails at the first step for many things. There is not a lot of things that you want to be append-only, typically for very good reasons.
But let's say I want my blog append-only for some reason. One solution would be to just do it instead of forcing myself technically. But lets say I want to force others, then it would make sense.
Now it does not make a lot of sense to make that literal log public, but let's say I also offer an API to it and ignore all the real world problems it would bring (illegal content that needs to be deleted which I could do by rolling the merkle tree back to the latest non-illegal version.
Now I run that sote, why would I like to decentralize that data? So I can claim I don't need to delete anything?
If I were to build a blog system I would not store the blog posts in a local merkle tree. Why not? Because a regular database has more benefits. Now why would I want to store the data on a decentralized public merkle tree (blockchain)? I don't want my blogs data to be public, I want *an adjustable view" into non-public, editable and deletable data, which is what we have now. This is one case where the status quo is not only totally fine as you phrased it, but it is superior (to me at least).
The issue I have with web3 is not that it is a new idea, it is that to me it sounds like yet another solution in search of a problem. People who have/are invested in crypto-tokens have a huge incentives to fool themselves into believing you actually can/should solve every problem using the technology of the blockchain.
If it is an problem that people can delete things use an append-only-log/merkle tree. If it is an problem that you want to have a centrally agreed upon public state, open a public API to that append-only-log. If it is a problem that people can neither trust you, nor each other to be a faithful keeper of logs, decentralize it wit consesus algorithms and end up with something like a block chain.
Now this chain of problems is something that fails at the first step for many things. There is not a lot of things that you want to be append-only, typically for very good reasons.
But let's say I want my blog append-only for some reason. One solution would be to just do it instead of forcing myself technically. But lets say I want to force others, then it would make sense.
Now it does not make a lot of sense to make that literal log public, but let's say I also offer an API to it and ignore all the real world problems it would bring (illegal content that needs to be deleted which I could do by rolling the merkle tree back to the latest non-illegal version.
Now I run that sote, why would I like to decentralize that data? So I can claim I don't need to delete anything?
The issue I have with web3 is that it's libertarian politics pretending to be a technological solution. "Decentralised" is being sold as "Out of reach of governments" - but that's clearly not true.
It's also ridiculously poor value-generated-per-Watt-used.
It's in the same conceptual class as "gun culture makes everyone safer" and "lowering taxes on rich people makes everyone richer" - both of which are trivially falsifiable, but repeated fervently by promoters and adherents, some of whom are acting in bad faith.
The root comment is correct - you can't enforce trust in a low-trust culture.
The real problem is the culture. And especially the fact that in a low-trust culture, successful scamming is considered a major status marker.
It's also ridiculously poor value-generated-per-Watt-used.
It's in the same conceptual class as "gun culture makes everyone safer" and "lowering taxes on rich people makes everyone richer" - both of which are trivially falsifiable, but repeated fervently by promoters and adherents, some of whom are acting in bad faith.
The root comment is correct - you can't enforce trust in a low-trust culture.
The real problem is the culture. And especially the fact that in a low-trust culture, successful scamming is considered a major status marker.
Decentralized doesn’t mean everything is unregulated and out of reach of governments. USDC is pretty heavily regulated despite operating on top of, and featuring composability with, a decentralized network.
The value per watt concern does not apply to all consensus mechanisms.
The value per watt concern does not apply to all consensus mechanisms.
I wonder how many of the anti-crypto people will stop using this argument when Ethereum completes The Merge and we get rid of PoW. Specially the gamer crowd who will finally get access to cheap GPUs and will go on to collective "waste" orders of magnitude more energy playing games in comparison with the network of validators.
GPU mining is a lottery. No individual is likely to win the lottery, only pooled in aggregate is the likelihood of winning enough to offset the costs of participating. A GPU mining outfit is wasting shitloads of electricity every day trying to buy enough lottery tickets to pay the bills.
An individual buying a GPU is not wasting any electricity in the hope of winning a rendered frame of a game. Every watt used by the GPU is explicitly for the user's purpose. Applying some sort of moral judgement to an individual's use of their private property is ludicrous. It doesn't matter if a GPU is used to play a game, display a spreadsheet, or play back porn.
An individual buying a GPU is not wasting any electricity in the hope of winning a rendered frame of a game. Every watt used by the GPU is explicitly for the user's purpose. Applying some sort of moral judgement to an individual's use of their private property is ludicrous. It doesn't matter if a GPU is used to play a game, display a spreadsheet, or play back porn.
The "lottery" is just a method to have the aligned incentives and secure the network. Without the miners, there would be no Blockchain. Every user of the blockchain benefits from the work from the miners. So if you have a problem with miners, you have a problem with all those that depend on them. But if you want to complain about the consumption patterns of this group, you open yourself for criticism for your consumption patterns as well. As long as you are actually paying for the electricity and energy you are consuming, I am not going to be judging you if you prefer to use with gaming, or by driving an huge SUV or flying every weekend to Las Vegas.
Still, I am glad that we are moving away from it and adopting PoS. Not only the system is more efficient, it also removes from the perma-bears one more talking point.
Still, I am glad that we are moving away from it and adopting PoS. Not only the system is more efficient, it also removes from the perma-bears one more talking point.
> As long as you are actually paying for the electricity and energy you are consuming.
For starters the price of electricity is not at all capturing all the negative externalities of generating that electricity. A miner paying a utility bill is not paying the entire cost of the energy used for mining.
Second, the vast majority of "work" performed by Proof of Work schemes is literally thrown away. It has absolutely zero utility and so is in the most literal sense just wasted electricity. Not only do they require waste but by design require increasing amounts of waste as the networks scale. They're not designed to improve or get more efficient.
Unless you're just running a game idly in the background, idling an SUV in the driveway, or idling a jet on the tarmac they're not wasting the resources used to run. They're serving at least some utility. An SUV or jet to Vegas might not be the best use of fuel for the task but they're not just wasting it. Neither an SUV or jet burns coal so even their energy usage has fewer negative externalities than a majority of blockchain miners.
Proof of Stake has been coming Real Soon Now to Ethereum for a few years now. It's still not here. Even with PoS it doesn't help matters if a majority of coins are still PoW and continue burning an Argentina worth of power.
For starters the price of electricity is not at all capturing all the negative externalities of generating that electricity. A miner paying a utility bill is not paying the entire cost of the energy used for mining.
Second, the vast majority of "work" performed by Proof of Work schemes is literally thrown away. It has absolutely zero utility and so is in the most literal sense just wasted electricity. Not only do they require waste but by design require increasing amounts of waste as the networks scale. They're not designed to improve or get more efficient.
Unless you're just running a game idly in the background, idling an SUV in the driveway, or idling a jet on the tarmac they're not wasting the resources used to run. They're serving at least some utility. An SUV or jet to Vegas might not be the best use of fuel for the task but they're not just wasting it. Neither an SUV or jet burns coal so even their energy usage has fewer negative externalities than a majority of blockchain miners.
Proof of Stake has been coming Real Soon Now to Ethereum for a few years now. It's still not here. Even with PoS it doesn't help matters if a majority of coins are still PoW and continue burning an Argentina worth of power.
The migration to PoS is well under way. The whole path to ETH2.0 was full of setbacks and delays, but it was never vaporware as the critics would like to think.
Just this week the largest test network completed the migration successfully, despite the miners making efforts to destabilize it.
> majority of coins
You mean BTC. Well, the best way to get rid of BTC will not be by yelling at people about the energy "waste" (which again, it is not "wasted" if it fulfill its purpose securing the network, but you are free to disagree), it will be by supporting a better alternative compelling most people to migrate.
Just this week the largest test network completed the migration successfully, despite the miners making efforts to destabilize it.
> majority of coins
You mean BTC. Well, the best way to get rid of BTC will not be by yelling at people about the energy "waste" (which again, it is not "wasted" if it fulfill its purpose securing the network, but you are free to disagree), it will be by supporting a better alternative compelling most people to migrate.
You fall into the same trap that the parent commenter points out. Rarely does a serious web3 project aim to put everything on a blockchain.
But something like a Kickstarter-ish crowdfund system could be using a blockchain contract to handle funding and escrow, while the rest of the website is hosted in a standard web2 way. Suddenly it’s a “web3 project” where users are able to interact with and even own records in the contract, outside the context of a single frontend website.
But something like a Kickstarter-ish crowdfund system could be using a blockchain contract to handle funding and escrow, while the rest of the website is hosted in a standard web2 way. Suddenly it’s a “web3 project” where users are able to interact with and even own records in the contract, outside the context of a single frontend website.
Not the parent's objection, rather my own, but how many times has this been tried already, only to hit predictable and easily avoidable issues, if only you'd been using fiat?
Like for example, the crypto kickstarter that tried to buy a copy of the constitution? Nevermind the fact that the geniuses in charge didn't realize this didn't give them merchandising rights, when the bid failed, returning the money was a legitimate problem. Hell, even collecting the money was hard, for the same reason - gas fees.
Sure, there are ways around gas fees using second layer chains or whatever, but it's STILL not any more useful than just using fiat currency and existing systems.
Just solutions in search of problems. Kickstarter-style platforms are NOT a problem that fiat currency doesn't solve. Adding blockchain, even just for payment, doesn't solve this problem that doesn't exist.
Like for example, the crypto kickstarter that tried to buy a copy of the constitution? Nevermind the fact that the geniuses in charge didn't realize this didn't give them merchandising rights, when the bid failed, returning the money was a legitimate problem. Hell, even collecting the money was hard, for the same reason - gas fees.
Sure, there are ways around gas fees using second layer chains or whatever, but it's STILL not any more useful than just using fiat currency and existing systems.
Just solutions in search of problems. Kickstarter-style platforms are NOT a problem that fiat currency doesn't solve. Adding blockchain, even just for payment, doesn't solve this problem that doesn't exist.
How many times do we have to keep trying to make cars happen, we have perfectly good horse-drawn carriages!
The constitution DAO was pretty successful application of the tech. Within a week, they went from idea to public fundraiser, raised more than they would have been allowed to on Kickstarter or GoFundMe, had immediate access to the funds, and paid 0% commission compared to what most corporate platforms would charge. When the bid failed, donors were able to seamlessly exchange their PEOPLE tokens for their initial deposit. The whole process was faster than Kickstarter’s 14 day settlement.
The fees could be mitigated by using a rollup.
They lost the auction because their maximum fixed bid was public knowledge, but another application of this tech could just activate the funds toward the goal such as putting it toward carbon removal.
Disclosure: I was one of the donors and I knew the risks and also the fees involved, and I was satisfied with the whole process. A low fee tech like this on a rollup would be great.
The constitution DAO was pretty successful application of the tech. Within a week, they went from idea to public fundraiser, raised more than they would have been allowed to on Kickstarter or GoFundMe, had immediate access to the funds, and paid 0% commission compared to what most corporate platforms would charge. When the bid failed, donors were able to seamlessly exchange their PEOPLE tokens for their initial deposit. The whole process was faster than Kickstarter’s 14 day settlement.
The fees could be mitigated by using a rollup.
They lost the auction because their maximum fixed bid was public knowledge, but another application of this tech could just activate the funds toward the goal such as putting it toward carbon removal.
Disclosure: I was one of the donors and I knew the risks and also the fees involved, and I was satisfied with the whole process. A low fee tech like this on a rollup would be great.
The criticism that I phrased was not that somehow it could be done, it was that I don't see a reason why it should.
It only works in places where the institutions are functional, which is something that you are taking from granted.
But forget kickstarter. We are talking about identity. Tell me how you could implement, e.g, a twitter-like application where no single entity can kick you out. Assume that the data does not need to live in a blockchain, and each user's data is portable between different servers. The only thing a (willing) server needs to have is a way to authenticate your identity. How would you do that without blockchain?
But forget kickstarter. We are talking about identity. Tell me how you could implement, e.g, a twitter-like application where no single entity can kick you out. Assume that the data does not need to live in a blockchain, and each user's data is portable between different servers. The only thing a (willing) server needs to have is a way to authenticate your identity. How would you do that without blockchain?
> It only works in places where the institutions are functional, which is something that you are taking from granted.
I want to stick with the Kickstarter example a bit longer, as "banking the unbanked" is to me one of the few claims of potential crypto applications that I care about.
Blockchain technology is at this point well over a decade old, yet we can still only talk about its benefits in hypotheticals. You claim that a decentralized, crypto-based alternative to Kickstarter would be valuable in those places where institutions are not functional. This seems like something that could be tested today, as opposed to in some nebulous future. So where are all these applications that financially emancipate the proverbial Somalian farmer? I haven't really seen any concrete, significant success stories, much less any that justify the fossil fuels we're burning to maintain these systems.
I suspect this has to do with the strong correlation between corruption in general (which would drive one to adopt crypto alternatives) and poor or nonexistant education (which is needed for the tech literacy to use crypto and not be scammed at every turn). I don't know how to solve that problem.
> But forget kickstarter[...]
I don't know how to solve that problem without blockchain; I also don't know how to solve it with blockchain.
I want to stick with the Kickstarter example a bit longer, as "banking the unbanked" is to me one of the few claims of potential crypto applications that I care about.
Blockchain technology is at this point well over a decade old, yet we can still only talk about its benefits in hypotheticals. You claim that a decentralized, crypto-based alternative to Kickstarter would be valuable in those places where institutions are not functional. This seems like something that could be tested today, as opposed to in some nebulous future. So where are all these applications that financially emancipate the proverbial Somalian farmer? I haven't really seen any concrete, significant success stories, much less any that justify the fossil fuels we're burning to maintain these systems.
I suspect this has to do with the strong correlation between corruption in general (which would drive one to adopt crypto alternatives) and poor or nonexistant education (which is needed for the tech literacy to use crypto and not be scammed at every turn). I don't know how to solve that problem.
> But forget kickstarter[...]
I don't know how to solve that problem without blockchain; I also don't know how to solve it with blockchain.
> So where are all these applications that financially emancipate the proverbial Somalian farmer?
https://trustlines.network
> I also don't know how to solve it with blockchain.
https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825093961591719
https://trustlines.network
> I also don't know how to solve it with blockchain.
https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825093961591719
> https://trustlines.network
I'm aware that there are several projects that aim to "bank the unbanked". The existence of projects that claim to solve an issue does not prove that the issue is solved or even addressed. I don't see any numbers or even anecdotes on how effective these projects are at achieving their goals.
How many formerly unbanked are now banked thanks to blockchain? And I don't mean that theoretically, as in, "any Somalian farmer could in theory access banking services through the blockchain right now", I mean "how many people who had no access to trustworthy financial institutions in the past, are now actively using blockchain-based alternatives for financial services?"
I'm aware that there are several projects that aim to "bank the unbanked". The existence of projects that claim to solve an issue does not prove that the issue is solved or even addressed. I don't see any numbers or even anecdotes on how effective these projects are at achieving their goals.
How many formerly unbanked are now banked thanks to blockchain? And I don't mean that theoretically, as in, "any Somalian farmer could in theory access banking services through the blockchain right now", I mean "how many people who had no access to trustworthy financial institutions in the past, are now actively using blockchain-based alternatives for financial services?"
> "how many people who had no access to trustworthy financial institutions in the past, are now actively using blockchain-based alternatives for financial services?"
This is the falling for the same all-or-nothing trap that I pointed out in the very first comment. We are never going to go from "unbanked" to "banked exclusively thanks to the blockchain". What is going to happen (and is happening) is that these projects will bring "people who don't have access to service X" to "blockchain project that creates an alternative to service X".
Examples:
- People in countries with strong capital controls can now participate in a global economy through blockchain transactions.
- People living in countries with poor monetary policies and weak currencies can protect some of their wealth by buying stabletokens backed by stronger currency.
- Communities without access to money markets can now issue their own local currencies and create their own credit cooperatives.
- Sex workers and "sin businesses" who are denied access to payment processors (no matter if political or economic reasons) can use web3 to not only accept payments, but also as a way to distribute their content without intermediaries.
In all of the examples above, it might happen that the situation in the "traditional" system changes and the groups start getting access. But until they don't have it, it's nice to know that they have an alternative.
This is the falling for the same all-or-nothing trap that I pointed out in the very first comment. We are never going to go from "unbanked" to "banked exclusively thanks to the blockchain". What is going to happen (and is happening) is that these projects will bring "people who don't have access to service X" to "blockchain project that creates an alternative to service X".
Examples:
- People in countries with strong capital controls can now participate in a global economy through blockchain transactions.
- People living in countries with poor monetary policies and weak currencies can protect some of their wealth by buying stabletokens backed by stronger currency.
- Communities without access to money markets can now issue their own local currencies and create their own credit cooperatives.
- Sex workers and "sin businesses" who are denied access to payment processors (no matter if political or economic reasons) can use web3 to not only accept payments, but also as a way to distribute their content without intermediaries.
In all of the examples above, it might happen that the situation in the "traditional" system changes and the groups start getting access. But until they don't have it, it's nice to know that they have an alternative.
Your examples are all incomplete. They all need "until people with badges and guns shut them down" or "until they need to deal with off-chain assets that require trusted reliable oracles". It is ludicrous in the extreme to assume that some blockchain transaction can and will remain anonymous and outside the enforcement of laws.
A country with repressive or non-functional capital/monetary controls will just jail people using cryptocurrencies unless they turn over their wallets. They can also use an accusation of having a wallet as pretext for indefinite detainment or punishment. Such countries aren't likely to have functional governments or even free access to the Internet. Even TV and radio are tightly controlled in such places.
A country with repressive or non-functional capital/monetary controls will just jail people using cryptocurrencies unless they turn over their wallets. They can also use an accusation of having a wallet as pretext for indefinite detainment or punishment. Such countries aren't likely to have functional governments or even free access to the Internet. Even TV and radio are tightly controlled in such places.
> outside the enforcement of laws
whose laws?
- Sex workers from countries where prostitution is absolutely legal are affected by, e.g, Mastercard pushing for blocking transactions and almost forcing OnlyFans to drop all their adult content. All because of extended overreach from American politicians.
- A lot of these countries with strong capital controls have a lot of loopholes in the legislation by design, so that the elites can find a way to move their capital while the middle-class is forced to carry all the burden. There is a saying from a Peruvian politician: "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law", which perfectly illustrates the situation.
Crypto is not illegal, it just democratizes these loopholes. If History can teach any lesson, whenever the middle-class finds a way to enjoy the same privileges as the elites, it does not end up in a repressive reaction from the government, but in the normalization and formalization of the "informal" behavior.
- Same thing for holding stabletokens. In Brazil there is no regulation against holding crypto. The problem is that Forex is not something for retail. Too many fees, taxes on fiat and the impossibility of making deposits in foreign currency make it difficult for "retail investors", but a lot of elites have access to external markets where they can hold USD/EUR/GBP to protect themselves.
I could go on... but the point I am trying to make is that in the places it doesn't take an extreme case of Authoritarianism or Poor Economic Development to face a situation where the institutions fail.
whose laws?
- Sex workers from countries where prostitution is absolutely legal are affected by, e.g, Mastercard pushing for blocking transactions and almost forcing OnlyFans to drop all their adult content. All because of extended overreach from American politicians.
- A lot of these countries with strong capital controls have a lot of loopholes in the legislation by design, so that the elites can find a way to move their capital while the middle-class is forced to carry all the burden. There is a saying from a Peruvian politician: "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law", which perfectly illustrates the situation.
Crypto is not illegal, it just democratizes these loopholes. If History can teach any lesson, whenever the middle-class finds a way to enjoy the same privileges as the elites, it does not end up in a repressive reaction from the government, but in the normalization and formalization of the "informal" behavior.
- Same thing for holding stabletokens. In Brazil there is no regulation against holding crypto. The problem is that Forex is not something for retail. Too many fees, taxes on fiat and the impossibility of making deposits in foreign currency make it difficult for "retail investors", but a lot of elites have access to external markets where they can hold USD/EUR/GBP to protect themselves.
I could go on... but the point I am trying to make is that in the places it doesn't take an extreme case of Authoritarianism or Poor Economic Development to face a situation where the institutions fail.
This is besides my point. Again, I'm not asking for what these projects can mean for people in theory. We've been doing blockchain for almost 15 years, we're pumping megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year to feed proof of work algorithms, by now we should have something concrete to show for it.
What do we have to show for it? I'm asking for concrete data, or even just some anecdotes. You list some projects and how these projects could, in principle, help people. How many people are helped by them (even indirectly by improving access to traditional services)? Is this number proportional to the cost of running these systems?
What do we have to show for it? I'm asking for concrete data, or even just some anecdotes. You list some projects and how these projects could, in principle, help people. How many people are helped by them (even indirectly by improving access to traditional services)? Is this number proportional to the cost of running these systems?
What do you want? For developers to go forcing others to adopt their solution? And do it against the interests of the current elites, and God forbid if VCs get involved because then obviously you are a greedy bastard who just want to exploit a fad?
Do me a favor: go check my project (https://hub20.io/about). If minimally supported, it could very well become THE system to "bank the unbanked". Afterwards go check the "Contribute" link. See how many people are supporting my work.
Do me a favor: go check my project (https://hub20.io/about). If minimally supported, it could very well become THE system to "bank the unbanked". Afterwards go check the "Contribute" link. See how many people are supporting my work.
> they start from this ridiculous notion that "web3" is about creating a Highlander solution (there can be only one!) and that this solution needs to satisfy all constraints, otherwise it rubbish and needs to be discarded.
I dub this the Highlander bias.
I dub this the Highlander bias.
Most of those ideas have been around before. See the classic "Why your idea for stopping spam sucks".[1] It's the same problem as email source addresses.
[1] https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
[1] https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
I think this article conflates too many different notions of identity together (which tbf, is because the bitcoin people the article is criticizing do the same thing).
Identity is one of those concepts that has a lot of parts to it, and you can do the individual parts sanely, but if you try to do everything all at once, its crazy.
As a example, my ssh key is an identity system. It works great in some contexts. Would i want my social insurance number attached to it? Obviously not, that is crazy. That doesn't mean ssh keys are bad.
Identity is one of those concepts that has a lot of parts to it, and you can do the individual parts sanely, but if you try to do everything all at once, its crazy.
As a example, my ssh key is an identity system. It works great in some contexts. Would i want my social insurance number attached to it? Obviously not, that is crazy. That doesn't mean ssh keys are bad.
Personally, I think it's a good summary of the kinds of identity problems being tackled in the Blockchain space. However, the alarmist tone makes the author seem quite dismissive of interesting technological advances that can be used to securely store data publicly.
We are obviously going to be sharing more data in the future and these projects are discovering how this can be achieved. Blanketing the entire movement as dystopian is unhelpful.
We are obviously going to be sharing more data in the future and these projects are discovering how this can be achieved. Blanketing the entire movement as dystopian is unhelpful.
The "dismissive" tone is not because we believe that technology advancement is impossible.
It is because we have been hearing for over a decade about how crypto is going to deliver massive value "in the future".
There is only so much time people will be willing to listen to vague promises of future innovation before they take a look at the actual technology of today and realize that most if not all of it is of little value other than gambling.
My advice to anyone that actually wants to make real products or advancements in identity would be to avoid crypto. Build the product on top of a generic store layer. It will be obvious to anyone with software expertise that Blockchain could be interested in that storage layer of the product would benefit from it.
It is because we have been hearing for over a decade about how crypto is going to deliver massive value "in the future".
There is only so much time people will be willing to listen to vague promises of future innovation before they take a look at the actual technology of today and realize that most if not all of it is of little value other than gambling.
My advice to anyone that actually wants to make real products or advancements in identity would be to avoid crypto. Build the product on top of a generic store layer. It will be obvious to anyone with software expertise that Blockchain could be interested in that storage layer of the product would benefit from it.
I am convinced that crypto/blockchains are slowly and pointlessly re-encountering the same problems that existing centralised systems and agencies were setup to solve.
It’s as if we are all disregarding the centuries of evolution that has gone into creating what we already have today. Systems that, whilst sometimes flawed, for the most part enable us to live our daily lives freely and easily. Systems that already have means of verifying people when you need to make an important transaction and that already allow for trust and stability. As the essay mentions making people the agents of their own verification with documents that you’d have to backup forever would be an absolute nightmare.
There is a reason we have centralised systems and there is a reason we can’t escape them.
It’s as if we are all disregarding the centuries of evolution that has gone into creating what we already have today. Systems that, whilst sometimes flawed, for the most part enable us to live our daily lives freely and easily. Systems that already have means of verifying people when you need to make an important transaction and that already allow for trust and stability. As the essay mentions making people the agents of their own verification with documents that you’d have to backup forever would be an absolute nightmare.
There is a reason we have centralised systems and there is a reason we can’t escape them.
This is an excellent write-up, and I genuinely hope that the brain-cycles the web3 world is spending on this eventually benefit the rest of society.
I’ve been musing about a similar but more simple problem: how can we prove we are an individual human in the context of a web service. Think of this like the ultimate CAPTCHA where not only can you prove you are human but every person can do so at most once or, more pragmatically, O(once).
The closest thing we have in society today is Sign in with Apple, where you have a delegated identity provided by a company which has effectively put up a large portion of its brand value as collateral that it won’t be shady, for some definition of the term “be shady”. This is suboptimal for a number of reasons, not least of which is that they can be compelled by a government to divulge this data while (mostly) protecting their brand-value-collateral, and they can be selective in what types of services are allowed to use this system.
I’m hopeful some of the non-charlatan web3 folks can come up with some sort of scheme where a trusted entity (a government or a civil rights oriented NGO) can participate in a cryptographic handshake with an end user and a service where at the end the service receives a unique identifier for that user which can not be used to associate that user across services, or divulge to the trusted entity which services a particular individual is using. This wouldn’t fully solve the “can I give this person a loan” problem, but would make many things on the web much better (most bots pretending to be human would become cost prohibitive). I also feel like trustworthiness attestation can be incrementally built on such a system (if such a system is possible).
I’ve been musing about a similar but more simple problem: how can we prove we are an individual human in the context of a web service. Think of this like the ultimate CAPTCHA where not only can you prove you are human but every person can do so at most once or, more pragmatically, O(once).
The closest thing we have in society today is Sign in with Apple, where you have a delegated identity provided by a company which has effectively put up a large portion of its brand value as collateral that it won’t be shady, for some definition of the term “be shady”. This is suboptimal for a number of reasons, not least of which is that they can be compelled by a government to divulge this data while (mostly) protecting their brand-value-collateral, and they can be selective in what types of services are allowed to use this system.
I’m hopeful some of the non-charlatan web3 folks can come up with some sort of scheme where a trusted entity (a government or a civil rights oriented NGO) can participate in a cryptographic handshake with an end user and a service where at the end the service receives a unique identifier for that user which can not be used to associate that user across services, or divulge to the trusted entity which services a particular individual is using. This wouldn’t fully solve the “can I give this person a loan” problem, but would make many things on the web much better (most bots pretending to be human would become cost prohibitive). I also feel like trustworthiness attestation can be incrementally built on such a system (if such a system is possible).
In Iceland we already have digital identity from a centralised authority. I log into my bank, health service, sign papers (including loans) and so on with a government managed digital ID. So this isn’t even something that needs invention let alone by web3.
The tech world will start making more sense when you realize that a large chunk of tech is created because of US hyperindividualism and lack of trust in other people so folks keep trying to create tech solutions for social problems they consider intractable (several of which don't even exist in other developed countries).
Purely tech solutions for social problems generally don't work and frequently create more social problems.
Purely tech solutions for social problems generally don't work and frequently create more social problems.
But does it allow you to anonymously prove that you are a human? You don't want to go telling random websites who you are.
No one says this can't be done. In fact, it's explicitly mentioned in the essay, that the problem this approach has is that it's centralized and you typically can't use it as an anonymous proof of humanity, or disclosing information selectively.
So, why is this important? Well, while you can still make a website and trust you won't be popular enough to become a target, the truth is that without proof of uniqueness / humanity, many services and systems can't be put to the service of the people without potentially falling into an insane battle against spam, in protection of user data, in protection of privacy, etc. And while you can absolutely build lots of things without giving a shit about all this and actually be successful, it's simply immoral (and progressively becoming more and more legally restricted). If this was a solved problem, digital services could finally become truly democratized. Nowadays, this is the main issue preventing many programmers from setting up useful services, very often intended to serve the local community, requiring us instead to start a whole company, getting in touch with some lawyers and storing user data like their actual state IDs. Which we can't do if we don't intend to monetize the service! Without this barrier, we could really do a lot more for our local communities in the digital space.
No one says this can't be done. In fact, it's explicitly mentioned in the essay, that the problem this approach has is that it's centralized and you typically can't use it as an anonymous proof of humanity, or disclosing information selectively.
So, why is this important? Well, while you can still make a website and trust you won't be popular enough to become a target, the truth is that without proof of uniqueness / humanity, many services and systems can't be put to the service of the people without potentially falling into an insane battle against spam, in protection of user data, in protection of privacy, etc. And while you can absolutely build lots of things without giving a shit about all this and actually be successful, it's simply immoral (and progressively becoming more and more legally restricted). If this was a solved problem, digital services could finally become truly democratized. Nowadays, this is the main issue preventing many programmers from setting up useful services, very often intended to serve the local community, requiring us instead to start a whole company, getting in touch with some lawyers and storing user data like their actual state IDs. Which we can't do if we don't intend to monetize the service! Without this barrier, we could really do a lot more for our local communities in the digital space.
This reply hits the nail on the head, but I’ll just add that this isn’t only a benefit to small scale services. I’ve been at well funded startups and medium sized companies where we spent quite a bit of time and effort dealing with spam and bot activity, to the point of making trade offs in the product to lower the impact of bad actors. Even companies that are more or less successful at this spend a TON of money and engineering resources on this problem, and it still manages to detract from the UX (think Twitter bots). I wouldn’t be surprised if the economic benefit of a technical solution to this problem was on the order of tens of billions of $$.
What sort of digital services are you thinking of?
In a local context, many kinds of "social networks" or spaces to share things with other people from the same area, specially related to art and culture. Also many local associations organizing events could use unique identities to make it easier to make reserves for events with food, races, slots in talks, concerts, etc. Many other kinds of specific applications are also possible. You could even organize games and augmented reality activities much more easily if people didn't have to create accounts for everything, we had an easy way to verify that a human is trying to use the service... and even more if we could verify some info like "this person is from this area" (though there are some workarounds for that). Mostly, use tech to reivindicate public space, which public administrations have a tendency to mismanage as if it was their own private space (lack of vision is typically also an issue). There are many other ways to do similar things, but that's what I had in mind when I talked about democratization.
I mean, client side TLS certificate support goes back to the netscape days. Not like its a new idea on the web.
Having to identify yourself to every website ever does sound dystopian (albeit there are cryptography (the old fashioned type not botcoin) solutions like blacklistable anonoymous credentials.
Having to identify yourself to every website ever does sound dystopian (albeit there are cryptography (the old fashioned type not botcoin) solutions like blacklistable anonoymous credentials.
I would say https://privacypass.github.io/ is a lot closer than "sign in with apple"
See also crypto papers on blacklistable credentials, e.g. https://www.cypherpunks.ca/~iang/pubs/blacronym-wpes.pdf
See also crypto papers on blacklistable credentials, e.g. https://www.cypherpunks.ca/~iang/pubs/blacronym-wpes.pdf
(Disclaimer: I wrote this response before I realized this was a link; I thought it one of those, "Ask HN" questions so I replied in turn. Upon reading the article I think comment still has relevancy.)
No. Give up illusions like your rights exist in some vacuous transcendental place outside of other people and society. Read, "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes or if you really want to get the, "tarian" washed out of your soul dig into Rousseau's, "the Social Contract."
I will state this over and over: "The Divine Right of Individuals" is a myth rooted in how the United States' constitution is worded. God isn't real and he can't give you rights and claiming in a court of law (made up of people) where evidence is of the highest concern, "God gave me rights and I'm a sovereign unto myself do to certain unalienable rights which I cannot obviously or readily demonstrate without making an appeal to hundreds of years of political development" doesn't seem a compelling enough reason for society to release a suspected criminal or the like.
Meta: The fundamental fallacy with crypto is that it ignores that the vitality of, "currencies" is quite like the vitality of languages vs their counterparts, dialects-- What makes distincts a dialect from a language? Borders and armies. It's a tough pill to swallow that the world is kind of fundamentally based on violence but once you get past what is sometimes referred to as, "Democratic Peace Theory" and have a sense of history (start with Thucydides) it becomes very hard to take the idea of cryptocurrency seriously. Digital payments have practical value. I think that's about the extent of it. Trustlessness is a character defect and a social mallady and it doesn't surprise me nerds see this as forward movement.
No. Give up illusions like your rights exist in some vacuous transcendental place outside of other people and society. Read, "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes or if you really want to get the, "tarian" washed out of your soul dig into Rousseau's, "the Social Contract."
I will state this over and over: "The Divine Right of Individuals" is a myth rooted in how the United States' constitution is worded. God isn't real and he can't give you rights and claiming in a court of law (made up of people) where evidence is of the highest concern, "God gave me rights and I'm a sovereign unto myself do to certain unalienable rights which I cannot obviously or readily demonstrate without making an appeal to hundreds of years of political development" doesn't seem a compelling enough reason for society to release a suspected criminal or the like.
Meta: The fundamental fallacy with crypto is that it ignores that the vitality of, "currencies" is quite like the vitality of languages vs their counterparts, dialects-- What makes distincts a dialect from a language? Borders and armies. It's a tough pill to swallow that the world is kind of fundamentally based on violence but once you get past what is sometimes referred to as, "Democratic Peace Theory" and have a sense of history (start with Thucydides) it becomes very hard to take the idea of cryptocurrency seriously. Digital payments have practical value. I think that's about the extent of it. Trustlessness is a character defect and a social mallady and it doesn't surprise me nerds see this as forward movement.
I think the discourse you started here becomes even more interesting and defensible if your assertion goes from “God isn’t real” to “God is human created.” It makes the idea of rights clearer as some kind of higher order, purer version of law
Much of the problem with crypto-skepticism is that basically every problem it raises is true.
The argument is effectively boiled down to “here are a bunch of people working on very hard problems. Hard problems are hard, and therefore crypto won’t work”.
If you were to replace the word crypto with “computers” or “space travel”, most folks here would push back, saying that “yes these are hard problems, but there’s a lot of people working on it, and there’s lots of different solutions in many different directions.” And that would be a perfectly reasonable counter.
Most pro-crypto and anti-crypto have attached their identity to liking or dislike crypto.
If you disagree, ask yourself if, upon meeting someone who likes crypto, your brain naturally likes or dislikes the person. If you see someone talk about crypto in a positive light on the internet, do you instinctively upvote or downvote them?
This identity makes it very hard to make rational predictions about crypto. It’s too easy to weigh the same evidence in favor of crypto if you like crypto, or against crypto if you don’t like crypto.
Since most folks on HN dislike crypto, you may want to ask “what evidence would cause me to think crypto would work? What evidence would cause me to think it was good? Say crypto worked in 20 years, what would now like?”
If, when you’re attempting to answer those questions, your brain instead starts to answer the opposite questions (ex: “here is why crypto can’t possibly work”), then you know you’ve been trapped by the soldier mindset, and are not thinking rationally.
If your mind draws a blank or thinks “there is no evidence that crypto will work”, then either you are living in a bubble, your brain refuses to see information counter to your prior, or you have to figure out what makes you more able to understand the situation.
The argument is effectively boiled down to “here are a bunch of people working on very hard problems. Hard problems are hard, and therefore crypto won’t work”.
If you were to replace the word crypto with “computers” or “space travel”, most folks here would push back, saying that “yes these are hard problems, but there’s a lot of people working on it, and there’s lots of different solutions in many different directions.” And that would be a perfectly reasonable counter.
Most pro-crypto and anti-crypto have attached their identity to liking or dislike crypto.
If you disagree, ask yourself if, upon meeting someone who likes crypto, your brain naturally likes or dislikes the person. If you see someone talk about crypto in a positive light on the internet, do you instinctively upvote or downvote them?
This identity makes it very hard to make rational predictions about crypto. It’s too easy to weigh the same evidence in favor of crypto if you like crypto, or against crypto if you don’t like crypto.
Since most folks on HN dislike crypto, you may want to ask “what evidence would cause me to think crypto would work? What evidence would cause me to think it was good? Say crypto worked in 20 years, what would now like?”
If, when you’re attempting to answer those questions, your brain instead starts to answer the opposite questions (ex: “here is why crypto can’t possibly work”), then you know you’ve been trapped by the soldier mindset, and are not thinking rationally.
If your mind draws a blank or thinks “there is no evidence that crypto will work”, then either you are living in a bubble, your brain refuses to see information counter to your prior, or you have to figure out what makes you more able to understand the situation.
Most of the crypto-enthusiasts I’ve met in the real world seem to be motivated more by narrow-minded self-enrichment rather than a genuine belief that society can be reshaped to serve humanity better. The more ideological ones seem to be driven by an arsonist’s enthusiasm for destroying and subverting existing systems rather than an architect’s enthusiasm for building something better.
I can appreciate the potential of the technology, but that doesn’t mean I embrace the community.
I can appreciate the potential of the technology, but that doesn’t mean I embrace the community.
> I can appreciate the potential of the technology, but that doesn’t mean I embrace the community.
That seems fine, and is basically the opinion I hold.
The intellectually challenging thing about crypto is that it is very easy to go from “I don’t like these people” to “these people’s predictions are wrong”.
Hacker news seems so caught up in disliking a subset crypto people, that they assume that not only are they “bad people”, but they’re wrong.
That seems fine, and is basically the opinion I hold.
The intellectually challenging thing about crypto is that it is very easy to go from “I don’t like these people” to “these people’s predictions are wrong”.
Hacker news seems so caught up in disliking a subset crypto people, that they assume that not only are they “bad people”, but they’re wrong.
I agree. I think in general if you’re saying anything interesting there’s at least some risk that you’re wrong—if you only say things that everyone already knows are true, why bother talking?
Some crypto people may be wrong a bit more than baseline because their judgement is more clouded by the dollar signs in their eyes, compared to people talking about e.g. open-source distributed databases.
Some crypto people may be wrong a bit more than baseline because their judgement is more clouded by the dollar signs in their eyes, compared to people talking about e.g. open-source distributed databases.
> If you were to replace the word crypto with “computers” or “space travel”
Sputnik was launched in 1957 [0] - it did nothing except orbit and beep. Telstar, the first commercial communications satellite was launched in 1962 (5 years later) - it relayed television signals, photos and phone calls [1].
Blockchain cryptocurrencies started with Bitcoin in 2009, and it's now 2022 (13 years). How long are we supposed to wait for a practical application that solves a real problem? I guess we're supposed to conclude that making literally any broadly useful blockchain application is in fact much harder than commercial space travel or computers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar
Sputnik was launched in 1957 [0] - it did nothing except orbit and beep. Telstar, the first commercial communications satellite was launched in 1962 (5 years later) - it relayed television signals, photos and phone calls [1].
Blockchain cryptocurrencies started with Bitcoin in 2009, and it's now 2022 (13 years). How long are we supposed to wait for a practical application that solves a real problem? I guess we're supposed to conclude that making literally any broadly useful blockchain application is in fact much harder than commercial space travel or computers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar
This argument has two issues:
- it has a moving goal post on what “a real problem” is
- it creates an arbitrary start date and end date
Or in other words, it’s not falsifiable.
What would count as a “real problem”? Why does “money” not count? Why does “1000x cheaper storage compared to s3” (filecoin) not count?
The argument implies that, if some important use case is new and just getting off the ground now, then it’s inception is predated 10 years ago, and is judged as such.
The equivalent would be to say “space has had 70 years to get us to mars, therefore the 2030 missions to mars will fail” only to follow up with “if the 2030 missions succeed, then space must explain why it has not gotten us to Jupiter”.
- it has a moving goal post on what “a real problem” is
- it creates an arbitrary start date and end date
Or in other words, it’s not falsifiable.
What would count as a “real problem”? Why does “money” not count? Why does “1000x cheaper storage compared to s3” (filecoin) not count?
The argument implies that, if some important use case is new and just getting off the ground now, then it’s inception is predated 10 years ago, and is judged as such.
The equivalent would be to say “space has had 70 years to get us to mars, therefore the 2030 missions to mars will fail” only to follow up with “if the 2030 missions succeed, then space must explain why it has not gotten us to Jupiter”.
On the contrary, you and other crypto-boosters forever claiming "we're still early" is what's completely unfalsifiable. When will you admit that it's a failure? 2030? 2050?
I think my argument is very clear:
- It took 5 years to get from a working proof-of-concept of a satellite to something that has absolutely inarguable utility. No one can make a good-faith claim that transatlantic radio and television broadcasts are pointless.
- Cryptocurrency has had 13 years and the only genuine use-case I can see is evading regulation, buying drugs or paying for ransomware. Everything else is hand-waving vaporware bullshit "well maybe we could track X on the blockchain"[0]
[0] https://twitter.com/liron/status/1533214640460574720
I think my argument is very clear:
- It took 5 years to get from a working proof-of-concept of a satellite to something that has absolutely inarguable utility. No one can make a good-faith claim that transatlantic radio and television broadcasts are pointless.
- Cryptocurrency has had 13 years and the only genuine use-case I can see is evading regulation, buying drugs or paying for ransomware. Everything else is hand-waving vaporware bullshit "well maybe we could track X on the blockchain"[0]
[0] https://twitter.com/liron/status/1533214640460574720
I spent a lot of time reading into crypto, trying out some dApps and trying to understand whether or not there was some usefulness beyond online value transmission. We’ve all read the same articles here but long story short I see no reason to buy or hold and unless something changes I think it’s so far been a terrible waste of energy. Both electricity and human energy.
I’ll reevaluate in a year or two. I think something like ripple could work, and maybe some non eth based dapp platform. But currently none of the coins really seem like a good investment and I’ll continue working on regular ass applications.
I wanted to find something new and amazing, but it feels like more of a religion to me. I guess it’d be cool if something incredible precipitated in a couple decades but I’m not holding my breath.
I’ll reevaluate in a year or two. I think something like ripple could work, and maybe some non eth based dapp platform. But currently none of the coins really seem like a good investment and I’ll continue working on regular ass applications.
I wanted to find something new and amazing, but it feels like more of a religion to me. I guess it’d be cool if something incredible precipitated in a couple decades but I’m not holding my breath.
Well said. I certainly agree with this. It is a good approach into understanding what works and what doesn't work in crypto and what would most likely happen in the future. What I think will happen is quite simple:
Not all crypto projects and their technologies will survive, a few of them will stand the test of time especially when regulations do come and all of them won't be completely and 'totally destroyed' as the anti-crypto folks keep saying that 'all of them must be destroyed'. They also won't overthrow and 'replace the current system' as the crypto-maximalists keep saying that it will.
The hint in seeing which ones will survive are the ones that aim to co-exist with the current system. Take this from Stripe [0] and Moneygram [1] and Checkout.com as good examples of all of them using a stablecoin like USDC for payments. I'm sure they all waited for regulatory clarity before implementing these projects. It is not what either camp would want to see, but it is what is really happening right now, even for the case of some of them with CBDCs and the ISO 20020 standard.
> Most pro-crypto and anti-crypto have attached their identity to liking or dislike crypto.
Exactly. This is the problem.
Either you have those who have invested heavily in the coin so they need to keep shilling it on social media or you have those who make a living or gain a following disliking all of crypto on social media or even selling books on why it will be destroyed. What's definitely common with both extremes is the attachment of identity to either camp which does bring out the most irrational and absolute claims and predictions seen with a very high chance of them being both incorrect.
The only absolute that exists is: There are no absolutes. When either side continues to make absolute claims, they will realise that they will be disappointed with the actual reality that is being shown to them doesn't match their utopian goals and absolute beliefs.
[0] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/checkoutcom-jumps-into-crypt...
Not all crypto projects and their technologies will survive, a few of them will stand the test of time especially when regulations do come and all of them won't be completely and 'totally destroyed' as the anti-crypto folks keep saying that 'all of them must be destroyed'. They also won't overthrow and 'replace the current system' as the crypto-maximalists keep saying that it will.
The hint in seeing which ones will survive are the ones that aim to co-exist with the current system. Take this from Stripe [0] and Moneygram [1] and Checkout.com as good examples of all of them using a stablecoin like USDC for payments. I'm sure they all waited for regulatory clarity before implementing these projects. It is not what either camp would want to see, but it is what is really happening right now, even for the case of some of them with CBDCs and the ISO 20020 standard.
> Most pro-crypto and anti-crypto have attached their identity to liking or dislike crypto.
Exactly. This is the problem.
Either you have those who have invested heavily in the coin so they need to keep shilling it on social media or you have those who make a living or gain a following disliking all of crypto on social media or even selling books on why it will be destroyed. What's definitely common with both extremes is the attachment of identity to either camp which does bring out the most irrational and absolute claims and predictions seen with a very high chance of them being both incorrect.
The only absolute that exists is: There are no absolutes. When either side continues to make absolute claims, they will realise that they will be disappointed with the actual reality that is being shown to them doesn't match their utopian goals and absolute beliefs.
[0] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/checkoutcom-jumps-into-crypt...
How can identity be self-sovereign?
In the end, it boils down to everyone just asking to see the passport or some other government ID, or a proxy for that (credit card, library card, employee card).
In the end, it boils down to everyone just asking to see the passport or some other government ID, or a proxy for that (credit card, library card, employee card).
Self-sovereign identity boils down to : you control a public key (you have the private key). Everything after that is some variant on : someone with another key can sign a message that means they believe something about your key. This turns out to be pretty much the same as X.509 from 30+ years ago, with the names of things changed and modern encoding schemes used for the messages.
In this context, much of what we think of as identity on the internet doesn't need a central authority because all most web sites know about you is that you're the same entity that originally created the account (usually implemented via your email address). But email tends to be favored by users because managing your own keys is problematic.
Be very skeptical of anyone who claims to have devised a decentralized sybil-resistant identity scheme.
In this context, much of what we think of as identity on the internet doesn't need a central authority because all most web sites know about you is that you're the same entity that originally created the account (usually implemented via your email address). But email tends to be favored by users because managing your own keys is problematic.
Be very skeptical of anyone who claims to have devised a decentralized sybil-resistant identity scheme.
The "web of trust" is the canonical example of "self-sovereign" identity: you publish your identity, others verify it, and (in theory) the "web" propagates through degrees of trust in peers.
The big problem there is that it doesn't scale beyond a small handful of people who know each other well and trust each other for a specific purpose. Cryptocurrency companies seem to be aware of this (and of the prominent historical record of failure associated with WoT), which might be why they perform remarkable contortions to avoid that phrase (see "web of verifications" in the article.)
The big problem there is that it doesn't scale beyond a small handful of people who know each other well and trust each other for a specific purpose. Cryptocurrency companies seem to be aware of this (and of the prominent historical record of failure associated with WoT), which might be why they perform remarkable contortions to avoid that phrase (see "web of verifications" in the article.)
Putting crypto currency to one side, you are aware of the pgp 'strong set'? because six degrees of Kevin Bacon says a handful is a serious underestimate of how good transitive trust can be. The strong set is quite large.
That word "transitive" is a very important qualifier here: it's weaker than an absolute statement but hierarchical PKI turns out to be weaker than theory, in practice.
Crypto coins are trash. Signatures are not trash. Behaviour of people and systems performing signing including HSM operators are mutable and worrisome.
That word "transitive" is a very important qualifier here: it's weaker than an absolute statement but hierarchical PKI turns out to be weaker than theory, in practice.
Crypto coins are trash. Signatures are not trash. Behaviour of people and systems performing signing including HSM operators are mutable and worrisome.
I'm aware of the strong set, but I was under the impression that it didn't accomplish much anymore -- GnuPG disabled SKS lookups a while back, in response to the network's inability to handle thousands of clearly malicious key attestations. The last major topological analysis I can find of the strong set was back in 2015, one year before the first series of spam attacks on SKS.
(But don't get me wrong: signatures are great! I'm just skeptical of the WoT, from multiple angles.)
(But don't get me wrong: signatures are great! I'm just skeptical of the WoT, from multiple angles.)
As usual I'm behind the times. It peaked at 60,000 in 2018 and declined and people stopped believing in it around 2020, some people earlier. My point about scale was a footnote to history, not relevant.
Don’t feel bad, so there so much happening in so many spaces these days.
What a time to be alive.
What a time to be alive.
It also has the Byzantine problem where if you have enough wealth and your web is covetous enough, they can conspire to trick you into giving away financial information.
The birth of brand names was all about attaching enough status to a product line that if you ever broke that trust, that you harm yourself more than you did the customers. CAs are built on that idea. But then so is BP, 3M, and DuPont. So was Hooker Chemical Company (Love Canal), and Montrose Chemical Corp (DDT dumping off California). So I don't know what that really buys you.
I do think that trust in certificates needs to be incremental, especially when they change. And perhaps you need a way to ask your savvy friend to take a hard look at some and be able to veto them.
The birth of brand names was all about attaching enough status to a product line that if you ever broke that trust, that you harm yourself more than you did the customers. CAs are built on that idea. But then so is BP, 3M, and DuPont. So was Hooker Chemical Company (Love Canal), and Montrose Chemical Corp (DDT dumping off California). So I don't know what that really buys you.
I do think that trust in certificates needs to be incremental, especially when they change. And perhaps you need a way to ask your savvy friend to take a hard look at some and be able to veto them.
I do think there is some potential in the idea of people proving they are at face-to-face events (signing each others' zero-knowledge tokens) and then timing/placing those events such that someone can't be in two places at once.
However, doing graph-based Sybil detection is already a hard problem[0], and trying to create an infallible algorithm that also works using homomorphic encryption is maybe pushing beyond the boundaries of known technology, unfortunately.
[0] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2492517.2492568
However, doing graph-based Sybil detection is already a hard problem[0], and trying to create an infallible algorithm that also works using homomorphic encryption is maybe pushing beyond the boundaries of known technology, unfortunately.
[0] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2492517.2492568
It would still be easy to have more tokens than people in this setup, you could choose which of your tokens to present, or pass some tokens around. So it is hard to guarantee there is a 1:1 correspondance. Which could be a good thing, but also doesn't work for some of the cases that want 1:1, like giving people a universal basic income where you don't want them to create fake people.
Crypto-currency nonsense aside, the article clearly goes into DIDs which is on its way to becoming a standard.
https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/
> Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) are a new type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. A DID refers to any subject (e.g., a person, organization, thing, data model, abstract entity, etc.) as determined by the controller of the DID. In contrast to typical, federated identifiers, DIDs have been designed so that they may be decoupled from centralized registries, identity providers, and certificate authorities. Specifically, while other parties might be used to help enable the discovery of information related to a DID, the design enables the controller of a DID to prove control over it without requiring permission from any other party. DIDs are URIs that associate a DID subject with a DID document allowing trustable interactions associated with that subject.
https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/
> Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) are a new type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. A DID refers to any subject (e.g., a person, organization, thing, data model, abstract entity, etc.) as determined by the controller of the DID. In contrast to typical, federated identifiers, DIDs have been designed so that they may be decoupled from centralized registries, identity providers, and certificate authorities. Specifically, while other parties might be used to help enable the discovery of information related to a DID, the design enables the controller of a DID to prove control over it without requiring permission from any other party. DIDs are URIs that associate a DID subject with a DID document allowing trustable interactions associated with that subject.
Nobody gives a shit if your name is Steve Irving. They care if you're wanted in three extradition-treaty countries or on an Interpol list. Federated identities mean you can have five of them and none of them are counterfeit, which is exactly the opposite of what they want to let you into a country, out of a country, to take out a loan, or to be sitting in a jail cell.
There was a time that having multiple identities online was a sensible thing to do, and many in the privacy community wanted this, but now that State actors are fucking with elections, that use case is in serious jeopardy.
There was a time that having multiple identities online was a sensible thing to do, and many in the privacy community wanted this, but now that State actors are fucking with elections, that use case is in serious jeopardy.
Did you respond to the wrong comment?
I have no idea what you are trying to say here sorry.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here sorry.
I could ask you the same. You responded to
> in the end, it boils down to everyone just asking to see the passport or some other government ID, or a proxy for that (credit card, library card,
with a standard on distributed identity. That doesn't answer the question. I doubled down on what OP said. So if you don't see how my response isn't a follow-up, then the three of us are talking past each other.
> in the end, it boils down to everyone just asking to see the passport or some other government ID, or a proxy for that (credit card, library card,
with a standard on distributed identity. That doesn't answer the question. I doubled down on what OP said. So if you don't see how my response isn't a follow-up, then the three of us are talking past each other.
Correct. There is nothing "self" or "sovereign" about having your "government name" certified cryptographically by the state.
Oh, you generated your own key material all by yourself, and THEN the government signed it? That's the innovation? Who cares. There is no value.
The -only- reason anyone cares about your identity is because it's mandated to do some checks by the government. Also, to deter fraud, as mandated by your insurance companies and credit card processors.
In both cases, there are legal requirements set out that mandate what exactly you must do. Often it would be the passport, plus second source of identity, plus an address check, plus proof of liveness.
Nobody asked for an open standard. Nobody really cares about identity except for banks/financials corps.
When was the last time you woke up and felt, damn, all I wanna do is identity, identity, identity?
Oh, you generated your own key material all by yourself, and THEN the government signed it? That's the innovation? Who cares. There is no value.
The -only- reason anyone cares about your identity is because it's mandated to do some checks by the government. Also, to deter fraud, as mandated by your insurance companies and credit card processors.
In both cases, there are legal requirements set out that mandate what exactly you must do. Often it would be the passport, plus second source of identity, plus an address check, plus proof of liveness.
Nobody asked for an open standard. Nobody really cares about identity except for banks/financials corps.
When was the last time you woke up and felt, damn, all I wanna do is identity, identity, identity?
> When was the last time you woke up and felt, damn, all I wanna do is identity, identity, identity?
As someone who went through the clown show gauntlet of crypto scammers and charlatans as a freelancer, I’m going to have to disagree. This is going to be most useful for the crypto community, not the brick and mortar world, nor Silicon Valley or the HN community.
As someone who went through the clown show gauntlet of crypto scammers and charlatans as a freelancer, I’m going to have to disagree. This is going to be most useful for the crypto community, not the brick and mortar world, nor Silicon Valley or the HN community.
I suggest you read my w3 consortium link. Self sovereign identities and decentralised identities very much overlap to the point of being synonyms.
State actors have been fucking with elections since elections existed. Do you perhaps have a recent example in mind from somewhere dear to you? How it is different from countless other cases?
I'm woefully underinformed. But SSI seems like some kind of next-gen adtech. Instead of scaring people about privacy we just convince people "it's safe - you are in control." Meanwhile you can now sell your privacy.
I hope someone less cynical can convince me it's a good idea.
I hope someone less cynical can convince me it's a good idea.
Hi Molly, great article.
I was just thinking about the CAP theorem again a few days ago and the trilemma you describe here, interestingly, feels quite related.
As for what I personally consider to be the heart of the problem, I believe proof of personship (or whatever a soul is) is an unsolvable problem in the most rigorous sense. This is one reason why we have government. The issue isn't that government exists, it's that we cannot trust them, nor control them effectively. Still, a local government is much better positioned to prove my identity than some nebulous algorithm. Even the crazy Orb people knew this, and took to physically scanning retinas as you mention. We just need to build trust locally again somehow.
Of course, people move and trust must be (re)bootstrapped. This is the root of the heart of the problem if you will; and a problem I cannot see concrete solutions to that don't approximate the existing systems. Here in MA, I have to both pay to get an ID, and provide various information to verify my address and initiate background checks, etc. This is all worth something, no?
So why not have local governments provide this verification service...? Well, there's another complicating factor. The higher the value of a secret (i.e. identity proof), the less one should use it, or the more careful one should be with it. If I'm asked to give out my SSN to log into some new video game, I might stop and think twice. Whereas, providing my SSN to apply for a loan from a trustworthy financial institution is pretty commonplace.
Finnaly, on data stewardship. Why not have companies like Apple and Google selling HomePods which act as local clouds which store, sync, and replicate encrypted data as requested by the user? Give me a static IPv6 and a decent authenticated tunnel into my LAN and I'm good to go! I choose what files go up to iCloud.com, I choose where 3rd party services point to for authentication credentials, and I decide when I want to delete and invalidate things!
Anyway, thanks for the thought provocation. </rant>
I was just thinking about the CAP theorem again a few days ago and the trilemma you describe here, interestingly, feels quite related.
As for what I personally consider to be the heart of the problem, I believe proof of personship (or whatever a soul is) is an unsolvable problem in the most rigorous sense. This is one reason why we have government. The issue isn't that government exists, it's that we cannot trust them, nor control them effectively. Still, a local government is much better positioned to prove my identity than some nebulous algorithm. Even the crazy Orb people knew this, and took to physically scanning retinas as you mention. We just need to build trust locally again somehow.
Of course, people move and trust must be (re)bootstrapped. This is the root of the heart of the problem if you will; and a problem I cannot see concrete solutions to that don't approximate the existing systems. Here in MA, I have to both pay to get an ID, and provide various information to verify my address and initiate background checks, etc. This is all worth something, no?
So why not have local governments provide this verification service...? Well, there's another complicating factor. The higher the value of a secret (i.e. identity proof), the less one should use it, or the more careful one should be with it. If I'm asked to give out my SSN to log into some new video game, I might stop and think twice. Whereas, providing my SSN to apply for a loan from a trustworthy financial institution is pretty commonplace.
Finnaly, on data stewardship. Why not have companies like Apple and Google selling HomePods which act as local clouds which store, sync, and replicate encrypted data as requested by the user? Give me a static IPv6 and a decent authenticated tunnel into my LAN and I'm good to go! I choose what files go up to iCloud.com, I choose where 3rd party services point to for authentication credentials, and I decide when I want to delete and invalidate things!
Anyway, thanks for the thought provocation. </rant>
I agree that government proof-of-identity systems are actually pretty decent, and I think they could offer something really useful by making those services available as cryptographic proofs. In America, using a government-issued proof of identity over the internet amounts to sending someone my SSN, or a picture of my passport or drivers license. Obviously this sucks because they can now convincingly impersonate me on the internet.
If they also provided some kind of public-key database, any internet service could verify my identity without learning how to impersonate me. If I lose my private key (or it gets leaked), I can go to the DMV or whatever and have them revoke my old one and issue a new one, just like if I lose my physical license today.
EDIT: I know, Estonia/Iceland/whoever already do this. Not an original idea.
If they also provided some kind of public-key database, any internet service could verify my identity without learning how to impersonate me. If I lose my private key (or it gets leaked), I can go to the DMV or whatever and have them revoke my old one and issue a new one, just like if I lose my physical license today.
EDIT: I know, Estonia/Iceland/whoever already do this. Not an original idea.
This is not quite true that "considerations of ethics, user safety, privacy, security, how can this be used for evil, and is this even good for society often come as a belated afterthought". Referencing only recent popular articles in mass media does not paint the whole picture.
The very concept of SSI was motivated by ethical concerns: https://www.moxytongue.com/2016/02/self-sovereign-identity.h...
There is a field of academic research on ethics of SSI: [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09563-x [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.0001...
And there is a great deal of awareness regarding these issues in industry https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/04/26/self-sovereign-id... (yes including core Ethereum developers community).
The very concept of SSI was motivated by ethical concerns: https://www.moxytongue.com/2016/02/self-sovereign-identity.h...
There is a field of academic research on ethics of SSI: [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09563-x [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.0001...
And there is a great deal of awareness regarding these issues in industry https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/04/26/self-sovereign-id... (yes including core Ethereum developers community).
This seems to trying to pin down the "problem of identity" (how to ensure people maintain a stable identity over a digital realm)
I think it's important to be clear about why this is important, depending on the use case (votes, currency, etc) there may be a different reasons why it's important that one identity follows one person.
In the case of currency, the reason behind needing stable identity has to do with double spending.
But I have a toy scenario that I like to play around with, consider a cryptocurrency such that anybody can emit tokens (credits) however they deem appropriate, in this case the necessity of a stable identity is clear, the person needs to be able to answer for their emited tokens. If people can just shed the token-emitting-identity, then they cannot be held accountable (forced to answer) for their emitted tokens and the entire construction is useless.
However, for the case of votes and other group-concensus schemes, the scenarios are sufficiently different that I'm not sure if it'e even worthwhile to try to come up with ONE answer to the identity "problem"
I think it's important to be clear about why this is important, depending on the use case (votes, currency, etc) there may be a different reasons why it's important that one identity follows one person.
In the case of currency, the reason behind needing stable identity has to do with double spending.
But I have a toy scenario that I like to play around with, consider a cryptocurrency such that anybody can emit tokens (credits) however they deem appropriate, in this case the necessity of a stable identity is clear, the person needs to be able to answer for their emited tokens. If people can just shed the token-emitting-identity, then they cannot be held accountable (forced to answer) for their emitted tokens and the entire construction is useless.
However, for the case of votes and other group-concensus schemes, the scenarios are sufficiently different that I'm not sure if it'e even worthwhile to try to come up with ONE answer to the identity "problem"
There are two interesting aspects of self-sovereign identity that are not worth hand-waiving away as dystopian:
- it provides identity tools that use standards that span across geographical and platform boundaries. this is a different form of “user account” than say an online Amazon or NYStateGov account. it is good to have an option on the web for auth and identity that is detached from any single corporate entity or jurisdiction.
- unlike most of the world’s current identity systems, many of the SSI systems can and are using novel cryptography, which can combine with privacy and encryption techniques such as hashing, private keys and zk-proofs. so instead of sending photos of your passport and drivers license all over the web, SSI allows you to sign a message on a public ledger, or send a zero knowledge proof that the other end can verify.
SSI doesn’t need to replace typical identity and web auth but it could be introduced as another option.
- it provides identity tools that use standards that span across geographical and platform boundaries. this is a different form of “user account” than say an online Amazon or NYStateGov account. it is good to have an option on the web for auth and identity that is detached from any single corporate entity or jurisdiction.
- unlike most of the world’s current identity systems, many of the SSI systems can and are using novel cryptography, which can combine with privacy and encryption techniques such as hashing, private keys and zk-proofs. so instead of sending photos of your passport and drivers license all over the web, SSI allows you to sign a message on a public ledger, or send a zero knowledge proof that the other end can verify.
SSI doesn’t need to replace typical identity and web auth but it could be introduced as another option.
What SSI systems exist that are widely adopted and have a user base in at least few million MAUs?
You could consider Ethereum addresses and ENS aliases to be a limited form of SSI. MetaMask alone suggests it has several million MAUs not that this should be a metric in determining whether a tech is dystopian or not.
Various web3 platforms already require verifiable attestations through signing messages with private keys such as multi sig wallets, off chain voting, token gated access.
Various web3 platforms already require verifiable attestations through signing messages with private keys such as multi sig wallets, off chain voting, token gated access.
> You could
(gong show noises)
(gong show noises)
"can" is doing all the work there. If it isn't please show me a SSI system that uses zksnarks in production.
Are you objecting to the cryptography and theory of ZK-SNARKs or the fact that not enough production grade applications are using this new tech to your expectations?
Proving systems like Groth16 and TurboPLONK have only recently gotten to a point where they can be run in a web browser, and circuit development has come a long way with Circom 2 and now varying zkVMs being built around higher level programming languages. It is reasonable to concede that we are still some years from seeing production grade SSI + ZK tech reach a mass market.
Proving systems like Groth16 and TurboPLONK have only recently gotten to a point where they can be run in a web browser, and circuit development has come a long way with Circom 2 and now varying zkVMs being built around higher level programming languages. It is reasonable to concede that we are still some years from seeing production grade SSI + ZK tech reach a mass market.
The original commenter was speaking of things that you admit are in the fabulous future, and talking about them as if they exist in the present right now. And that's just a lie.
Why would anyone sign a message on a public ledger?
All messages on a blockchain ledger are signed messages.
A practical example is signing the message “I, user 1234, am sending 1000 USDC to user 5678”
A practical example is signing the message “I, user 1234, am sending 1000 USDC to user 5678”
Exactly, why would you sing a message saying that you're logging on this or that website, for everyone to see, when you can just tell the website in question and no one else?
You don’t need to post a message on the chain to ‘login’ to a web3 site. But if you perform a transaction such as changing the state in a smart contract or withdrawing tokens based on your address and message meeting some ZK-SNARK verifiable condition, that is when you might need to post a message to the chain.
I suspect privacy is the most malleable point on the trilema.
You can't compromise on security while still being usable.
You can compromise on decentralisation, and everything will work. Your gym, bank and employer already have you in a centralised identity system. Compromising on decentralisation fails the other way. There's no way of holding the centralised body to its side of the compromise. If worldcoin controls identity, they'll control downstream of identity too.
For actual solutions, I think it's better to think of specifics applications. Once you get specific, there are often more options.
Take DAUS governance. Say you want to implement a voting system that requires identity for sybil resistance. Maybe it's ok if voting requires a limited compromise on privacy. You expose just enough information to demonstrate eligibility, then vote. If privacy is more important that voting, you can maintain privacy instead.
You can't compromise on security while still being usable.
You can compromise on decentralisation, and everything will work. Your gym, bank and employer already have you in a centralised identity system. Compromising on decentralisation fails the other way. There's no way of holding the centralised body to its side of the compromise. If worldcoin controls identity, they'll control downstream of identity too.
For actual solutions, I think it's better to think of specifics applications. Once you get specific, there are often more options.
Take DAUS governance. Say you want to implement a voting system that requires identity for sybil resistance. Maybe it's ok if voting requires a limited compromise on privacy. You expose just enough information to demonstrate eligibility, then vote. If privacy is more important that voting, you can maintain privacy instead.
'Username and Password' is 'most' of 'sovereign identity'.
'Proof of Personhood' is mostly only going to matter in a legal context, in which there will be some kind of state that recognizes that personhood. Even governments kind of screw that up though.
For the later we probably just need a slightly more advanced 'Ministry of Information and Identity'. Like the passport office, but digital. And away you go.
This whole 'decentralize everything' is a big of a canard. Useful though experiment, but not much more.
Also: "Soulbound token" make me cough up my coffee a little bit.
'Proof of Personhood' is mostly only going to matter in a legal context, in which there will be some kind of state that recognizes that personhood. Even governments kind of screw that up though.
For the later we probably just need a slightly more advanced 'Ministry of Information and Identity'. Like the passport office, but digital. And away you go.
This whole 'decentralize everything' is a big of a canard. Useful though experiment, but not much more.
Also: "Soulbound token" make me cough up my coffee a little bit.
Short answer: No.
The desire to be "identified" incorporates the desire to be identified as "Self sovereign," which is an appeal that only other people can fulfill. Your identity is sovereign thus depends on their collaboration in constructing and maintaining a space where such an identity is even possible. You cannot be self sovereign because the mandate to make that identification is not entirely reserved to yourself. Unless of course you impose it on others by force, in which case you're no longer self sovereign but sovereign, period.
The desire to be "identified" incorporates the desire to be identified as "Self sovereign," which is an appeal that only other people can fulfill. Your identity is sovereign thus depends on their collaboration in constructing and maintaining a space where such an identity is even possible. You cannot be self sovereign because the mandate to make that identification is not entirely reserved to yourself. Unless of course you impose it on others by force, in which case you're no longer self sovereign but sovereign, period.
I feel like the "Anonymity [is] central to the crypto world." ship sailed a long time ago. It was one of the original promises of Bitcoin but it is literally a public database.
It's also possible that a society with more transparency regarding financial transactions is the better option long-term, but surrendering the dream of anonymity is a tough one for proponents.
It's also possible that a society with more transparency regarding financial transactions is the better option long-term, but surrendering the dream of anonymity is a tough one for proponents.
Couldn’t I just buy monero off guys on the dark web?
pseudonymity is a reasonable compromise.
Facebook also stores all your data with the index key being a 64 character string.
A reasonable compromise, protecting people indeed.
A reasonable compromise, protecting people indeed.
And equally as untenable in the crypto world.
how so? for example, i operate a pseudonym.
> Jack Dorsey just launched “Web5”, a buzzwordy project focused on decentralized identity
Woah, hold on, I thought we were still on "Web3"? Actually I'm not convinced that we've even moved past Web 2.0, since Web3 is still mostly just bullshit, scams, vaporware and monkey jpegs.
Did "Web4" get swallowed up by the same beast that made us skip IPv5?
Woah, hold on, I thought we were still on "Web3"? Actually I'm not convinced that we've even moved past Web 2.0, since Web3 is still mostly just bullshit, scams, vaporware and monkey jpegs.
Did "Web4" get swallowed up by the same beast that made us skip IPv5?
Why is the techno-libertarian world so overwhelmingly obsessed with extreme individualism?
We are social creatures. We sacrifice individual needs because we gain massive security and social value in return.
We need a balance of the various ideologies, and not the extremism of any one ideology.
Fifty years of narcissistic, anti-social, "Leave me the hell alone" libertarianism is at the heart of the culture-rot collapse we are facing.
We need people on hackernews and Ridgewood elsewhere developing civic and social innovations that deepen our connections, not replacing them with with increasingly inauthentic, algorithmic, trustless, artificial substitutes.
We are social creatures. We sacrifice individual needs because we gain massive security and social value in return.
We need a balance of the various ideologies, and not the extremism of any one ideology.
Fifty years of narcissistic, anti-social, "Leave me the hell alone" libertarianism is at the heart of the culture-rot collapse we are facing.
We need people on hackernews and Ridgewood elsewhere developing civic and social innovations that deepen our connections, not replacing them with with increasingly inauthentic, algorithmic, trustless, artificial substitutes.
I believe it was Bruce Schneier who coined the term "movie-plot threat" for a kind of security threat that gets more attention, not because it's plausible and around the corner, but because it excites our imagination the most.
It seems that there's something similar here. For most of the world, it's just natural that your government provides you with identity proof. USA and maybe other anglo countries could be the exception, although other times the question was discussed, I was told that, even if there is no official id card, other means like SS numbers provide an equivalent mechanism.
The movie plot, in which you are framed for some heinous crime and you need to go full Jason Bourne, is what justifies having a handful of fake passports, of course guns and a sizeable reserve of cash in a hole in the woods. Now it would be your bitcoin wallet and some sovereign identity keys in USB drives.
We need a balance of the various ideologies, and not the extremism of any one ideology.
Actually I think that those extreme views are a reaction to one ideology adopted by all mainstream parties. You see that no matter what you vote, you're going to be screwed, so you turn to fringe options.
It seems that there's something similar here. For most of the world, it's just natural that your government provides you with identity proof. USA and maybe other anglo countries could be the exception, although other times the question was discussed, I was told that, even if there is no official id card, other means like SS numbers provide an equivalent mechanism.
The movie plot, in which you are framed for some heinous crime and you need to go full Jason Bourne, is what justifies having a handful of fake passports, of course guns and a sizeable reserve of cash in a hole in the woods. Now it would be your bitcoin wallet and some sovereign identity keys in USB drives.
We need a balance of the various ideologies, and not the extremism of any one ideology.
Actually I think that those extreme views are a reaction to one ideology adopted by all mainstream parties. You see that no matter what you vote, you're going to be screwed, so you turn to fringe options.
well, the thing is existing institutions are completely fucked. governments simply do not represent us and there is no trust for them. we have not opted into these systems, they do not speak for us, and they are not legitimate.
we are indeed social creatures and we are developing new civic and social innovations. this mostly relates to actively opting into communities with people we like that share our values and that do not attempt to control us. and crypto/web3 enables us to exit the rotten institutions that try to coerce us into being part of them, and create new institutions that represent our values.
it is pretty obvious when you think about it. only institutions we actively and freely opt into can actually be legitimate.
and the idea that something that claims a monopoly on violence also claims to be legitimate is just completely, utterly laughable. and what is going on right now is that the clown car is finally flying off a cliff :)
we are indeed social creatures and we are developing new civic and social innovations. this mostly relates to actively opting into communities with people we like that share our values and that do not attempt to control us. and crypto/web3 enables us to exit the rotten institutions that try to coerce us into being part of them, and create new institutions that represent our values.
it is pretty obvious when you think about it. only institutions we actively and freely opt into can actually be legitimate.
and the idea that something that claims a monopoly on violence also claims to be legitimate is just completely, utterly laughable. and what is going on right now is that the clown car is finally flying off a cliff :)
If that has a solid majority where you live why does that not translate into different policies and institutions?
If it is a minority position, how to convince more people? Or where to find a place to create a new society without free-riding on the existing one, etc.?
If it is a minority position, how to convince more people? Or where to find a place to create a new society without free-riding on the existing one, etc.?
Sure if you want anything cheaper and more widespread, abolish the monopoly on it. Including violence. When your ancestors opted into monopoly of violence, they had their reasons. Behooves you to try to understand the reasons first, not blindly exclaiming "this is all fucked i want out". Also, consider that most likely 90% of world population is living under even more dysfunctional institutions.
What are the proposed alternatives to individualism? Collectivism? No thanks. I've seen what that does to the human spirit.
I'd rather take an extremely individualist culture and then fill in the gaps with taxation and some level of wealth redistribution.
I'd rather take an extremely individualist culture and then fill in the gaps with taxation and some level of wealth redistribution.
Individualism and collectivism are opposites, not simply alternatives.
Alternative to individualism is everything that is not based on individualism alone.
For example every social democracy out there the majority of which you can find in Europe.
We live in countries where we are individuals with rights but also we have to let go some of that individualism because the good of the many overrides the individual rights.
It's not very hard actually.
Alternative to individualism is everything that is not based on individualism alone.
For example every social democracy out there the majority of which you can find in Europe.
We live in countries where we are individuals with rights but also we have to let go some of that individualism because the good of the many overrides the individual rights.
It's not very hard actually.
individualism, liberty and self-reliance are pillars of the modern developed world, which is the best place to live in all the history of mankind.
and we have plenty of examples from the last century of what do you get if you adopt the opposite values
and we have plenty of examples from the last century of what do you get if you adopt the opposite values
> individualism, liberty and self-reliance are pillars of the modern developed world
Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly disagrees with you.
I believe you confused individualism with autonomy and free will.
a society of individuals can easily become atomized and paradoxically uniform when “every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd“.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
a true pillar of modern developed World
Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly disagrees with you.
I believe you confused individualism with autonomy and free will.
a society of individuals can easily become atomized and paradoxically uniform when “every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd“.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
a true pillar of modern developed World
Self reliance is definitely not part of the modern developed world. Countries are more interconnected than ever, and almost any person, unless they live in the wilderness in Alaska and do everything themselves, relies on other people to live. The pillar of the modern developed world is specialization and trade, not self-reliance.
Are you now or have you ever been an adherent of "Leave me the hell alone" libertarianism? I'm sympathetic to it presently and I have been in the past, but I must admit that I struggle mightily to view any segment of the past 40 years in meatspace as anything approaching a shrine to that philosophy. I'd actually find it much easier to say the exact opposite in fact, and I do believe that what's happening in crypto is in large part a backlash to that.
The entire point of it being in crypto of course is that the same people and forces that push back so hard against it in meatspace are relatively powerless to do so in the cyptosphere.
For better or worse, I can't see that changing any time soon. I was in a meeting at a very large crypto exchange recently and their branded coffee cups all had a very simple message; "freedom is here". That's basically at the core of everything happening in the space, and I don't think arguing against it is going to work in any way shape or form given the polarised attitude toward the philosophy on either side of the cyptosphere border.
Like it or not, it's not going away, and it's swinging more towards extreme individualism by the day, not less.
The entire point of it being in crypto of course is that the same people and forces that push back so hard against it in meatspace are relatively powerless to do so in the cyptosphere.
For better or worse, I can't see that changing any time soon. I was in a meeting at a very large crypto exchange recently and their branded coffee cups all had a very simple message; "freedom is here". That's basically at the core of everything happening in the space, and I don't think arguing against it is going to work in any way shape or form given the polarised attitude toward the philosophy on either side of the cyptosphere border.
Like it or not, it's not going away, and it's swinging more towards extreme individualism by the day, not less.
That's not what libertarianism is about. It is about ideas that maximize freedom for everyone in a society. It is about allowing freedom to others. It's the opposite to narcissist and anti-social. It is about being nice to each other, or as Jesus said: "love your neighbor as yourself". Individual acts and thoughts are allowed and valued.
Unfortunately, our society and culture has been going into more collectivist and totalitarian direction for quite a while, which is why there's so much economic and social issues.
"Leave me the hell alone"-people are just normal people who react to their freedom being violated.
Unfortunately, our society and culture has been going into more collectivist and totalitarian direction for quite a while, which is why there's so much economic and social issues.
"Leave me the hell alone"-people are just normal people who react to their freedom being violated.
> We are social creatures. We sacrifice individual needs because we gain massive security and social value in return.
I'm not a libertarian or a proponent of cryptocurrency. But I do think we can be clearer about what being "social creatures" means.
We are "social creatures" in the sense that we seek the advantages of group membership (safety, co-operation, food stability, shelter, school), but we are not social creatures in the sense that we want oppressive control and uniformity. Our "agreement" with being social is accompanied by resentment. In some cases, the resentment is pathological. (Conformity can be pathological too.)
Homo sapiens developed/evolved language, the amazing human protocol to support co-operation. But when we ask people to say everything that they are thinking without social consequences, we discover the degree to which people can be angry, rude, willfully ignorant, and even crazy. (Consider "social media" to be both a business and an unprecedented live experiment revealing social resentment.)
The cryptocurrency movement/phenomenon is a construct with significant flaws and ardent adherents who see their own interest fulfilled in the narrative. In this, it is nothing particularly special. But by definition a crowd of people who all seek total individuality will not cohere.
I'm not a libertarian or a proponent of cryptocurrency. But I do think we can be clearer about what being "social creatures" means.
We are "social creatures" in the sense that we seek the advantages of group membership (safety, co-operation, food stability, shelter, school), but we are not social creatures in the sense that we want oppressive control and uniformity. Our "agreement" with being social is accompanied by resentment. In some cases, the resentment is pathological. (Conformity can be pathological too.)
Homo sapiens developed/evolved language, the amazing human protocol to support co-operation. But when we ask people to say everything that they are thinking without social consequences, we discover the degree to which people can be angry, rude, willfully ignorant, and even crazy. (Consider "social media" to be both a business and an unprecedented live experiment revealing social resentment.)
The cryptocurrency movement/phenomenon is a construct with significant flaws and ardent adherents who see their own interest fulfilled in the narrative. In this, it is nothing particularly special. But by definition a crowd of people who all seek total individuality will not cohere.
People actually think libertarianism has been the dominant ideology of the last 50 years? For real?
> Why is the techno-libertarian world so overwhelmingly obsessed with extreme individualism?
That's pretty much by definition. So-called "libertarian" and neoliberal posit that individuals are greedy yet emotionless rational actors.
Unsurprisingly, individuals with narcissistic tendencies flock to that.
That's pretty much by definition. So-called "libertarian" and neoliberal posit that individuals are greedy yet emotionless rational actors.
Unsurprisingly, individuals with narcissistic tendencies flock to that.
that seems like a straw man argument.
building systems that give better control to users online is orthogonal to social goals.
not too much knobs on Facebook helped elect Trump, quite the opposite
building systems that give better control to users online is orthogonal to social goals.
not too much knobs on Facebook helped elect Trump, quite the opposite
DAO is Decentralized Autonomous Organizations - entities with no central leadership, for those of you like me who didn't know.
And where, Oh where, are other good original thinkers, please? I don't care about "agree" or "disagree" I just care about the #$?* thinking.
And where, Oh where, are other good original thinkers, please? I don't care about "agree" or "disagree" I just care about the #$?* thinking.
EU has already solved this problem 10+ years ago using electronic ID cards. You can transfer money, sign contracts etc with these. You have your private key on chip + PINs for 2nd factor auth. Why not build a block-chain on that tech?
What use-case do you have in mind? Because your current suggestion sounds like "$existingThing, but with a blockchain!". What would this blockchain do?
Self-sovereign is such a great admiralty flag phrase
No, of course cryptocurrency doesn't give you the powers of a nation state
No, of course cryptocurrency doesn't give you the powers of a nation state
I find it fascinating to watch as the crypto community gradually recapitulates the evolution of the existing financial regulation/structure.
In this case, negative attestations are reimplementing liens / UCC filings (for business loans) and credit reports (for individuals). But without any plausible consumer rights recourse, of course. (Like for example your right to have errors on your credit report fixed.)
It will be interesting to see if they can use zk-SNARKs to come up with a scheme that’s substantially better here.
Another corollary of this observation is that crypto will recapitulate the evolution of privacy legislation too. As the OP notes these systems are going to struggle to comply with deletion requests under GDPR. And while many would buy the premise that financial regulations are not helpful to the public (I don’t personally buy that), I think privacy legislation is much more popular and clearly a case of hard-won consumer protection.
In this case, negative attestations are reimplementing liens / UCC filings (for business loans) and credit reports (for individuals). But without any plausible consumer rights recourse, of course. (Like for example your right to have errors on your credit report fixed.)
It will be interesting to see if they can use zk-SNARKs to come up with a scheme that’s substantially better here.
Another corollary of this observation is that crypto will recapitulate the evolution of privacy legislation too. As the OP notes these systems are going to struggle to comply with deletion requests under GDPR. And while many would buy the premise that financial regulations are not helpful to the public (I don’t personally buy that), I think privacy legislation is much more popular and clearly a case of hard-won consumer protection.
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No. As long as there is a mechanism for adding new identities to the system, (presumably you want this, because people can be born), people can disguise themselves as new people. This is not trivial to accomplish, but there's no law of nature preventing you from growing a remote control infant should the need arise. It's certainly impractical, but new people are legitimately allowed to enter the system, and there's no way to establish that someone does not know something (in this case knowing something would be the RC baby actually being me, I know how to say goo goo ga ga, and you can't prove I know more than that).
That's obviously a silly example, but the point is that soulbinding isn't a cryptographic primitive. There's just no such thing. Not only is non-dystopian identity impossible, No amount of dystopia will change this. Even a totally authenticated system is vulnerable to the "Add a new person that I control" attack. It's not current technology, but it's also not science fiction, and in simple fact, a lesser version of this attack happens all the time. People who have more kids get more representation in government. I don't think that we should totally ignore this effect, but it's certainly useful to mostly ignore it.
Anyway, there is no way to establish a sophisticated adversary's unique identity and also allow new identities to be created based on phenomena external to the system.
That's obviously a silly example, but the point is that soulbinding isn't a cryptographic primitive. There's just no such thing. Not only is non-dystopian identity impossible, No amount of dystopia will change this. Even a totally authenticated system is vulnerable to the "Add a new person that I control" attack. It's not current technology, but it's also not science fiction, and in simple fact, a lesser version of this attack happens all the time. People who have more kids get more representation in government. I don't think that we should totally ignore this effect, but it's certainly useful to mostly ignore it.
Anyway, there is no way to establish a sophisticated adversary's unique identity and also allow new identities to be created based on phenomena external to the system.
To give an absolute “no” here is presumptive. There are many unique indicators for a human. DNA is unique. At most, there is a small statistical chance of one or two other twins with identical DNA. That could be used to have some level of digital identity binding.
If the technology existed to take a neural snapshot, that would be completely unique. And I would argue if anything had the ability to operate at the complexity of a brain, then it deserves representation.
If you were to automated the entire system top down for identity validation, there are possible avenues to get a high degree of assurance that someone is uniquely human on a system. Just because it hasn’t been done yet does not me it is impossible.
But it is a very hard problem.
If the technology existed to take a neural snapshot, that would be completely unique. And I would argue if anything had the ability to operate at the complexity of a brain, then it deserves representation.
If you were to automated the entire system top down for identity validation, there are possible avenues to get a high degree of assurance that someone is uniquely human on a system. Just because it hasn’t been done yet does not me it is impossible.
But it is a very hard problem.
Molly White consistently writes concise and precise essays about problems in the crypto space that the crypto "community" consistently fail to address or even respond to in as concise and precise a manner.
Well, except "it's too early" and "these articles are wrong and a smear campaign".
Well, except "it's too early" and "these articles are wrong and a smear campaign".
The whole post has a general tone of hand-waving away any decentralized idea as dystopian or a privacy nightmare, without taking any look at the current dystopian landscape of Google and Apple account based identity.
It’s also pretty hard to “address” the post as, in broad strokes, many crypto people will agree with her. Nobody wants all data to be public on a blockchain. Worldcoin is disturbing. SBTs are poorly named and not perfect. Identity data posted on an immutable ledger is dystopian, and why ZK proofs are getting so much attention to try and solve this.
Just to take a specific comment:
> Now [Buterin’s] revealing here that his dreams for soulbound tokens involve police departments uploading criminal records to the blockchain. [..] Not only that, but he’s envisioning a world in which every police department uploads criminal records to a blockchain, providing the level of data completeness required to prove a negative.
That whole paragraph sounds like a crazy rant by Molly. Vitalik never said that criminal records in the real world should be posted to a public blockchain. His statement was that it can be useful to verify some record of a user before taking some action with them. In the real world one way this is done is with a criminal background check.
Vitalik often points to ZK proof primitives to avoid posting any private data online. Molly does not seem to take this into account, and hardly gives it a passing mention when she earlier writes:
> Buterin brushes this off with the argument that such a system could use zk-SNARKs to encrypt the token contents as well as its sender and recipient.
To the casual reader it might seem like Vitalik wants to put private real-world data on a public ledger. But this is not the reality of his statements.
It’s also pretty hard to “address” the post as, in broad strokes, many crypto people will agree with her. Nobody wants all data to be public on a blockchain. Worldcoin is disturbing. SBTs are poorly named and not perfect. Identity data posted on an immutable ledger is dystopian, and why ZK proofs are getting so much attention to try and solve this.
Just to take a specific comment:
> Now [Buterin’s] revealing here that his dreams for soulbound tokens involve police departments uploading criminal records to the blockchain. [..] Not only that, but he’s envisioning a world in which every police department uploads criminal records to a blockchain, providing the level of data completeness required to prove a negative.
That whole paragraph sounds like a crazy rant by Molly. Vitalik never said that criminal records in the real world should be posted to a public blockchain. His statement was that it can be useful to verify some record of a user before taking some action with them. In the real world one way this is done is with a criminal background check.
Vitalik often points to ZK proof primitives to avoid posting any private data online. Molly does not seem to take this into account, and hardly gives it a passing mention when she earlier writes:
> Buterin brushes this off with the argument that such a system could use zk-SNARKs to encrypt the token contents as well as its sender and recipient.
To the casual reader it might seem like Vitalik wants to put private real-world data on a public ledger. But this is not the reality of his statements.
> The whole post has a general tone of hand-waving away any decentralized idea as dystopian or a privacy nightmare, without taking any look at the current dystopian landscape of Google and Apple account based identity.
If the article was about the dystopian landscape of Google/Apple, then it would've talked about that.
As it is, the article talks about the current state of solutions/proposals in the crypto world.
> That whole paragraph sounds like a crazy rant by Molly. Vitalik never said that criminal records in the real world should be posted to a public blockchain. His statement was that it can be useful to verify some record of a user before taking some action with them. In the real world one way this is done is with a criminal background check.
Which literally translates to: let's put people's criminal record on blockchain, and assign them to people without any possibility of revocation. Ah yes, and it's going to be police and/or courts who are going to put those records there.
> To the casual reader it might seem like Vitalik wants to put private real-world data on a public ledger. But this is not the reality of his statements.
Yeah, no. I just watched the segment where he talks about it. He literally brushes aside the privacy implications. It's all "yeah, we could definitely go further, and zk-something could do something". But the underlying reality is that: nope, everything is public. So those criminal records uploaded and attached to you by the police? Yup, they can be as public as police wants.
If the article was about the dystopian landscape of Google/Apple, then it would've talked about that.
As it is, the article talks about the current state of solutions/proposals in the crypto world.
> That whole paragraph sounds like a crazy rant by Molly. Vitalik never said that criminal records in the real world should be posted to a public blockchain. His statement was that it can be useful to verify some record of a user before taking some action with them. In the real world one way this is done is with a criminal background check.
Which literally translates to: let's put people's criminal record on blockchain, and assign them to people without any possibility of revocation. Ah yes, and it's going to be police and/or courts who are going to put those records there.
> To the casual reader it might seem like Vitalik wants to put private real-world data on a public ledger. But this is not the reality of his statements.
Yeah, no. I just watched the segment where he talks about it. He literally brushes aside the privacy implications. It's all "yeah, we could definitely go further, and zk-something could do something". But the underlying reality is that: nope, everything is public. So those criminal records uploaded and attached to you by the police? Yup, they can be as public as police wants.
The implication of zero knowledge proofs is that no private data need be shared. The “zk-something” you and Molly both brush over translates literally to “verifying knowledge without any private information having to be shared or checked.”
I'd like to verify knowledge about your private password, without it being shared. Sounds good? OK, my first question: does it start with an "a"? No? What about a "b"?
How can you verify something about someone's criminal background that doesn't ultimately share the information?
How can you verify something about someone's criminal background that doesn't ultimately share the information?
Is that zk thing required by the soulbound tokens?
Ah. No. All Vitalik is saying is that you could use it, but it's not a requirement. So it's on the person/organization who's attaching that irrevocable token to not expose that information.
So yes. He is brushing this issue aside, and so do you.
Ah. No. All Vitalik is saying is that you could use it, but it's not a requirement. So it's on the person/organization who's attaching that irrevocable token to not expose that information.
So yes. He is brushing this issue aside, and so do you.
Speaking personally, they might be concise and precise but the arguments are nothing new and too often have simple counter arguments. That's the reason they're not addressed, there really is no reason to except to directly address the Molly white audience.
> too often have simple counter arguments
If only there was anyone to provide those.
> That's the reason they're not addressed
No, it's not the reason. Because you'd think that after a decade there would be blog posts or articles with coherent explanations of how these problems are tackled. Nope. All we hear is "there are arguments but we won't show them to you just join the discords believe in blockchain so many smart people are working on it".
If only there was anyone to provide those.
> That's the reason they're not addressed
No, it's not the reason. Because you'd think that after a decade there would be blog posts or articles with coherent explanations of how these problems are tackled. Nope. All we hear is "there are arguments but we won't show them to you just join the discords believe in blockchain so many smart people are working on it".
There are endless blogs and forums with these arguments chewed out, just a google search away.
Molly sounds like someone with an agenda of wilful ignorance due to how easily rebuttals of her arguments can be located, and thus it’s a waste of time to even engage.
Molly sounds like someone with an agenda of wilful ignorance due to how easily rebuttals of her arguments can be located, and thus it’s a waste of time to even engage.
see, this would have been the perfect moment to link your three favourite slam-dunk examples, which I assume from your comment you have right there to hand.
> There are endless blogs and forums with these arguments chewed out, just a google search away.
As I said, "All we hear is 'there are arguments but we won't show them to you just join the discords'". Without fail.
Well, there are some entirely self-referential circular arguments sometimes (as in crypto X is good because it's based/traded with cypto Y), but that's about as far as it goes.
As I said, "All we hear is 'there are arguments but we won't show them to you just join the discords'". Without fail.
Well, there are some entirely self-referential circular arguments sometimes (as in crypto X is good because it's based/traded with cypto Y), but that's about as far as it goes.
I regret having wasted about 5 minutes reading this before scrolling through the rest
some surface knowledge, little to no expertise, further watered down by lots of musings nobody except those familiar with the guy who wrote it would really care to read in full
some surface knowledge, little to no expertise, further watered down by lots of musings nobody except those familiar with the guy who wrote it would really care to read in full
Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly.
However, blockchain-adjacent initiatives seem to suggest a future where we implicitly label[1] every human as motivated to hurt another by making all aspects of their activities subject to verification checks.
In addition to strong dystopian vibes, won’t this act of labeling everyone as potential threat actually be instrumental in bringing this motivation to everyone, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Aren’t we sort of codifying malicious intent, instead of trying to remove it from the equation? Whom would this serve?
There is place for verification in the interim, such as maintaining security of your home, but if we are looking ahead (as blockchain enthusiasts do) we should strive for a future where humans are not motivated to hurt other humans. Not treating it as some sort of default is a good start.
[0] Their core motivation to benefit at others’ expense is to me indicative of mental health issues, possibly caused by insecurity and upbringing trauma.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory