[HN Gopher] Trust Models
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       Trust Models
        
       Author : feross
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2020-08-21 00:42 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (vitalik.ca)
 (TXT) w3m dump (vitalik.ca)
        
       | statquontrarian wrote:
       | It seems odd to not discuss the more fundamental issues of
       | trusting the infrastructure. All this virtual reality is on top
       | of a physical reality controlled by governments and powerful
       | interests. What happens when said powers declare cryptocurrencies
       | illegal (app store removals, RST packets, etc.), or try to take
       | them over with brute force?
        
         | Taek wrote:
         | This tends to be a focus of the Bitcoin community a lot more
         | than other cryptocurrency communities. Bitcoin has technologies
         | such as ASN based sybil attack protections [1], satellite
         | broadcasts that cover most of the land area of the earth [2],
         | and setups that allow Bitcoin to be broadcast over Ham Radio
         | [3].
         | 
         | Of course that's not to say the problem is ignored by other
         | communities. Many people are well aware of the full set of
         | dependencies of these crypto projects and the ways that
         | external forces might be disruptive. And many people are
         | working on increasingly sophisticated ways to eliminate these
         | dependencies or ensure viable alternatives if worst comes to
         | worst.
         | 
         | [1]: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/16599
         | 
         | [2]: https://blockstream.com/satellite/#satellite_network-
         | coverag...
         | 
         | [3]: https://www.wired.com/story/cypherpunks-bitcoin-ham-radio/
        
         | ignoramous wrote:
         | > _It seems odd to not discuss the more fundamental issues of
         | trusting the infrastructure._
         | 
         | It would be odd if the Blockchain / Crypto-currency market came
         | crashing down. Like most nutritionists who do not understand
         | the popularity of sugary drinks or fast food chains, I think,
         | news.yc fails to understand the Crypto-currency / Blockchain
         | market.
        
         | chejazi wrote:
         | Assuming N isn't 1, they should be able to survive a ban by a
         | single government. Can be extended to multiple governments
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | If you invert the colours in the chart, you also get the
       | consequences of their failure modes. In designing tokenization
       | schemes some years ago, we used a trust model like this, and the
       | basic problem reduces to the adage, "a security system is only as
       | strong as its recovery process."
       | 
       | In the case of the field of trust models Vitalik has illustrated,
       | trust comes down to the questions of: do you have a way to tumble
       | your root of trust, do you leave it static (like an HSM with
       | destroyed keys), or do you federate. The answer is of course, "it
       | depends..." In the case of the balance of consensus, proofs, and
       | anonymity (e.g. ZK) the application defines the needs.
       | 
       | The issue I think is that these problems are all negatively
       | defined and presume a threat model before a use case. They are
       | artifacts of that threat model, in that they wouldn't exist if
       | they weren't a reaction to it. These things (blockchains and
       | their applications) are essentially criticisms that allow people
       | to organize and defect to a certain extent, but they are lacking
       | a quality of essentialness I can't seem to find a name for. It's
       | like they aren't discovered things, but just artifacts of a
       | constraint. Such fun to read his stuff.
        
         | Taek wrote:
         | >If you invert the colours in the chart, you also get the
         | consequences of their failure modes.
         | 
         | Forgive me if I am misunderstanding what you are saying, but it
         | sounds to me like you are suggesting that the consequences of a
         | 1-of-N failure are inherently worse than the consequences of an
         | N-of-N failure, which is not a fundamental truth in any way. It
         | is entirely possible for a 1-of-N system to have better
         | recovery modes than an N-of-N system, in fact it's often much
         | easier to tumble / enhance / improve the root of trust in a
         | 1-of-N system than it is to do so in an N/2-of-N system. (for
         | example, in the case of rolling trusted setup ceremonies vs.
         | multi-party-computation).
        
       | cosmojg wrote:
       | Whenever I read Vitalik's work, I find myself convinced that all
       | of society and its various problems can be boiled down to
       | incentives and their alignment or misalignment.
        
         | dasudasu wrote:
         | To me that's the basic point of game theory.
        
         | chrisshroba wrote:
         | Any recommendations of other work of his to read?
        
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       (page generated 2020-08-21 23:00 UTC)