[HN Gopher] Trust Models ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2020-08-21 23:00 UTC)