Also you might consider giving this a read.
Cough Silk Road Cough
1 Like
I believe I read this quote in a cybersecurity text somewhere and I think I might be paraphrasing here slightly but âIf your system is not being used by terrorists, drug dealers and pedophiles then it is not secure.â Whatever you might think about illegal drugs Silk Road did prove one thing: Anonymous reputation systems are possible. More than that it proved that deregulating the drug trade can have very beneficial effects for the customers. A similar effect I predict would be for any market of illicit merchandise.
Cough what? It was a centralized site. That argument was already provided and busted.
See above.
Now youâre going off-topic. I am all for getting the state thugs out of the economy (including trade and currency).
+1 
(herb)
Yes but since there has never been a decentralized internet before there isnât much archatecture to test a truly decentralized system on now is there? What weâre trying to do here is design a system that would work logically and one could program and THEN test, hopefully, when maidsafe actually launches. Perhaps you missed the original point of the whole bitlaw thread? We are not trying to prove a decentralized reputation system based on a decentralized internet can work when there has never yet existed a decentralized internet. For the love of toast man be reasonable.
Once again, it was about a real world situation, where one dies from that Coke and assuming you left some coins with your lawyer that should be enough to conduct an investigation and execute instructions in the will (e.g. sue the Coke seller in the local private court, or perform other actions, such as broadcast results of the investigation).
In these examples it increases the cost of criminal behavior so it serves as a deterrent and potentially a means to restitution (to your family).
I didnât challenge that. I challenged the ability and need to create a decentralized reputation system with anonymous participants.
How? How can you legally prosecute an anonymous individual? True an investigation might crack oneâs security but that would just lead to tighter security for both app developers and bad actors. Ultimately you are pitting the security of the seller against the investigative powers of the buyerâs champion as a means of creating a deterrent. And in the case of app development or a security hole in the network itself this can only work once as once someone is caught this proves to be a security breech for the entire community that must be patched or there must be a work around found. Being a little bit insecure is like being a little bit pregnant. You are betting, sometimes with your life, that your champion can find and exact justice and/or vengence upon your attacker.
I think you highly underestimate what is being made illegal these days. There are parts of the world being gay is still illegal, or having sex with anyone but your wife is illegal. In Japan speaking or publishing anything about Fukashima and the radiation caused thereof lands you 10 years in prison. Then there are the countless whistleblowers all over the world. Then there are âterrorists.â Did you know that by some legal definitions just owning more than 7 days worth of food in the states constitutes as being âextremist and terroristâ behavior, same with owning a flashlight, thank you NDAA. In Canada speaking out against the attrocities committed by Israel against Palastine makes one a âterrorist.â Canadaâs political parties are very zionist in their leanings. My point is that while everyone likes getting all huffy about suicide bombers or pedophiles or drug dealers at the end of the day if you donât have a secure system that is secure for EVERYONE, including the pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers, then you also donât have freedom of expression or the ability to sleep with whomever you want to sleep with or worship (or not) whatever deity you prefer.
This means that for the sake of the security of the entire network any time ANYONE gets arrested while using a SAFE app people will sit up and take notice and try and figure out how it was done and seal the hole. This means that the preverbial investigation route will have limited if nonexistent success in the long term and cannot be counted on in terms of a solution. Which is why contracts are not the end all be all. Reputation is required so that one isnât left naked and left with the only recourse of heading an investigation which will only tighten what is already supposed to be an airtight system. Of course humans make mistakes. Of course humans can be hacked. But isnât the whole point of developing apps and smart contracts to limit the exposure of that?
How many times do I have to mention that the Coke seller example is a real world example? Iâve repeated this like 3 times already?
A similar example (say, someone says heâll do a micro-job for 10K Satoshi, I pay him in advance, and he does a crappy job) simply does not lend to pursuing on the Web. You get swindled and lose 0.001 BTC, so what? Are you going to spend 5 BTC paying forensic investigators to ID and sue the individual in Peru? No, youâll move on.
Thatâs what Andreas said in the video too - in P2P cryptolending, default rate may be 10%, and in the real world it may be 7%. If your 1 BTC is spread over 50K borrowers, you donât care that 10% will fail in a given year as long as the rest pay a 12% yearly interest rate.
Why would I care about each individual micro-borrowerâs âreputationâ or seek to establish a ârelationshipâ with him?
Of course their reputation is worse than the average in the real world, otherwise they wouldnât be micro-borrowing on a P2P network.
No i donât. Which is why I think (pseudo)anonymity is more important than reputation, and in a system where things have to be prioritized, Iâd choose anonymity, whereas you argue for reputation and relationships. Precisely because everything is becoming illegal, you donât want to know the other party, or be able to track their history (because that means others can do the same to you).
Why would a person in the US want to have a good reputation for providing good quality raw milk? Itâd be crazy.
And itâs not like your counterpartyâs reputation gives you any recourse in case you get cheated.
Escrow, multisig and smart contracts can help somewhat mitigate the problem, but even in case of escrow and 2-3 multisig you need to trust the third guy. Smart Contracts could be trustless, but wonât work for situations that deal with real life (i.e. was raw milk actually delivered and was it really raw milk or just white colored water?).
Iâve nothing against reputation systems and I donât claim they arenât possible. The fact is, none exist and if they do they may be both a liability and an asset to those who use them. Anonymity is a clear priority IMO. But if you disagree, fine.
If the coke example is not analogous to the web and p2p system then why use it as a metaphor?
If youâre saying that a reputation system isnât needed because people will just write off small enough financial losses I would also remind you that the value of money is relative. A âsmallâ financial loss to one can be a costly one to another. Also at what point does the cost of said losses become to great?
No youâre not going to sue some buyer on the web but you wonât buy from them again. Hence the value of reputation.
This is where I think you misunderstand me. Iâm not arguing to prioritize reputation over anonymity. If your reputation system compromises your anonymity and security then both the reputation and security systems are flawed. One should be able to preserve their anonymity while gaining or losing reputation. The anonymity is ascribed to a fiction, a character. True there is a compromise in anonymity in that oneâs patterns of behaviour can be watched via oneâs reputation gains and losses or oneâs linguistics. However this seems to be the cost of operating in a social environment. One could mask oneâs linguistics by hiring a copywriter and having someone write oneâs advertising and marketing for them but that creates dependency in oneâs business. And it doesnât do anything at all for oneâs personal life.
It doesnât matter if they can track your activity so long as they canât link your psudonym to your real identity or any of your other aliases. Keeping things compartmentlized is the key. On the internet thatâs pretty much impossible really but on SAFE itâs theoretically possible. Who cares if the government know that user1xJ9 sells heroine with great efficiency and have a line graph that spans several decades. They have no idea who he is and therefore canât arrest him. But I see your point. The less people know the better. So why not turn reputation into a cryptocurrency? You wouldnât need to tell people how much you had. Youâd just need to have it in order to spend it.
Trust with various people could be viewed as debt or their willingness to allow you to borrow from them. In short it would be a system of favors, in terms of cryptocurrency it would be financial favors, which in turn would translate into other kinds of exercises of power.
Say you performed a successful transaction with someone. They perform well and at the end of it all you say âI like you!â So you give them x amount of reputation coins and/or reputation credit. If you did a bad job and they decided âHey I donât like youâŚâ then youâd gain debt with them and owe them coins and/or have reputation coins automatically deducted from your account. At no point does anyone else besides you or them need to know the details of any of this. You could even give them specific organization reputation coins that identify gaining reputation with a specific group. Those might be of more or less worth for obvious security and spending reasons. Now if you wanted to get a job for instance they could place a prerequisite on it saying you needed x amount of reputation coins to get this job.
One could also take these coins and trade them for other kinds of currency. It is not lost on me how one might try to buy their reputation as opposed to earning it, or sell it in fact, but that kind of thing goes on all the time when people trade money for doing questionable activities. The maintainance or lack thereof of integrity is not a new thing. So much in the same way one could buy and sell currency and still maintain oneâs anonymity one could also buy, sell, and exchange reputation.
The example was meant to compare risk of transactions on the Web and in real life.
Yes, some people need to work a lot for $1, so they would attach different perceived value to a transaction compared to a well off person.
In my mind a working reputation system designed to be non-anonymous isnât flawed, but if there was a reputation system for anonymous participants that canât deliver, I would call it flawed too. If you look at any current approach, no reputation project is decentralized and anonymous. I suspect it will stay that way for many years.
Maybe itâs possible. I hope someone makes it work. But hereâs why I think it canât work:
- Usually thereâs just one issuer or tightly knit group of issuers of a currency. They start off with an unearned ton of reputation, while everyone else has to earn it.
- What you mentioned - if itâs a currency, itâs trade-able, so âfarmingâ in the negative sense is possible. I can buy âREPâ coins for 0.05 BTC each or whatever from people who donât need it (e.g. they only buy from the Web, pay before delivery or F2F, and donât sell anything).
But what would 1 REP in that case (trade-able reputation) stand for? Itâd mean âthis person had (or âhas borrowed and is indebted forâ !) 0.05 BTC before they bought 1 REP they hold now.â
Just like you wouldnât lend 1 BTC to a person whose address contains 0.05 BTC, you wouldnât trust them if they had 1 REP.
I donât know a lot about decentralized reputation systems but I often read about them. I donât know whether any other participants on this thread are experts, but I donât think any of us will come up with a revolutionary idea here. If a breakthrough happens, it will happen in one of specialized reputation projects that are or will be being worked on, and the SAFE network will use its API. Even if there was a decentralized anonymous reputation expert here, I wouldnât want to use 2 or 3 systems, but one that can work with Tor, I2P, SAFE and WWW.
Precisely thatâs what it would mean. Trust would become a function of debt and credit, or to put it another way a measurable form of trading favors and obligations honored and owed.
You either pay for your reputation in time, labour, contributions or cash, If you want to put capital up and buy and sell favors that way itâs the same as spending time gaining a skill and performing a service for someone who then pays you in cash and rewards you in reputation, after which you go out and buy additional products and services and earn more reputation. If your goal is simply to purchase reputation and you have enough raw capital then youâre paying either way, either in time or money. Now do you personally deserve that reputation? Maybe, maybe not BUT if you act badly then all those reputation coins you just bought will go down the drain. So if one acts badly they can pay for their crime to society in raw capital or in time earning back their reputation. Either way it costs you. If there is a great demand for reputation in the form of BTC thatâs actually a good thing. Remember as far as the reputation system is concerned we donât want people trading their reputation for money, as itâs literally selling out your integrity. So a spike in the price of reputation coins only emphasizes the value of what oneâs honor is worth.
Okay, then. But thatâs like PoS - what Andreas spoke against above - the richer would have progressively more âreputationâ and get more business (e.g. rich merchant vs. poor merchant), so something could be said about this money = trust = reputation equation hereâŚ
It is wrong to consider that assets = reputation, I think. That helps create the medieval style aristocracy without those people actually doing anything thatâs necessary useful (imagine how weâd do against Wall Street guys if reputation for brokerage or escrow services on an anonymous P2P network was directly derived from the balance on the brokerâs address - youâd never make it regardless of how truly reputable or trusted you are). Check the Andreas video, itâs only 5 or so minutes long.
Well, in any case, the field is open for experiments of all sorts. Maybe your ideas are good, I am not an expert, I just wanted to point out how difficult it is. IMO no one here should expect to come up with a breakthrough because itâs not a trivial question. Thousands of people have been working on this for decades now (from eBay to Google and all the startups) and thereâs nothing that works (in terms of decentralized & anonymous reputation).
Assets != reputation. Assets are CONVERTABLE into reputation. Just like time is convertable into reputation. Assets = a form of power. There are many different forms of power and one form can be changed into another much like you can change matter into energy. Einstein proved matter = a whole lot of energy. So matter = power and energy = power just in different forms. Likewise assets = power and reputation = power just in different forms. I doubt âWall Streetâ or other such centralized systems will be able to function on the SAFE network. Remember how safecoin works. You canât exactly hoard safecoin like you can money. If the value of safecoin goes up thatâll be motivation for people to farm AND to sell safecoin for bitcoin but a disincentive to upload. If people donât upload farmers donât get GETS and therefore drop off farming and so the price of safecoin comes back down. When the price of safecoin comes down people start uploading again and farmers get more GETs again. And remember with the price of safecoin tied to data that means 1GB = x amount of safecoin = y amount of bitcoin. So theoretically data = safecoin = bitcoin = reputation. And what with everyone being able to farm, transfer money anonymously and not be reliant on the banks I very much doubt Wall Street will stay afloat. The centralized institutions you mentioned are built upon the premise that data is free, that consumers canât just rent out their hard drive, that communication and monetary transfer is centralized. In short the institutions you mention are built upon centrlaization. You take away that assumption and their entire system comes crashing down. Wall Street is based on the banks. Google is based on centralized servers. Government is based on centralized political power structures. I mean câmon man look at how people are throwing such a huge stink about Uber. Itâs totally blowing their minds. Now imagine what will happen when we decentralize the internet at large!
Imagine for a moment that the Wall Street boys tried to start buying up safecoin or reputation coins. If reputation coins spiked in price then people would stop selling them or maybe theyâd sell them more, until of course they needed them to get their jobs done. Remember you still need reputation in order to gain trust from your fellow human beings. But what if Wall Street tried to buy all the safecoin? Then the price of safecoin would go up, uploading would go down, farming would drop off, safecoin value would drop and no matter how much safecoin they bought the value of safecoin would STILL go down until uploads resumed to reward farmers. Moreover bankers are used to people having to pay banking fees and such. Safecoin is free, anonymous and global. Yes Wall Street could buy reputation on the SAFE network but could they FUNCTION on the SAFE network as the SAFE network fundamentally opposes everything the banking cartel represents. Yes politicians could buy reputation on the SAFE network but considering their line of work and how easy it is to deciminate secrets, especially those of public figures, over the SAFE network, theyâd be spending huge amounts of funds on âreputationâ just to make up for all their blunders. And thatâs assuming those not on the SAFE network would accept the reputation coin. Sometimes you just plain have egg on your face. Sure Government could buy repcoins but what with them waging wars and commiting attrocities against the human race at times theyâd be burning them like crazy. And if they spent all their money to save face how much is left over for public works for their citizens?
See if it costs money to have a bad reputation then that means being disreputable is not profitable. And businesses want to make profit, they want power. Governments want power. Your average thug wants power. So itâs not good business to earn yourself a bad reputation.
We already live in a medeval style aristocrasy. We have been for awhile now. The atristocrats are called CEOs and politicians.
You underestimate the power of financial engineering.
They donât need to buy all of them, they just need to buy until they have more than the SAFEx founder, and from there on more (relative to SAFEx) business will go in their direction, and theyâll be able to buy even more.
But considering that the entire capitalization of MAID is equal to one of those guyâs year income, a guy like Madoff could easily become the most reputable person on the SAFE Network and JPMorgan would be more reputable than MaidSafe Inc.
Iâll stop now and watch if another commenter will agree with your approach.
The whole idea of money/assets etc âbuyingâ reputation/voting rights etc is just plain wrong - Money = power/speech still. I still think that the only way to achieve the anonymity, along with the voting/reputation is to have a 2 coin system. The only practcal way I can see this would work and be more consistent with democratic ideas, is to distribute these blockchain/mastercoin based coins free to all community members at launch in equal amounts to safecoin holdings
Yes, it still initially starts off unequal, but at least we know they have gone to supporters. It would become more equal over time by spreading coins about each time they are used - say lose 1% to be re-distributed.
I get that Safe will have some kind of functionality for this, but not sure about anonymity/voting combo. 
Obviously, Iâm unclear about all this, not being technical myself, so may not understand something. My main point would be that reputation should be âearnedâ not bought and voting/power should be both free and as fair and democratic as possible. 
@Al_Kafir Yes but I just proposed a two coin system. I agree itâs WRONG to sell reputation. In fact I stated that it was WRONG and we donât want people to do it. The fact itâs immoral or undesirable isnât the point. The point is any transferable currency is ultimately tradable and one of the criteria of being a currency is that it be transferable. Therefore if a reputation currency exists then it will be exchangeable with other currencies. One doesnât need a reputation coin in order to sell oneâs reputation. Politicians sell their reputations all the time when they accept corporate donations. A poor woman will sell her reputation by becoming a whore. Or an independent businessman with principles might sell his reputation by contracting or selling out to a corporate buyer or partner. One doesnât NEED a reputation coin in order to compromise oneâs integrity the buying and selling of reputation goes on all the time. The reputation coin just makes it more explicit. And you have yet to explain how launching the two coins at the same time would stop one from being traded for the other.
If you are suggesting using a blockchain in order to track reputation then how does this preserve anonymity? How is this better or worse than simply setting up an app to form an opt in reputation database of somekind and how does it prevent the security issues discussed above?
Wow wow wow⌠I respect sex workers and donât consider them unreputable (and I think theyâre held in higher esteem than politicians and governors of central banks - there was a poll somewhere IIRC).
Yes, letâs make it even worse than just trade-able - letâs make it completely worthless (non-scarce) by giving it to everyoneâŚ
On top of that we already know that resetting the game is futile because after a few minutes good players leave noobs in dust. How long would a homeless or hungry person hang onto their reputation coins? For couple of hours. Amazingly this âdemocraticâ redistributionist approach has failed over and over again and yet it still seems like a âgood ideaâ.
I believe it is the more important point.[quote=âBlindsite2k, post:116, topic:4755â]
One doesnât NEED a reputation coin in order to compromise oneâs integrity the buying and selling of reputation goes on all the time. The reputation coin just makes it more explicit.
[/quote]
I see, it just provides a dedicated token for buying/selling reputation? Not sure how this is any better than a âcorruption coinââŚlol. Seriously, though, what you see as not being the point, I see as THE point - to get away from money=power/influence/reputation. We are agreed that your solution does not seek to address this point?
Hereâs what you see as the point:
OK, what I would say is that pretty much anything material can be tradeable, it doesnât necessarily have to have the properties of a âcurrencyâ. [quote=âBlindsite2k, post:116, topic:4755â]
And you have yet to explain how launching the two coins at the same time would stop one from being traded for the other.
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As I mentioned above, anything can be traded with anything else - how do you stop anything being traded - not just âreputation coinâ? The answer is that we canât - we can only try to minimise this. I outlined a depreciation mechanism, whereby anybodyâs âvoiceâ becomes more equal with others over time. I also donât see it as a currency, rather a token. There would be less incentive to buy tokens that are going to reduce in amount each time you use them.[quote=âBlindsite2k, post:116, topic:4755â]
If you are suggesting using a blockchain in order to track reputation then how does this preserve anonymity?
[/quote]
Because the coin holders are not known or associated with Safecoin wallets in any way. [quote=âBlindsite2k, post:116, topic:4755â]
How is this better or worse than simply setting up an app to form an opt in reputation database of somekind
[/quote]
Who makes and operates the app? [quote=âBlindsite2k, post:116, topic:4755â]
and how does it prevent the security issues discussed above?
[/quote]
Sorry, what security issues and do you not see any security issues with the app suggestion?
So do I but that doesnât mean they donât lose reputation now does it? Read the forums youâll see I support the legality of prostitution and support sex work BUT the fact remains that sex work can and does result in reputation loss among some circles. Nevermind all the self esteem issues involved. Even just being involved in kinky sex in your personal life can result in negative reputation and affect your business and chances of getting a job. Being all politically correct about it doesnât negate the realities of all of this. Iâm sorry if this offends your sensibilities but thatâs reality. Human beings can be downright bigoted and prejudiced little gits at times.
Also being a whore could give one possitive reputation among some circles. Itâs all subjective after all. And I never said that being a whore was WORST than being a politician or a banker. I simply said that these were different examples of how one might sell their reputation (or in the case of prostitution perhaps earn it).
Uh what? Let me guess you want to restrict the economy. YupâŚ
Then whatâs the value of the coins? Everyone ends up with equal and worthless coins. Why would you use the system? Why would you buy them or use them? It seems like a poor investment.
Then whatâs the point of the coins? If you canât trade the coins for a measure of safecoin then whatâs the point? How does the redistribution model work?
But being on a blockchain means transactions are being tracked. Ergo itâs a security breech. Thatâs another reason why SAFE is superior to bitcoin: There is no blockchain on SAFE.
Whatever dev or DAO codes it.
You want to create a blockchain that would track peopleâs purchasing history. Thatâs the same security issues inherant with an app that tracks reputation. You canât have redistribution system that doesnât track the members of the community. So youâd turn anonymity into psudo-anonymity. Because if we know that every SAFE member has this redistribution coin then we donât need to track the safecoin accounts we can just track the redistribution coin. And if every SAFE member DOESNâT have the redistribution coin then itâs not equality for the whole network, youâd just be creating a commune. Which is fine but itâs not this big revolutionary thing youâre talking about.
Please explain your apparently self-contradictory statements - you are suggesting creating a coin to âexplicitlyâ provide all the functionality for something you believe is wrong and people shouldnât do - why?[quote=âBlindsite2k, post:119, topic:4755â]
But being on a blockchain means transactions are being tracked. Ergo itâs a security breech.
[/quote]
The âergoâ is a bit ambitiousâŚlol. How does tracking token movements used to vote (basically) with no name attached and not related to Safe, cause a âsecurity breech (sic)â?
All sounds a bit born backwardsâŚ
Yes, a DAO would work - with both our suggestions.[quote=âBlindsite2k, post:119, topic:4755â]
You want to create a blockchain that would track peopleâs purchasing history.
[/quote]
NoâŚvoting history - on both Safe matters and othersâ reputation etc[quote=âBlindsite2k, post:119, topic:4755â]
You canât have redistribution system that doesnât track the members of the community
[/quote]
Sorry, not grasping this aspect, or why its any worse than any other suggestion in any case?[quote=âBlindsite2k, post:119, topic:4755â]
Because if we know that every SAFE member has this redistribution coin then we donât need to track the safecoin accounts we can just track the redistribution coin.
[/quote]
Yes but if you just track the reputation token, what good does it doâŚI mean to what end? All you know is that some anonymous person on Safe has an ever diminishing stash of tokens, not tied in any way to Safecoin. How does tracking anonymous voting behaviour on blockchain create any security risks for Safe or the voter for that matter? The added benefit is that you donât have to vote if concerned and just give coins away. The end goal would be spreading the tokens as wide as possible with eventually, the vast majority only having/needing 1 coin. [quote=âBlindsite2k, post:119, topic:4755â]
And if every SAFE member DOESNâT have the redistribution coin then itâs not equality for the whole network,
[/quote]
Well, firstly, holdings would reflect support/investment in the project.- so it starts as being as fair and equitable as the crowd sale - it then gets more equitable over time. The issue you raise can be something that is addressed as the network grows - ie say each token is then âburnedâ in exchange for 2 or more newly named tokens to reflect the growing community.Also, the 1% deducted could be re-distributed as giveaways.
lolâŚa commune of about 99% of the Network community at a guess - it seems about as equal as weâre going to get. Iâm not grasping how your suggestion would be any more efficacious?
Edit:
ExactlyâŚmaybe ponder this aspect a bit.