It’s interesting that my first concern on hearing this idea hasn’t come up yet and isn’t in mav’s list. Maybe that means it is ill founded, but here it is again…
What about the effect on the incentive side of attacks? Does this change significantly is my question, and if so, how cool are we with that?
My concern is that a balance based system creates a much larger incentive to control a section in order to manipulate those balances, than a coin = data system, where the amount of coin controlled by a section is limited (but maybe still a big incentive? So I’m not sure how much of a difference this makes).
So the first part is: does this create a significant, or possibly irresistibly large financial incentive (and in consequence political incentive) to control a section, such that even if it is very expensive indeed, attackers will be willing to pay for it (criminals, corrupt mega corporations, or wealthy authoritarian governments)?
And if so what are the mitigations?
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For example, could good sections detect and ostrasise a section that is fiddling the books? And if they did, how could they recover the data of that section?
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Or can we just be confident that no matter how much money somebody throws at this, they can never control a section? I think we would need to be carful about that, but first: is that our strategy?
As I said, here be a can, with “worms” printed on the side!