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Who Watches the Watchmen? Sybil-Resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

arxiv.org

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: Who Watches the Watchmen? Sybil-Resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the key feature of sybil attacks is that they are fake or semi fake. the majority overriding the minority (regardless of correctness), is a feature of democracy, not a bug.

What you've got there is majoritarianism not strictly democracy. We should hope that a democracy would consider not only whether there are more in favour than against but also other factors. For example. Suppose there are two rabbits and three foxes and the question is what's for dinner? Majoritarianism suggests that the foxes can vote "Rabbit" and then eat the rabbits, all is fair. But I think we'd want our democrac…

The success of democracy is not that it allows 2 rabbits to convince 3 foxes to eat vegetables, but merely that it convinces 2 foxes to limit themselves to eating vegetables based on the votes of 3 rabbits.

To achieve the result that you're hoping democracy will provide, it is perhaps better to rely on the principle of Freedom of Speech / Expression.

Re: Who Watches the Watchmen? Sybil-Resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

#14
post #12

https://certisfy.com uses plain PKI certificates to solve identity and information verification in general.

For some values of "solve" and "in general".

> Certificates are information verifications issued to you by Certisfy partners.

> Certisfy partners:

> * Police departments.

> * Government agencies, ex DMV, SSA, IRS.

> * A notary public.

> * A school, college, university

Re: Who Watches the Watchmen? Sybil-Resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

#15

This paper is really about solving a fundamental problem in decentralized identity, which is to combine the characteristics of self-sovereignty, privacy and Sbil-resistance, which seems to exclude each other. I previously proposed formalizing this problem as Decentralized Identity Trilemma ( http://maciek.blog/dit ).

The paper even references that post directly in footnote 8:

> Those three requirements, sybil resistance, self-sovereignty and privacy-reservation, compose the "Decentralized Identity Trilemma".[7][8]

> [8] ‘Decentralized Identity Trilemma’, Maciek, 2019.

Re: Who Watches the Watchmen? Sybil-Resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

#16
post #12

https://certisfy.com uses plain PKI certificates to solve identity and information verification in general.

For some values of "solve" and "in general". > Certificates are information verifications issued to you by Certisfy partners. > Certisfy partners: > * Police departments. > * Government agencies, ex DMV, SSA, IRS. > * A notary public. > * A school, college, university

Keep reading, you'll see that these are not problems except for "perfect being enemy of good" rigidity.

The fact is the internet is in need of a privacy-friendly information verification solution that scales...when it comes to approaches for achieving this I think the more the merry.

Re: Who Watches the Watchmen? Sybil-Resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

#17

This paper is really about solving a fundamental problem in decentralized identity, which is to combine the characteristics of self-sovereignty, privacy and Sbil-resistance, which seems to exclude each other. I previously proposed formalizing this problem as Decentralized Identity Trilemma ( http://maciek.blog/dit ).

I was mulling over this exact issue the other day but couldn't find the words to express it. Thank you for this.
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