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Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

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Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#121

Post by k__ »

strogonoff wrote: post #82

The problem I have with blockchain enthusiasts, after talking with them about their philosophy, is that they seem to consider trust a bug, and believe that ideal world is achievable with straitjackets of technical solutions that eliminate trust. Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly. However, blockchain-adjacent initiative…

Don't know what people you talked to, but I'm active in one of the biggest DAOs for 10 months and it's 99% about trust.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#122

Post by hgomersall »

bawolff wrote: post #94
strogonoff wrote: post #82

The problem I have with blockchain enthusiasts, after talking with them about their philosophy, is that they seem to consider trust a bug, and believe that ideal world is achievable with straitjackets of technical solutions that eliminate trust. Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly. However, blockchain-adjacent initiative…

I disagree - trust is a bug in technical systems. Maintaining trust has a really high cost and is an obvious and common single point of failure. Take TLS - wouldn't it be nice if we could have the same system without certificate authorities? The thing is - like everything else, trust is a tradeoff. Bitcoin folks will discard it at any cost. Sometimes discarding it is not worth the cost. That doesn't mean adding trust…

But even with Bitcoin you're super reliant on trust in (a) the technology not to be broken or compromised and (b) the system that supports the actual world outside of crypto (i.e. actual resources that matter).

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#123

Post by rglullis »

ookdatnog wrote: post #119
rglullis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only works in places where the institutions are functional, which is something that you are taking from granted. But forget kickstarter. We are talking about identity. Tell me how you could implement, e.g, a twitter-like application where no single entity can kick you out. Assume that the data does not need to live in a blockchain, and each user's data is portable between different servers. The only thing a (willi…

> It only works in places where the institutions are functional, which is something that you are taking from granted. I want to stick with the Kickstarter example a bit longer, as "banking the unbanked" is to me one of the few claims of potential crypto applications that I care about. Blockchain technology is at this point well over a decade old, yet we can still only talk about its benefits in hypotheticals. You cla…

> So where are all these applications that financially emancipate the proverbial Somalian farmer?

https://trustlines.network

> I also don't know how to solve it with blockchain.

https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825093961591719

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#124

Post by strogonoff »

bawolff wrote: post #94
strogonoff wrote: post #82

The problem I have with blockchain enthusiasts, after talking with them about their philosophy, is that they seem to consider trust a bug, and believe that ideal world is achievable with straitjackets of technical solutions that eliminate trust. Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly. However, blockchain-adjacent initiative…

I disagree - trust is a bug in technical systems. Maintaining trust has a really high cost and is an obvious and common single point of failure. Take TLS - wouldn't it be nice if we could have the same system without certificate authorities? The thing is - like everything else, trust is a tradeoff. Bitcoin folks will discard it at any cost. Sometimes discarding it is not worth the cost. That doesn't mean adding trust…

But that is in technical systems. More or less it’s an equivalent of defending your home, or using password auth: there are humans motivated to increase their well-being at your expense (at the expense of the environment, and so on).

This tech seems often to be pushed onto human society as a whole, though. It’s like giving up on solving the underlying issues that give humans the above-mentioned motivation to betray each other, and instead baking into the fabric society an assumption that it’s human nature to be this way.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#125

Post by kibwen »

strogonoff wrote: post #82

The problem I have with blockchain enthusiasts, after talking with them about their philosophy, is that they seem to consider trust a bug, and believe that ideal world is achievable with straitjackets of technical solutions that eliminate trust. Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly. However, blockchain-adjacent initiative…

Even without considering the social benefits of trust, from an economic perspective, trust is often enormously, ridiculously efficient compared to distrust. If I need to borrow my neighbor's weed whacker, I don't need to determine its value (plus interest and opportunity cost) and write up a contract and register collateral on the world's slowest and least efficient database, I can just say, hey, mind if I borrow this? Trust and reputation are force multipliers.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#126

Post by lottin »

hGkXBvR wrote: post #88
lottin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone sign a message on a public ledger?

All messages on a blockchain ledger are signed messages. A practical example is signing the message “I, user 1234, am sending 1000 USDC to user 5678”

Exactly, why would you sing a message saying that you're logging on this or that website, for everyone to see, when you can just tell the website in question and no one else?

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#127

Post by supert56 »

I am convinced that crypto/blockchains are slowly and pointlessly re-encountering the same problems that existing centralised systems and agencies were setup to solve.

It’s as if we are all disregarding the centuries of evolution that has gone into creating what we already have today. Systems that, whilst sometimes flawed, for the most part enable us to live our daily lives freely and easily. Systems that already have means of verifying people when you need to make an important transaction and that already allow for trust and stability. As the essay mentions making people the agents of their own verification with documents that you’d have to backup forever would be an absolute nightmare.

There is a reason we have centralised systems and there is a reason we can’t escape them.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#128

Post by tatertots1234 »

lottin wrote: post #126
hGkXBvR wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All messages on a blockchain ledger are signed messages. A practical example is signing the message “I, user 1234, am sending 1000 USDC to user 5678”

Exactly, why would you sing a message saying that you're logging on this or that website, for everyone to see, when you can just tell the website in question and no one else?

You don’t need to post a message on the chain to ‘login’ to a web3 site. But if you perform a transaction such as changing the state in a smart contract or withdrawing tokens based on your address and message meeting some ZK-SNARK verifiable condition, that is when you might need to post a message to the chain.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#129

Post by heresie-dabord »

jstnwill wrote: post #21

Why is the techno-libertarian world so overwhelmingly obsessed with extreme individualism? We are social creatures. We sacrifice individual needs because we gain massive security and social value in return. We need a balance of the various ideologies, and not the extremism of any one ideology. Fifty years of narcissistic, anti-social, "Leave me the hell alone" libertarianism is at the heart of the culture-rot collaps…

> We are social creatures. We sacrifice individual needs because we gain massive security and social value in return.

I'm not a libertarian or a proponent of cryptocurrency. But I do think we can be clearer about what being "social creatures" means.

We are "social creatures" in the sense that we seek the advantages of group membership (safety, co-operation, food stability, shelter, school), but we are not social creatures in the sense that we want oppressive control and uniformity. Our "agreement" with being social is accompanied by resentment. In some cases, the resentment is pathological. (Conformity can be pathological too.)

Homo sapiens developed/evolved language, the amazing human protocol to support co-operation. But when we ask people to say everything that they are thinking without social consequences, we discover the degree to which people can be angry, rude, willfully ignorant, and even crazy. (Consider "social media" to be both a business and an unprecedented live experiment revealing social resentment.)

The cryptocurrency movement/phenomenon is a construct with significant flaws and ardent adherents who see their own interest fulfilled in the narrative. In this, it is nothing particularly special. But by definition a crowd of people who all seek total individuality will not cohere.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#130

Post by rglullis »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #104
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I have with web3 is that it's libertarian politics pretending to be a technological solution. "Decentralised" is being sold as "Out of reach of governments" - but that's clearly not true. It's also ridiculously poor value-generated-per-Watt-used. It's in the same conceptual class as "gun culture makes everyone safer" and "lowering taxes on rich people makes everyone richer" - both of which are trivially fal…

Decentralized doesn’t mean everything is unregulated and out of reach of governments. USDC is pretty heavily regulated despite operating on top of, and featuring composability with, a decentralized network. The value per watt concern does not apply to all consensus mechanisms.

I wonder how many of the anti-crypto people will stop using this argument when Ethereum completes The Merge and we get rid of PoW. Specially the gamer crowd who will finally get access to cheap GPUs and will go on to collective "waste" orders of magnitude more energy playing games in comparison with the network of validators.
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