A Decentralized Lie Detector
augur.net
A Decentralized Lie Detector
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Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#2Interesting, I wonder how this could be used in a consensus smart contract.
Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#3Interesting, I wonder how this could be used in a consensus smart contract.
Smart contracts can use oracle systems to get consensus on info from the outside world. So a smart contract normally can't communicate with anything besides its internal state, but with Augur they can get info about outside events.
One example of how this could be used (and our primary focus) is on prediction markets using the oracles to report on the outcomes of events after they occur. (Imagine a decentralized InTrade)
Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#4This doesn't address Sybil attacks.
Bitcoin is unique in that it presented the first viable decentralized solution to Sybil attacks (via proof-of-work).
To leverage that solution here, it would require that only people who successfully solve the proof-of-work puzzle are able to submit statements to the "decentralized lie detector", otherwise I could just spin up a billion VMs to spread the lies I wanted.
The only other solutions to this problem are centralized, a la government identification.
That said, the math is certainly cool; I just doubt it's very useful in a decentralized system.
Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#5This doesn't address Sybil attacks. Bitcoin is unique in that it presented the first viable decentralized solution to Sybil attacks (via proof-of-work). To leverage that solution here, it would require that only people who successfully solve the proof-of-work puzzle are able to submit statements to the "decentralized lie detector", otherwise I could just spin up a billion VMs to spread the lies I wanted. The only oth…
You think they haven't thought of that?
Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#6This doesn't address Sybil attacks. Bitcoin is unique in that it presented the first viable decentralized solution to Sybil attacks (via proof-of-work). To leverage that solution here, it would require that only people who successfully solve the proof-of-work puzzle are able to submit statements to the "decentralized lie detector", otherwise I could just spin up a billion VMs to spread the lies I wanted. The only oth…
People have suggested proof-of-work as a way to stop spam. Legitimate users wouldn't notice if their computer spent a few seconds generating a proof in the background as the email is being sent out. The only problem is that spammers have access to vast amounts of computing power in the form of zombie PCs.
The reason proof-of-work worked for bitcoin back when an army of zombie PCs could have legitimately controlled 51% of the network was that the rewards for a 51% attack were far less than just doing legitimate mining. I think that setting up a system similar to bitcoin won't work when there aren't the same financial incentives to keep the miners honest.
P.S. Isn't the PGP web of trust also a decentralized solution to Sybil attacks?
Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#7This doesn't address Sybil attacks. Bitcoin is unique in that it presented the first viable decentralized solution to Sybil attacks (via proof-of-work). To leverage that solution here, it would require that only people who successfully solve the proof-of-work puzzle are able to submit statements to the "decentralized lie detector", otherwise I could just spin up a billion VMs to spread the lies I wanted. The only oth…
What, specifically, is cool to you about the math?
Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#8Interesting, I wonder how this could be used in a consensus smart contract.
Smart contracts can use oracle systems to get consensus on info from the outside world. So a smart contract normally can't communicate with anything besides its internal state, but with Augur they can get info about outside events. One example of how this could be used (and our primary focus) is on prediction markets using the oracles to report on the outcomes of events after they occur. (Imagine a decentralized InTr…
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Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#9This doesn't address Sybil attacks. Bitcoin is unique in that it presented the first viable decentralized solution to Sybil attacks (via proof-of-work). To leverage that solution here, it would require that only people who successfully solve the proof-of-work puzzle are able to submit statements to the "decentralized lie detector", otherwise I could just spin up a billion VMs to spread the lies I wanted. The only oth…
People have suggested proof-of-work as a way to stop spam. Legitimate users wouldn't notice if their computer spent a few seconds generating a proof in the background as the email is being sent out. The only problem is that spammers have access to vast amounts of computing power in the form of zombie PCs. The reason proof-of-work worked for bitcoin back when an army of zombie PCs could have legitimately controlled 51…
P.S. Isn't the PGP web of trust also a decentralized solution to Sybil attacks?
PGP web of trust requires a secure channel to broadcast the public keys, so it's not the type of P2P network that the Sybil attacks is applicable to.
Re: A Decentralized Lie Detector
#10This consensus algorithm looks pretty good, but it seems it could get into trouble in cases where the distribution of outcomes is multimodal. One thing that is mentioned is that users would be reporting on several events simultaneously (let's say k events), but it seems entirely possible that there could be strong consensus among k-1 events, but multimodality in the reported outcomes for the kth event, making it very difficult to see who is wrong and who is correct for that event.
I know that Augur is planning to allow people to report event outcomes as "invalid", and that might clear up some of these cases, but what about an event where the outcome initially appears to be objective, but after-the-fact it is unclear and open to interpretation, resulting in two distinct camps of reported outcomes (and hence multimodality)? Perhaps one solution would be to simply declare events with strongly multimodal properties in the distribution of reported outcomes as invalid, and thus avoid the somewhat arbitrary decision where one mode would be declared the "consensus" by the algorithm, costing reputation to those who reported the other mode as the outcome.