4 ms·

I don't understand the assertion made regarding blockchains/digital signatures supposedly increasing accuracy or trust in IoT sensor-reading reliability. Also,

by m3ta 10y ago

I don't understand the assertion made regarding blockchains/digital signatures supposedly increasing accuracy or trust in IoT sensor-reading reliability. Also, how do you respond to the inevitable criticism that advertising your solution as a "shared global registry" invokes the "How Standards Proliferate" XKCD[1]? Finally, I like the idea of creating a marketplace or exchange for AI training information, but it's strictly not necessary to use a blockchain for this purpose unless a very large portion of your users are hyper-concerned about their anonymity. It's also misleading to try to build a marketplace of signed IoT data, with the assumption that it is more trustworthy than unsigned IoT data, when that is simply false. [1]: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

trentmc 10y ago
Thanks for the thoughts. I'll respond to each point in turn. > I don't understand the assertion made regarding blockchains/digital signatures supposedly increasing accuracy or trust in IoT sensor-reading reliability. If each IoT sensor has a known public key then we can know that the data came from that sensor. It doesn't solve all reliability problems of course. E.g. if you have a hardware failure, a digital signature ain't gonna help:) > Also, how do you respond to the inevitable criticism that advertising your solution as a "shared global registry" invokes the "How Standards Proliferate" XKCD[1]? I get this. What's cool is that IPDB doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be) the "one network to rule them all. The path is to leverage other existing standards and new connectivity standards, so that IPDB (or whatever registry) plays well with other emerging & existing registries. The main lesson is from the internet itself, which was born by combining together disparate networks (ARPANET, NSFNet, etc) that didn't communicate previously, via the invention of TCP/IP. All the networks had to do was alter their top-level protocol and suddenly they could talk to other nets. There's a similar protocol for blockchain tech, called Interledger (https://www.interledger.org https://www.interledger.org). Whereas TCP/IP connected networks with data, since you can re-send packets etc it doesn't account for double-spending; Interledger does this. You can view it as a way to connect networks of value. Interledger has already been used to connect Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many centralized payment networks. There are other protocols that are closer to the data level. E.g. simply using JSON-LD helps. And ILPD on top of that (roughly, a Merkle-ized JSON-LD). And domain-specific value transfer protocols above that, like COALA IP for intellectual property (which plays well with existing protocols like DDEX for music, PLUS for photography). > Finally, I like the idea of creating a marketplace or exchange for AI training information, but it's strictly not necessary to use a blockchain for this purpose Agreed; and I wrote about it: "An exchange could be centralized, like DatastreamX already does for data. But so far, they are really only able to use publicly-available data sources, since many businesses see more risk than reward from sharing. What about a decentralized data & model exchange? ..." and I went on to list some benefits. > unless a very large portion of your users are hyper-concerned about their anonymity. To me, there are much greater benefits. I'm hoping that the biggest benefit will be to further catalyze a truly open data market. > It's also misleading to try to build a marketplace of signed IoT data, with the assumption that it is more trustworthy than unsigned IoT data, when that is simply false. I'm not sure why you say this; knowing the provenance of the data has clear trust-related benefits in some cases like I described. Obviously just standing on its own, it has no benefit, it's all about usage farther along in the pipeline.

by m3ta 10y ago

trentmc 10y ago

Thanks for the thoughts. I'll respond to each point in turn. > I don't understand the assertion made regarding blockchains/digital signatures supposedly increasing accuracy or trust in IoT sensor-reading reliability. If each IoT sensor has a known public key then we can know that the data came from that sensor. It doesn't solve all reliability problems of course. E.g. if you have a hardware failure, a digital signature ain't gonna help:) > Also, how do you respond to the inevitable criticism that advertising your solution as a "shared global registry" invokes the "How Standards Proliferate" XKCD[1]? I get this. What's cool is that IPDB doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be) the "one network to rule them all. The path is to leverage other existing standards and new connectivity standards, so that IPDB (or whatever registry) plays well with other emerging & existing registries. The main lesson is from the internet itself, which was born by combining together disparate networks (ARPANET, NSFNet, etc) that didn't communicate previously, via the invention of TCP/IP. All the networks had to do was alter their top-level protocol and suddenly they could talk to other nets. There's a similar protocol for blockchain tech, called Interledger (https://www.interledger.org https://www.interledger.org). Whereas TCP/IP connected networks with data, since you can re-send packets etc it doesn't account for double-spending; Interledger does this. You can view it as a way to connect networks of value. Interledger has already been used to connect Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many centralized payment networks. There are other protocols that are closer to the data level. E.g. simply using JSON-LD helps. And ILPD on top of that (roughly, a Merkle-ized JSON-LD). And domain-specific value transfer protocols above that, like COALA IP for intellectual property (which plays well with existing protocols like DDEX for music, PLUS for photography). > Finally, I like the idea of creating a marketplace or exchange for AI training information, but it's strictly not necessary to use a blockchain for this purpose Agreed; and I wrote about it: "An exchange could be centralized, like DatastreamX already does for data. But so far, they are really only able to use publicly-available data sources, since many businesses see more risk than reward from sharing. What about a decentralized data & model exchange? ..." and I went on to list some benefits. > unless a very large portion of your users are hyper-concerned about their anonymity. To me, there are much greater benefits. I'm hoping that the biggest benefit will be to further catalyze a truly open data market. > It's also misleading to try to build a marketplace of signed IoT data, with the assumption that it is more trustworthy than unsigned IoT data, when that is simply false. I'm not sure why you say this; knowing the provenance of the data has clear trust-related benefits in some cases like I described. Obviously just standing on its own, it has no benefit, it's all about usage farther along in the pipeline.