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It seems like most of what I read in first half could be done with an app for seller, an app for buyer, a traditional database, and regular currency. There's al

It seems like most of what I read in first half could be done with an app for seller, an app for buyer, a traditional database, and regular currency. There's already ticketing software in existence that people actually use. Improving it in ways described in article without blockchains should get more take up. Even logging for verification, popular with blockchains, can be done with a signed, hash chain + 3rd-party, trusted timestamping.

_aventus 9y ago
Hi Nick, thanks for your reply. Our point here is to completely eliminate trust. There is a lot of shady behaviour in the current ticketing industry - for example at initial releases of tickets, under the table deals between promoters and ticket resale platforms exist where promoters give these platforms a percentage of the initial release to put directly on the secondary market, in exchange for percentage commissions on each of those tickets sold. To solve this, yes theoretically you could have a trusted third-party intermediating, but who would that third party be? If this were a product created by a monopoly with 80% market share, could you completely trust that the third party selected to intermediate were completely independent, especially when they are dis-incentivised from finding an unbiased third party that they could not influence?
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  "To solve this, yes theoretically you could have a trusted third-party intermediating, but who would that third party be?" A non-profit to start with given a startup is focused on money and growth. They almost always get more evil or acquired into evil over time. The nonprofit is chartered and/or contracted with standard provisions to prohibit certain behavior. They have a traditional crypto + database + published ticket log w/ optional apps as I described. Whoever is running it registers the event, they describe the constraints such as ticket numbers/pricing, that summary is posted by ticket mediator for all to see, each purchase generates a unique ticket in the database signed by central app, buyer's app plus mediator's web site shows decrease in tickets available, a log optionally shows a ticket ID (maybe hash) added for each ticket purchased, optionally saved onto append/write-only storage (DVD-R's) for certain amount of time, and any claim in court can pull the data to check payment records vs buyer's income on event vs database contents vs published log. All of this can be done on one server with an application server and a database since performance requirements will be low. Especially if HW-accelerated crypto in standard CPU's are used. And, since I haven't seen a mention of this, make sure there's an open-source verifier w/ patent license + the log itself is Creative Commons w/ Attribution. "If this were a product created by a monopoly with 80% market share" That's what your startup intends to achieve by creating and dominating a new market. Startups 101. My idea can be done by a number of organizations copying the same template for business, legal, and tech. They can do it for-profit based on reputation, non-profit set up to not legally be allowed to assist malicious behavior, or something in between. I'd trust my model so long as it was auditable w/ all the logs published. Organized crime is a crazy-strong threat model that might still forge things by coercing people to forge things with some gains between the event happening and my model detecting it. That's unavoidable but your model or mine will reduce risk a lot. Mine reduces operational risk with proven components.
  - _aventus 9y ago
    "That's what your startup intends to achieve by creating and dominating a new market. Startups 101. My idea can be done by a number of organizations copying the same template for business, legal, and tech." I recommend finishing the blog post - our core protocol has no fees and we encourage anyone and everyone to adopt it. This protocol solves the problems of unregulated scalping and counterfeits. We also have a services layer, which is an API anyone can use with usage charges, that help integrate the protocol easier - but we do not force anyone to use these. So, we intend to dominate the market as a non-profit open protocol that anyone can use to build their applications on top of. It will create more competition in the market, since to differentiate people using the protocol will need to build even more value add services on top to drive users to their applications rather than others.
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
      "our core protocol has no fees and we encourage anyone and everyone to adopt it." There's all kinds of standard protocols dominated by one player with first-mover advantage and branding. You all going for that plus having an open protocol aren't incompatible. I give you all props for having enough integrity to make the protocol open and encourage independent use. Good luck to you regardless of whether I prefer simpler, old tech for these problems. I'd rather the problem get solved by an available, good-enough solution rather than not at all. :)

_aventus 9y ago

Hi Nick, thanks for your reply. Our point here is to completely eliminate trust. There is a lot of shady behaviour in the current ticketing industry - for example at initial releases of tickets, under the table deals between promoters and ticket resale platforms exist where promoters give these platforms a percentage of the initial release to put directly on the secondary market, in exchange for percentage commissions on each of those tickets sold. To solve this, yes theoretically you could have a trusted third-party intermediating, but who would that third party be? If this were a product created by a monopoly with 80% market share, could you completely trust that the third party selected to intermediate were completely independent, especially when they are dis-incentivised from finding an unbiased third party that they could not influence?

nickpsecurity 9y ago
"To solve this, yes theoretically you could have a trusted third-party intermediating, but who would that third party be?" A non-profit to start with given a startup is focused on money and growth. They almost always get more evil or acquired into evil over time. The nonprofit is chartered and/or contracted with standard provisions to prohibit certain behavior. They have a traditional crypto + database + published ticket log w/ optional apps as I described. Whoever is running it registers the event, they describe the constraints such as ticket numbers/pricing, that summary is posted by ticket mediator for all to see, each purchase generates a unique ticket in the database signed by central app, buyer's app plus mediator's web site shows decrease in tickets available, a log optionally shows a ticket ID (maybe hash) added for each ticket purchased, optionally saved onto append/write-only storage (DVD-R's) for certain amount of time, and any claim in court can pull the data to check payment records vs buyer's income on event vs database contents vs published log. All of this can be done on one server with an application server and a database since performance requirements will be low. Especially if HW-accelerated crypto in standard CPU's are used. And, since I haven't seen a mention of this, make sure there's an open-source verifier w/ patent license + the log itself is Creative Commons w/ Attribution. "If this were a product created by a monopoly with 80% market share" That's what your startup intends to achieve by creating and dominating a new market. Startups 101. My idea can be done by a number of organizations copying the same template for business, legal, and tech. They can do it for-profit based on reputation, non-profit set up to not legally be allowed to assist malicious behavior, or something in between. I'd trust my model so long as it was auditable w/ all the logs published. Organized crime is a crazy-strong threat model that might still forge things by coercing people to forge things with some gains between the event happening and my model detecting it. That's unavoidable but your model or mine will reduce risk a lot. Mine reduces operational risk with proven components.
- _aventus 9y ago
  "That's what your startup intends to achieve by creating and dominating a new market. Startups 101. My idea can be done by a number of organizations copying the same template for business, legal, and tech." I recommend finishing the blog post - our core protocol has no fees and we encourage anyone and everyone to adopt it. This protocol solves the problems of unregulated scalping and counterfeits. We also have a services layer, which is an API anyone can use with usage charges, that help integrate the protocol easier - but we do not force anyone to use these. So, we intend to dominate the market as a non-profit open protocol that anyone can use to build their applications on top of. It will create more competition in the market, since to differentiate people using the protocol will need to build even more value add services on top to drive users to their applications rather than others.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    "our core protocol has no fees and we encourage anyone and everyone to adopt it." There's all kinds of standard protocols dominated by one player with first-mover advantage and branding. You all going for that plus having an open protocol aren't incompatible. I give you all props for having enough integrity to make the protocol open and encourage independent use. Good luck to you regardless of whether I prefer simpler, old tech for these problems. I'd rather the problem get solved by an available, good-enough solution rather than not at all. :)