5 ms·

> If some piece of art has two claims, who decides which one is the correct? In the end I would say that all of your other questions can be reduced to this one

> If some piece of art has two claims, who decides which one is the correct? In the end I would say that all of your other questions can be reduced to this one, by adding weight to claims, which makes the quantity of claims and indentities irellevant. We are not focused on the art market, but open to any kind of information. But for the example of the art ownership verification: - Person A (true owner) claims that they own the Mona Lisa with a weight of 10 tokens - Person B (non-owner) claims that they own the Mona Lisa with a weight of 10 tokens - An additional actor X who knows about the ownership can add additional weight to the claim of Person A. If the consensus in the end decides (based on the weights) that Person A is the true owner, actor X will be rewarded. There are some specifics about how we construct the reward function that I can't talk about yet, but the core of it is that all participants in the network are incentivized to only submit true information, and also incentivized to combat any wrong information they see by providing conflicting true information. If you are interested in the topic and would like to discuss more deeply feel free to reach out to me via the email on the website (I'm Max).

blowski 8y ago
I can see and am grateful for your effort to answer the questions as helpfully as you can. But to me, when you say "the owner of the Mona Lisa is whoever has the most tokens in our system", it sounds like complete nonsense. The Louvre owns the Mona Lisa, and if your system disagrees with that, your system is broken.
- hobofan 8y ago
  I can definitely see where you are coming from since that mechanism of "most token wins", sounds very unintuitive and inherintly cheatable (and in a lot of places has rightfully bad connotations like "pay to win" in video games). When I first heard it I also had the same reaction. Sadly I don't think that I can offer any more information right now, but we are all very eager to publicize it and put it out into the open for critic ASAP.
  - Sangermaine 8y ago
    >I can definitely see where you are coming from since that mechanism of "most token wins", sounds very unintuitive and inherintly cheatable (and in a lot of places has rightfully bad connotations like "pay to win" in video games). It does indeed seem exactly that way. You said upthread: >An additional actor X who knows about the ownership can add additional weight to the claim of Person A. But how do you verify that X is someone "knows about the ownership"? What if X was someone A or B paid or incentivized to vouch for them so the consensus would be swayed? How do prevent bad actors from gaming the system in this way? If the asset in dispute is valuable enough it would certainly be worth it to a bad actor to pay a little to cheat and have the consensus fall on their side.
    - hobofan 8y ago
      > What if X was someone A or B paid or incentivized to vouch for them so the consensus would be swayed? If B were to pay X a bribe of amount N, so X enforces the statement with amount N, B could also directly enforce the statement with amount N, which would lead to exactly the same result. If X would receive less than N, to add a weight of N, they would be gifting some money to B, and vice versa. So between rational untrusted parties, a simple bribe would not make sense. There are some rationality assumptions relating to 51% attacks similar to PoS oriented systems that have to be met, but there are some mechanisms in place that should reduce the practical requirement regarding rationality among participating parties significantly. > If the asset in dispute is valuable enough it would certainly be worth it to a bad actor to pay a little to cheat and have the consensus fall on their side. Good question, but I'm afraid that's one of the questions I can't answer right now without leaking too much information.
      - a1369209993 8y ago
        > If B were to pay X a bribe of amount N, [...] B could also directly enforce the statement with amount N Okay, better question: how do you deal with the (pathologic, and therefore approximately guarranteed to come up) situation where A's life savings are ten dollars and a horse, B has 100 million dollars, and B claims (with amount ≥ 11$) that B owns A's horse.
pavel_lishin 8y ago
I know it's not fair to critique your system without access to the code or the whitepaper, but it sure sounds like "truth is whatever the person with the most money to spend says it is."
pwinnski 8y ago
It's almost like rule 0 of the modern internet. There will almost certainly be many cases in which there are more additional actors willing to pledge tokens stating that [arbitrary person] painted the Mona Lisa than there are additional actors willing to pledge tokens stating that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa. In fact, given what so far seems like a tiny value in having information be correct, I would guess that the majority of works of art would end up attributed to the wrong artists given enough time. I know you said your system isn't tracking this specifically, but the general principle remains true in any problem domain. The integrity of a common-consensus system depends entirely on how little trolls care about disrupting it.
- hobofan 8y ago
  "The integrity of a common-consensus system depends entirely on how little trolls care about disrupting it." That is actually the key point why a blockchain (or ledger that allows for money-like transaction) is an important part for us. By binding what you say to a monetary reward people that act irrationaly and do it for the lulz will lose their money and ultimately have to leave the system by running out of funds. Simmilarly, trolls could dimish the value of a PoW blockchain by creating and exploiting 51% attacks, but that hasn't happened with Bitcoin, since that is far too expensive to do it just for fun. Monetarily motivated attacks are of course a different discussion.
  - pwinnski 8y ago
    Of course, this depends on the cost and value of the truth being higher than the cost and value of a lulz. The art example is a great demonstration of the mismatch. There is essentially zero value in the truth, so it was worth a bit of the author's time for the lulz. With cryptocurrency, the cost to subvert the truth is pretty high, so the value of doing so, although high, doesn't exceed the cost. With anything for which the value isn't inherent, like a cryptocurrency, it's hard to see that working out. I mean, if I'm using a hypothetical art-ownership blockchain system, and I see that someone has spent $5 to claim authorship of Mona Lisa, do I care enough to spend $6 to say no, it's Leonardo? Do I care enough to spend even $1, along with five other people? What if 200 4chan trolls have each pitched in a dollar to say Hitler painted it? Eventually, maybe, enough people kick in a combined $201 to say no, seriously, it was Leonardo. But then what? Am I expected to continue paying a regular fee to maintain the truth? Why would I even care that much? Wikipedia is a great example of something working really well, but many of the reasons it works so well are contrary to what you've described. It is in fact often people with far more time than money that ensure the truth generally remains on wikipedia, and they use non-blockchain-like tools, including the exertion of authority and locking of article pages, to do it. I'm not trying to crap on your super-sekret whitepaper at all! I'm mostly thinking this through as I type, and responding to the poor design, heck, the poor goal of the described art-authorship application. You might have solved all of this in a way that doesn't depend on trolls being poor or getting bored easily. I hope so.
nbeleski 8y ago
Thanks for answering! I am very interested in prospect Blockchain solutions. > the core of it is that all participants in the network are incentivized to only submit true information How is this done? What is the incentive?

blowski 8y ago

I can see and am grateful for your effort to answer the questions as helpfully as you can. But to me, when you say "the owner of the Mona Lisa is whoever has the most tokens in our system", it sounds like complete nonsense. The Louvre owns the Mona Lisa, and if your system disagrees with that, your system is broken.

hobofan 8y ago
I can definitely see where you are coming from since that mechanism of "most token wins", sounds very unintuitive and inherintly cheatable (and in a lot of places has rightfully bad connotations like "pay to win" in video games). When I first heard it I also had the same reaction. Sadly I don't think that I can offer any more information right now, but we are all very eager to publicize it and put it out into the open for critic ASAP.
- Sangermaine 8y ago
  >I can definitely see where you are coming from since that mechanism of "most token wins", sounds very unintuitive and inherintly cheatable (and in a lot of places has rightfully bad connotations like "pay to win" in video games). It does indeed seem exactly that way. You said upthread: >An additional actor X who knows about the ownership can add additional weight to the claim of Person A. But how do you verify that X is someone "knows about the ownership"? What if X was someone A or B paid or incentivized to vouch for them so the consensus would be swayed? How do prevent bad actors from gaming the system in this way? If the asset in dispute is valuable enough it would certainly be worth it to a bad actor to pay a little to cheat and have the consensus fall on their side.
  - hobofan 8y ago
    > What if X was someone A or B paid or incentivized to vouch for them so the consensus would be swayed? If B were to pay X a bribe of amount N, so X enforces the statement with amount N, B could also directly enforce the statement with amount N, which would lead to exactly the same result. If X would receive less than N, to add a weight of N, they would be gifting some money to B, and vice versa. So between rational untrusted parties, a simple bribe would not make sense. There are some rationality assumptions relating to 51% attacks similar to PoS oriented systems that have to be met, but there are some mechanisms in place that should reduce the practical requirement regarding rationality among participating parties significantly. > If the asset in dispute is valuable enough it would certainly be worth it to a bad actor to pay a little to cheat and have the consensus fall on their side. Good question, but I'm afraid that's one of the questions I can't answer right now without leaking too much information.
    - a1369209993 8y ago
      > If B were to pay X a bribe of amount N, [...] B could also directly enforce the statement with amount N Okay, better question: how do you deal with the (pathologic, and therefore approximately guarranteed to come up) situation where A's life savings are ten dollars and a horse, B has 100 million dollars, and B claims (with amount ≥ 11$) that B owns A's horse.

pavel_lishin 8y ago

I know it's not fair to critique your system without access to the code or the whitepaper, but it sure sounds like "truth is whatever the person with the most money to spend says it is."

pwinnski 8y ago

It's almost like rule 0 of the modern internet. There will almost certainly be many cases in which there are more additional actors willing to pledge tokens stating that [arbitrary person] painted the Mona Lisa than there are additional actors willing to pledge tokens stating that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa. In fact, given what so far seems like a tiny value in having information be correct, I would guess that the majority of works of art would end up attributed to the wrong artists given enough time. I know you said your system isn't tracking this specifically, but the general principle remains true in any problem domain. The integrity of a common-consensus system depends entirely on how little trolls care about disrupting it.

hobofan 8y ago
"The integrity of a common-consensus system depends entirely on how little trolls care about disrupting it." That is actually the key point why a blockchain (or ledger that allows for money-like transaction) is an important part for us. By binding what you say to a monetary reward people that act irrationaly and do it for the lulz will lose their money and ultimately have to leave the system by running out of funds. Simmilarly, trolls could dimish the value of a PoW blockchain by creating and exploiting 51% attacks, but that hasn't happened with Bitcoin, since that is far too expensive to do it just for fun. Monetarily motivated attacks are of course a different discussion.
- pwinnski 8y ago
  Of course, this depends on the cost and value of the truth being higher than the cost and value of a lulz. The art example is a great demonstration of the mismatch. There is essentially zero value in the truth, so it was worth a bit of the author's time for the lulz. With cryptocurrency, the cost to subvert the truth is pretty high, so the value of doing so, although high, doesn't exceed the cost. With anything for which the value isn't inherent, like a cryptocurrency, it's hard to see that working out. I mean, if I'm using a hypothetical art-ownership blockchain system, and I see that someone has spent $5 to claim authorship of Mona Lisa, do I care enough to spend $6 to say no, it's Leonardo? Do I care enough to spend even $1, along with five other people? What if 200 4chan trolls have each pitched in a dollar to say Hitler painted it? Eventually, maybe, enough people kick in a combined $201 to say no, seriously, it was Leonardo. But then what? Am I expected to continue paying a regular fee to maintain the truth? Why would I even care that much? Wikipedia is a great example of something working really well, but many of the reasons it works so well are contrary to what you've described. It is in fact often people with far more time than money that ensure the truth generally remains on wikipedia, and they use non-blockchain-like tools, including the exertion of authority and locking of article pages, to do it. I'm not trying to crap on your super-sekret whitepaper at all! I'm mostly thinking this through as I type, and responding to the poor design, heck, the poor goal of the described art-authorship application. You might have solved all of this in a way that doesn't depend on trolls being poor or getting bored easily. I hope so.

nbeleski 8y ago

Thanks for answering! I am very interested in prospect Blockchain solutions. > the core of it is that all participants in the network are incentivized to only submit true information How is this done? What is the incentive?