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You might want to read a bit through this 4 year old thread about Tribler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878

You might want to read a bit through this 4 year old thread about Tribler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780313. Apart from the mountains of grant money and severly broken crypto ("set aside 'RSA without blinding'; this is RSA without padding.") which might or might not be fixed by now, I think the main point is that: "Tribler has a very long history of making high profile claims and never being able to follow through with actually usable software". And it seems they're doing it again, now even making clearly false claims. See this paper, published this summer: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01926 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01926 They claim that this is about the "deployment" of an identity platform, but they only talk about several student projects during a blockchain course given by Pouwelse. The conclusion paragraph is really bordering on academic misconduct. They claim: "Thusly, we have created the new Dutch digital passport solution ready for global adoption", but there isn't a shred of evidence to back this up. There is no production ready system. There is some work being done by course students here (https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-android https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-android), but this is very far from "ready for global adoption". The documentation about ZKPs for example states "it was decided to leave zero knowledge proofs out of the application for now, until a better library comes around", while the paper claims that this is core part of the solution. They also say that they have "presented the ground work for a Self-Sovereign Identity solution which is in production in the Netherlands for use by citizens in the latter half of 2018". They are here framing two small pilots in two Dutch municipalities to be a production ready system. Those two pilots, by the way, have yet to materialize. (throwaway because I don't want to be ambushed about this later)

synctext 8y ago
> The conclusion paragraph is really bordering on academic misconduct. Sad you see it that way. For obvious reasons our Github code for Bittorrent-based token economy is separated from passport-grade identity system with experimental zero-knowledge proof system. > The documentation about ZKPs for example states [...] Those are old student projects; this is the repo and code implementing "Evaluating 2-DNF Formulas on Ciphertexts" by Dan Boneh, https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestation/wallet/primitives/cryptosystem/boneh.py https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestat... > two small pilots in two Dutch municipalities These pilots are indeed not moving fast enough for us, we're now using a notary-based approach. Governments don't innovate as fast as they themselves want. -Tribler founder.
- throwaway83342 8y ago
  > Sad you see it that way. For obvious reasons our Github code for Bittorrent-based token economy is separated from passport-grade identity system with experimental zero-knowledge proof system. I really don't know what those obvious reasons would be. I can understand that "the details of this biometric system will remain proprietary", but I don't see why the rest of it wouldn't be developed out in the open. That's the one thing I do think is quite commendable about the Tribler project and the courses you give: everything is very open for everyone to see. Are you in this case afraid the results will not stand up to scrutiny? I'm quite skeptical, especially in light of your past conduct. If the system you are presenting is really so "ready for deployment", there would be no reason to include those irrelevant student projects as part of the paper. Instead, they form the main portion of the results. The title of the paper is "Deployment of a Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity", but instead, it's about juggling some performance tests of student projects along with the IPv8 library, and never about that supposed deployment. > These pilots are indeed not moving fast enough for us, we're now using a notary-based approach. Governments don't innovate as fast as they themselves want. -Tribler founder. Well, I can really understand that those municipalities are not innovating fast enough. That must be frustrating. That doesn't give you a license to simply make up things as you go along. There is no "self-sovereign identity solution which is in production in the Netherlands for use by citizens in the latter half of 2018", as you claim there is. There would only be two municipal pilots. There is no "new Dutch digital passport solution ready for global adoption". Not yet. If it was in production, I would be able to use it. Stop making things up.
  - synctext 8y ago
    > Stop making things up. Again, sad to see this much frustration. Please check out real code for attestations with experimental zero-knowledge proof in Python. https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestation/wallet/primitives/cryptosystem/boneh.py https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestat...
    - throwaway83342 8y ago
      It's a bit strange that you don't respond to my main complaint, namely making up statements for an academic publication, but now keep reiterating that you really implemented some homomorphic encryption scheme in Python. It's a very cute scheme, but it has little to do with the supposed "new Dutch digital passport solution ready for global adoption". I brought it up in the context of the only shred of evidence (but apparently no so) that such a solution exists. The paper itself also literally states that the "implementation of the Zero-Knowledge Proofs will remain outside of the scope of this paper". I'm indeed a bit frustrated with the overblown claims being made, but I don't think that's particularly unhealthy in this case. I've given ample motivation, to which you can choose to respond substantively.

synctext 8y ago

> The conclusion paragraph is really bordering on academic misconduct. Sad you see it that way. For obvious reasons our Github code for Bittorrent-based token economy is separated from passport-grade identity system with experimental zero-knowledge proof system. > The documentation about ZKPs for example states [...] Those are old student projects; this is the repo and code implementing "Evaluating 2-DNF Formulas on Ciphertexts" by Dan Boneh, https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestation/wallet/primitives/cryptosystem/boneh.py https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestat... > two small pilots in two Dutch municipalities These pilots are indeed not moving fast enough for us, we're now using a notary-based approach. Governments don't innovate as fast as they themselves want. -Tribler founder.

throwaway83342 8y ago
> Sad you see it that way. For obvious reasons our Github code for Bittorrent-based token economy is separated from passport-grade identity system with experimental zero-knowledge proof system. I really don't know what those obvious reasons would be. I can understand that "the details of this biometric system will remain proprietary", but I don't see why the rest of it wouldn't be developed out in the open. That's the one thing I do think is quite commendable about the Tribler project and the courses you give: everything is very open for everyone to see. Are you in this case afraid the results will not stand up to scrutiny? I'm quite skeptical, especially in light of your past conduct. If the system you are presenting is really so "ready for deployment", there would be no reason to include those irrelevant student projects as part of the paper. Instead, they form the main portion of the results. The title of the paper is "Deployment of a Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity", but instead, it's about juggling some performance tests of student projects along with the IPv8 library, and never about that supposed deployment. > These pilots are indeed not moving fast enough for us, we're now using a notary-based approach. Governments don't innovate as fast as they themselves want. -Tribler founder. Well, I can really understand that those municipalities are not innovating fast enough. That must be frustrating. That doesn't give you a license to simply make up things as you go along. There is no "self-sovereign identity solution which is in production in the Netherlands for use by citizens in the latter half of 2018", as you claim there is. There would only be two municipal pilots. There is no "new Dutch digital passport solution ready for global adoption". Not yet. If it was in production, I would be able to use it. Stop making things up.
- synctext 8y ago
  > Stop making things up. Again, sad to see this much frustration. Please check out real code for attestations with experimental zero-knowledge proof in Python. https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestation/wallet/primitives/cryptosystem/boneh.py https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestat...
  - throwaway83342 8y ago
    It's a bit strange that you don't respond to my main complaint, namely making up statements for an academic publication, but now keep reiterating that you really implemented some homomorphic encryption scheme in Python. It's a very cute scheme, but it has little to do with the supposed "new Dutch digital passport solution ready for global adoption". I brought it up in the context of the only shred of evidence (but apparently no so) that such a solution exists. The paper itself also literally states that the "implementation of the Zero-Knowledge Proofs will remain outside of the scope of this paper". I'm indeed a bit frustrated with the overblown claims being made, but I don't think that's particularly unhealthy in this case. I've given ample motivation, to which you can choose to respond substantively.