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Can you not trivially build a traditional server that requires API requests to be signed?
by fwip 8y ago
Can you not trivially build a traditional server that requires API requests to be signed?
- lisper 8y agoYes, but that by itself won't solve the problem. You need some way of auditing the TTP to insure that they don't cheat by, say, censoring transactions, or printing money for themselves. And this auditing process has to preserve user privacy. You don't want the world to know what your bank balance is. Making this work is not trivial.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoArguably, the IRS needs to know your transactions I think people don't want other people to know their balance, but remember, Uncle Sam prints the money, so he gets what he wants. I do think we'll move to a cashless society exactly for this reason. It might be blockchain based. But I'm skeptical it will be a utopian move where we can all inspect the chain and verify no one is cheating. I am pretty sure in the future the IRS will have the ability to know the details of every USD denominated transaction. Even still, I'm skeptical this will do much to stop tax evasion and fraud.
- lisper 8y agoIt's not necessary for everyone to be able to verify that no one is cheating. It is only necessary for everyone to be able to verify that the TTP isn't cheating. Whether or not such a system exists is mostly orthogonal to the question of whether or not cash exists. Cash can be eliminated whether or not it's replaced with a reasonable alternative, and the reasonable alternative can exist without eliminating cash. The nightmare scenario is the elimination of cash, and replacing it with an insecure, inefficient system run by a bunch of rent-seeking oligarchs. (Sadly, that outcome also seems to be the most likely in the U.S.)
- silotis 8y agoA blockchain is not a particularly good solution for auditability though. A simple signed transaction log does the job just as well with much less complexity and overhead. Neither approach solves the privacy issue.
- lisper 8y agoA signed transaction log doesn't solve the censorship issue either.
- drexlspivey 8y agoAnd how do you make sure that the entity in charge didn't just remove transactions from the log? Let's add a cryptographic commitment to the whole transaction set with each transaction. But then how do you order them to know which one came first. What if two transactions come at the same time? Let's split them into chunks that will be added every X minutes. And how do you make sure that the chunks aren't messed with/reordered/whatever? Let's make each chunk reference the previous one through a hash. Oh wait.
- silotis 8y agoWithout PoW the crypto you describe does nothing to stop the TTP from re-writing history. The TTP can just re-generate the chain starting from the block they wish to re-write. With both a private blockchain and a signed transaction log you have to rely on the tx log/blockchain being published so that third parties can verify that all updates are consistent.
- jopsen 8y agoSure, but such service could be compromised. If the system allows customers to verify the ledger it makes compromising the system much harder.