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> Who is the boogey-man trying to control your site memberships? The site operator? I highly doubt this system is robust against site operators trying to "moder

by _3jh0 5y ago

> Who is the boogey-man trying to control your site memberships? The site operator? I highly doubt this system is robust against site operators trying to "moderate" you, but supppse it was, why would they sign up for it. People use centralized platforms like patreon for memberships. They can kick you off and you will lose all your subscribers. Your patrons will lose access as well. That is what unlock tries to solve. The membership data is stored on the blockchain publicly which everyone has equal access to. You can prove you own a particular nft stored on the blockchain by signing using your private key. So even if all data is public, authorization is secure and reliable.

bawolff 5y ago
So its a really fancy way to make an immutable public back up? I mean i guess, but you could also just back up your subscribers list.
- _3jh0 5y ago
  Here's the thing though. Let's say, I want to provide special benefit to people who own membership on hackernews. In the model where this data is public, I can query the wallet of people to check for HN nft and provide special discount or perks. If this membership data was privately backed up, I cannot do that. It fits nicely into the blockchain model, imo. Subscriber owns the membership and can prove to the service provider. Service provider has access to the membership and can check the validity.
  - csmpltn 5y ago
    > "In the model where this data is public, I can query the wallet of people to check for HN nft and provide special discount or perks." How will you provide your "perks" if either you or your members have been kicked off the platform where those perks made sense in the first place? With this use-case you're describing - all you have is a list of wallets that were at some point relevant to you in some way. This is the equivalent of maintaining a mailing list. Why does any of this require a distributed ledger? What problem does this solve exactly? > "Subscriber owns the membership and can prove to the service provider. Service provider has access to the membership and can check the validity." How is this any different than signing up with an email-address as a username?
    - _3jh0 5y ago
      I think you are misunderstanding something above. I'm not the one providing HN membership. That would be YC but I as a third party can verify whether someone has a valid HN membership and provide them perks based on their membership. That is the problem a distributed ledger solves. The data is public and usable by any service provider. To verify you have a HN account (membership) today, a service provider need to build something like keybase. That is complicated and will be different for each service. That is the problem unlock-protocol "solves". It defines the protocol for managing these memberships. To create, verify, deploy, etc. You need some way to pay for membership without a middleman. This is solved by cryptocurrency part of the blockchain these nfts are stored on. Memberships are also more complicated than a list of email addresses. They can be transferred, expired, and change depending on the action of the user. For example, some provider want their memberships to be reduced to half when transferred. This is the part smart contracts solve.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        > To verify you have a HN account (membership) today, a service provider need to build something like keybase. That is complicated and will be different for each service. What's wrong with plain old digital signatures in this contrived scenario. If for some reason this was desired, hn signs an assertion that so and so is a member. Person presents this assertion as neccesary. No blockchain required. Memorizing hn's public key is no more hard than memorizing what their nft is. I suppose you'll say transfering memberships. If hn is onboard with the transfer they could just issue a new signed assertion. So the only use case is if you want to transfer ownership against the service provider's will. But how does blockchain solve that? Unless i missed some great advance in zkp, all transfers are public on the blockchain, and service providers can trace the transfers and not recognize transfers they don't like. > They can be transferred, expired, and change depending on the action of the user. For example, some provider want their memberships to be reduced to half when transferred. What's a real world example of someone wanting something like this? I can't think of any.
        _3jh0 5y ago
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    So we sacrifice member privacy for the sake of spam? Who would want this other than the spammer?
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  What is forcing Patreon or any other company to allow you to export your subscriber list? And do you have a right to export even if your account has (wrongly?) been banned. Unless there's some kind of regulation involved, this is the kind of thing that easily could cease to work as expected once a company has enough market share.

by _3jh0 5y ago

bawolff 5y ago

So its a really fancy way to make an immutable public back up? I mean i guess, but you could also just back up your subscribers list.

_3jh0 5y ago
Here's the thing though. Let's say, I want to provide special benefit to people who own membership on hackernews. In the model where this data is public, I can query the wallet of people to check for HN nft and provide special discount or perks. If this membership data was privately backed up, I cannot do that. It fits nicely into the blockchain model, imo. Subscriber owns the membership and can prove to the service provider. Service provider has access to the membership and can check the validity.
- csmpltn 5y ago
  > "In the model where this data is public, I can query the wallet of people to check for HN nft and provide special discount or perks." How will you provide your "perks" if either you or your members have been kicked off the platform where those perks made sense in the first place? With this use-case you're describing - all you have is a list of wallets that were at some point relevant to you in some way. This is the equivalent of maintaining a mailing list. Why does any of this require a distributed ledger? What problem does this solve exactly? > "Subscriber owns the membership and can prove to the service provider. Service provider has access to the membership and can check the validity." How is this any different than signing up with an email-address as a username?
  - _3jh0 5y ago
    I think you are misunderstanding something above. I'm not the one providing HN membership. That would be YC but I as a third party can verify whether someone has a valid HN membership and provide them perks based on their membership. That is the problem a distributed ledger solves. The data is public and usable by any service provider. To verify you have a HN account (membership) today, a service provider need to build something like keybase. That is complicated and will be different for each service. That is the problem unlock-protocol "solves". It defines the protocol for managing these memberships. To create, verify, deploy, etc. You need some way to pay for membership without a middleman. This is solved by cryptocurrency part of the blockchain these nfts are stored on. Memberships are also more complicated than a list of email addresses. They can be transferred, expired, and change depending on the action of the user. For example, some provider want their memberships to be reduced to half when transferred. This is the part smart contracts solve.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      > To verify you have a HN account (membership) today, a service provider need to build something like keybase. That is complicated and will be different for each service. What's wrong with plain old digital signatures in this contrived scenario. If for some reason this was desired, hn signs an assertion that so and so is a member. Person presents this assertion as neccesary. No blockchain required. Memorizing hn's public key is no more hard than memorizing what their nft is. I suppose you'll say transfering memberships. If hn is onboard with the transfer they could just issue a new signed assertion. So the only use case is if you want to transfer ownership against the service provider's will. But how does blockchain solve that? Unless i missed some great advance in zkp, all transfers are public on the blockchain, and service providers can trace the transfers and not recognize transfers they don't like. > They can be transferred, expired, and change depending on the action of the user. For example, some provider want their memberships to be reduced to half when transferred. What's a real world example of someone wanting something like this? I can't think of any.
      - _3jh0 5y ago
- sdenton4 5y ago
  So we sacrifice member privacy for the sake of spam? Who would want this other than the spammer?
throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
What is forcing Patreon or any other company to allow you to export your subscriber list? And do you have a right to export even if your account has (wrongly?) been banned. Unless there's some kind of regulation involved, this is the kind of thing that easily could cease to work as expected once a company has enough market share.