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Show HN: Prototype for ETH Signing for endorsing Wikipedia updates

30 points by xinbenlv 3y ago

Wikipedia suffers from vandalism. We built a prototype for making endorsement from cryptographically signed signature using Ethereum wallet (e.g. MetaMask)

mvid 3y ago
I work in crypto, and even I ask, what makes this better than GPG?
- cypherpunks01 3y ago
  Maybe it's that you can prove endorsement by a person who is wealthy in ETH, or in jpeg monkeys? Not totally sure.
- Forgeties79 3y ago
  [Insert favorite crypto buzzword/phrase of the week], obviously!
  - junofan 3y ago
    Metamask has 10m MAU. I think this is a great idea.
    - Forgeties79 3y ago
      I was just being tongue in cheek but I guess it didn’t register/I was too believable, my bad
- chizhik-pyzhik 3y ago
  More people have an ethereum wallet than a gpg keypair.
  - oskarw85 3y ago
    Ah yes, newsflash straight from ass.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  GPG had 30 years to proliferate and didnt and only got the most rabid enthusiasts to use it. Crypto made public private keys more ubiquitous, not completely, but much much more. Speculation drives innovation.
  - oskarw85 3y ago
    That's simply not true. Even if the underlying mechanism is the public-private key pair most owners do not use it with signing in mind.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      they have the software and are setup and are familiar with it which is all that matters
    - everfree 3y ago
      A signature is a signature whether or not you "have signing in mind" when you create the signature.
    - xinbenlv 3y ago
      > oskarw85@: That's simply not true. Even if the underlying mechanism is the public-private key pair most owners do not use it with signing in mind. OP: Society with and without "phones" are foundamentally different. The introduction and adoption of cryptography into daily life is at this level. In the beginning, we probably could only attract a small group of adoptors. But the monthly active editors of Wikipedia is only O(100000) and the number of editors that actively review and "like" edits are even smaller, around O(1000). This is the scale of users that have made great impact on Wikipedia and the world's knowledge.
- 40four 3y ago
  At a super low technical level, probably nothing. At a higher level, obviously way more people use Ethereum and the MetaMask extension, than use GPG. It’s better because it’s way more popular and easier to use.
- World177 3y ago
  The chain of trust seems better with blockchain based domains than chain of trust often used with GPG. With blockchain based domains, they're secured by the same chain that has so far successfully secured billions of dollars. In the old system, at the top of the chain, the person trusting keys had to be confident that the keys at the top were correct, where in my opinion, it's harder to mistake having an incorrect version of Ethereum's chain. The old system also provided a way for domains to be seized, which would be the equivalent of an identity being revoked. This can't happen with blockchain based identities, so it provides more certainty. Blockchain based domains are tie human rememberable names to identities well. Which while GPG is associated with email addresses, the association seems more difficult to fake, and provides non-technical people certainty of identity in a similar way to how they would normally trust a website.
- crote 3y ago
  Heck, I'm having trouble seeing what makes this better than a Facebook Like!
  - xinbenlv 3y ago
    > @crote: Heck, I'm having trouble seeing what makes this better than a Facebook Like! Yes it's pretty much the same as Facebook Like, except that the accounts are decentralized so could never be banned. Also you could have a group of people "like" an edit as a group (shared identity).
    - FridgeSeal 3y ago
      Is that like, meant to be a benefit? This project feels a lot like “we could do things with blockchain because…we can do things with blockchain” As mentioned elsewhere, there’s already PKI stuff for Wikipedia, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point, or benefit? Just because there’s some sort-of-convenient infra in ETH land doesn’t automatically make that inherently useful to anywhere else, and honestly comes across more like a veiled attempt to pump MAU’s on blockchains/meta mask.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  Even as a skeptic, this wallet can be tied to a real identity, which would make signing transactions way more legit. And more importantly, the infrastructure for crypto is already established. Still can’t shake the idea that this is a solution waiting for a problem, and this isn’t really it.
- xinbenlv 3y ago
  > @mvid: I work in crypto, and even I ask, what makes this better than GPG? OP: two points. 1. It helps harness the help from EVM wallet's adoption. Most people don't know how to use GPG. Most GPG tools aren't built with mind of regular user as target audience. 2. We could soon see on-chain identities, and organizational relationships linked to it. E.g. one could use ERC-1271 to have a contract attest to a signature.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
This is fake, right? Why would Wikidata touch this with a ten-foot pole? There is a lot of paid promotion on Wikipedia and highly-motivated vandalism. Just because someone has reserves of ETH, they get to say what a valid edit is? It seems altogether antithetical to the free-knowledge open-source ethic of the WMF. It is one thing to propose this as an extension for MediaWiki that some rando running a website may use. It's entirely another thing to mock this up as if it's part of Wikidata's own interface. EDIT: Headline says "Wikipedia" but screenshots are allegedly "Wikidata" which is really different.
- tzumby 3y ago
  This has nothing to do with how much ETH one has. Metamask is a PKI keystone, you’re just signing something using your public key.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? MediaWiki has a mechanism called Pending Changes, where edits are held from public view until an officially-designated reviewer editor signs off on the edits. This is the sort of endorsement already built-in and in active use on Wikipedia, and it leverages the reputation of a trusted user to "endorse" possibly disruptive edits. I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Wikipedians also use something called a "Committed Identity" which is a cryptographic proof of their identity, which can be used to recover an account if credentials don't work. Since it's encrypted, it doesn't amount to revealing your real-life identity, it merely provides a mechanism for them to verify it with your cooperation.
    - World177 3y ago
      > What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? I think you're right in that it's so far not been necessary to use blockchain based identities. Though, I think blockchain based identities are objectively better. In implementation, it doesn't have to be a random person, it could be anyone or any organization that could endorse changes. > I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Ethereum based identities are easy to remember and harder to censor. If Wikipedia wants to censor someone currently, they can just remove the system they have implemented. The solution offered provides an external system that provides a way to determine if someone did something even if Wikipedia tries to hide it later. (with the certainty that also backs billions of dollars in value on Ethereum)
greenthrow 3y ago
Why is this better than just signing it with any private key and sharing the public key? Why do you need to involve a blockchain and I assume transaction fees as well?
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  It’s not. In no way is it better than the alternative, unless the metric is “pointless and harmful introduction of blockchain things”.
  - xk_id 3y ago
    What makes this harmful?
- chizhik-pyzhik 3y ago
  No TX fees here, since signing is not on-chain- the advantage is just that having eth accounts means people are already set up with a keypair, often without even realizing it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  It doesn't use the blockchain, it uses a more ubiquitous user experience and namespace than what GPG failed to do across 30 years.
- World177 3y ago
  > Why is this better than just signing it with any private key and sharing the public key? People using Ethereum often also use blockchain based domains which makes it easier for non-technical people to be more certain about endorsements. Ethereum leaves the implementation of how something becomes endorsed by a domain up to the owner(s) of a domain. > Why do you need to involve a blockchain and I assume transaction fees as well? This is more dependent on implementation. Just endorsing something does not need to be on chain, so there does not need to be fees.
FreeTrade 3y ago
I'm interested to see an integration of wikis and web-of-trust. This looks to be a step in the right direction.
- xinbenlv 3y ago
  > FreeTrade@: I'm interested to see an integration of wikis and web-of-trust. This looks to be a step in the right direction. OP: yes, thank you! That's what we see in common!
justsomeadvice0 3y ago
Sorry, but this is an absolutely terrible idea. Signing things is cool. Humans on the internet should sign more things. But why in the world would you want to use the same key that can instantaneously shred the dollars in your bank account to ensure authorship of some edit on a website article? The UX for these two things should be incredibly different; instead you are setting people up to get phished and lose their savings.
- World177 3y ago
  Ethereum is a blockchain of computations. The fact that it also secures billions of dollars is evidence that the records, such as domains that represent an identity, are highly secure. In the same way that someone can't change who owns a balance, they also are not able to change who owns a blockchain based domain.
- 40four 3y ago
  I mean, to your point, why in the world would anyone use a ‘hot wallet’ or any wallet with anything valuable in it for this purpose. You wouldn’t. You would make a dedicated wallet for signing Wikipedia transactions.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    > You would make a dedicated wallet for signing Wikipedia transactions. Then why does it need to be linked to the Ethereum blockchain -- or, indeed, to any blockchain -- at all?
    - junofan 3y ago
      Because that’s where the users are. Metamask alone has 10 million MAU.
      - duskwuff 3y ago
        And Facebook probably has a couple orders of magnitudes more, but you don't see anyone lining up to make a Facebook app for this. Besides, Wikipedia already has user accounts. They even have a system for users with the appropriate permissions to approve revisions of a page -- no external crypto-nonsense needed.
bawolff 3y ago
This is stupid and doesn't solve any real problems.
- xk_id 3y ago
  Cryptophobic mantras also lack substance and don’t solve any real problems. But here we are.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    They solve the problem of people spamming inapropriate crypto related solutions. Which i would argue is a very real problem and one of the main reasons that anything "crypto" isn't taken seriously.
    - xk_id 3y ago
      If that “spam” you talk about was real and not just a conspiracy theory, you wouldn’t have to rely on promoting uncritical, dogmatic skepticism. That only works on feeble minds anyway. The people who matter are taking crypto seriously regardless of your “efforts”.
  - Forgeties79 3y ago
    >cryptophobic I mean a lot of us are skeptical about many of the proposed use cases for legitimate reasons. We aren’t just mindlessly against any and all mentions of crypto.
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Considering most Wikipedia editors are under-employed guitarists and retired house painters deciding on the veracity of details about local history events and obscure scientific niches, this doesn't help much.
- xinbenlv 3y ago
  > Considering most Wikipedia editors are under-employed guitarists and retired house painters deciding on the veracity of details about local history events and obscure scientific niches, this doesn't help much. OP: that's true, for majority editors. But just like Balaji says in his Network State book, it only take a small group of people to start something big. We just need early adoptions from some subset of editors and hopefully if it's useful, other poeple will see it and begin using it.
xinbenlv 3y ago
OP(xinbenlv@HN): Hi all, OP here. I am new to the HN so please forgive me and educate me for the proper etiquette if I doing anything wrong. I am super thrilled to see 28 upvotes and 58 comments overnight. thank you for your passionate response, suggestion and critize of what we shared. It took me a while to read every comments you left so please bear with me for delay. Here are the combined responses for your questions: https://hackmd.io/@d3servelabs/hn-wiki-eit https://hackmd.io/@d3servelabs/hn-wiki-eit --- It's done via a Wikipedia feature called "User script", which works like a Chrome/Firefox Extension. If an user choose to install what you build, it could load additional JS and CSS. Our code is open sourced on https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt, and the feature is enabled for my own account User:Xinbenlv https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem.js https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem...
- xinbenlv 3y ago
  ## Final words (first batch of answers) Thank you all for your passionate conversations. Your criticize and defending are all super valuable and inspiring to us. Thank NoZebra120vClip@, bawolff@, spaceman_2020@, justsomeadvice0@, duskwuff@, 8organicbits@, mvid@, greenthrow@, sacnoradhq@: you helped us think harder with your criticizing comments and questions. World177@, sowbug@, everfree@, 40four@, peyton@ crote@ yieldcrv@, xk_id@ Thank you for your defending, your inspiration and your support! It means a lot. We also look forward to collaborate with you if interested.
WilliamsSmith 3y ago
[dead]

30 points by xinbenlv 3y ago

Wikipedia suffers from vandalism. We built a prototype for making endorsement from cryptographically signed signature using Ethereum wallet (e.g. MetaMask)

mvid 3y ago

I work in crypto, and even I ask, what makes this better than GPG?

cypherpunks01 3y ago
Maybe it's that you can prove endorsement by a person who is wealthy in ETH, or in jpeg monkeys? Not totally sure.
Forgeties79 3y ago
[Insert favorite crypto buzzword/phrase of the week], obviously!
- junofan 3y ago
  Metamask has 10m MAU. I think this is a great idea.
  - Forgeties79 3y ago
    I was just being tongue in cheek but I guess it didn’t register/I was too believable, my bad
chizhik-pyzhik 3y ago
More people have an ethereum wallet than a gpg keypair.
- oskarw85 3y ago
  Ah yes, newsflash straight from ass.
yieldcrv 3y ago
GPG had 30 years to proliferate and didnt and only got the most rabid enthusiasts to use it. Crypto made public private keys more ubiquitous, not completely, but much much more. Speculation drives innovation.
- oskarw85 3y ago
  That's simply not true. Even if the underlying mechanism is the public-private key pair most owners do not use it with signing in mind.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    they have the software and are setup and are familiar with it which is all that matters
  - everfree 3y ago
    A signature is a signature whether or not you "have signing in mind" when you create the signature.
  - xinbenlv 3y ago
    > oskarw85@: That's simply not true. Even if the underlying mechanism is the public-private key pair most owners do not use it with signing in mind. OP: Society with and without "phones" are foundamentally different. The introduction and adoption of cryptography into daily life is at this level. In the beginning, we probably could only attract a small group of adoptors. But the monthly active editors of Wikipedia is only O(100000) and the number of editors that actively review and "like" edits are even smaller, around O(1000). This is the scale of users that have made great impact on Wikipedia and the world's knowledge.
40four 3y ago
At a super low technical level, probably nothing. At a higher level, obviously way more people use Ethereum and the MetaMask extension, than use GPG. It’s better because it’s way more popular and easier to use.
World177 3y ago
The chain of trust seems better with blockchain based domains than chain of trust often used with GPG. With blockchain based domains, they're secured by the same chain that has so far successfully secured billions of dollars. In the old system, at the top of the chain, the person trusting keys had to be confident that the keys at the top were correct, where in my opinion, it's harder to mistake having an incorrect version of Ethereum's chain. The old system also provided a way for domains to be seized, which would be the equivalent of an identity being revoked. This can't happen with blockchain based identities, so it provides more certainty. Blockchain based domains are tie human rememberable names to identities well. Which while GPG is associated with email addresses, the association seems more difficult to fake, and provides non-technical people certainty of identity in a similar way to how they would normally trust a website.
crote 3y ago
Heck, I'm having trouble seeing what makes this better than a Facebook Like!
- xinbenlv 3y ago
  > @crote: Heck, I'm having trouble seeing what makes this better than a Facebook Like! Yes it's pretty much the same as Facebook Like, except that the accounts are decentralized so could never be banned. Also you could have a group of people "like" an edit as a group (shared identity).
  - FridgeSeal 3y ago
    Is that like, meant to be a benefit? This project feels a lot like “we could do things with blockchain because…we can do things with blockchain” As mentioned elsewhere, there’s already PKI stuff for Wikipedia, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point, or benefit? Just because there’s some sort-of-convenient infra in ETH land doesn’t automatically make that inherently useful to anywhere else, and honestly comes across more like a veiled attempt to pump MAU’s on blockchains/meta mask.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
Even as a skeptic, this wallet can be tied to a real identity, which would make signing transactions way more legit. And more importantly, the infrastructure for crypto is already established. Still can’t shake the idea that this is a solution waiting for a problem, and this isn’t really it.
xinbenlv 3y ago
> @mvid: I work in crypto, and even I ask, what makes this better than GPG? OP: two points. 1. It helps harness the help from EVM wallet's adoption. Most people don't know how to use GPG. Most GPG tools aren't built with mind of regular user as target audience. 2. We could soon see on-chain identities, and organizational relationships linked to it. E.g. one could use ERC-1271 to have a contract attest to a signature.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

This is fake, right? Why would Wikidata touch this with a ten-foot pole? There is a lot of paid promotion on Wikipedia and highly-motivated vandalism. Just because someone has reserves of ETH, they get to say what a valid edit is? It seems altogether antithetical to the free-knowledge open-source ethic of the WMF. It is one thing to propose this as an extension for MediaWiki that some rando running a website may use. It's entirely another thing to mock this up as if it's part of Wikidata's own interface. EDIT: Headline says "Wikipedia" but screenshots are allegedly "Wikidata" which is really different.

tzumby 3y ago
This has nothing to do with how much ETH one has. Metamask is a PKI keystone, you’re just signing something using your public key.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? MediaWiki has a mechanism called Pending Changes, where edits are held from public view until an officially-designated reviewer editor signs off on the edits. This is the sort of endorsement already built-in and in active use on Wikipedia, and it leverages the reputation of a trusted user to "endorse" possibly disruptive edits. I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Wikipedians also use something called a "Committed Identity" which is a cryptographic proof of their identity, which can be used to recover an account if credentials don't work. Since it's encrypted, it doesn't amount to revealing your real-life identity, it merely provides a mechanism for them to verify it with your cooperation.
  - World177 3y ago
    > What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? I think you're right in that it's so far not been necessary to use blockchain based identities. Though, I think blockchain based identities are objectively better. In implementation, it doesn't have to be a random person, it could be anyone or any organization that could endorse changes. > I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Ethereum based identities are easy to remember and harder to censor. If Wikipedia wants to censor someone currently, they can just remove the system they have implemented. The solution offered provides an external system that provides a way to determine if someone did something even if Wikipedia tries to hide it later. (with the certainty that also backs billions of dollars in value on Ethereum)

greenthrow 3y ago

Why is this better than just signing it with any private key and sharing the public key? Why do you need to involve a blockchain and I assume transaction fees as well?

FridgeSeal 3y ago
It’s not. In no way is it better than the alternative, unless the metric is “pointless and harmful introduction of blockchain things”.
- xk_id 3y ago
  What makes this harmful?
chizhik-pyzhik 3y ago
No TX fees here, since signing is not on-chain- the advantage is just that having eth accounts means people are already set up with a keypair, often without even realizing it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
yieldcrv 3y ago
It doesn't use the blockchain, it uses a more ubiquitous user experience and namespace than what GPG failed to do across 30 years.
World177 3y ago
> Why is this better than just signing it with any private key and sharing the public key? People using Ethereum often also use blockchain based domains which makes it easier for non-technical people to be more certain about endorsements. Ethereum leaves the implementation of how something becomes endorsed by a domain up to the owner(s) of a domain. > Why do you need to involve a blockchain and I assume transaction fees as well? This is more dependent on implementation. Just endorsing something does not need to be on chain, so there does not need to be fees.

FreeTrade 3y ago

I'm interested to see an integration of wikis and web-of-trust. This looks to be a step in the right direction.

xinbenlv 3y ago
> FreeTrade@: I'm interested to see an integration of wikis and web-of-trust. This looks to be a step in the right direction. OP: yes, thank you! That's what we see in common!

justsomeadvice0 3y ago

Sorry, but this is an absolutely terrible idea. Signing things is cool. Humans on the internet should sign more things. But why in the world would you want to use the same key that can instantaneously shred the dollars in your bank account to ensure authorship of some edit on a website article? The UX for these two things should be incredibly different; instead you are setting people up to get phished and lose their savings.

World177 3y ago
Ethereum is a blockchain of computations. The fact that it also secures billions of dollars is evidence that the records, such as domains that represent an identity, are highly secure. In the same way that someone can't change who owns a balance, they also are not able to change who owns a blockchain based domain.
40four 3y ago
I mean, to your point, why in the world would anyone use a ‘hot wallet’ or any wallet with anything valuable in it for this purpose. You wouldn’t. You would make a dedicated wallet for signing Wikipedia transactions.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > You would make a dedicated wallet for signing Wikipedia transactions. Then why does it need to be linked to the Ethereum blockchain -- or, indeed, to any blockchain -- at all?
  - junofan 3y ago
    Because that’s where the users are. Metamask alone has 10 million MAU.
    - duskwuff 3y ago
      And Facebook probably has a couple orders of magnitudes more, but you don't see anyone lining up to make a Facebook app for this. Besides, Wikipedia already has user accounts. They even have a system for users with the appropriate permissions to approve revisions of a page -- no external crypto-nonsense needed.

bawolff 3y ago

This is stupid and doesn't solve any real problems.

xk_id 3y ago
Cryptophobic mantras also lack substance and don’t solve any real problems. But here we are.
- bawolff 3y ago
  They solve the problem of people spamming inapropriate crypto related solutions. Which i would argue is a very real problem and one of the main reasons that anything "crypto" isn't taken seriously.
  - xk_id 3y ago
    If that “spam” you talk about was real and not just a conspiracy theory, you wouldn’t have to rely on promoting uncritical, dogmatic skepticism. That only works on feeble minds anyway. The people who matter are taking crypto seriously regardless of your “efforts”.
- Forgeties79 3y ago
  >cryptophobic I mean a lot of us are skeptical about many of the proposed use cases for legitimate reasons. We aren’t just mindlessly against any and all mentions of crypto.

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Considering most Wikipedia editors are under-employed guitarists and retired house painters deciding on the veracity of details about local history events and obscure scientific niches, this doesn't help much.

xinbenlv 3y ago
> Considering most Wikipedia editors are under-employed guitarists and retired house painters deciding on the veracity of details about local history events and obscure scientific niches, this doesn't help much. OP: that's true, for majority editors. But just like Balaji says in his Network State book, it only take a small group of people to start something big. We just need early adoptions from some subset of editors and hopefully if it's useful, other poeple will see it and begin using it.

xinbenlv 3y ago

OP(xinbenlv@HN): Hi all, OP here. I am new to the HN so please forgive me and educate me for the proper etiquette if I doing anything wrong. I am super thrilled to see 28 upvotes and 58 comments overnight. thank you for your passionate response, suggestion and critize of what we shared. It took me a while to read every comments you left so please bear with me for delay. Here are the combined responses for your questions: https://hackmd.io/@d3servelabs/hn-wiki-eit https://hackmd.io/@d3servelabs/hn-wiki-eit --- It's done via a Wikipedia feature called "User script", which works like a Chrome/Firefox Extension. If an user choose to install what you build, it could load additional JS and CSS. Our code is open sourced on https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt, and the feature is enabled for my own account User:Xinbenlv https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem.js https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem...

xinbenlv 3y ago
## Final words (first batch of answers) Thank you all for your passionate conversations. Your criticize and defending are all super valuable and inspiring to us. Thank NoZebra120vClip@, bawolff@, spaceman_2020@, justsomeadvice0@, duskwuff@, 8organicbits@, mvid@, greenthrow@, sacnoradhq@: you helped us think harder with your criticizing comments and questions. World177@, sowbug@, everfree@, 40four@, peyton@ crote@ yieldcrv@, xk_id@ Thank you for your defending, your inspiration and your support! It means a lot. We also look forward to collaborate with you if interested.

WilliamsSmith 3y ago

[dead]