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Keybase was sort of trying to do this with social proof, though it's reliance on a centralized provider (keybase itself) made it brittle. I think you can get t

Keybase was sort of trying to do this with social proof, though it's reliance on a centralized provider (keybase itself) made it brittle. I think you can get there with something like Urbit IDs that are easy to ban. If IDs are not infinite you can some protection against abuse - pairing that with some proof-of-humanity and you can get closer, but there are still issues of someone doing the proof and then selling their ID to a bot. At least if it's easy to ban you can try to make that not economical. Doubly true if the IDs have a non-zero (but low) cost. Helps make you resistant to a sybil attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack The problem isn't trivial though - it's not obvious what will work best and it'll likely always be somewhat of an arms race, especially if you want to keep privacy.

ineptech 3y ago
> Keybase was sort of trying to do this with social proof, though it's reliance on a centralized provider (keybase itself) made it brittle. I think something like this could've worked, which is why I was so sad over its demise. I think Keybase (like the MIT PGP keyring, which it is sort of a fancier version of) was predicated on the idea that it's much easier to build a centralized keyring and then decentralize it once it's widely adopted than to build a decentralized keyring from the ground up.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  That did seem to be the direction Keybase was exploring. Their merkle trees weren't properly decentralized but hinted at ways that they could be. I'm curious where Keybase would have gone if they were better incentivized to explore that before its demise.