@bryancyan That's incorrect. Tor requires a consensus over all Tor nodes. That consensus is what's centralized. There's no good way around it - arguably the very fact the consensus is centralized part of the argument as to why Tor is secure in the first place.

@pete Bitcoin’s consensus is not centralized.

@bryancyan Tor needs to come to consensus over bandwidth and other things that don't translate well into decentralized consensus schemes.

@pete So just trust the Tor Project? They’re good people, they would never censor anything. But they can be blocked. That’s why Tor doesn’t work in China, where it is needed most. But everywhere is starting to look like China.

@bryancyan The reason why China manages to block Tor has nothing to do with the consensus mechanism. Any consensus mechanism can be blocked, by simply looking at what nodes are in the consensus and blocking them.

The actual problem for Tor re: blocking is china has basically moved to a whitelist model.

@bryancyan Tor has bridge nodes that specifically are _not_ part of the consensus. Those get blocked via what's essentially a white lost of allowed encrypted traffic.

@pete Tor bridges are not detectable hence block everything that’s not whitelisted, is what I think you are saying. That sounds infeasible for a free-flowing internet, but I guess the Chinese Communist Party does not care about that.

@bryancyan Exactly. I've actually seen that first hand myself when I visited China a few years back. Even a SSH tunnel could get detected and blocked if it started passing too much traffic.

@kexkey ...which is kinda scary: what stops MITM attacks? Tor isn't great against that. But at least humans run it, and node operators are a good mix of anonymous and not.

@kexkey sorry, specifically, sybil attacks.

@pete @kexkey we need to bridge meat space and cyber space with distributed trust networks somehow.

Like if we had communities that could determine who was a trusted actor couldn't each community maintain consensus for that community, then those communities form branches to each other based on a different trust model?

That way if one community goes down you can likely still have connections to route around it through trusted parties?

@untappedgrowth @kexkey well, now you're getting into very tricky UI/UX problems. :)

@pete @kexkey humans are used to social congregating into tribes. That is a completely solvable problem

@untappedgrowth @kexkey Implementing tribes well is a very tricky UI/UX problem!

@pete @kexkey *this* I can help with.

What are the current problems that pop up in attempts to address this?

@untappedgrowth @kexkey Not clear really. Hardly anyone has tried lately. Keybase is probably your best example.

@pete @kexkey yeah, that nowhere near resembles a mimicry of the organic into the digital space.

We as humans are used to delegating trust, even in groups. This is doable. It just gets into authority structure & culture creation through incentives... which get screwed up massively by the majority of organizations and businesses once they pass a certain size, but it can be done well.

This is kind of like the digital version of the city state model we all foresee in Bitcoin future. @robingrant

@untappedgrowth @kexkey @robingrant one of the problems of delegating trust is moderation is a lot of work...

@untappedgrowth @kexkey @robingrant anyway, I think a good first start would be to just make a usable UI for the PGP web of trust. Keep it simple: a tool to let you go from roots to trust to keys you want to be use to verify.

@pete @untappedgrowth @kexkey

I guess there's an evolution of trust levels - trust identity, trust to pay, trust not to tell etc. which can happen over time.

@robingrant @untappedgrowth @kexkey well, again, I'd advise you to keep it really simple: does or does not this key belong to who it says it does?

@pete @untappedgrowth @kexkey
could that be reduced via barriers to entry and/or smart contracts? for example, rules which take away your deposit if you create spam (with some formal machine definition of spam).

@robingrant @untappedgrowth @kexkey if you could define spam formally in a smart contract algorithm why not use just that algorithm to block the spam to begin with?

@pete @untappedgrowth @kexkey
true. I guess that is already done in some networks. enough down votes and you're deleted, then enough over time and you're out?

@robingrant @untappedgrowth @kexkey Voting algorithms like reddit's always have to put significant effort into weeding out bots.

@pete @robingrant @kexkey yeah, it has to be human. Just like we do socially where we "ignore" the village idiot who is just clamoring loudly in the street.

The breakthrough is we need the ostracisms to be effortless, just like how bitcoin ignores bad blocks, but prohibitively expensive for those trying to disrupt

@untappedgrowth @robingrant @kexkey Well, like I said, try doing something relatively simple like PGP web-of-trust first and see how far we get.

@pete @robingrant @kexkey

Satoshi model-

Game theory the system -> THEN build it 😛

Stepping all the way back to defining the problems clearly is what enables you to have the intuitional type flashes of brilliance on novel ways to address massive issues with simplicity

@pete @robingrant @kexkey

Thank you for your time Peter 🙏 this was very helpful

@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey
human but emergent, bottom up?

@robingrant @pete @kexkey

Currently I'm thinking delegated but consensual. It needs to be effortless in implementation by the trusted authority though, otherwise it doesn't scale

@pete @kexkey @robingrant 100% agree

Correct me if I'm wrong in boiling it down this far but-

web 1.0 essentially treated all academic nodes joining as trusted

Web 2.0 uses centralized authorities to say who isn't trusted

But *neither* of these matches how we as humans network irl.

The magic of Bitcoin is POW ostracizing the untrusted outcomes so that moderation happens organically. This can be done socially too where bad actors simply get eliminated and everything just carries on.
1/2

@untappedgrowth @kexkey @robingrant Human networks don't operate at web scale. When they do, they practically always just use central authorities for trust. That's what politicians, media, and lately, social networking is.

@pete @kexkey @robingrant

No way away from that. Humans always work that way whether it is patriarchal family groups, tribe chiefs and medicine men, or warlord groups & kings.

Consensual relationship with authority that enable scaled collaboration but also respects personal sovereignty and freedom of the individual is like THE problem of humanity

@pete @kexkey @robingrant

We just need a Bitcoin level breakthrough of pulling together a unique composite of how to align incentives in order to create an "inevitable game" where trust breakers are ostracized naturally, just like bad blocks are. Possible 😜
2/2

@untappedgrowth @kexkey @robingrant "just" :)

@pete @kexkey @robingrant

exactly 😂 you got my humor

I see the problem. Still believe it is solvable though.

(Same problems exist in governance of human organizations, so I understand I am standing against millennia of human precedent. Rofl)

@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey @robingrant Properly Aligned Incentives. Yes.

@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey @robingrant What is the problem you guys are trying to solve? Isn't just self-hosted blogs with RSS/ATOM enough?

No trusted central authority to store the content that can deplatform/censor you.

You decide who you "follow" and of course you need to trust those you follow, but that's implied, isn't it? You don't need to trust the "network" though.

Now of course there could be attacks on other levels, like DNS, but those should be solved on a lower level.

@ibz

I'm personally thinking in idea space beyond that. In 20 years the world will revolve around BTC and other crypto. How will that happen? Likely not by sudden acceptance by govt & banks. I imagine via expansion of networks which trade in crypto and set their own rules both online and in "meat space" (lol). I'd like to know who is working on that already.
@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey

@ibz @pete @kexkey @robingrant

https://bitcoinhackers.org/@untappedgrowth/105531975140433620

@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey @robingrant Yes, yes. Very good points.

I think Web 3.0 actually is just self-hosted content with people following each other using various tools and using Bitcoin for value transfer.

I actually wrote a post exactly about this https://ibz.me/bitcoin/the-great-software-renaissance/

I think your assumption is that there must be *one* tool (network) to solves this. But it doesn't have to be. There can be various tools that interact with each other.

@ibz @pete @kexkey @robingrant

Sort of. But how do you solve the noise problem?

In a room with the whole world shouting how do you find the voices that matter?

@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey @robingrant For long form, I only follow the blogs I like, of course. That's a personal choice. Plus the client can add further filters on content and simply move articles in various "inboxes" based on keywords.

For short form we'll see. Let's talk in one year on how Mastodon can be improved. So far I like it more than Twitter already. But I think even here it's sort of the same - follow the people you care about. Unfollow / block / ignore when needed.

@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey @robingrant Or are you talking about the problem of discovery? I think that's a very different problem. Some discovery tools can be built on top, and there should be more than one such tool. Otherwise you end up stuck in bubbles, which is a big problem with current social media.

@ibz @pete @kexkey @robingrant

Bingo

https://bitcoinhackers.org/@untappedgrowth/105532197589381793

@ibz @pete @kexkey @robingrant

I agree but the problem exists in the inverse too- how do good voices get found and heard?

This is all good, but we need better tools. Ones that mimic in cyberspace how communities IRL function

@ibz

Have read "the great software renaissance" - it all makes sense. I agree. Perhaps I'm naive but I can see all of that falling into place. What I can't see is how BTC and all the discussion on top of it can facilitate reliable real world interactions. How can I sell products for BTC and deliver them, when any such trade - if openly conducted - will be shut down by governments?
It WILL happen - but how?
@untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey

@robingrant @untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey Yeah, I was talking more about online interactions as opposed to physical products. But even then - which part do you see being "shut down"? The payment? The delivery of the goods?

@ibz @untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey
think of the people who have been arrested for advertising goods in exchange for gold. we don't see trade in BTC because governments don't want it. so we need networks of trust to embrace that, facilitating BTC overtaking of fiat in the real world.

@ibz @untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey

the Steve Mnuchin assault on own custody is a case in point. Governments and banks (my background) do not want BTC payments bypassing the banking system...

@robingrant @untappedgrowth @pete @kexkey Yeah, good point. I think that's hard to bypass for physical goods. They can always find you and put you in jail for using an "illegal currency", right?

@pete @untappedgrowth @kexkey We have federations, right? Just use that?

@bryancyan @pete @kexkey we are talking about something that reaches wayyy beyond that. It essentially is a mashup of human governance structures bridging networks between cyber space and meat space in a way that is both resilient and fluid while still respecting personal sovereignty and freedom