[Cryptography] Need a better name

[ianG]

On 12/11/2016 22:28, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> ​...
> But what if the file isn't static? Well the obvious approach is to use a
> public key signature in some way. In the Mesh, I use this to
> authenticate profiles as follows:
>
> 1) Each profile has a unique signature key.
>
> 2) The unique identifier of the profile is the fingerprint of the public key
>
> There are some other features I might add in the future such as
> checkpointing against a linked log but that is the basic concept.
>
> Problem is, what to call it?

In my world it's called a smart contract, but I can understand that 
isn't going to make you happy [0].  Indeed, it isn't really a smart 
contract but a smart object or even better a networked or consensus object.

Things to think about:

  * what happens when private key is compromised?  For this reason the 
smart object idea is nice - the object can accept a new key under some 
conditions.

  * what happens when the key is re-used for two documents?  Is it then 
by definition the same?  or different?  Or?

  * from my thinking, the initial creation of the object seems best to 
be empty.  And then the first instance is pushed into the object as 
first action.  Which means we might likely need an immutable chain of 
events.  But this might be too far away from your use case.

iang