[Cryptography] Anonymous rendezvous (was Business opportunities in crypto)

[jrzx]

> > > Introducing a bunch of fancy words doesn't change anything.
> > > No, it still makes no sense. If you don't know who you're
> > > talking to,

> > But you do know who you are talking to. What you don't
> > know is where he is, what he looks like, or how to send thugs
> > around to his place for speaking crimethoughts or to seize
> > his assets.

> Did you read the original message you're replying to?
>
> "[The participants] (a) are "strongly distributed" -
> "strongly" because we want to assume no connections
> between participants except those explicitly desired;
> (b) no trusted third parties"
>
> What exactly is "reputation" if not (a) an implicit
>  communication through intermediaries to deliver information
> about the party involved; (b) trusted third parties:
> You are trusting their evaluations. Zero for two.

Consider bitmessage.


bitmessage is strongly distributed - no connections
between participants except those explicitly desired;
and no trusted third parties

Your id on bit message is a random looking string which is derived from the hash of your public key, and the messages
are distributed in a way that makes it almost impossible
to associate an ip with an id.

This is exactly the technology that you say does not work
and cannot be done, yet quite obviously people do acquire
reputation on pseudonymous bit message forums.

If we had a cryptocurrency running over something
like bitmessage, there would be businesses running over
bitmessage.

Businesses attempted to run over tor onion services ids,
which work on the same principle as bitmessage ids
- a random looking string constructed from the hash of
the key.

They had no problem acquiring reputation - their problem
was that tor is in the hands of our enemies.

So, proof of existence.  The technology you say cannot
work, does work, has worked.  It exists, it has been used
repeatedly and successfully.

No connections except those explicitly desired, no
"trusted" third parties, other than equally unofficial
and pseudonmymous peers, thus strongly distributed - no
"trusted" party at the center.