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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/1/21 2:39 PM, jrzx wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:Kd5T067nPpsV6kLnNeCdTyh4qghAkQAZmBs0NJ5pq50nLdV2nPLj2GEs5lNJskivs1O0XwA-t7UJS9BY8Zp2QNvOBdotK_R8B_e0n0kth08=@protonmail.ch">
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<div>On Tuesday, January 26, 2021 11:24 PM, Ray Dillinger <<a
href="mailto:bear@sonic.net" moz-do-not-send="true">bear@sonic.net</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
you can figure out who double spent it, revoke their cert, and
sue them for<br>
<div>> counterfeiting. But you don't need the authority's help
to see that the record of spends<br>
</div>
<div>> from minting to you is well-formed, and the
double-spend->revoke feature, combined with<br>
</div>
<div>> certs NOT being freely available, should keep instances
of double spending very rare.<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div>"Certs not being freely available" is the number of the beast
problem that crypto currency attempts to address.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
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</blockquote>
<p>If you regard absolute anonymity as the problem that
cryptocurrency attempts to address, then you do not understand
what payment systems are for. There is no motive whatsoever to
pay any absolutely anonymous person for anything. At the very
least you have to know that this is the same person who has
provided the goods or services you are paying for. <br>
</p>
<p>Bitcoin provides a nearly-useless "pseudonymity". People who
aren't the counterparties can tell how much was transferred and
when, and can link each transaction to previous transactions. Its
total public ledger can be used to trace everything. And it can't
scale because of the Block Chain Bandwidth Bottleneck. <br>
</p>
<p>This alternate proposal guarantees "conditional anonymity" -
meaning that anonymity depends on users not breaking protocol with
a double spend or counterfeit. If they don't do that, then nobody
- not even the trusted authority - can tell how much was
transferred, what certs were used in a transaction, or link
previous transactions. <br>
</p>
With no total public ledger appearing anywhere, "melting" of tokens
permanently erasing transactions from the protocol (or at least
providing no protocol-related reasons to keep record of them) and no
way to tell even the AMOUNT of a transaction unless you have one of
the counterparties' private keys, the conditional anonymity here is
IMO substantially better than the pseudonymity provided by Bitcoin.<br>
<p>But anonymity was never really the point, except that people
deserve some privacy. The point is making payments between users
without creating a "Block Chain bandwidth bottleneck." <br>
</p>
<p>Without creating a Block Chain Bandwidth Bottleneck we cannot
discover protocol breaks before the transaction is completed. <br>
</p>
<p>If a transaction that may involve a protocol break is completed
and other transactions made later depend on it, then we have to be
able to provide legal recourse against the thief.<br>
</p>
<p>It is not possible to create viable legal recourse against an
anonymous entity. <br>
</p>
<p>Therefore real-world identities must be associated with
certificates even if, in the absence of protocol breaks, no one
save the counterparties to the transaction will ever be able to
identify which cert was used. <br>
</p>
<p>A protocol break is proof of misconduct, and someone who
misconducts themselves needs to be cut out of the network. But
revoking a cert is meaningless if there is an endless supply of
free certs. So the same information that doxes a thief for legal
recourse is also necessary for doxing a protocol breaker for
revocation. <br>
</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a Trusted Authority is needed to assure that certs
are limited to one per breathing human being. The Trusted
Authority has no means to discover the content of any transaction
or identify the people who made it. There is no reason in fact
for any record of any transaction to be where the Trusted
Authority can see it. <br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:Kd5T067nPpsV6kLnNeCdTyh4qghAkQAZmBs0NJ5pq50nLdV2nPLj2GEs5lNJskivs1O0XwA-t7UJS9BY8Zp2QNvOBdotK_R8B_e0n0kth08=@protonmail.ch">
<div>
<div>A cryptocurrency where you need permission from authority
to own and
spend the currency would have all the defects of the US$, and
none of
the advantages.<br>
</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Observe no end of people being deplatformed and demonetized,
often for no intelligible reason. </div>
</blockquote>
<p>"Permission?" The user gets one cert. Nobody can even tell how
the user is using it or what for. The user has complete control
over whether and when that cert gets revoked. If you don't want
to be revoked/demonetized/deplatformed/censored/canceled/whatever,
then DON'T ATTEMPT A DOUBLE SPEND OR COUNTERFEIT. That's it.
That's all. There's no politics, no opinions, no judgments, no
philosophy beyond the simple bright-line rules of the protocol, no
exceptions for anybody we like or don't like, no other way to
revoke a cert, no technicalities to argue over, and nobody except
the user who can decide whether to abide by or break the rules.</p>
<p>Nobody, not even the Trusted Authority, can tell which
transactions belong to which certs, UNLESS the user revokes by
attempting a double spend. Someone out there is making
transactions someone else doesn't approve of? The Trusted
Authority has absolutely no way of determining who. Nor does
anyone else save the counterparties. All they have is a list of
certs that are currently valid.<br>
</p>
<p>The Trusted Authority here is in the role of making sure that if
someone revokes their cert (by attempting THEFT from one or more
other users) they don't get a new one. And that is all. One cert
per breathing human being, and the Trusted Authority is there not
to make any judgements, nor even to have enough information to
attempt judgements. The Trusted Authority is there solely because
evidence of non-duplicated breathing human beings necessarily
comes from outside the protocol.<br>
</p>
<p>Bear</p>
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