Am 17.03.2014 um 12:37 schrieb Adam Gibson <ekaggata@???>:
>
> Consider the two obvious applications: 1 Silk Road 2 fiat-BTC trade.
>
> 1 Silk Road - transfer of goods is irreversible, but not verifiable.

I think in markets you have some hard to verify attributes included (delivery time, customer care, product description meet expactation,…) so a kind of rating/reputation system is useful (and will be created off-system if not provided by the system), even if it will never be perfect.

>
> 2 fiat-BTC transfer of fiat is verifiable (ssl logging) but not fully
> irreversible (although it can come VERY close).

With an exchange the trade is more like a binary operation. Either the trade was completed like defined or not (including timeout).
But with the rare but possible case of bank chargebacks or stolen bank accounts the verification process can be tricked (trade was successful, locked BTC funds are released, but then the Fiat got reversed or frozen). So for that cases an additional protection is needed.
Blacklisting and/or identity verification could help, but maybe a kind of collateral/deposit which is pegged to the identity would be the most efficient protection.
That way any scam will result in a loss of the collateral and the scammed person will receive a reparation from that.
There must be an arbitration entity which guarantees enough fairness and stability to hold that collateral.
The maximum allowed trade volume in a certain time period could be limited from the amount of the collateral paid in.
Drawback is that you need a certain amount of BTC to start buying BTC…

Maybe there could be off-systems markets where you can get a BTC mortgage against some surety bond (reputation, smart contracts,…).

To go in that direction the arbitration will become more and more central and powerful as we move all those trust problems over to the arbitration system.
Its true that with MultiSig there are no theft risks (beside collusion), but other new problems might to be problematic and hard to solve:
- Entry costs (to become an arbitrator) need to be low so it will not lead to monopolies
- The max. arbitration volume might be pegged to the collateral, so that might lead to centralisation (a rich arbitrtor can take more jobs as he paid more collateral in, and get richer with doing more jobs)
- Legal status of arbitrators can turn out that they have to be registered businesses with all the implications (regulation, governmental control,...)
- Prevent cartel building and influence of bigger companies having many pseudo-independent sub-contractors as arbitrators (see real life examples like the real estate agency Remax,…)
- Fee policy could lead to kick out competitors (monopoly building)
- Sock puppets cannot be prevented completely. Even with real life ID verification a company can hire many arbitrators using their ID but in fact the company has full control about all those arbitrators.
- More exposed to DDos attacks as the arbitrators are limited and well known nodes

I think best would be to get the arbitrators down to the user level with very low entry costs, otherwise it could lead to some power concentration like we see it with mining pools in BTC.
Maybe some structure like in liquid democracy could be used:
Everyone has the basic right and possibility to be an arbitrator. If he does not like to take that chance/job he can delegate it further up in a trust line (give his arbitrator right to some he knows or abort it).

br,
Manfred



>
> Because of these limitations, users will always want some
> identity/reputation tagging.
> Thinking in this way, you could see that many users can and WILL create
> or rely on existing reputation systems, no matter what we do. However
> for special cases, they can and would use such systems anonymously, with
> no reputation, and be very happy to do so.
>
> These ideas are fleshed out at
> https://github.com/AdamISZ/stegabank/blob/master/protocol.md
>
>
> On 03/17/2014 12:44 PM, Manfred Karrer wrote:
>> Hi Jaume,
>>
>> I did not want to say it has not value, often it matches well with the real expectation.
>>
>> But I think those reputation systems only have a limited validity from the data from where the reputation is derived. Like in bitcointalk its the number of posts and the activity (post over period of time, so regular long time posters has more value), and to fake that with sock puppets means a certain amount of work have to be spent, so sock puppets with "Hero Member" attribute are probably very rare.
>> Of course it is not easy from a usability point of view to present the user a more complex reputation algorithm as pure data, so they tend to make easy to understand categories like "Hero Member", but at the end those are misleading. If the user only gets presented the naked facts, he need to derive in his brain a high level attribute from that (> 500 posts -> experienced user,….) and he would be more aware of the relation and limitations of that process.
>>
>> Back to the exchange project, I assume that reputation manipulation with self-trades cannot be prevented, so I am wondering if it is better to avoid reputation completely, as providing no data seems better than providing (possibly) false data (due sybil). And in the exchange project the reputation would only serve for punishing scammers who do bank chargebacksor use stolen bank accounts, as the rest is covered by arbitrators.
>> But for those kind of scams a blacklisting by an arbitrator with a proof of the scam is justified, and then reputation is not needed as well.
>>
>> For other use cases a more soft approach might be justified also because often there are no hard facts available, so human intelligence/judgements is needed to derive meaningful conclusions. Like with "upvoting", "+1" or "like" its fine to have those tools which does not imply a precise valuation and have no critical consequences (other as in an exchange when you trust a sock puppet and can be a victim of a scam).
>> But I guess all of us know how limited those approaches are as well. See how poor the reddit scoring works in realitiy. Gossiping outrival content too often….
>>
>> br,
>> Manfred
>>
>>
>> Am 17.03.2014 um 08:36 schrieb jaume <jaume@???>:
>>
>>>
>>>> To provide measurable data is one thing, to derive from that data
>>>> qualitative statements is problematic.
>>>> As example see the bitcointalk "reputation" categories like "Hero Member",
>>>> etc…
>>>> It does not mean really much that one is categorized as "Hero Membe". It
>>>> only means he has posted a lot. So better to display only that naked data
>>>> and not derive any unprovable statements.
>>>
>>> Even though there is a history of "hero members" that were scammers, being
>>> a hero member provides some kind of "proof of work". As the posts are
>>> public, it is possible to evaluate the quality of such posts. A member
>>> that has posted a large number of high quality posts over the years
>>> deserves some "reputation" as it has contributed to the community. As this
>>> reputation has a "value", the user has some incentive to preserve that
>>> reputation by being legit. I have the feeling that the number of scammers
>>> is higher in the ranks of "junior members" than it is in the ranks of
>>> "hero members".
>>>
>>> My belief is that we are moving towards a "reputation economy" in which
>>> what is important is what we contribute to the community and not what we
>>> have.
>>>
>>> Peace :)
>>> Jaum
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
>>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem