There's no reason that I can see why we can't automate the tedious bits. I can see someone creating some sort of a digital assistant program that applies trust policies to digital identities on behalf of a user. think for example something that applies a digital encoding of "I trust everyone whom I've paid to advertise their specials to me" or "I trust people who prove they live within 5 miles of my home address to send a neighborhood watch message to me", etc.

I'm not sure the specific formulation needed to be successful, but there is clearly value in something that helps people better manage digital trust. It's a shit show right now.

Right. I had some ideas around this previously when thinking around http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex/2012-04-11-pa...

In short each node would have its own risk management profile. Entering a transaction using any settlement path or asset type (even multi-hop transactions involving multiple paths or assets) is the explicit decision of the actor in question, against that risk profile, available information, and its own priorities (eg. must complete by X date, prefer to avoid Y actor/system/asset, etc.)

Because the properties of each settlement network, asset type or actor are able to be formally defined, cross-system automation is possible and new systems with interesting properties are able to present themselves on a fair and equal footing.

Of course, with such lofty goals, it was never finished (I was keen but asked to direct attentions to urgent areas elsewhere), but recently I have begun to revisit it owing to my study of physical logistics networks and scheduling algorithms for my current startup http://8-food.com/

Thanks for the link! I'll check it out. I agree such a system is quite lofty at this point. I can start to see a feasible system in my mind, but IMO we're still just so far away from it working in reality and in practice.

I'm still on the horse for now... sorry to hear you got burnt out at kraken.

Hehe. Just on crypto specifics not the rest :)

I wonder what a protocol might look like based on more cynical assumptions? Let's call it the House protocol because it assumes that everyone is hostile--lying and trying to cheat you. Sadly, I think this a more realistic assumption for the global digital environment.