Re:Show HN: Cost of a 51% Attack on Popular Cryptocurrencies
by askmike on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @05:50AM
(#17177757)
That is about as far from a decentralised system as I can imagine, we now all have to trust the Estonian government (everyone part of the e-ID chain).
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Re:Show HN: Cost of a 51% Attack on Popular Cryptocurrencies
by Iv on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @09:18PM
(#17184219)
For ID systems, I have yet to find a way to do registration in a decentralized way. Until we get cheap unspoofable genome sequencing devices (which may never be a thing), we will have to trust some authorities.
Once registered, you don't need to trust the Estonian government at all: you get an IC card and a reader (all open source IIRC) and you can autonomously authenticate. If memory serves, you can even authenticate pseudonymously.
Note that you don't have to trust everyone, you have to trust the e-ID registration system as a whole. That is, a single flawed individual won't be enough to corrupt the whole thing.
Re:Show HN: Cost of a 51% Attack on Popular Cryptocurrencies
by askmike on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @04:43AM
(#17186098)
> we will have to trust some authorities
Which is fine, but than don't talk about cryptocurrencies. These are supposed to be trustless, not trustless-except-we-all-have-to-trust-the-government. Just talk about some new state system that uses some cryptography somewhere.