Re:In Response to My first impressions of Web3
by jhgb on Saturday January 08, 2022 @09:17AM
(#29851864)
> - trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest
Shouldn't that be "at least one participant is assumed to be unreliable/dishonest"?
Re:In Response to My first impressions of Web3
by oblio on Saturday January 08, 2022 @09:21AM
(#29851886)
They're equivalent. If at least 1 participant is unreliable/dishonest and I don't know which one, the only logical reaction is to treat them all the same until I can determine the culpable one.
Re:In Response to My first impressions of Web3
by anonymouse008 on Saturday January 08, 2022 @11:06AM
(#29852920)
Perhaps, but it feels a bit like the Monty Hall paradox/game. If you know which ones are more truthful, then the odds aren't as bad as "everyone must be guilty until proven innocent."
"Innocent until proven guilty," the modus operandi of the US judicial system, at least in theory, is the design of a system that assumes trust and removes offenders.
Re:In Response to My first impressions of Web3
by rglullis on Saturday January 08, 2022 @12:27PM
(#29853839)
It's not about "justice" or "fairness". It's about "correctness". An "honest" agent with stale data is as unreliable as the "dishonest" one.
When dealing with Byzantine-style problems, there is no such thing of "who is more truthful?", just "what is the consensus that should be agreed on?"
Repeat after me: "blockchain is only required if you want to solve a problem that deals with permissionless, trustless and distributed consensus".
- permissionless: no previous vetting/authentication/authorization of any participant. If you can a priori authenticate users, you can have a decentralized system with Paxos, and you can run a "decentralized" governance system based on simple "web of trust".
- trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest
- distributed: the network can suffer disconnections and partitions, but the overall system can still work.
If you can choose who will be allowed to define "consensus", you can use other BFT consensus solutions, so no blockchain is needed.
If you have a "cooperative" model, this assumes that you can trust the participants, so no blockchain is needed.
If your system can withstand network disconnections/partitions, no blockchain is needed.