Re: IETF Chair

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 5:01 PM Michael Thomas <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> On 10/14/20 12:16 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:
> >> But 90% of the efforts of the academy and 99% of those of commerce are
> focused on
> >> the Blockchain, an integrity technology.
> > It's worse than that, because not only is most of the effort placed on
> > blockchain technology, blockchain technology is also being pushed as
> > the answer to *everything*.  Blockchain technology has a place, but it
> > doesn't make sense everywhere, and when one says, "Wait, let's take a
> > step back and look at what we really *need* blockchains for, and where
> > we don't," then one seems a heretic... or at best, quaintly naïve.
>
> What place might that be? I really can't think of any. Maybe you can use
> it for buying and selling tulips.
>
> Mike


Every day thousands of courts are presented with digital evidence, pretty
much all of which should be excluded because it is far too easy to tamper
with. I have spent days engaged in pointless arguments over
admissibility that could be avoided entirely.

Every piece of digital evidence that is collected should be time stamped at
the time it is collected and enrolled in a notary service using a one way
sequence. At regular intervals, the notary offering this service should
cross notarize with other notary services, thus making it impossible for
any one notary to defect without detection unless every other notary
colludes. And NIST and every other national lab should run a national cross
notary service whose probity would be automatically considered valid by the
courts of that country.

That is not the sort of construct I see being built in blockchain land.
Noooo, much more fun selling virtual cowrie shells. But it is exactly the
sort of infrastructure we need.


The Mesh will (eventually) provide that capability once I have the Mesh
Naming System running. The objective is to provide the user with the
maximal degree of autonomy possible. So while most Mesh users are going to
outsource management of their Mesh to a service provider, I want to keep
the closest possible control over that provider, ensure that it is
accountable and provide for switching costs. One way sequence technology
provides the basis for accountability and allows a naming infrastructure
model that allows names to be provided for $0.10 for a life-long name
rather than renting them at $10/year.

Take away the stupidity, the criminality and the ecological disaster and
blockchain is built on a very powerful idea.