Re: overcoming ecash deployment problems (Re: all about transferable off-line ecash)
At 10:57 AM 4/11/2002 -0400, Adam Shostack wrote: >Thus, ecash deployment is a 3 party problem, where most new >technologies that succeed are not. Actually, it is worse than this. Credit cards are a four party transaction. Mostly for historical reasons, but still, the customer's card is presented to a merchant, who presents the slips to a "acquiring bank" who then talks to the "issuing bank" to get money from the customer. The banks maintain this system when it has long outlived its historical justification. Similarly, checks are a four party transaction. Real cash is a two party transaction, but nearly everything else has four or more. So to begin with, you need to work it as a four party problem. You will have to bribe one or more parties to make them agree to drop out of the party. Pat Pat Farrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pfarrell.com
Re: "How do we trust bits?"
At 01:43 AM 4/11/2002 -0500, Jim Choate wrote: >On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Pat Farrell wrote: >> Banks exchange bits thru the ACH networks based on >> a belief that their exchange is valid. > >No, they exchange bits based on a very expensive and complicated protocol >that has a variety of safe guards built into it. You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion. I don't see it that way. And I think the difference is important. My work at CyberCash, where we did the exchanges over ACH and Vital and other networks shows that the protocols were not actually very expensive or strongly complicated. Baroque, yes, overly complex to imply security by obscurity, yes. and to serve as a barrier to entry to keep out the unwashed and untrusted, of course yes. CyberCash was allowed to plug in and use the networks not because of some cryptographic wizardry. Rather it was because the founder (Bill Melton) and several of the VPs had years of experience working with the banks. The trust was with the people, not with the bits. Pat Pat Farrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pfarrell.com
Re: "How do we trust bits?"
At 07:29 PM 4/10/2002 -0700, Tim May wrote: >How do we trust bits to represent money? >I argue that the question is, as stated, not well-grounded at this time. I agree. It is interesting to be back on cypherpunks after a five or more year vacation, only to find most of the same discussions we had ten years ago. >Trust. Trust is a misleading concept. I think this is key. Trust was used in the early crypto papers as a handy word that had very little of the emotional baggage that people place on it now. The whole mangling of Certification Authorities and whether trust is transitive is missing the point. Alice trusts money because she can get ice cream cones. Banks exchange bits thru the ACH networks based on a belief that their exchange is valid. Bits are bits, there is no way to know that the bits are special; yet there is a cultural contract that allows money to move. Recent discussions talk about money in consumer terms. Banks move millions on faith alone. Large banks, mortgage houses, etc. move billions of dollars (with a B) with far less real security than many cypherpunks would use to secure a Tim May rant. >Furthermore, the entire "is-a" object model, where "is-a bank" and "has-an account >balance of" can and SHOULD (IMO) be replaced with a more realistic and more >interesting model of "believes." All of digital money is recastable in terms of Alice >believes, Bob believes, Charles believes, etc. All of finance is about belief. Yes, Bank A believes that the bits coming down the Fedwire belong to Bank B. That is how money moves today. And there is a risk that this is not true, which is one of the things banks are paid to do: assess the probability of getting paid back for a transaction, and charging accordingly. We need to ask better questions if we expect to stop talking about the same real and imagined problems ten years from now. Pat Pat Farrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pfarrell.com
