I think a reputation network is more complicated than is needed for this. This can be solved by the market. What is needed is a simple method for each individual user to mark certain merchant as trusted. For example, if your device gets an untrusted payment request, it'll make a small sound, light up the screen and ask the user to authorize the payment. The user then has the choice of adding the merchant to trust list, authorizing just a single transaction or not paying (and perhaps adding to the user's publicly shared untrusted list?). This way, even lacking a trust architecture, only the first payment to a merchant needs to take several seconds. If trust is granted, the next payments will be swift. The lack of chargebacks presents a clear risk to the customer, though, so a need for a third party that can keep the merchants honest exists. This opens up markets for transaction insurance companies. Even though bitcoin transactions are final, if a transaction insurance company offers to cover your losses in the event of fraudulent charge, the risk is practically eliminated. Such an insurance company would have a strong incentive to make sure the merchants they insure for behave. Otherwise they'll suffer the losses. I think this would result in an equally trustworthy but more decentralized system than with credit cards. - Joel On 06.03.2014 16:20, Brooks Boyd wrote: > > > On Mar 6, 2014 3:47 AM, "Mike Hearn" > wrote: > > > > I just did my first contactless nfc payment with a MasterCard. It > worked very well and was quite delightful - definitely want to be > doing more of these in future. I think people will come to expect this > kind of no-friction payment experience and Bitcoin will need to match > it, so here are some notes on what's involved. > > > > 3) Have some kind of decentralised reputation network. I spent some > time thinking about this, but it rapidly became very complicated and > feels like an entirely separate project that should stand alone from > Bitcoin itself. Perhaps rather than try to make a global system, > social data could be exchanged (using some fancy privacy preserving > protocols?) so if your friends have decided to trust seller X, your > phone automatically trusts them too. > > A reputation network might be an interesting idea, or several > different networks with different curators (to prevent complete > centralization), like how the US credit score system has three main > companies who track your score. Something like a GPG ring of trust, > with addresses signing other addresses would work well, if some sort > of Stealth address or HD wallet root was the identity gaining the > reputation, then address re-use wouldn't have to be mandatory. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Subversion Kills Productivity. Get off Subversion & Make the Move to Perforce. > With Perforce, you get hassle-free workflows. Merge that actually works. > Faster operations. Version large binaries. Built-in WAN optimization and the > freedom to use Git, Perforce or both. Make the move to Perforce. > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=122218951&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > > > _______________________________________________ > Bitcoin-development mailing list > Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development