I don't think it's minimally invasive to layer PGP's web of trust on top of Bitcoin, in fact, the opposite. From a certain angle, bitcoin exists as a sort of answer / alternate solution to the web of trust. Digital cash with an existing web of trust in place was a working concept in the mid-1990s, courtesy of David Chaum, I believe. I totally agree on the kitchen sink concern; I would personally like to see something like a one-year required discussion period on all non-security changes proposed to the blockchain protocol. We know almost nothing about how bitcoin will be used over the next 20 years; I believe it's a mistake to bulk up the protocol too rapidly right now. There's a famous phrase from the founder of Lotus about Lotus' engineering process: "add lightness." The equivalent for protocol design might be "add simplicity." I'd like to see us adding simplicity for now, getting a core set of tests together for alternate implementations like libbitcoin, and thinking hard about the dangers of cruft over a 10+ year period when it comes to a technology which will necessarily include a complete history of every crufty decision embodied in transaction histories. Peter On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Wladimir wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:55 PM, Luke-Jr wrote: > >> On Tuesday, April 03, 2012 2:46:17 PM Gavin Andresen wrote: >> > We should avoid reinventing the wheel, if we can. I think we should >> > extend existing standards whenever possible. >> >> I wonder if it's possible to make sigs compatible with PGP/EC ? >> > > Or we could take a step back, further into "don't reinvent the wheel" > territory. Why not simply make use of PGP(/EC) to sign and verify messages? > It has many advantages, like an already existing web-of-trust and keyserver > infrastructure. > > I still feel like this is sign message stuff is dragging the kitchen sink > into Bitcoin. It's fine for logging into a website, what you use it for, > but anything that approaches signing email (such as S/MIME implementations > and handling different character encodings) is going too far IMO. > > Wladimir > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Better than sec? Nothing is better than sec when it comes to > monitoring Big Data applications. Try Boundary one-second > resolution app monitoring today. Free. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-dev2dev > _______________________________________________ > Bitcoin-development mailing list > Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development > > -- Peter J. Vessenes CEO, CoinLab M: 206.595.9839