I don&#39;t think it&#39;s minimally invasive to layer PGP&#39;s web of trust on top of Bitcoin, in fact, the opposite. <div><br></div><div>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.</div>

<div><br></div><div>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&#39;s a mistake to bulk up the protocol too rapidly right now.</div>

<div><br></div><div>There&#39;s a famous phrase from the founder of Lotus about Lotus&#39; engineering process: &quot;add lightness.&quot; The equivalent for protocol design might be &quot;add simplicity.&quot; I&#39;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.</div>

<div><br></div><div>Peter</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Wladimir <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:laanwj@gmail.com">laanwj@gmail.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">

<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:55 PM, Luke-Jr <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:luke@dashjr.org" target="_blank">luke@dashjr.org</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">


<div>On Tuesday, April 03, 2012 2:46:17 PM Gavin Andresen wrote:<br>
&gt; We should avoid reinventing the wheel, if we can. I think we should<br>
&gt; extend existing standards whenever possible.<br>
<br>
</div>I wonder if it&#39;s possible to make sigs compatible with PGP/EC ?<br></blockquote></div><div><br>Or we could take a step back, further into &quot;don&#39;t reinvent the wheel&quot; 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.<br>


<br>I still feel like this is sign message stuff is dragging the kitchen sink into Bitcoin. It&#39;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. <br>

<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<br>Wladimir<br><br></font></span></div></div>
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