Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Signature Blocks and URI Sign Requests

From: Peter Vessenes <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2012 14:04:19 -0600

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 <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:55 PM, Luke-Jr <[email-masked]> 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
>
>
>
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-- 

Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839