[messaging] Namecoin

[elijah]

On 08/20/2014 07:39 PM, Tony Arcieri wrote:

> I remember staring at Zooko's triangle in the days before Bitcoin and
> thinking it was unsolvable, and in that regard, Namecoin was a bit of a
> revelation. I had a bit of an "a-ha" moment reading Aaron Swartz's
> original post about squaring Zooko's triangle.

Another way to look at it is that Zooko's triangle is alive and well, in
the sense that a single global append-only log is a central authority,
just one that is the result of a majority vote, so we feel better about it.

There may be ways to feel better about uniqueness and human memorability
too.

If only we could all just use our face as our identifier. It is unique
enough, usually, certainly memorable, usually, and there is no central
authority deciding what face we can use (yet).

Speaking of biometrics, someone just told me that they now make
temporary tattoos with RFID chips and now I really want a neck tattoo
that people have to scan with their phone to get my public key (the
idiocy of RFID aside). All of my preference for a federated PKI
infrastructure has gone out the door the moment I thought how cool it
would look to have a public key on my neck in the shape of a bird
tattoo. Also, much easier to change than your face when you need to.

-elijah