{"id":1054,"date":"2011-12-09T09:57:14","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T17:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.colliertech.org\/cj\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2011-12-09T09:58:45","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T17:58:45","slug":"bitcoin-wot-using-pgpsks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/?p=1054","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin WoT using PGP\/SKS"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was recently a post<\/a> to the sks list prompting discussion regarding the use of PGP and SKS as a distributed web of trust for an alternative currency system called “Bitcoin.” This reminds me of a project<\/a> I worked on in the early ’00s with the late Jeff Fairhall<\/a> and Thomas Greco<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, I mumbled some things on IRC about my thoughts:<\/p>\n

\r\n08:23 < cj> nanotube: I got your email on the sks list\r\n08:32 < cj> nanotube: the reason SKS keyservers work at this \r\n            point is because there is little interest in PGP WoT\r\n08:32 < cj> or PGP in general\r\n08:33 < cj> cjac@pki:~$ df -h \/var\/lib\/sks\r\n08:33 < cj> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted \r\n            on\r\n08:33 < cj> \/dev\/xvda2             14G  9.0G  4.2G  69% \r\n            \/var\/lib\/sks\r\n08:34 < cj> if a major monetary system were to \"piggyback\" on \r\n            the existing network, maintenance of pub keys would \r\n            become unmanageable\r\n08:34 < cj> nanotube: read through the sks archive with an eye \r\n            toward database size\r\n08:36 < cj> there are a total of a bit more than 3M keys in the \r\n            db at this point.\r\n08:36 < cj> http:\/\/keyserver.colliertech.org:11371\/pks\/lookup?op=stats\r\n08:38 < cj> My database becomes corrupt every 3 months or so \r\n            and I need to re-build it.  This may just be user \r\n            error, and probably is.  However, I do not seem to \r\n            be the only one who suffers from this problem.\r\n08:40 < cj> Assuming that there are on average about 5 keys in \r\n            the db per participant, that means the 9G of key \r\n            data represents 600K humans.\r\n08:42 < cj> which is roughly 0.000085719% of the world's \r\n            population\r\n08:43 < cj> if we want to support the other 100% of the \r\n            population, we need to implement intelligent \r\n            sharding or improve the efficiency of the data store\r\n09:04 -!- OneFixt is now known as Guest66546\r\n09:06 -!- Guest66546 is now known as OneFixt\r\n09:08 < cj> note that operating a key server which stores \r\n            anything less than the full set of public keys \r\n            compromises the integrity of the system.  The \r\n            primary objective of the key server is to be a \r\n            complete store of the set so that there is no \r\n            central authority.\r\n09:16 < cj> from the wiki page:  \"Since the web of trust node \r\n            keys will over time grow long with a bunch of UIDs, \r\n            it is likely that you may not want to use your \r\n            regular key for this purpose, and would probably \r\n            want to create a separate key. If you want to tie \r\n            your regular PGP identity to this key, you can \r\n            simply cross-sign your regular key with your web of \r\n            trust key.\"\r\n09:18 < cj> this assumes that there is an infinite amount of \r\n            storage on each SKS key server.  If everybody's key \r\n            will over time grow long with a bunch of UIDs\", \r\n            then we will see a very large number of very large \r\n            keys.\r\n09:19 < cj> I recommend that bitcoin participants manage their \r\n            own SKS pool while developing the proof of concept. \r\n            This will reduce the noise caused in the public \r\n            pool.\r\n09:20 < cj> and will give the developers an understanding of \r\n            the implications of their design decisions\r\n09:22 < cj> here are some thoughts I had on the subject a \r\n            decade or so ago and RMS' responses:\r\n09:22 < cj> http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20030812201116\/http:\/\/gnubucks.com\/impressions\/rms.html\r\n<\/pre>\n\n
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There was recently a post to the sks list prompting discussion regarding the use of PGP and SKS as a distributed web of trust for an alternative currency system called “Bitcoin.” This reminds me of a project I worked on in the early ’00s with the late Jeff Fairhall and Thomas Greco. Anyhow, I mumbled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,172,124,187,79,125,63,101,127],"tags":[283],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-224","category-cj-insider","category-cryptography","category-finance","category-free-software","category-pgp","category-politics","category-security","category-washington","tag-283"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1YDIB-h0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1057,"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.c9h.org\/cj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}