[mnet-devel] reconsidering fundamental Mnet architecture

[Zooko]

Kyle:

Thanks for rambling on.  I just now got around to reading your whole letter 
again, and more thoroughly.

> Hmmm.  I'm going to ramble aimlessly, but I might get somewhere worthwhile
> eventually.
...
> Once you have an identity, there's the problem of demonstrating it.  If you
> do it well (PGP WoT style), it's too hard for end users.  If you don't do
> it well, it's easy for attackers.

I'm definitely not going anywhere near that whole "certification to avoid man-
in-the-middle" tarpit.

If the friendnet idea works out like I hope, then the current behavior from the 
point of view of the user should be implementable as a variation on it.  That 
is: suppose that each node has a notion of who its friends are and it shares 
only with them, then you could instruct your node that a bunch of random 
strangers are its friends and then it should behave similarly to the current 
system.

The Mnet software that you download to get started could have a bunch of random-
strangers-as-friends hardcoded in for bootstrapping.

Of course, the reason I am interested in friendnet is that I think sharing with 
random strangers is problematic.  If I'm right, then intercourse with random 
strangers might result in people hogging your resources, denial-of-servicing 
you, having you arrested and thrown in jail, and so forth.

But my ideal software would enable both kinds of operation, and even allow 
interoperation between people with different friendnet policies.

--Z



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