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stephantul • today at 5:45 AM • 4 replies • view on HN

IMO: trust-based systems only work if they carry risk. Your own score should be linked to the people you "vouch for" or "denounce".

This is similar to real life: if you vouch for someone (in business for example), and they scam them, your own reputation suffers. So vouching carries risk. Similarly, if you going around someone is unreliable, but people find out they actually aren't, your reputation also suffers. If vouching or denouncing become free, it will become too easy to weaponize.

Then again, if this is the case, why would you risk your own reputation to vouch for anyone anyway.

Replies

ashton314 • today at 6:16 AM

> Then again, if this is the case, why would you risk your own reputation to vouch for anyone anyway.

Good reason to be careful. Maybe there's a bit of an upside to: if you vouch for someone who does good work, then you get a little boost too. It's how personal relationships work anyway.

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I'm pretty skeptical of all things cryptocurrency, but I've wondered if something like this would be an actually good use case of blockchain tech…

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skeptic_ai • today at 9:12 AM

Think Epstein but in code. Everyone would vouch for him as he’s hyper connected. So he’d get a free pass all the way. Until all blows in our faces and all that vouched for him now gets flagged. The main issue is that can take 10-20 years for it to blow up.

Then you have introverts that can be good but have no connections and won’t be able to get in.

So you’re kind of selecting for connected and good people.

__turbobrew__ • today at 6:15 AM

> Then again, if this is the case, why would you risk your own reputation to vouch for anyone anyway.

Maybe your own vouch score goes up when someone you vouched for contributes to a project?

ares623 • today at 7:55 AM

I've been thinking in a similar space lately, about how a "parallel web" could look like.

One of my (admittedly half baked) ideas was a vouching similar with real world or physical incentives. Basically signing up requires someone vouching, similar to this one where there is actual physical interaction between the two. But I want to take it even further -- when you signup your real life details are "escrowed" in the system (somehow), and when you do something bad enough for a permaban+, you will get doxxed.