Privacy and memory

Fully private systems, like Aleo, will be mostly memoryless systems (memory will be provided only by an individual’s viewing keys).

These systems will allow for a class of application we haven’t seen online before - UTXO/records as rai stones that just happened to materialize along with a zkp.

Given that fully private systems will be memoryless black boxes with zero-knowledge proofs, one cannot verify that a contract path got executed in the exact same way that you would have wanted. Therefore, it makes no sense to cling to the notion of traditional execution, and one should focus on the result that one wanted to achieve.

This would seem to indicate that private systems lend themselves to intent-based approaches.

Small world

We do not intend to enforce any sort of identity verification or unique identities in distributed[C]. We do not think encouraging people to doxx themselves is a good idea.

This goes beyond concerns about privacy, though. We believe that having multiple personas, which you can use depending on the context you are in, is healthy.

This raises concerns regarding disinformation. If the platform is uncensorable, and we do not plan to enforce identity, how will this not become a cesspool of fake news?

Identity, Privacy, and the Edge

Introduction

My goals for this talk are to:

  • Give a small taxonomy going into categories and labels that I think are useful when talking about identity;
  • Walk you through what a layered conceptual model for identity could be like;
  • Talk about the privacy implications for how we go about implementing things;
  • Hopefully convince you that the closer to the edge we process things, the better it is for the user, but that the edge does not guarantee privacy (no matter what the Blue Behemoth whose name starts with an F would like people to believe).

Slides at Speakerdeck.

The Truth of The Thing

A talk on conceptual accessibility being fundamental for adoption, while discussing mistakes I’ve made.

Slides at Speakerdeck.

Ledgers - When would you even

I delivered this talk at SAP Inside Track Berlin in September 2018. The audience was mostly enterprise developers, almost all of them specifically working with SAP as a platform.

Given how many companies I’ve seen flirting with the idea of distributed ledgers, I thought it would be useful to give people an idea of which cases I see as being a good fit for them, to give them a leg up the next time it enters the discussion.

Slides at Speakerdeck.

Remember the rubber hose

I delivered Remember The Rubber Hose, a talk on privacy and distributed applications, at DappCon Berlin 2018. Skipping the introduction and going straight to the beef…

Slides at Speakerdeck.