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Comment by p2pai | Hacker News Reader

A zero-knowledge way of sharing and validating data is the direction we shd move towards. So for example, how can i convince the apartment office that i am a good renter without sharing my personal information? Technology solutions exist for this, just not used.

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Because trust has a social aspect to it, along with technical. The tech may exist, but it is going to be quite hard, if not impossible, to explain to an average person how cryptographically verified evidence of the piece of information is better than the person just accessing said information.

Exactly. And also one of the main reasons why we don't see "blockchain" getting into the mainstream products. If consumers don't understand the true benefit (or even requirement) of it, it won't work. It's really tough to convince consumers to replace soul trust with cryptography.

Block chain doesn't replace trust. If you are strong enough, i.e. control enough mining activity, you pretty much can do whatever you want. All it does, is formalize the same solutions for trust society has evolved.

The downside is that it naturalizes the abuses and make them morally justified.

Public/private keypairs.

Solved problem since Nam.

Politics/business nexus. Unsolved problem since the dawn of time.

Lack of technology education.

People spend time, money, effort on things important to them.

Things can't be important if they're not on someone's radar.

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