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uberman

So in theory, I can pay a small premium to rob you. Is that the basic premise of how this works?

You (assuming you are the author of the service) challenge people to find a flaw in your game theory.

Here it is. The world if full of trolls.

You have a 1000 dollar camera and I want to borrow it. I put up 1100 bucks and you put up your camera and 100 bucks.

If I'm a troll and enjoy making internet people suffer and happen to actually want a camera.

Then I can get yours and for an extra 100 bucks cause you to personally lose your camera and 100 bucks.

Sounds like the dream scheme for affluent trolls to leverage 100 bucks into 1100 of pain.

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Don't make it a small premium then, or make yourself the beneficiary, you're in control of the terms, the other party can choose to accept them or not.

"It’s important to note as well that each of the fields in the contract are totally open for customization. You can make the “Agreed upon 3rd party” the lender. Or you can change the collateral amounts based on trust levels. If you feel like there’s an asymmetry of risk, you can up the collateral on either side of the contract before signing. It’s all in your hands."

Sometimes I read things from crypto maxis and wonder if they’ve ever read what history was like when there was no trust (and thus no credit) and everything operated in manners such as the above.

Like, I get it, I do: the Fed is out of control (ahem, my username) and inflation yada yada. But in no way is this better from a capital efficiency/economic utility/user experience perspective. I’d rather just book a hotel or airbnb where my credit card can play the role of escrow, or judge and jury (or an actual judge and jury if things really go sideways).

I'd suppose the maxis would argue that services would spring up to take a small fee, post the collateral, negotiate fair resolution to disputes, etc ... but then they're halfway to reinventing rental agencies, insurance and credit cards and all that with sprinkling of operational and exchange rate risk thrown on top.

Would you be surprised that there is a “justice as a service” startup that is reinventing the court system on blockchain?

You’re right!

The issue with these trolls is that all that history exists publicly on the blockchain

So if someone is a troll you’ll see their transaction history of multiple blown up contracts and you’ll know to stay away

Not everyone is “rational” given the incentives, but you can choose who you play with based on how they’ve treated others

That provides another mechanism for abuse that cannot be fixed, or will not. Abuse via other’s id and they are left with the perpetual fallout

Can’t they just create multiple accounts?

You can limit account creation with KYC and have a ratings system where you can choose who to do business with (taking less risk by staying with high-rated people etc)

You're just moving goalposts here. A distributed "ratings system" has the exact same problems: fixing ratings, spamming someone with fake ratings, etc.

A rating system isn’t needed here. Just a history of transactions (% contracts successfully completed is a good metric)

+ Communities can decide who they let into these groups, or boot people who are multiple offenders

So it’s not all anonymous trolls, there’s context around each person that allows you to filter who is a troll

Can't you just game the metric and do transaction with yourself? (With other fake accounts)

That doesn't sound very decentralized at all, lol.

Why not? These are researched areas in the field and people are finding solutions to things like decentralized identities, multi-chain ratings, etc...

KYC != decentralized identities. I have never heard of anyone working on an actually-decentralized system capable of proving that you are Fred, as opposed to merely rate limiting the speed at which you can create accounts (which one might argue is sufficient, but isn't KYC). It might be that you are merely misusing the term, and meant something like sybil-resistant pseudonyms?

Doesn't sound very decentralized to me.

Why not? These are researched areas in the field and people are finding solutions to things like decentralized identities, multi-chain ratings, etc...

Copying and pasting the same comment doesn't improve the quality of discussion, it just looks like you're not actually paying attention.

Two people said the same thing and I wanted to discuss it with either

Projects like BrightID allow for rate limiting account creation through crowdsourcing real person verification.

That's where something like BrightID would help.

https://www.brightid.org/

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