
TrustDavis: A Non-Exploitable Online Reputation System [pdf] - kwikiel
http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~defigued/index_files/trustdavis.pdf
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Animats
The short version:

"In TrustDavis, the ability to issue multiple identities or to change identity
does not provide a significant advantage to a malicious party, since a
malicious party must back each identity with funds that other players can use
to protect their transactions".

"Individuals with no references can join TrustDavis through the use of
security deposits."

"There should be some incentive for parties to provide references and take on
risk. Thus, parties can function as insurers and charge a premium for the
references they provide."

From that, you can see where this is going. The basic problem with online
reputation systems, of course, is that creating a new pseudonym is usually
quite cheap. This is a way to make it more expensive.

From a marketing perspective, it's not going to fly. If you had to put up a
deposit to buy on eBay or to get a Gmail account or to post on Facebook or
Hacker News, few would bother. There are, however, dating sites which require
this of men.

~~~
bmelton
Also, one has to assume, it's easily exploitable by those for which the
deposit is not an obstacle... e.g., the rich, and also those making money off
of their scams.

Totally worthwhile to pay a $5,000 if it means I can successfully defraud
someone for > $5,000 to cover it. If I can time the frauds well enough, I can
defraud a number of people with my "good" reputation, then just abandon it.

~~~
kwikiel
The whole point is that system will be stable and secure if cost to fraud X
amount of money will be higher than X. Otherwise there will be always a way to
scam people - just waiting to be discovered.

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drcode
There's also EigenTrust, a competing algorithmic approach:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EigenTrust](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EigenTrust)

~~~
kylebrown
TrustDavis is more like distributed escrow than reputation.

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MarkPNeyer
i've been working for a while on this:

[https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop](https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop)

~~~
ottonomy
Interesting. You might be interested in some of the discussions we've been
having in the [http://opencreds.org/](http://opencreds.org/) group.

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gtt
I've skimmed the paper. What if the refers default on their liability, too?
Could a big enough net of cascading defaults cause unbounded damage?

