
Cicada – Decentralized Application and Direct Democracy Platform - emrgx
http://iamcicada.com/cicada-deep-dive/
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th1sw1lln3ver
Some egomaniac kids are at it again, changing the world with shower ideas and
stuff!

(This is just a scummy marketing tactic for a fiction book)

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kough
Branding and name immediately reminded me of Cicada 3301:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301)

Haven't had a chance to fully evaluate yet but I do like that they're taking
inspiration from scifi.

~~~
avisaven
I thought of the same thing. I have a feeling it's not the same organization
however because when Cicada 3301 refers to themselves, they use 3301 rather
than Cicada.

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rdrey
When I first saw this site a few months ago I got quite excited. I was looking
for a solution to Sybil Attacks so I liked it on github and read the
whitepaper.

The "Human Unique Identifier" is supposed to solve Sybil Attacks. But I don't
see how if the enrollment of new users is decentralized bad actors can't
simply generate new retinas / HUIDs and enroll them in the system, then use
those identities to sway online elections, commit fraud, mine
disproportionately more coins, etc.

I'm always looking for fun sci-fi, but the book by Dan Jeffries doesn't
contain much of this tech, which was disappointing. It was an OK read
otherwise. I think "Infomocracy" was better and contained more novel concepts.

~~~
sebastos
Agreed, I'm not seeing any protection against simply using fake photoshopped
pictures of eyes.

It appears they're envisioning an encrypted microkernel which digests the bio
data, generates a public key, and pushes it to a blockchain filled with
similar data for the whole world population. So I suppose they could be
planning to build some kind of signature into the microkernel itself so that
outgoing messages sent from a patched or fraudulent process would be noticed.
So I guess that could be used to prevent against the even simpler attack of
generating the digests of the biodata, as opposed to the biodata itself.

Still, it all seems pretty hand-wavy.

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lend000
Not sure I see how this avoids an inevitable mining arms race (if it is indeed
claiming to avoid such a thing). Even if miners are randomly drafted into
random pools, the more miners you create, the more income. Seems like a very
game-able system.

~~~
rboyd
The paper linked on github mentions that people are limited to only run a
single miner. I haven't parsed it all yet but I think they intend to use the
biometrics/HUID to enforce this. Among other concerns, I'm not sure where this
leaves folks with injured or missing retinas. Or what might stop people from
selling vote or mining capacity by proxy.

~~~
lend000
Yeah, and of course anything biometric can be represented as data that can be
stored on another machine/is NOT secure. Best case is behavioral
challenge/response, but eventually even that will be cracked (probably just as
soon as there's a working implementation).

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castle-bravo
There's another novel relevant to this idea: Bruce Sterling's Distraction [1]
describes groups of people ('Moderators' and 'Regulators') who live under
alternative, network-moderated social contracts ('reputation servers'). In
Sterling's book, these 'proles' live without money, but earn positive
reputation for engaging in pro-social behaviour. They are not under the boot-
heel of the state.

[1]
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218566.Distraction](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218566.Distraction)

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aphextron
This technobabble reads as some of the most horrifying dystopian cyberpunk
fantasy I can possibly imagine

~~~
arisAlexis
I guess you hate tech

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emrgx
White paper: [https://github.com/the-laughing-monkey/cicada-
platform/blob/...](https://github.com/the-laughing-monkey/cicada-
platform/blob/master/README.md)

~~~
rboyd
Looking at this it appears the github large avatar for the-laughing-monkey
user doesn't match the thumbnail image. Maybe it was recently changed. The
large version is an illustration, but the small version gets hits on TinEye
for Dan Jeffries (the author of the book mentioned as inspiration).

A search for Dan Jeffries cicada turns up some related material. Seems strange
that the link to the book on the iamcicada page doesn't explicitly spell out
the author's relationship to the project.

Maybe somewhere along the way, he decided to go pseudonymous? I'm sure he's an
HNer, maybe he'll weigh in.

FWIW, I like most of the ideas here.

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adambrenecki
...is this a parody?

~~~
liamzebedee
I don't know about you, but 'blockchain of blockchains' [1] is an incredible
idea. ;)

[1] [https://github.com/the-laughing-monkey/cicada-
platform/blob/...](https://github.com/the-laughing-monkey/cicada-
platform/blob/master/Cicada-WhitePaper-2016-10.13.GA.1.pdf)

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JustSomeNobody
Overthinking it. The internet is great because it is as simple as a bunch of
computers talking via socket connections. Do _that_ but with encryption. Let
everything else grow the way it wants to.

This sounds like a framework. Not a good idea. You'll eventually find
something that the framework cannot support, but you've over thought
everything, so adding that is next to impossible, so time for a rewrite.

~~~
emrgx
Fair enough. Not endorsing the idea of Cicada but it does open up an
interesting conversation about the future of the internet. Can we really say
"nope, the internet is good enough." That like saying "nope the horse and
buggy works fine. why change it?" Not putting words in your mouth, just making
a point about the general trend of trite comments here being hostile to new
ideas. I think we should discuss the viability of the internet in the near
future.

FWIW- I do agree they overthought everything.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Good points. I'm not opposed to new ideas, but what I like most about the
internet is just how simple it is. Whatever comes next, I don't believe we
should lose that.

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aqsheehy
Another scam-coin designed to take money from 14 year olds. What is this doing
on the frontpage of HN?

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Quiark
I was duped into reading this a few months back. The entire page is total
nonsense, promising to solve all of the world's problems without having a clue
about anything. HN sinked to new depths for me by having this on the front
page :/

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Kinnard
The first thing I notice is quite remarkable, this is a cryptocurrency
inspired by a science fiction novel??

It all comes full circle with Cryptocurrency first being described in
Cryptonomicon.

Haven't had a chance to dig through all its claims.

~~~
jdormit
> Cryptocurrency first being described in Cryptonomicon

Really? That's crazy! I always thought that Stephenson had heard early ideas
about cryptocurrencies and incorporated them into his book.

Are you saying the Neil Stephenson invented the concept of a cryptocurrency?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
It seems like you know the answer and you're being passive-aggressive about
it. Are you thinking the OP doesn't know about David Chaum?

~~~
Kinnard
I know about Chaum, but I was off on when Cryptonomicon was written.

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miguelrochefort
Until they solve the UX problem, this is useless.

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aqsheehy
UX problem?

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miguelrochefort
Nobody came up with a proper user interface for Ethereum, the semantic web,
AI, etc.

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shalmanese
How does this relate to Richard Hendrick's work with middle-out compression as
the basis for a new internet?

~~~
diego_moita
Sorry, I like SV but this is childish. It doesn't add anything to the
discussion.

