
Whuffie – how to build a reputation currency in Ethereum? (2014) - bryanrasmussen
https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/462/whuffie-how-to-build-a-reputation-currency-in-ethereum
======
dajbelshaw
Hmmm...

> I need to confess something: ‘‘Whuffie’’ would make a terrible cur­rency.

[http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2016/03/cory-
doctorow-w...](http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2016/03/cory-doctorow-
wealth-inequality-is-even-worse-in-reputation-economies/)

------
dane-pgp
A lot of the problems with decentralised reputation systems (or indeed
decentralised anything systems) stem from the difficulty of establishing a
decentralised identity system.

I wish that the idea of "idchains" had been explored more, but it seems it
didn't get much further than a (now unlisted) video on the inventor's YouTube
channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZC98s4paYY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZC98s4paYY)

The (perhaps controversial) idea is that you accept that your face is public
data, and so use that as sort of the unique key in a global database of faces,
or ideally, hashes of faces. A user could then carry around a digital copy of
their face picture (in a mobile app, say), which other users could attest and
check the hash of in a global blockchain.

There would need to be gamified incentives to do this attestation (effectively
key-signing parties for non-geeks), and you could opt to have people take
pictures of you each time and upload them to a decentralised file store (like
IPFS). Organisations could then compete on using machine learning to generate
confidence scores that a given identity really had been in use for a
significant duration, vouched for by other individuals, and not a duplicate of
another account somewhere else in the system.

There are various trade-offs in terms of security and usability and anonymity,
but it seems like an idea that is worth exploring.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
people's faces change with some regularity. Also there are people who are
incapable of recognizing faces, or just especially bad at it, so the method is
unfair to them.

~~~
mlmlmasd
What about using some kind of DNA hash?

~~~
dane-pgp
If sequencing a DNA sample became as cheap and common as taking a selfie, then
I could see that happening, yes. I also think that would be a very strange
world to live in, but recent events have shown that strange worlds are hard to
rule out.

------
kwikiel
I am working on p2p reputation network in Ethereum.
[https://github.com/kwikiel/p2p-trust-
network](https://github.com/kwikiel/p2p-trust-network)

Often it's useful to be able to trust an online identity, i.e. for peer-to-
peer lending sites, peer-to-peer home exchange sites, work assignments, etc.

Most often the various platforms (like Couchsurfing, Uber, BeWelcome,
Loanbase, Localbitcoins etc) will have some built-in support for ratings; user
account A can leaving positive feedback for B after A and B has had an
interaction on that platform. The ratings never leave the platform. There are
usually no ways to see the difference between a conman creating yet another
fake account and a newcomer to the platform. It is impossible for an outsider
that have been scammed on one platform to leave a negative feedback warning
users on another platform about the scammer.

What we need is a global network-of-trust system. It should be truly peer-to-
peer, it should be based on open standards and open source. Just the risk of
getting negative feedback on such a network could be enough deterrent to avoid
certain types of scam.

~~~
contingencies
I had a similar idea a few years ago but decided to make it wholly objective.
Basically, individual actors could publish cryptographic proof that they had
engaged in a certain transaction with a certain party and reached a certain
outcome, without necessarily disclosing the full details of the transaction.
This information could then be analyzed and collected by those considering
entering in to a transaction with that party, or perhaps paid agencies who
acted as caches to do this for the general public. Quite a lot of related
thoughts at [http://ifex-project.org/](http://ifex-project.org/)

------
eterps
I particularly like this insightful comment:

> Reputation is always relative to a particular group; I doubt there could be
> an "absolute" measure of reputation.

~~~
dschep
IIRC, Down&Out addressed this. When you looked at another person's Whuffie, it
consisted of 4 parts:

    
    
      * +Whuffie from users you +Whuffie
      * -Whuffie from users you +Whuffie
      * +Whuffie from users you -Whuffie
      * -Whuffie from users you -Whuffie

