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Well, classic key distribution problem is classic. You have to anchor your trust somewhere. And whatever you choose, somebody will complain.

Cue web of trust PSA.



Well, maybe not. Web of Trust has serious scaling issues. https://bitcointalk.org/oldSiteFiles/byzantine.html

Blockchain based key distribution may let you anchor trust to a decentralized process.


I am really curious why/how you think the byzantine link relates to key distribution and the web of trust?


The byzantine Trust issue is really just all agreeing on a a value. A handle/name and public key pair is such a value. We can distribute public keys in a block-chain. This pushes MIM attacks down to the last mile between a block-chain server and client and to the identifier exchange. The user can run their of own Block-chain server and authenticate via sneakernet if need be and we can at least be assured that you are communicating with the person who's handle matches the key (even if it might not be the person we think it is).

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A Blockchain makes a good backed for a web of trust because it lets us use the above to link an identifier with a public key and server. One of the primary scaling issues with a web of trust based authentication is that names get long fast: PersonA.PersonB.PersonC.Otherguy. A blockchain allows for a universal naming scheme and a central place to store high confidence links that is faster then querying the peers I trust and asking if they have a link to an arbitrary node.


I cant understand anything that you wrote. Yes you can distribute keys in a blockchain. After Alice grabs a key out of the blockchain how does she know it is Bob's key and not Eve's?


This is a better summary then I can hack together: http://namecoin.info/

I have issues with their implementation, but in general the message is right.


How does Alice attest to Carol's key so that Bob (who trusts Alice) can identify/use Carol's key for communication?


Alice just signs Carols name. Bob looks up Carol's name in the blockchain. The primary application is TLS style authentication, so the user ideally already knows the name of their intended recipient.




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