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Ask HN: Proposing an Alternative Decentralized Approach

3 points by larryfreeman ↗ HN
I've been thinking recently about what happens to cryptocurrency if we move away from the dependence on private keys or the irreversibility of transactions.

My idea at this point is probably quite naive and I have a lot of reading to do to check out whether there's any merit in the approach I am thinking about which would involve n-factor authorization and a variant of a smart contact to handle disputes.

What would be the recommended way to write up a draft of an idea to get feedback. If the idea already exists in sufficient form, I would be glad to join an open source project.

The challenge is that there are so many projects out there and I am not clear the best way to find an open source project similar to the one I have in mind or to get feedback once I write my idea up.

2 comments

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tornato7
On the signing side it sounds like you’re talking about a multi-sig or a threshold wallet. Gnosis Safe is pretty popular there. Dispute resolution is an unsolved problem in crypto but the leading project there is probably Kleros.
larryfreeman
Thanks very much!

I will take a look at Kleros ( https://kleros.io/about ). The White Paper and Yellow Paper are very interesting! This is different than the problem that I was solving but it fits in very well as the next step if my simple dispute flow does not work.

The dispute flow is the main idea. I have worked out a rough logic. My next step is building a proof-of-concept to confirm that it can work.

I am not familiar with Gnosis Safe ( https://gnosis-safe.io/ ). I will take a look.

The alternative to irreversibility that I am thinking about is not so much based on multi-signature (my concern is that overreliance on a private key/public key is too limiting) as much as on additional attributes included in each transaction that can be used to initiate a dispute associated with the transaction.