Ask HN:Proof of Burn == Trusted Identities

Problem:

Continued growth of the sharing economy and p2p marketplaces necessitates a global distributed and repurposable (real name/pseudonymous/anonymous) trust and reputation system. A mechanism is needed which will allow strangers to gauge whether to interact/transact with each other across 'n' services and use-cases. Trusted Identities would engender trade, relationships, serendipity and more.

A possible solution:

Proof of burn represents a sacrifice of value in order to establish a trusted identity. By making a trusted identity expensive to obtain it can be trusted not to engage in bad behaviour, as doing so would cause the identity to become destroyed if tarnished thereby rendering the sacrifice and identity useless.

Third parties can easily verify the value sacrificed to establish your trusted identity and use it as a proxy to decide whether to:

1) rent their room to you on Airbnb 2) go on a date with you after meeting you on Tinder 3) accept you for a ride on Lyft 4) back your projects on Kickstarter 5) loan you money through crowdlending etc etc.

MVP:

A web app which generates a verifiably unspendable bitcoin address to which you would send an arbitrary amount of btc (proof of burn). The service would then link the transaction hash of the payment to an existing online identity of your choosing and provide you a profile page which acts as public proof of your trusted identity.

In the event of bad behaviour, aggrieved parties can leave public comments on your proof page for others to see. The service itself would not blacklist your identity based on negative feedback, merely display it for others to judge as they see fit. (Third party services could create blacklists off the data much in the same way SpamAssassin and others do to IP addresses). Over time you create a global trust network with serious emergent behaviour potential.

Ideas/thoughts appreciated