Re: [circle] p2p auctions

[Daniel A. Nagy]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 02:09:39AM +1000, Jiri Baum wrote:
> address@hidden:
> > Is this really a non-spam email to the list?  
> 
> I don't know; I got the same e-mail, but privately. It also ended up in my 
> spam box - according to spamassassin it is pretending to be from Outlook and 
> the envelope sender is in a blacklist.
> 
> > It is at least on topic.
> 
> That it is.
> 
> I would expect that technically, a p2p auction would be SMOP; it's the social 
> side that would be the difficult part - crudely put, the equivalent of eBay's 
> complaints department. Engineering that to work without a central trusted 
> party would be quite a feat.

Hmm, I somehow missed the original email, but on-line auctions is one of the
things I might want to use Circle for. I have many things to say about the
topic.

The main idea about feedbacks is embedding them in signatures on OpenPGP
public keys. Once can embed 64 kilobytes of arbitrary data into a key
signature, which is more than enough for a reference to the deal in question
and a short message. The trust value is already part of the trust signature,
which could be used for distinguishing between negative, neutral and
positive feedback.

Of course, anyone can easily pollute the database, but the Web of Trust
(WoT) can be used to ignore untrusted comments and even retaliate for
deliberate libel or fake praise.

We (ePointSystem) have actually some cash for those willing to work on this. 
We have many ideas about how to do auctions in a p2p fashion, but it's not
a consistent design yet.

-- 
Daniel