Trust Building List - Ron Gross

[ripper234]

In light of the last few crazy months, I wanted to share a list of all the people in the Bitcoin world that I trust to some degree. I will try to update this list sometimes (no promises) ... if you think I should trust you, pm/post and if I do, I'll add you to the list.

You are welcome to post your own message on this thread (or create another), with a list of people whom you personally trust.

Here are some trust flags:

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.
- RL - I have met this person in real life.
- ID - I believe I know who this person is.
- FT - I financially trust this person to honor his word.

(Sorry for overly complicating this, but I think it's important to break down trust into specific elements)

The list itself has now become a table, hosted at Google Docs

I will post when I updated this list.

Update 1:

If anyone whom I don't currently know/trust wants to try and get me to add him to my ID column, you can try sending me some of these to ron.gross@gmail.com (please don't send a pm, just email me):


1. Good quality scan of ID/passport
2. Facebook/LinkedIn account
3. Video chat via skype/Google Talk/whatever...
4. ebay account with good transaction history
5. Any other details you think can help

I will of course keep any details you wish confidential.
I am not promising to add you to my ID trust list ... I will consider the entire "evidence pile" and choose whether it's sufficient for me, or not.

Update 2:
Here are a few credentials that suggest you might want to trust me:

1. Most of my social media profiles are found on my blog.
2. I have already proven in the past that my blog (ripper234.com) is my own, and that I'm not an imposter.
3. I have done a 100 BTC bond via GLBSE (see link in 2), and paid it back in full.
4. A few well-known people who would vouch for me: Meni Rosenfeld, Patrick Harnett, Death & Taxes.

I won't post ID scans here, for obvious reasons.

[bracek]

modern "engineers" will be good guys until they become bad guys

so,
only if they submit ID scans to a trusted (by vote) forum member who will do skype session with them,
people can be considered trustworthy,
other categories are simply not enough for even 1 satoshi of trust
imo

I did a few transactions through this forum, never got burned, but maybe it was pure luck

[greyhawk]

People I trust to know what they are doing and not being completely evil/incompetent

- Andresen
- Gornick
- Marchenko

The end.

[LoweryCBS]

The list itself has now become a table, hosted at Google Docs

I will post when I updated this list.

This is quite handy - thanks for sharing.

I foresee a structured large-scale graphic web-of-trust wiki-style reference with history that's dynamic and distributed...

[mobodick]

In light of the last few crazy months, I wanted to share a list of all the people in the Bitcoin world that I trust to some degree. I will try to update this list sometimes (no promises) ... if you think I should trust you, pm/post and if I do, I'll add you to the list.

You are welcome to post your own message on this thread (or create another), with a list of people whom you personally trust.

Here are some trust flags:

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.
- RL - I have met this person in real life.
- ID - I believe I know who this person is.
- FT - I financially trust this person to honor his word.

(Sorry for overly complicating this, but I think it's important to break down trust into specific elements)

The list itself has now become a table, hosted at Google Docs

I will post when I updated this list.

Lists won't work for large communities.
It would become impractical to go through them in no time at all.
It would be much better if all things that rely on trust would move to a different location on the web which has facilities to deal with trust relations.
This board is already bogged down by impractical ammounts of impractical lists of stuff.

[ripper234]

I foresee a structured large-scale graphic web-of-trust wiki-style reference with history that's dynamic and distributed...

Indeed.

[ripper234]

Lists won't work for large communities.
It would become impractical to go through them in no time at all.
It would be much better if all things that rely on trust would move to a different location on the web which has facilities to deal with trust relations.
This board is already bogged down by impractical ammounts of impractical lists of stuff.

Indeed. Do you know of a better existing website to manage this list?
If not, it should be built (and will eventually be built).

Until the site exist, I posted the list here as a public service.

[ripper234]

Added Eli Sklar, author of Safebit

[mobodick]

Lists won't work for large communities.
It would become impractical to go through them in no time at all.
It would be much better if all things that rely on trust would move to a different location on the web which has facilities to deal with trust relations.
This board is already bogged down by impractical ammounts of impractical lists of stuff.

Indeed. Do you know of a better existing website to manage this list?
If not, it should be built (and will eventually be built).

Until the site exist, I posted the list here as a public service.

I'm not just talking about a website.
What's important is that there is a way to verify trust relations.
In all occurences of lists, what would prevent someone from injecting coherent false information of trust?
If you can't resolve this problem lists are just extentions of the current level of trust quality.
What could be used to realy strenghten trust relations (and i know people here won't like it, for various reasons) is real world accountability.

[mobodick]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

You mean like Mathews bet, right?

I'm not sure when people are gonna realise that this is the internet and you can't trust text on the internet to be true all by itself.

[DeathAndTaxes]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

What is the incentive to do that?  Honest question.  I could see something like that working but there has to be an incentive for the person making the vouch.  Otherwise it is risk x to gain 0 which is always a bad decision.   Interesting concept to monetize trust.  It makes me thing some system is there I just can't see it through the coffee starved fog in my brain.

[mobodick]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

What is the incentive to do that?  Honest question.  I could see something like that working but there has to be an incentive for the person making the vouch.  Otherwise it is risk x to gain 0 which is always a bad decision.   Interesting concept to monetize trust.  It makes me thing some system is there I just can't see it through the coffee starved fog in my brain.

Isn't that how banking started?..

[DeathAndTaxes]

Thinking a little further really OTC is the answer BUT there needs to be a couple improvements:

a) there needs to be an OTC lite portal.  Getting GPG can be tough enough, then using IRC, authenticating, etc.  That can be overwhelming so people don't use it.  Some OTC lite portal (maybe with limits on # tx, etc) would allow more people to use it and that makes the system more powerful.

b) the big one.  There is no consequence for bad ratings.  If I give Pirate a rating 10 (I didn't) then I am staking my rep on Pirate rep.  If it turns out I am wrong (either through collusion or ignorance) there should be a penalty to my rep.   That might not seem very fair but think about it for a second.  If I am a horribly bad judge of character then there should be some discount for my ratings right?

Imagine I give a 10 to 3 known scammers and nobody else.
ripper234 gives a 10 to 3 people who show themselves to be trustworthy (by future good trades).
Obviously a 10 from ripper234 means more than a 10 from me right?

Anyways just throwing some random stuff out there maybe something sticks. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

What is the incentive to do that?  Honest question.  I could see something like that working but there has to be an incentive for the person making the vouch.  Otherwise it is risk x to gain 0 which is always a bad decision.   Interesting concept to monetize trust.  It makes me thing some system is there I just can't see it through the coffee starved fog in my brain.

Isn't that how banking started?..

Yeah it does have some parallels.  In making a "BTC-vouch" you are trusting the person you are vouching not to cause a financial loss much like when you deposit your money/gold/btc in a bank you are trusting the banker not to cause a financial loss/theft.


Just had a weird idea.  If a system like that ever developed (where people backed "vouches" with financial penalties) you could see professional "trust-bondsman".  Say some new trader has no rep or little rep and he needs rep to get rep.  So he goes to a "trust-bondsman" who collects some ID, makes some verifying phone calls, and requires the new trader to put up some funds into escrow (say 20 BTC).  The trust bondsman may then offer x BTC of rep (will pay x BTC for a busted trade).  The 20 BTC are just escrowed so later when the new trader has enough self earned rep he can collect his escrow back (minus a fee).  Higher level of guarantee may require more extensive dox (mail verifciation, public records search, etc) and a larger escrow.  In time the bondman may offer a higher x BTC on the same escrowed amount.

Anyways feel free to ignore just bouncing some unfinished ideas out there.

[mobodick]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

What is the incentive to do that?  Honest question.  I could see something like that working but there has to be an incentive for the person making the vouch.  Otherwise it is risk x to gain 0 which is always a bad decision.   Interesting concept to monetize trust.  It makes me thing some system is there I just can't see it through the coffee starved fog in my brain.

Isn't that how banking started?..

Yeah it does have some parallels.  In making a "BTC-vouch" you are trusting the person you are vouching not to cause a financial loss much like when you deposit your money/gold/btc in a bank you are trusting the banker not to cause a financial loss/theft.


Just had a weird idea.  If a system like that ever developed (where people backed "vouches" with financial penalties) you could see professional "trust-bondsman".  Say some new trader has no rep or little rep and he needs rep to get rep.  So he goes to a "trust-bondsman" who collects some ID, makes some verifying phone calls, and requires the new trader to put up some funds into escrow (say 20 BTC).  The trust bondsman may then offer x BTC of rep (will pay x BTC for a busted trade).  The 20 BTC are just escrowed so later when the new trader has enough self earned rep he can collect his escrow back (minus a fee).  Higher level of guarantee may require more extensive dox (mail verifciation, public records search, etc) and a larger escrow.  In time the bondman may offer a higher x BTC on the same escrowed amount.

Anyways feel free to ignore just bouncing some unfinished ideas out there.

Yes, i've been thinking about this.
You will just need a way to trust in the bondsman.
There needs to be absolute incentive for the bondsman (or even list-maker) to be neutral all the time.
Also, who will decide what is a busted trade and who to blame for it?
And how will you trust the person making this decision?

[ripper234]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

I am willing to sell insurance about certain people ... a subset of my FT list.
But why would you expect that I give such insurance for free?

[ripper234]

BTW, D&T - I think there is definitely room for an easy to use trust/insurance/debt platform, with optional connections to PGP signatures, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, BTC, USD, ...

Trust should be monitizable and tradeable.

It needs to be developed with strong UX principles, while still keeping security in mind as a top priority.

Of course we'll need to have some trust in the platform itself, audits, etc...

[DoogieHouser]

Shared.

[mobodick]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

I am willing to sell insurance about certain people ... a subset of my FT list.
But why would you expect that I give such insurance for free?

How would you even make sure your insurance will cover the case someone turns out to be a scammer anyway?
What will you bring to the table (in terms of trustability) to justify a fee?
If someone bought insurance from you and got scammed for BTC100.000 would you recoup that loss?
Is trust in trust more justified if it's paid for?
Or are you simply going by "If i paid for it it must be good"?

[jasinlee]

For the amounts over lets say 10 BTC I agree this would be a good measure, pay like .5 btc to a trusted party to perform a short interview where the person would have to take the webcam and show the outside of the home so it can be tracked down on google maps. Thats kinda difficult to fake.