Payment protocol and alternatives to SSL - convergence/notaries

[benjyz]

2 years ago an expert in SSL security - Moxie Marlinspike -  proposed an alternative to CA's - notaries, a kind of reversed certificate authority. the project is called convergence. It hasn't taken off yet, but the idea is very much worth pondering.

https://github.com/moxie0/Convergence

defcon talk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDmj_xe7EIQ

Discussion with Whitefield Diffie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt7uW6vDk00

Contrary to the beliefs of some bitcoin core developers I think CA's are thoroughly broken, and the use of them makes bitcoin worse, not better. SSL was a quick hack by a netscape engineer 20 years ago.