While it is an interesting concept, I'm not sure if would be a good idea.
It would have to centralise again the idea of what constitutes a good or bad transaction. Sure, in some 'obvious' cases, that would be easy to define. But the devil is always in the grey area in between.
I'm not sure this would have been possible in the case of fiat money (to attach a taint to known serial numbers), in not sure if would be desirable either in crypto. Sure, it is horrible to be robbed, but is the cure worse?
Somehow, the entire crypto ecosystem must be made more user friendly to people that in general have 'password123' as for key into their digital kingdom. In not sure that taking away responsibility for your own security and safety is the way though.
Sorry, a bit of a unstructured comment, not enough sleep last night.
Thanks for the feedback! I also have mixed feelings about it. It actually wouldn't have to centralize the decisions about taint, because there could be competing taint chains, and people/courts/arbitrators could choose which ones they'd recognize, but it still seems like it runs sort-of counter to the overall cryptocurrency ethos.
I do think it's a very insightful mix of law and computer science, though. Technology is always a cat and mouse game, so I guess this isn't the last word on the topic, even if it does see widespread adoption.
Oh, in that case I guess these traint chains is a slightly more elegant solution than what has happened with ETC/ETH and more recently with NEM.
But I wonder if the sheer greed of people in general would cause them to just ignore the taint chains anyway without some structural enforcement. If you find money on the street, most people tend to pocket it. If they were told it was off questionable history, I'm not convinced the result would be that much different....
Coincidentally, I came across this video during lunch today. Near the end, they talk about some inventions of theirs that will supposedly make bitcoin cash fungible.
No idea how that would work, but I'm interested to see if they deliver.
Interesting stuff, but it's like everything in the crypto space at the moment, all promises! By the way, isn't Craig Wright the guy that claimed to be Satoshi?
Yeah, he is. I wrote about those claims almost a year ago, here, and I've been following the nChain blog - where I found that video - since shortly after that article. It actually looks to me like nChain is attempting to implement a vision that Wright started hinting at in public statements from as far back as 2015, before all the Satoshi drama.
And yeah, you're definitely right that the crypto space is saturated with vaporware. Results take a long time to deliver.
Thanks, that was an interesting read. It seems like you have a similar idea to me for the Satoshi question. For me, it seems parallel to the mathematian Nicholas Bourbaki.
Anyway, all the drama aside, it does seem like this guy has some interesting ideas. Maybe something for me to look further into.