From: Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 94 09:47:17 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: digital reputation capital
Message-ID: <199409091646.MAA16843@bwh.harvard.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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	I'm currently writing up a design for a digital reputation
capital system.  The intent is not to provide a framework for
licensing or formal endorsement system, but instead, allow people to
automatically discover the opinions of others about various entities.

	I'd like to know how much people would want anonymity in a
system like this.  My preferred solution would be to allow anonymity
through the established services of remailers.  This has the advantage
of having people who use a nym constantly (and well) get more respect
when doing it then those who use a nym occasionally.

	The reason this solution is preferred is that it allows a
fully distributed system to exist, with no centralization needed at
all.  Is losing that distributed characteristic of the system worth
gaining a system that supports anonymity?

	(It might be possible to design a work intensive system to
handle distributed anonymity, based on Merritt's protocol for voting
without any central facility (Applied Crypt section 6.5), but the
amount of work involved is quite high, thus the system wouldn't work
in a production environment.)

Adam