Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Distributed Transaction Signing
by
andytoshi
on 05/03/2014, 00:37:11 UTC
I am simply asking about a type of Oracle (whose legitimacy has already been established by Gavin, Mike Hearn, and others), but also leaving the design open to a more general solution.

It is important to realize that in cryptography, arguments by authority have no validity. There have been cryptosystems created by experts, with mathematical proof of security and decades of use, which eventually failed nonetheless. To develop cryptosystems, it is important to have a deep understanding of the underlying primitives and the contexts in which they can be safely used. This in itself is a gargantuan task which will likely take you years of research, even without attempting to develop your own primitives. (And as I explained in my article, it is never necessary or wise to use home-baked primitives, though it is good practice to develop and break them in private.)

Further, Gavin and Mike's conception of oracles may not correspond to your own conception. In all areas of research there are massive concepts hidden behind small words, and cryptography is no exception.

Quote
I also don't feel that you represent the community, as, to the contrary, other senior community members have encouraged me to continue.

With respect, you comment was completely ignorant and unhelpful. If you continue to make comments of this low quality I intend to use the forums 'Ignore' feature. I hope for your own sake you will apologize for your misunderstanding.

I apologize for my terse tone. The fact is that this forum has thousands of users with more enthusiasm than understanding, and it can be overwhelming at times. I have only so much time in the day, and sadly I am not paid to post here (though I am paid to do cryptographic research). In fact I have been part of the bitcoin community for several years, and have been quite active in its research community for a good part of that.

My low post count and short replies reflect this situation. To compensate I have been developing several articles to correct and explain common misconceptions, including the one that I posted for you, which as you noticed is not yet finished. I'm glad that you took the time to read it and I hope that it provided some perspective about the nature of Bitcoin-related work.

If you'd like to learn more about modern cryptography, I encourage you to check out Matthew Green's blog (as a starting point, read every single post and reference), as well as some classic papers such as "Probablistic Encryption" by Goldwasser and Micali.