Bootstraping the trust¶

To bootstrap the trust, physical and direct encounters are needed. The cryptographic algorithms are able to maintain the trust between people who encounter each other but are not able to create the trust through internet. The origin of the trust is always social. The cryptography is an helper-tool that reinforces the social trust.

In this document, trust means ‘I know that this guy exists’ or more accurately, ‘I have encountered this guy on that date’. Then, the cryptography will help us to ensure that his future messages are really coming from the encountered person, avoiding any usurping of his identity. Optionally, the cryptography could also be used to restrict the visibility of a message to a sub-group (a.k.a. secret message).

The exact meaning of ‘this guy’ is also floating. It refers to some descriptions of the person, that needs to be specified depending on the purpose of the web of trust. The minimum requirement is that, within the concerned social group, the description of ‘this guy’ is unique and clear enough, so the person can be recognized or identified. Actually, a web of trust is the cryptographic translation of ‘one person, one vote’.

The Bitcoin case¶

The original intention of Bitcoin was to spread the money creation through the users instead of having it concentrated within few banks. Its algorithm was selecting a server randomly every 5 minutes via the proof of work for this purpose. But because of the lack of web of trust, it comes that some people acquired more and more servers to profit more from the currency creation.

The definitions of Trust¶

In this context, trust is not evaluating if a person is loyal, honest or reliable. The level of confidence between the peers will increase or decrease over the time through their interactions and behaviors. The cryptography just help to avoid falsified identity. It eases the creation of white list and black list. It avoids spam and unwanted communication with robot. It enables the application of personal rules for his own communications.

A web of trust is a graph that shows who and when the people have encountered themselves to certificate each other. The goal is to be sure we communicate with a person we have encountered or with a person that has encountered a person that I have encountered and so on. It is a cartography of the connections between the users. Notice that it does not contain necessary all connections. And by certifying a person you just proof that you have encountered him or her but not that you support his activities.

Internet is only useful if it lets people communicate with each other. We need to find the people through the tons of IPs and URLs.

Single responsibility principal¶

Some crypto-currencies like G1 uses already their web of trust. The goal of Wendy is to address the creation of a Web of trust, regardless of the application build on top of it.