IRC discussion of implementing a vat with distributed public state

Sending this to the list for archival/searchability. This is an discussion which occurred today on #erights <irc://chat.freenode.net/%23erights> including myself and Andrew Miller (from the Tahoe-LAFS project, I believe) on the topic of constructing an E vat out of a distributed verified data structure (the same sort of thing as Bitcoin is).

The primary problem is: how do you preserve the capability properties for sent and received messages if there is no place to put crypto secrets?

(Incidentally, #erights has been much more active (i.e. not dead) of late, due to some migration of general capability discussion from #tahoe-lafs. Join the fun!)

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[4:04pm] <amiller> ah related but not too important, one of the things that has amused me is that in #opentransactions one of the guys trying to use the opentransactions development branch
[4:04pm] <Zarutian> amiller: a bit like Nese in Deepness of the sky
[4:04pm] <amiller> is using it for this in-game currency in this massive text-based mmorpg he maintains
[4:05pm] <amiller> it's a truly epic thing, he's worked on it for over 10 years as a pencil and paper thing, he has a large following
[4:05pm] <Zarutian> amiller: ú, ya have a link to its website?
[4:05pm] <amiller> he goes off sometimes on these stories and it takes me a while to figure out if it's in the fictional universe or it's a metaphor
[4:06pm] <Zarutian> amiller: well sometimes fiction is only made to make mega metaphors and sometimes vice versa
[4:06pm] <kpreid> opentransactions is what, a framework for bitcoinish things?
[4:06pm] <amiller> ihttp://www.devtome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Galactic_Milieu
[4:07pm] <amiller> opentransactions is very peculiar
[4:07pm] <Zarutian> kpreid: iirc it is trying to implement some of Nick Szabo ideas in bitcoin-esque system afaik
[4:07pm] <amiller> first of all it includes an implementation of chaumian blinding for cash
[4:07pm] <amiller> it uses lucre, which ben laurie wrote
[4:07pm] <amiller> so it's meant to do something right off the bat that bitcoin doesnt
[4:08pm] <amiller> on the other hand, it doesn't have any distributed component, let alone a proof-of-work-based anonymous distributed component
[4:08pm] <amiller> it's based on a heritage of systems including Loom and Truledger that use digital signatures to minimize the reliance on the server that runs the thing
[4:08pm] <amiller> but it's not a complete solution, you're still very reliant on the server, for the reason that the server is able to 'counterfeit' money
[4:08pm] <amiller> basically they don't have any double-spend solution.
[4:09pm] <amiller> they're double-spend-vulnerable to the server
[4:09pm] <Zarutian> aah, I heard about those. Dismissed them out of hand due to exacly that, lack of decentralization
[4:09pm] <amiller> well, depending on whether or not bitcoin is a valid solution to distributed anonymous agreement, something like opentransactions may be the best thing
[4:09pm] <Zarutian> but as namecoin as demonstrated, it seems to be possible to transact something else but fungible coins in blockchain based systems