Author: Rusty Russell 2018-11-05 06:09:01
Published on: 2018-11-05T06:09:01+00:00
In a recent online discussion, Anthony Towns expressed his opinion that Reddit is not a reliable platform for dispute resolution. He believes that there's no way for Reddit to determine who is right in a dispute as there is no intermediary to verify disputes. For instance, if someone claims that they paid for some stickers from Blockstream but did not receive them, Blockstream could just say that the stickers were delivered and that the customer should stop complaining. However, Rusty argues that Reddit and Twitter are useful starting points for thinking about receipts when there is no intermediary.Rusty explains that there are four types of "proof of payment" people might desire. The first is no proof, which may be applicable in cases of donations. The second is shared secret, which allows a payer to prove directly to the payee that an invoice was paid. This type of receipt can also be tied to the invoice. The third is signed payment, which enables the payer to prove to a different business unit of the payee that payment was made. Rusty suggests that this type of receipt requires auditing the current commitment transaction. Finally, the fourth type of receipt is third-party verifiable, which associates a payment with real-world identity information, allowing it to be taken to court or Reddit as a contract dispute. Rusty acknowledges that we are still missing the last mile between the merchant and the nodeid, and proposes using DNS records, LetsEncrypt-style serve-this-URL, or something like Certificate Transparency to reliably get old nodeids.
Updated on: 2023-05-25T15:06:32.063608+00:00