Trust Models

Describes different systems that require reliance on others by plotting across two axes—how many people need to behave correctly out of how many for the system to work.

Examples:

• 1 of 1 is the traditional centralized model—you rely on a single entity to behave well e.g. Google
• N of N every actor needs to act as expected for things to work
• N/2 of N is blockchain where the majority of miners are honest
• 1 of N is a load balancer with liveness checking—only 1 of many need to be operating as expected to work
• Few of N there are many actors and as a small fixed number act as expected
• 0 of N there is no reliance like checking hashes yourself for validity

See also:

• This article about trust models that explains the differences in a single chart

Links to this note

• Zero Trust Security Frameworks

  Zero Trust refers to securing at the device level rather than at the network level. Each device (or network) is on the public internet and uses encryption and authentication (using certificates and a certificate authority) between connections in the network. This has the advantage of being flexible—devices communicate directly to each other—and maybe more secure—there’s no ‘network’ to compromise (e.g. taking over the VPN server).

• Cede and Company Owns All Publicly Issued Stock in the US

  A single company operates as the ledger for all stock transactions in the United States. Cede & Co. essentially own all publicly issued stock and stock is traded through contractual rights.

• How Zk-Snarks Work

  Epistemic status: low

• Trust Is an Important Factor of Economic Prosperity

  In order for an economy to prosper, there must be a high degree of trust in the system. For instance, without trust that someone will uphold their side of a contract, only limited kinds of transactions can occur. If there is trust that a contract will be enforced then there is higher assurance the other party will make good, making it possible for more complex arrangements and entities outside the system can more easily participate.

• Businesses Are More Trusted Than Government

  According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, people trust businesses more than they trust government, media, and NGOs. In the US, there is a 13 point gap between businesses and government.

• Distributed Apps Are Centralized

  Blockchains are a server technology. They don’t live on the client and things like a web frontend to a dApp can’t perform CRUD operations without a server. While it’s possible to host your own node, in reality nobody wants to run their own server, not even the ones with the technical skills to do it.