Using Proof of Waste for Account Registration

[xeroc]

It currently isn't that easy to get an account at a traditional bank. Even Paypal and Coinbase have you jump through a few hoops. I don't think we need to be THAT slick if we're offering a good product.

I like the idea of some sort of challenge/response mechanism; just enough to make it hard to automate spam accounts. Will have to think about how to do that in a decentralized way.

+5% totally agree .. with both

[zerosum]

BS...

also known as proof of smell

[Thom]

I'm totally confused by this thread. Why "waste" anything to register new users? It seems totally counter intuitive since the point of BitShares is to eliminate waste. Fine, so that refers to mining waste but I'm totally confused why people just don't buy their account registration for what you seem to be saying here is only a few pennies anyway.

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental (yet again). Someone care to pls explain?

How could we allow people to register names without going through a central service like a faucet or forum?
And how do we prevent spam accounts?

Exactly what type of users are you targeting to register? Seems like if you have good functional value people will pay to register to get access to that functionality. Make it too easy & you'll get the spammers and nuisance registrations.

I'm still not sure I understand what the problem is you're trying to solve. I was looking the the BTSX account list a few days ago on BitsharesBlocks and noticed tons of names I highly suspect are abandoned and no longer active. Just garbage collect them.

In terms of registered names, well there may be a need for some type of fee, but not necessarily. They don't charge for gmail addresses, it's first come first served. If the account names are like DNS, some form of auction would be appropriate.

[Method-X]

I guess captcha's don't work because the entropy source would be the blockchain and thus someone could hack around it and spam the network ?

If delegates can be trusted to generate captchas, we could do cool things like adjusting captcha difficulty based on velocity of registrations.
But that could be also done with the POW approach.

This is very smart (using delegates to register users).

+5% This seems like the simplest solution to me. My problem with using POW is that I expect 90%+ users will be interfacing with the blockchain through mobile devices. If a viable solution cannot be found, I propose TITAN be removed as default. It seems to prevent adoption rather than promote it...

[Riverhead]

It currently isn't that easy to get an account at a traditional bank. Even Paypal and Coinbase have you jump through a few hoops. I don't think we need to be THAT slick if we're offering a good product.

I like the idea of some sort of challenge/response mechanism; just enough to make it hard to automate spam accounts. Will have to think about how to do that in a decentralized way.

[alphaBar]

I guess captcha's don't work because the entropy source would be the blockchain and thus someone could hack around it and spam the network ?

If delegates can be trusted to generate captchas, we could do cool things like adjusting captcha difficulty based on velocity of registrations.
But that could be also done with the POW approach.

This is very smart (using delegates to register users).

[gamey]

I guess captcha's don't work because the entropy source would be the blockchain and thus someone could hack around it and spam the network ?

If delegates can be trusted to generate captchas, we could do cool things like adjusting captcha difficulty based on velocity of registrations.
But that could be also done with the POW approach.

The delegates would need a new out of band way to communicate.  A lot of complexity.  If you use information in the blocks in a deterministic manner to create captcha (like would be required AFAIK), then an actor could just read the source of the captcha and plow through them. 

POW was originally created to fight email spam.  So we're not doing anything revolutionary.

[sudo]

use computer  pow  altcoins
exchange buy  btsx to register

gun  pool (virtual pow of btsx)

[roadscape]

I'm totally confused by this thread. Why "waste" anything to register new users? It seems totally counter intuitive since the point of BitShares is to eliminate waste. Fine, so that refers to mining waste but I'm totally confused why people just don't buy their account registration for what you seem to be saying here is only a few pennies anyway.

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental (yet again). Someone care to pls explain?

How could we allow people to register names without going through a central service like a faucet or forum?
And how do we prevent spam accounts?

[Thom]

I'm totally confused by this thread. Why "waste" anything to register new users? It seems totally counter intuitive since the point of BitShares is to eliminate waste. Fine, so that refers to mining waste but I'm totally confused why people just don't buy their account registration for what you seem to be saying here is only a few pennies anyway.

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental (yet again). Someone care to pls explain?

[roadscape]

I guess captcha's don't work because the entropy source would be the blockchain and thus someone could hack around it and spam the network ?

If delegates can be trusted to generate captchas, we could do cool things like adjusting captcha difficulty based on velocity of registrations.
But that could be also done with the POW approach.

[gamey]

Not sure if this would be sufficient to prevent an attacker with existing idle hardware from bloating the blockchain at no cost...

It is the cost of the power not the existence of hardware.

[gamey]

I guess captcha's don't work because the entropy source would be the blockchain and thus someone could hack around it and spam the network ?

[alphaBar]

Not sure if this would be sufficient to prevent an attacker with existing idle hardware from bloating the blockchain at no cost...

Could be solved by using a currently unused hash function I guess, but using PoW does feel like jumping down a rabbit hole.

[alphaBar]

Not sure if this would be sufficient to prevent an attacker with existing idle hardware from bloating the blockchain at no cost...