Anonymous address problems, etc.

[ghsvax!hal@uunet.UU.NET (Hal Finney)]

Chris Hibbert sent me a solution for the problem I mentioned about the
last remailer in an anonymous address chain being able to discover the
true name for the address.  He suggested making your own remailer be
the last one in the chain.  If you added a little padding, so the
second-to-last remailer couldn't tell (from the small size of the
encrypted address) that yours was last, this sounds pretty good.  And
it's another reason to run a remailer, even if you had to do it
manually.

On the digital cash issue - I think we should get some kind of
implementation of digicash (oops, "electronic money") out for people
on the list to play with.  Then, we should think of some kind of
experimental email-based game to play which would use the special
characteristics of anonymous cash.  Maybe we could use the remailers,
too.  Players would send cash back and forth to each other as part of
the game.  Even if the tools are sort of rough at first, this could
show where the most work is needed.

Can anyone think of a good kind of game that we could play?  As Eric
Hughes pointed out, the cash doesn't have to be "cash", it could
represent "gold" or "carrots" or any other material which exists in
limited quantity.

I think it was on the extropians list that Eli Brandt pointed out the
need for a shorter term than "digital cash" for this cryptographic
money.  He suggested "cryps".  I thought of "emoney" or "ecash" by
analogy to "email".  Here's another one: "crydets", based on
"credits".  Or maybe we should call them "Chaums".  That way he'd be
less likely to sue us for infringing on his patent. ;-)  I notice he
managed to cleverly name DC-nets after his initials so maybe he'd like
this.

Hal
74076.1041@compuserve.com

P.S. I hear PGP 2.1 is coming out today.