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Comment by arisAlexis | Hacker News Reader

true. it's not like Governments falsify data, forge evidence and all that. It's crazy to think the world needs zero trust.

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How do consensus protocols help here?

Currently we trust information by the source it comes from. It’s an authority-based model.

Consensus shifts that trust from authority figures to others in your group. Bottom-up trust instead of top-down.

Sorry, I should have made more clear what I mean:

When Governments falsify data, in my opinion bottom-up consensus doesn't help, since governments then also could simply participate in that consensus-forming process (see 51% attack)

you think a government of Burma for example can 51% attack Ethereum? The purpose of all this is to put all their balance sheets and title deeds etc on the global blockchain not a private blockchain they control in their offices.

You think the government of Burma, for example could successfully attack an append-only public database product hosted and managed by another country where a large number of interested parites are acting as auditors?

are you seriously suggesting that small countries should keep their important data on centralized servers controlled by another country? its worthless to discuss the million reasons why this will never happen and why sorry

Government actions are important because of the identities involved. A statement that's non-repudiably signed with an official government key seems far more useful for holding a government to account than an anonymous consensus that "the government said this"

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