Talk:Shamir Secret Snakeoil: Difference between revisions
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This article should be cleaned up to remove bias. I understand Greg Maxwell is well respected in terms of his cryptography knowledge, but its clear that this article is written in a way that includes many [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word weasel words], including in the title itself. Shamir's secret sharing algorithm is, even by Greg Maxwell's own admission here, a perfectly valid and secure algorithm. The fact that many programmers have botched the implementation is not an indictment of the algorithm itself. This page should be upgraded to be a bit more professional and unbiased, noting the pitfalls as well as the downsides in comparison to multisig alternatives, but also being clear that it is a secure tool people can use as long as they find well vetted implementations (like anything in cryptography). [[User:Fresheneesz|Fresheneesz]] ([[User talk:Fresheneesz|talk]]) 00:20, 25 November 2019 (UTC) | This article should be cleaned up to remove bias. I understand Greg Maxwell is well respected in terms of his cryptography knowledge, but its clear that this article is written in a way that includes many [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word weasel words], including in the title itself. Shamir's secret sharing algorithm is, even by Greg Maxwell's own admission here, a perfectly valid and secure algorithm. The fact that many programmers have botched the implementation is not an indictment of the algorithm itself. This page should be upgraded to be a bit more professional and unbiased, noting the pitfalls as well as the downsides in comparison to multisig alternatives, but also being clear that it is a secure tool people can use as long as they find well vetted implementations (like anything in cryptography). [[User:Fresheneesz|Fresheneesz]] ([[User talk:Fresheneesz|talk]]) 00:20, 25 November 2019 (UTC) | ||
::Note that the article [[Shamir Secret Sharing]] redirects to this article. I'm guessing the author added that for effect so that if someone searches Shamir Secret Sharing they can immediately see it be called snakeoil. The title isn't weasal words (which is using anonymous authority) but [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling name calling] which is legitimately useful in rhetoric (in our ecosystem see "shitcoin", "fedcoin", "scamcoin", etc). In this case the namecalling is useful to help the idea stick in people's heads (see rule 1 of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_to_Stick#Overview how to make ideas sticky]). The article does not use the argument that some programmers have botched the implementation therefore the algorithm is bad, instead the argument is that SSS itself is not a useful algorithm for storing bitcoins. Being unbiased is not an ideal to aim for; we should never be unbiased about educating people so they can avoid harming themselves. If you believe SSS is valuable you should respond to some of gmaxwell's points, such as the argument about SSS requiring the private keys to be restored in one machine, and if you have access to a secure machine you may as well just use store keys there without resorting to SSS. A multisig vs SSS section could be useful but multisig still wins hands-down, especially after schnorr gets adds to bitcoin, and even without schnorr a huge number of UTXOs today are in 2-of-3 multisig so the privacy issue isn't even that bad. [[User:Belcher|Belcher]] ([[User talk:Belcher|talk]]) 17:06, 27 November 2019 (UTC) | |||
Revision as of 17:06, 27 November 2019
This article should be cleaned up to remove bias. I understand Greg Maxwell is well respected in terms of his cryptography knowledge, but its clear that this article is written in a way that includes many weasel words, including in the title itself. Shamir's secret sharing algorithm is, even by Greg Maxwell's own admission here, a perfectly valid and secure algorithm. The fact that many programmers have botched the implementation is not an indictment of the algorithm itself. This page should be upgraded to be a bit more professional and unbiased, noting the pitfalls as well as the downsides in comparison to multisig alternatives, but also being clear that it is a secure tool people can use as long as they find well vetted implementations (like anything in cryptography). Fresheneesz (talk) 00:20, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
- Note that the article Shamir Secret Sharing redirects to this article. I'm guessing the author added that for effect so that if someone searches Shamir Secret Sharing they can immediately see it be called snakeoil. The title isn't weasal words (which is using anonymous authority) but name calling which is legitimately useful in rhetoric (in our ecosystem see "shitcoin", "fedcoin", "scamcoin", etc). In this case the namecalling is useful to help the idea stick in people's heads (see rule 1 of how to make ideas sticky). The article does not use the argument that some programmers have botched the implementation therefore the algorithm is bad, instead the argument is that SSS itself is not a useful algorithm for storing bitcoins. Being unbiased is not an ideal to aim for; we should never be unbiased about educating people so they can avoid harming themselves. If you believe SSS is valuable you should respond to some of gmaxwell's points, such as the argument about SSS requiring the private keys to be restored in one machine, and if you have access to a secure machine you may as well just use store keys there without resorting to SSS. A multisig vs SSS section could be useful but multisig still wins hands-down, especially after schnorr gets adds to bitcoin, and even without schnorr a huge number of UTXOs today are in 2-of-3 multisig so the privacy issue isn't even that bad. Belcher (talk) 17:06, 27 November 2019 (UTC)