







Attested TLS: the handshake that can't prove who's on the other end


Socialized Proof of Work — Open Indie
There’s an increasing obsession with “humanness” these days: Humanness in the age of AI Worldcoin: a solution in search of its problem (...

A Post-Quantum Future for Let's Encrypt
Let’s Encrypt is committed to a post-quantum-safe Web PKI. The path we’re planning to take is Merkle Tree Certificates (“MTCs”), a new approach that adds post-quantum authentication to the web without sacrificing the speed and reliability that have made TLS universal. This post is about these plans and why we believe MTCs are worth pursuing as a key to a post-quantum future. An increasingly urgent problem For much of the last several years, the conversation about post-quantum cryptography has been a conversation about encryption. The reasoning was straightforward: an attacker who records encrypted traffic today might be able to decrypt it years from now once quantum computers can break the underlying math. Authentication, the part of TLS that indicates a server is who it says it is, has been a less urgent problem. A quantum computer needs to forge a signature in real time, not retroactively, so threats to authentication hinge on the existence of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC).

🌸 ellie 🌸 on Twitter / X
One benefit of a “proof of fidelity” system where you aren’t trying to solve for such a narrow question of “is this a human”, is that you don’t need to rely on means of validation that can be biased or inaccessible for many actual humans, such as gov IDs or irl events.2/x— 🌸 ellie 🌸 (@heyellieday) July 29, 2021
Dangerous Protocols - Summer of Protocols
Protocols are frequently touted as the liberating alternative to walled technological gardens, but the historical purpose of protocols has always been to simplify decision-making and reduce human agency. How do we reconcile these two narratives? I explore the dangerous side of protocols, and how their ability to drive coordination means they also have

A Spectrum of Consent
Blockchain & Decentralized Identity Architect — Internet Cryptography Pioneer — Co-author TLS Security Standard — Collaborative Tools & Patterns

Are we human?
Distributed app platform's proposed agreement 'isn't freedom respecting,' he says
Future of Communications
Our seeming separation is but a trick of the light, for in truth we are all one, connected like dewdrops on a spider’s web. As technology traverses the illusory distance between us, it leads us back to the recognition of our inherent unity. Communication, once imagined as bridges between islands, dissolves as we awaken to find ourselves a sea; not separate, but an oceanic communion. We return h...

The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols | Summer of Protocols
DRAFT Version 0.99, March 6th, 2023
Strangeness, illegibility, hardness
An update from our Protocol Fiction special interest group


Protocols and Power
If "context" is king, we need to ensure it remains fluid and accessible by third-party developers
