Binge watching Stranger Things over the weekend, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the thrills of biking through the American suburbs as a kid. Save for knocking on doors, the whole town was a playground where we could roam freely as everyone knew each other. Those were such fond memories except for the fact that I was born and raised in a Malaysian city where cycling meant braving not only the immense distances and not-so-friendly stray dogs but also getting lost in a sea of strangers with Google Maps still a few years away. My social anxiety dictates that if the latter was to happen, I would have been as good as dead.

In all seriousness, implicit in all depictions of such communities is that trust in the community is based not only on reputation but also the simplicity of smaller communities. If I wanted to do anything, be it buying something or even just going for a walk, I would have to come face-to-face with what would very quickly become familiar faces. The chances of any individual committing fraud is greatly minimized as, short of uprooting himself and leaving behind all his possessions, that individual would be labelled as an outcast for life. In this case, without an explicit system, the role of the TTP is effectively carried out by the community itself through a reputation system.

This is distinctly not the case for many of us who grew up in cities where the chances of recognizing a familiar face shrinks disproportionately with population growth. As population grows, it is not just the ratio of strangers to recognizable faces in a crowd increases but more importantly, our human brains are not able to keep up with the overload of faces. Even if we could, time would be a limiting factor when it comes to getting to know the stories behind these faces. Consequently, we tend to tune out the crowd and keep to our own social circle. As such, the ability to “get lost in a crowd” provides an ideal environment for malicious actors to operate. Cities would cease to exist if there wasn’t a way to hold such actors accountable. This is where the role of TTPs becomes indispensable as individuals were assured their individual rights and possessions via keeping track of a few institutions (government, banks, businesses) instead of being overloaded with personal information.

It is important to note that although reputation correlates very closely with trust, it is the subtle differences which makes a world of difference when discussing trusted technology. These differences are even more pronounced the larger the network as trust in the individual gets increasingly displaced by trust in amorphous systems. This paper by Olnes provides a good distinction between the two types of trust and about trust systems in general. They are as follows:

Technical trust is one where individuals are assured that the system works as anticipated (reliability), is protected against attacks (security), and protects the interests of the user (safety)

Organisational trust is that which is placed on the honest intent and willingness to co-operate of other actors/users of the system

In other words, it is the difference between trust in impersonal objective systems and unpredictable subjective actors. As such, by definition, honest intent has no place in completely trustless systems.