Cicada – Decentralized Application and Direct Democracy Platform

Cicada – Decentralized Application and Direct Democracy Platform(iamcicada.com)

28 points by emrgx 9 years ago | 32 comments

th1sw1lln3ver 9 years ago |

Some egomaniac kids are at it again, changing the world with shower ideas and stuff!

(This is just a scummy marketing tactic for a fiction book)

kough 9 years ago |

Branding and name immediately reminded me of Cicada 3301: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301

Haven't had a chance to fully evaluate yet but I do like that they're taking inspiration from scifi.

avisaven 9 years ago | |

I thought of the same thing. I have a feeling it's not the same organization however because when Cicada 3301 refers to themselves, they use 3301 rather than Cicada.

rdrey 9 years ago |

When I first saw this site a few months ago I got quite excited. I was looking for a solution to Sybil Attacks so I liked it on github and read the whitepaper.

The "Human Unique Identifier" is supposed to solve Sybil Attacks. But I don't see how if the enrollment of new users is decentralized bad actors can't simply generate new retinas / HUIDs and enroll them in the system, then use those identities to sway online elections, commit fraud, mine disproportionately more coins, etc.

I'm always looking for fun sci-fi, but the book by Dan Jeffries doesn't contain much of this tech, which was disappointing. It was an OK read otherwise. I think "Infomocracy" was better and contained more novel concepts.

sebastos 9 years ago | |

Agreed, I'm not seeing any protection against simply using fake photoshopped pictures of eyes.

It appears they're envisioning an encrypted microkernel which digests the bio data, generates a public key, and pushes it to a blockchain filled with similar data for the whole world population. So I suppose they could be planning to build some kind of signature into the microkernel itself so that outgoing messages sent from a patched or fraudulent process would be noticed. So I guess that could be used to prevent against the even simpler attack of generating the digests of the biodata, as opposed to the biodata itself.

Still, it all seems pretty hand-wavy.

lend000 9 years ago |

Not sure I see how this avoids an inevitable mining arms race (if it is indeed claiming to avoid such a thing). Even if miners are randomly drafted into random pools, the more miners you create, the more income. Seems like a very game-able system.

rboyd 9 years ago | |

The paper linked on github mentions that people are limited to only run a single miner. I haven't parsed it all yet but I think they intend to use the biometrics/HUID to enforce this. Among other concerns, I'm not sure where this leaves folks with injured or missing retinas. Or what might stop people from selling vote or mining capacity by proxy.

lend000 9 years ago | | |

Yeah, and of course anything biometric can be represented as data that can be stored on another machine/is NOT secure. Best case is behavioral challenge/response, but eventually even that will be cracked (probably just as soon as there's a working implementation).

mingodad 9 years ago | | |

When I read about using both iris as unique identifier, it came to my mind this question:

The iris of a living been do not change with age ?

castle-bravo 9 years ago |

There's another novel relevant to this idea: Bruce Sterling's Distraction [1] describes groups of people ('Moderators' and 'Regulators') who live under alternative, network-moderated social contracts ('reputation servers'). In Sterling's book, these 'proles' live without money, but earn positive reputation for engaging in pro-social behaviour. They are not under the boot-heel of the state.

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218566.Distraction

aphextron 9 years ago |

This technobabble reads as some of the most horrifying dystopian cyberpunk fantasy I can possibly imagine

arisAlexis 9 years ago | |

I guess you hate tech

emrgx 9 years ago |

White paper: https://github.com/the-laughing-monkey/cicada-platform/blob/...

rboyd 9 years ago | |

Looking at this it appears the github large avatar for the-laughing-monkey user doesn't match the thumbnail image. Maybe it was recently changed. The large version is an illustration, but the small version gets hits on TinEye for Dan Jeffries (the author of the book mentioned as inspiration).

A search for Dan Jeffries cicada turns up some related material. Seems strange that the link to the book on the iamcicada page doesn't explicitly spell out the author's relationship to the project.

Maybe somewhere along the way, he decided to go pseudonymous? I'm sure he's an HNer, maybe he'll weigh in.

FWIW, I like most of the ideas here.

adambrenecki 9 years ago |

...is this a parody?

liamzebedee 9 years ago | |

I don't know about you, but 'blockchain of blockchains' [1] is an incredible idea. ;)

[1] https://github.com/the-laughing-monkey/cicada-platform/blob/...

JustSomeNobody 9 years ago |

Overthinking it. The internet is great because it is as simple as a bunch of computers talking via socket connections. Do that but with encryption. Let everything else grow the way it wants to.

This sounds like a framework. Not a good idea. You'll eventually find something that the framework cannot support, but you've over thought everything, so adding that is next to impossible, so time for a rewrite.

emrgx 9 years ago | |

Fair enough. Not endorsing the idea of Cicada but it does open up an interesting conversation about the future of the internet. Can we really say "nope, the internet is good enough." That like saying "nope the horse and buggy works fine. why change it?" Not putting words in your mouth, just making a point about the general trend of trite comments here being hostile to new ideas. I think we should discuss the viability of the internet in the near future.

FWIW- I do agree they overthought everything.

JustSomeNobody 9 years ago | | |

Good points. I'm not opposed to new ideas, but what I like most about the internet is just how simple it is. Whatever comes next, I don't believe we should lose that.

aqsheehy 9 years ago |

Another scam-coin designed to take money from 14 year olds. What is this doing on the frontpage of HN?

Quiark 9 years ago |

I was duped into reading this a few months back. The entire page is total nonsense, promising to solve all of the world's problems without having a clue about anything. HN sinked to new depths for me by having this on the front page :/

Kinnard 9 years ago |

The first thing I notice is quite remarkable, this is a cryptocurrency inspired by a science fiction novel??

It all comes full circle with Cryptocurrency first being described in Cryptonomicon.

Haven't had a chance to dig through all its claims.

jdormit 9 years ago | |

> Cryptocurrency first being described in Cryptonomicon

Really? That's crazy! I always thought that Stephenson had heard early ideas about cryptocurrencies and incorporated them into his book.

Are you saying the Neil Stephenson invented the concept of a cryptocurrency?

JustSomeNobody 9 years ago | | |

It seems like you know the answer and you're being passive-aggressive about it. Are you thinking the OP doesn't know about David Chaum?

keymone 9 years ago | | |

iirc cryptocurrency was never described in cryptonomicon, internet-based gold-backed currency was.

miguelrochefort 9 years ago |

Until they solve the UX problem, this is useless.

JustSomeNobody 9 years ago | |

And if someone solves the UX problem, this is still useless.

aqsheehy 9 years ago | |

UX problem?

miguelrochefort 9 years ago | | |

Nobody came up with a proper user interface for Ethereum, the semantic web, AI, etc.

shalmanese 9 years ago |

How does this relate to Richard Hendrick's work with middle-out compression as the basis for a new internet?

diego_moita 9 years ago | |

Sorry, I like SV but this is childish. It doesn't add anything to the discussion.