Cryptography doesn't eliminate the need for trust. It merely lowers the cost of verification.
It's a huge difference.
Some people think they can somehow completely eliminate the need for trust once their new cryptographic scheme will prove sound or their new system be implemented.
It's a red herring. If you take for granted that there are no perfect solutions just tradeoffs, you will design it right because you know you must distribute trust in the system *somewhere*.
In other words: verification has a cost, and in real life you always have oracles asserting things you cannot fully verify. We live in a fundamentally uncertain world.
What we can do is accept some fundamental limitations and get the most out of the rest.
Five
npub16p…kfhdw
2026-06-03 07:09:23 UTC
Author Public Key
npub16p8v7varqwjes5hak6q7mz6pygqm4pwc6gve4mrned3xs8tz42gq7kfhdwPublished at
2026-06-03 07:09:23 UTCEvent JSON
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"pubkey": "d04ecf33a303a59852fdb681ed8b412201ba85d8d2199aec73cb62681d62aa90",
"created_at": 1780470563,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
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],
"content": "Cryptography doesn't eliminate the need for trust. It merely lowers the cost of verification.\nIt's a huge difference.\n\nSome people think they can somehow completely eliminate the need for trust once their new cryptographic scheme will prove sound or their new system be implemented.\n\nIt's a red herring. If you take for granted that there are no perfect solutions just tradeoffs, you will design it right because you know you must distribute trust in the system *somewhere*. \n\nIn other words: verification has a cost, and in real life you always have oracles asserting things you cannot fully verify. We live in a fundamentally uncertain world.\n\nWhat we can do is accept some fundamental limitations and get the most out of the rest.",
"sig": "793f8d092beef705ad1cf64811a813a40962175e27c8259f781c06549132046066e9c69f3328a68344a33ca4803d621984bbab93a137df5128161b7fbf8deca1"
}