A trustworthy State is one that does not require citizens to trust them.

I think government software is the second real use case for blockchains (besides DeFi):
You need a system where you don’t have to trust by default the people running the systems.

The key point is that states have the monopoly on force.

it’s an asymmetry compared to the rest of the situations IT is used in (b2b, b2c, ..).

This asymmetry justifies that the citizens should not be required to trust the State’s systems by default, whoever manages them.

A trustworthy state is a state that does not require its citizens to trust it.

This implies that transactions, logs, data, be transparent to the interested parties (or their delegates) and verifiable by them.

A citizen should not be required to trust apps delivered by the state. Thus, everyone should have a right to build an app to interface with state’s system.

Reproducible builds and verifiable computing should become the norm.

If you like this post, please consider sharing it.

1 thought on “A trustworthy State is one that does not require citizens to trust them.”

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *