Re: [freehaven-dev] Another distributed project!

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2000 at 05:49:55AM -0400, David A Molnar wrote:
> 
> Right under my nose...
> 
> "The World Beyond the Web"
> http://www.deas.harvard.edu/~wbw/wbw-design-99.ps
> 
> is it just me, or is everyone trying to invent the next Web successor
> these days?
> 
> -David
 
I'm afraid this is totally offtopic to the WBW paper, but it made me
think of it by mentioning how tough it is to make a good java sandbox
for untrusted code. (I won't explain my thought process that led me to
the below paragraph. It's 0600. :)

Many people (including us) are beginning to consider using puzzles or
hashcash-equivalents to limit resource use. Basically, we require them to
answer some question that should take them a bit of time, so they can't
flood us too quickly with requests. This notion can be used for freenet
et al, but it can also be used (and I think to more immediate benefit)
in remailers, since their anonymity goals mean that other more common
solutions (eg limit connections by IP or domain) are infeasible.

If we actually develop a timewasting system that works well, can we make
it not just waste time but actually help solve some interesting problems?

Which problems are amenable (in a technical sense) to both domains?

Has anybody thought about this elsewhere? Surely I'm not the first...

--Roger