Trust Models
If you invert the colours in the chart, you also get the consequences of their failure modes. In designing tokenization schemes some years ago, we used a trust model like this, and the basic problem reduces to the adage, &quot;a security system is only as strong as its recovery process.&quot;<p>In the case of the field of trust models Vitalik has illustrated, trust comes down to the questions of: do you have a way to tumble your root of trust, do you leave it static (like an HSM with destroyed keys), or do you federate. The answer is of course, &quot;it depends...&quot; In the case of the balance of consensus, proofs, and anonymity (e.g. ZK) the application defines the needs.<p>The issue I think is that these problems are all negatively defined and presume a threat model before a use case. They are artifacts of that threat model, in that they wouldn&#x27;t exist if they weren&#x27;t a reaction to it. These things (blockchains and their applications) are essentially criticisms that allow people to organize and defect to a certain extent, but they are lacking a quality of essentialness I can&#x27;t seem to find a name for. It&#x27;s like they aren&#x27;t discovered things, but just artifacts of a constraint. Such fun to read his stuff.