Trust and the trustless mess

One of the useful arguments in the debate around decentralisation, blockchain and the #openweb is also one of the simplest – We do not actually live in a trustless world, we live in a world built on different kinds of trust. This is why the Fediverse worked because it was #4opens with a good #UI. The problem it had to overcome and still does is that much of #geekproblem pushing technology is obsessed with trying to eliminate trust rather than understanding how trust works. The idea of the “trustless” technology sounds attractive. If we cannot trust governments, corporations, banks, platforms, administrators or even other people, why not build digital systems where nobody needs to trust anybody? This is a simple mindset, instead of trusting a person, trust the mathematics, instead of trusting an institution, trust the protocol. Instead of trusting a moderator, trust the code. Instead of trusting a community, trust the ledger. It sounds wonderfully clean, but there is a problem – you…