Community Discussion Highlights

Attenuation and Caveats

The question: Can Gordian Clubs support caveats like expiration times?

The answer:

  • Pure autonomous mode: No external event conditionals (deterministic only)
  • With oracles: Yes, but loses autonomy
    • Timestamp servers
    • Blockchain time-locks (valid until block N is spent)
    • Prediction markets (conditional on market resolution)
  • Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs): “Valid when computation complete”
    • Not clock-based but computation-based
    • 10 days of VDF computation = proof of time passage
    • Hardware-aware, anti-parallel proof of work

Risk-adaptive access control example: “You can read this document unless the US is at war with Canada” - requires external oracle.

Revocation Mechanisms

Current approach:

  • Read revocation: Don’t include party in next edition’s permits
  • Write revocation: Don’t include party in FROST signing quorum
  • SSKR revocation: Don’t distribute shares to party
  • Once revealed, keys/shares can’t be “un-revealed” (mathematical permanence)

Future possibilities:

  • External oracles for revocation lists (loses autonomy)
  • Time-locked transactions on blockchains
  • Decentralized oracle networks
  • Integration with Ryan Grant’s DID method using time-locks

CRDTs and Distributed Systems

Opportunity identified: Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types could be excellent fit for serverless Gordian Clubs.

Wolf’s response: Long-time interest in CRDTs with Gordian Envelopes as carrier. No experimentation yet but eager to collaborate.

Potential: Offline-first, eventually consistent replication without central coordination aligns perfectly with autonomous object philosophy.

UX and Communication (Gordon Mohr)

Challenges:

  • Command-line tools are proof-of-concept, need better UX for broader adoption
  • Analogies help communication:
    • Clubs state like proof-of-stake blockchain
    • Edition progression like Git versioning
    • Need to visualize objects for non-CLI users

Existing UX work:

  • Gordian Seed Tool (iOS app) shows UX-driven approach
  • LifeHash, byte words, byte emojis for recognition
  • Object identifier blocks for standardized display

Need: Better demos showing how it looks/feels beyond command line.

Use Cases and Human Rights

Christopher’s priorities:

  • Journalist/activist protection: Provenance marks appear as random numbers, hard to identify
  • AMIRA engagement model: Protect developers creating activism software
  • Infrastructure resilience: Work during internet outages, infrastructure failures
  • Long-term archival: Outlive companies and governments

Real-world concern: Computer scientist detained at Istanbul airport (2025) highlights risks for developers in adversarial environments.

Funding landscape: Government funding for decentralized identity projects declining, need community support and corporate partnerships.