One doesn't need BLS to avoid having a trusted dealer in the context of signatures-- though signatures are unrelated and irrelevant to the subject of this post. But plain ECC signatures without any bilinear group can do threshold signatures.
(also any BLS signature that implements a single key threshold that's indistinguishable from a single key will be using SSS under the hood to implement the threshold, though I agree end users should probably never be using SSS directly)
> SGX extensions are far worse than smart contracts to secure large amounts of value, whether it’s currency balances, votes, or other data.
"smart contracts" as they are don't provide confidentiality, in fact they're generally extra toxic to confidentiality.
I am not sold on the value of confidentiality for everything. The governments are all moving to gradually ban end-to-end encryption, as they worry about “terrorism” etc. But no one is moving to ban cryptographic signatures. They help with self-sovereignty and to ensure integrity of many things including code. Smart contracts can help ensure the immutability of code and I don’t know of any other mechanism that’s widely deployed today that can guarantee the code and data won’t be tampered with. Do you?
The context of this article involves the use of secret sharing for confidential customer records... so I think that's pretty relevant.
> The governments are all moving to gradually ban end-to-end encryption, as they worry about “terrorism” etc.
In a few countries like the UK where the residents are subjects and don't have civil rights.
> But no one is moving to ban cryptographic signatures.
Most (perhaps all) signature schemes can also be used to conceal data.
> Smart contracts can help ensure the immutability of code and I don’t know of any other mechanism that’s widely deployed today that can guarantee the code and data won’t be tampered with.
I'm remained of "Wakalixes makes it go." from "Surely, You are Joking, Mr Feynman".
It's not at all clear to me that there is some code immutability crisis, and I don't see the relevance of 'Smart contracts' to the integrity of code that isn't answered by tools like cryptographic hashes or an ordinary digital signature, -- stuff we've been using for decades.
The blockchain woo is a bit part of what what causes a lot of the public to regard the entire space as a bunch of grifters.
(also any BLS signature that implements a single key threshold that's indistinguishable from a single key will be using SSS under the hood to implement the threshold, though I agree end users should probably never be using SSS directly)
> SGX extensions are far worse than smart contracts to secure large amounts of value, whether it’s currency balances, votes, or other data.
"smart contracts" as they are don't provide confidentiality, in fact they're generally extra toxic to confidentiality.