Re: Virtual City (tm) Network FAQ 1.0 (fwd)

This Virtual City project does have an interesting conceptual link to
cypherpunk philosophy.  Many of us have been influenced by the fiction
of Vernor Vinge, particularly his "True Names".  In this story we find
many elements of our cypherpunks mythology introduced:  digital
pseudonyms, anonymous mail, untraceable identities.  The heroes of the
story are hackers, powerful on the net, but with their real identies
unknown.  Having your true name discovered was the worst disaster that
could occur, as it made you vulnerable to many kinds of attacks, both
from other hackers and from the government.

In Vinge's story, people online interact in virtual environments.
This Virtual City and the other projects like it are trying to move
towards an online virtual environment similar to that described in
Vinge's story (and cyberpunk fiction).  It would be nice if they had
crypto anonymity and digital pseudonyms built in from the beginning.

Unfortunately, although they talk it up, the author of the FAQ doesn't
seem to really understand PK crypto:

> Send email to "vcreg@virtual.net" with pertinent
> info: your name, your requested character name, and a short blurb
> which will become your initial description.  Oh yes, and your Public
> Key.
> 
> Don't have one?  Tsk, tsk, they're a good thing to have in general; go
> out and connect to a public key server and get yourself a key-- we'll
> send out your initial password encrypted to you, and you can decipher
> it with our public key.  Fun, eh?  If you're a sufficiently
> enthusiastic cyberspace denizen to pre-reg, you probably already have
> a public key...

This is not how keys work: you don't need to connect to a public key
server to get yourself a key; and if they send something encrypted "to you"
then you wouldn't decipher it with their public key, but rather with your
private key.  Also, they should say whether they are using PGP, RIPEM,
PEM, or some new system for the public keys.  My guess is that they
haven't gotten that far yet.

Still, it might make sense for someone from this list to give them some
help on the crypto aspects.  This could be a safe and fun environment
in which people could be introduced to crypto, and it could even expand
eventually to include cryptographically protected business
relationships.  Tim May has suggested that strong crypto could be
initially deployed as part of a game, and this could be a beginning.

Hal
hfinney@shell.portal.com

On money in Virtual City:

First, a note of history.  Strata and I have been talking about money
in MUD-type environments (virtual, social, text-based).  These
discussions are reflected in her document.  I had decided after much
thought that the MUD type of environment would be a good place to
prototype electronic money.  I asked Strata about technical details,
since I knew that she was setting one up; discussions ensued.

A comment from Joichi Ito, a self-professed MUD enthusiast, which he
made to me at CFP-93 in March, started this train of thought: "I would
pay real money for MUD money."  He spends enough time on MUD's that
his personal life would be improved by spending cash dollars in
exchange for increased ability on the MUD.  

One of the big problems in creating electronic money is that there
must be something to spend it on, that is, some notion of actual value
upon which to base the derived value of the electronic money.  MUD's
seem to have that property.  I don't know exactly whence that value
arises, but certainly it does factually exist.  This question, the
origin of value in MUD's, will develop a life of its own, no doubt, as
various explanations arise, but this question is not central to any
monetary system.  What is needed is only that such value exists.  Let
us stipulate this for the purposes of discussion.

Once there is value, an economy develops when there is a means of
exchange for such value, typically coins.  So the MUD needs a notion
of exchange and a notion of representation of value.  For exchange,
I've designed a conceptual MUD object which is a simultaneous
transacter.  You put your stuff on the tray in front of you, likewise
does your trading partner.  After you both press the big red buttons
in front of you, the contents of the two trays are magically
interchanged. (Magically, of course, since this is a MUD.)  Recall
the big rotating lucite contraptions that post offices are using.

In the MOO (MUD, Object Oriented), one can subclass this transacter
and attach robot servers to the other side of the glass, creating
vending machines.  One particular vending machine could take the coin
of the realm and exchange it for a bank note of the same amount.  The
bank note, digitally signed by the MUD bank, is an informational
object.  Because it is information and not a MUD object, the note can
be freely transmitted _outside of the MUD_.

Once you have the existence of such notes, one can set up inter-MUD
currency exchanges, test the theory of free banking, and the like.

Eric

I'm still not clear as to exactly what MUD money would purchase. In a MOO,
such as MediaMOO or BayMOO, I can't conceive of what anyone could "buy"
with virtual money. The one real item of scarcity in a MOO -- from the
player's standpoint -- is quota. You are normally assigned a specific
number of objects or features that you can own -- say, 20 -- and once you use
that number up, you have to prove to the wizards that you really do need
an increase in your quota, and that you haven't just gobbled up disk space
with superfluous rooms or little-used objects.
  Any system of monetary exchange that would involve manipulating quotas,
or translating them into a kind of tradeable commodity would, I think, be
vigorously resisted by most MOO wizards. "I'll help you code that virtual
Harley if you'll pay me two quota" would be antithetical to the whole
spirit of cooperation I've seen in most (though not all) MOOs. In
addition, it would be an ironic commentary on the old cyberpunk
"Information should be free!" if Joe/Jane MOOwhiz sets up shop as a
for-hire expert in coding, amassing virtual capital off of newbies.
  If we're talking about RPG money -- gold and jewels that have value
within a MUD/RPG universe -- well, OK; but I think this would be a fairly
trivial use of what I thought was supposed to be a sophisticated model for
future monetary transactions on a global scale. And if, as part of your
post suggests, RL money would be gratefully paid for increased power
within a MUD -- shades of *Snow Crash*! And who would have guessed that
it was cypherpunks in executive clothing that brought such a system into
the MUD/MOO world.

Arthur Chandler <arthurc@crl.com> writes:
> 
>   I'm still not clear as to exactly what MUD money would purchase. In a MOO,
> such as MediaMOO or BayMOO, I can't conceive of what anyone could "buy"
> with virtual money.

What would one buy with any digital cash?  Whatever anyone is willing to
sell them.  How about programs, stock quotes, orders for physical items,
newspapers and magazines, etc...

> [quotas as the scarese resource on MOOs...]
>   Any system of monetary exchange that would involve manipulating quotas,
> or translating them into a kind of tradeable commodity would, I think, be
> vigorously resisted by most MOO wizards.

Quota is simply a manifestation of the only real resources that limit the
size of a virtual world, storage space and computation time.  There is no
reason to think that any currency exchanges on such systems would need to
limit themselves to this (but it does give one ideas as I will mention
later.) 

>   If we're talking about RPG money -- gold and jewels that have value
> within a MUD/RPG universe -- well, OK; but I think this would be a fairly
> trivial use of what I thought was supposed to be a sophisticated model for
> future monetary transactions on a global scale. And if, as part of your
> post suggests, RL money would be gratefully paid for increased power
> within a MUD -- shades of *Snow Crash*! And who would have guessed that
> it was cypherpunks in executive clothing that brought such a system into
> the MUD/MOO world.

Well, I do not know much about what the virtual city people are doing, but
I can tell you a little bit about what I know of another MOO that is
working on such a virtual marketplace, the metaverse MOO being run right
now by Steve Jackson Games (metaverse.io.com port 7777)  While people are
still working on setting things up (the system is fairly new) a lot of
ideas have been tossed around such as real online games done by
professionsal corperations (sjg, etc) or online orders for magazines such
as wired or mondo, or perhaps ordering equipment at computer sales outlet
on the MOO.  All one needs is currency and then the buyers and sellers can
determine what the market will be.

I find the MOO system interesting because it provides a structure of
objects (data) and interaction of people and the objects.  One of the
reasons I have been interested in dc nets, encrypted filesystems, and the
like is because I think it would be interesting to set up a completely
distributed and secure/private computing system.  I have figured out a lot
of the filesystem and communications (i/o) issues through dc nets and
various encrypted filesystem ideas.  The stumbling block I kept running
into was how to build a network CPU.  What about a MOO?  The MOO
programming language itself is rather primitive, but it only concerns
itself with negotiation of the objects within the system and simple
interactions with those connected to the system; if one were to hook a
perl, C, and tcl interpreter into such a system and add flags to objects to
signal that they should be run through a particular interpreter then one
would have the necessary CPU(s).  One could use MOO money to pay for the
data storage and CPU time (object quota and server ticks) and those
providing cycles or storage space for the MOO would be compensated and the
system could theoretically grow without bounds.

Just an idea or two and perhaps a hint of things to come...

jim

>   I'm still not clear as to exactly what MUD money would purchase. In a MOO,
> such as MediaMOO or BayMOO, I can't conceive of what anyone could "buy"

Well, this is true of MOOs in general but not MUDs most of which are D&D-style
combat games, wherein virtual money already plays a strong role; many
muds have banks, which have fees, interest rates, etc., and loan sharks
abound.  RL money does not come into it, and barter is usually quite
acceptable.  

I agree that the whole idea is rather trivial, but it would seem to be a
good test, at least: see if MUDdom will cooperate enough to have a
networked form of MUDbucks.  I don't think most MUDs would go for the
players being able to buy power(s) outright, but goods should not be a
problem.  Anyway, the difference between the typical MOO and typical MUD
community is very great in many ways and it doesn't do to conflate them.

>   Any system of monetary exchange that would involve manipulating quotas,
> or translating them into a kind of tradeable commodity would, I think, be
> vigorously resisted by most MOO wizards. "I'll help you code that virtual
> Harley if you'll pay me two quota" would be antithetical to the whole
> spirit of cooperation I've seen in most (though not all) MOOs. In
> addition, it would be an ironic commentary on the old cyberpunk
> "Information should be free!" if Joe/Jane MOOwhiz sets up shop as a
> for-hire expert in coding, amassing virtual capital off of newbies.

The capitalists here probably think that's a great idea, though the LPF
fans here would disagree.  This strikes me as remarkably similar to a BBS-
based idea that went around for a while, to have BBSbucks, that one could
spend to get online time on any participating BBS.  One got the bucks by
uploading to file oriented boards, posting on msg. oriented boards, etc.  Of
course, sysops in general slammed the idea, since it was immediately
obvious to most of them that people would manipulate the less popular and
more open (by necessity) boards.  People would call some newbie board, and
upload garbage to it, knowing that the sysop would not say much about it,
being in the process of trying to get new users and keep them, then take
the electricash to the popular boards.  If one looks at BBSs like
countries, it would be as if they were 3rd world nations being farmed for
their cheap resources and labour, and all the money goes out of the
country to the Big Empires.

> future monetary transactions on a global scale. And if, as part of your
> post suggests, RL money would be gratefully paid for increased power
> within a MUD -- shades of *Snow Crash*! And who would have guessed that
> it was cypherpunks in executive clothing that brought such a system into
> the MUD/MOO world.

Well, one can remove the necessity, for now, that RL money be paid.  What
then is the real objection?  I can see nothing keeping the idea from working.
As for the RL for digicash scenario, well *I* wouldn't play, having better
things to waste money on, but if some will, why not?  Why should MUD
programmers and site providers have to do it all for free, while their
game-programming counterparts in the online services rake in good salaries?

At times I shudder to think what it's costing in bandwidth to keep all
these NeTrek players going, night and day.  Make them PAY a little for it
(not much, but enough that they notice), place the financial burden where
it belongs. 

Note: my commentary on MUD/MOO practices dates from 92, so it may be
outdated by this point, seeing how fast that virtcom changes. 

--  
-=> mech@eff.org <=-
Stanton McCandlish     Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp
NitV-DC BBS 202-232-2715, Fido 1:109/? IndraNet 369:111/1, 14.4V32b 16.8ZyX

>I agree that the whole idea is rather trivial, but it would seem to be a
>good test, at least: see if MUDdom will cooperate enough to have a
>networked form of MUDbucks.  

I wish to clarify a point here.  The system as I envision it would not
have a single currency.  Rather, each MUD/MOO would create its own
currency or currencies.  Interdomain transfer would be accomplished by
trading promissory notes.

As to what the money buys, at the very least it could buy those things
which resolve down to CPU time and disk space and network bandwidth.

Eric