user238: To avoid the problems caused by the current SSL certificate infrastructure, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has proposed Sovereign Keys, which appears to be backed by a distributed, append-only datastructure that can grow to hundreds of gigabytes. That sounds awfully familiar to a block chain. Are there similarities between Sovereign Key and Bitcoin (or Namecoin)? Do they employ a related approach or is this just a superficial similarity?

user405: No.  Sovereign keys are simply a technical mechanism to use the DNSSEC trust anchors instead of companies like Verisign.  Trust is still centralized; it's just centralized in a different place.

238: <p>To avoid the problems caused by the current SSL certificate infrastructure, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has proposed <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/sovereign-keys-proposal-make-https-and-email-more-secure">Sovereign Keys</a>, which appears to be backed by a distributed, append-only datastructure that can grow to hundreds of gigabytes. That sounds awfully familiar to a block chain. Are there similarities between Sovereign Key and Bitcoin (or Namecoin)? Do they employ a related approach or is this just a superficial similarity?</p>
 405: <p>No.  Sovereign keys are simply a technical mechanism to use the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System_Security_Extensions#Trust_anchors_and_authentication_chains">DNSSEC trust anchors</a> instead of companies like Verisign.  Trust is still centralized; it's just centralized in a different place.</p>
