Signature certification

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 07:25 29/03/2001 +0100, Ben Laurie wrote:

[snip]

>BTW, a related subject is certified mail protocols (which I
>independently reinvented a couple of weeks ago [sigh]) - which would
>allow this stuff to proceed with mutually untrusting parties. In the
>scenario above, they don't deal with the other half of the contract
>exchange (i.e. the money exchange), since the presumption is that
>solicitors won't sign until they have the money, and won't fail to hand
>it over once the signature is done. Using certified mail protocols one
>can exchange the contract _and_ the money without the need to involve a
>solicitor each (though you do still need a TTP [in the untainted
>cryptographic sense]) and without any possibility of failure to complete
>the exchange, despite the best efforts of either party to cheat (i.e.
>either money and contract change hands or nothing does).

Could indeed be a useful protocol, but not very importantly at the stage of
exchange of contracts, where no more than the deposit changes hands.  It
becomes more important at completion, when (in paper terms) a transfer is
exchanged for the balance (e.g. 90%) of the price.

Regards

Nicholas

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