Trust

caution

This page has been moved to the eSSIF-Lab Framework on Github.

Short Description

Trust (of a party in X) is the (subjective) degree of belief or confidence that this party has in X. X can be anyone or anything. One can trust a president - e.g. to make the right decisions. One may trust one's own judgements or conscience. The degree of belief or confidence is a subjective judgement or perception by this party. So, given the same exact circumstances, two parties will perceive different amounts of trust based on their risk tolerance and history with trust issues.

Trust is not something that is given, but something that parties (un)consciously assess, and decide about, and changes over time. Since parties are autonomous, their trust is highly subjective. As a consequence, the idea of having 'trusted registries', 'trusted issuers' that do not take this subjectivity into account basically act as (centralized) authorities, denying that parties are autonomous. While we acknowledge that such ideas (have a right to) exist, we do not follow them.

So trust has a few basic issues, in that it is often not clear

  • who the actual party is in which the belief or confidence is rooted.
  • what X is - what it is that the party believes, o confides in.