I'm not too active on technology forums. I think that Hacker News and Stack Exchange are my only places where I am somewhat active.<p>As a result, it is quite challenging to write up and present a naive idea to find out if it has any meat. In general, expressing an idea without being clear on the technical history or misusing a technical term is an automatic disqualification of the idea independent of the value of the idea.<p>I am curious. Is there a recommended approach that more successful folks take when you have a potential solution to a well-known problem that the experts believe cannot be solved by a non-expert.<p>In my case, I've been thinking a lot of about alternatives to using a private key as the basis of identify for decentralized currencies. I have come up with an approach (that is most likely flawed and may not have any meat) for a decentralized identity service that is not based on private keys (in essence: if the private key is lost, a new one can be used in its place).<p>What would be the recommended approach for finding mentors, presenting the early draft, and ideally, receiving constructive feedback that will help me understand how to place the approach that I came up with within the context of current efforts.
> alternatives to using a private key as the basis of identify for decentralized currencies<p>Well, there’s always the Bitcoin Talk ANN board <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0" rel="nofollow">https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0</a><p>But that’s probably more relevant for the final version of your paper.<p>So before that, maybe some of the other boards on Bitcoin Talk?