The problem is validating someone’s review without revealing who wrote it. Reviewers can be pressured or paid to lie if they are not anonymous, but anyone can leave any review if they are anonymous.
I believe it should be possible to use cryptography to have the validator provide a key to the reviewer, and for the reviewer to sign the review with their key and the validator key, in such a way that a validator can validate a signed message used their key so is valid, but cannot know which reviewer it was. See Yang et. al. 2006 anonymous signature schemes in public key cryptography journal.
Of course that’s possible, but it wouldn’t be free. At some point, the person would need to be validated and assigned a private key that’s tied to their identity. That’s the hard part, the time consuming step. And the more automated it is, the easier it would be to spoof and lie.
All W2s should come with an anonymous review sheet, but you still need a centralized validator.
The problem is validating someone’s review without revealing who wrote it. Reviewers can be pressured or paid to lie if they are not anonymous, but anyone can leave any review if they are anonymous.
I believe it should be possible to use cryptography to have the validator provide a key to the reviewer, and for the reviewer to sign the review with their key and the validator key, in such a way that a validator can validate a signed message used their key so is valid, but cannot know which reviewer it was. See Yang et. al. 2006 anonymous signature schemes in public key cryptography journal.
Of course that’s possible, but it wouldn’t be free. At some point, the person would need to be validated and assigned a private key that’s tied to their identity. That’s the hard part, the time consuming step. And the more automated it is, the easier it would be to spoof and lie.