trustless

[ truhst-lis ]

adjective

1. not worthy of trust; faithless; unreliable; false:

   He was trustless when money was involved.

2. distrustful; suspicious:

   a doorman trustless of all strangers.

trustless

/ ˈtrʌstlɪs /

adjective

1. untrustworthy; deceitful
2. distrusting; wary; suspicious

Derived Forms

• ˈtrustlessly, adverb
• ˈtrustlessness, noun

Other Words From

• trustless·ly adverb
• trustless·ness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of trustless¹

First recorded in 1520–30; trust + -less

Example Sentences

One of the allures of cryptocurrencies is their potential to offer a “trustless” system where investors don’t have to trust whether the person at the other end of their deal will make good on it, unlike the 2008 financial crisis when banks were going bust.

From Seattle Times

Because in the crypto world, a lot of the pitch was “It’s trustless. You don’t have to trust.”

From Slate

It’s nihilistic and idealistic; decentralized and dominated by a few mega-billionaires; trustless and faith-based; public and encrypted; transparent and inscrutable; and a utopian anarchist invention beloved by drug cartels, terrorists, and Kim Jong-Un.

From Slate

The contract also specifies that copyrights only transfer if the NFT is legally sold — so stealing somebody’s token doesn’t give you all the rights associated with them. a16z frames the copyright licenses as a more “trustless” version of NFT ownership, which is right in some sense: it potentially offers more clarity over the tokens’ legal value rather than relying on handshake deals and vague promises.

From The Verge

What we found is this whole mantra of a trustless economy, we shouldn’t have trusted many of these new actors.

From New York Times

Related Words

• arguable
• debatable
• equivocal
• fishy
• hesitant
• improbable
• problematic
• questionable
• reluctant
• shady
• skeptical
• suspicious
• uncertain
• unclear
• unconvinced
• unreliable
• unsure