This is pretty much right, but a few details need correcting.  Think of the Federated servers like you think of bitcoin mining pools.  They are the authorities of how transactions get ordered in the system.  They all work together to build the blockchain.  There can be thousands of bitcoin nodes in the system, that also see all the data.  The bitcoin nodes see all the pending unconfirmed transactions, then after the miners order the transactions, all the nodes save the block which sets the ordering.  It is similar with factom.  All the nodes will see all the data, just like bitcoin.  Unlike bitcoin, the authorities are known in advance, so the order can be determined in real time, instead of probabilistically after the fact.  This gives faster response time.  Like the bitcoin miners, the servers will run the same code as all the other nodes.

Unlike ethereum or even bitcoin, factom nodes & servers do very little validation.  All that is checked is if data was paid for before putting it in the blockchain.  This is in contrast to something Turing complete, or even with a simple script like bitcoin.  All the validation for an application will be done on the client side, rather than on the servers.  Here is a comparison of the approaches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naKvYfYsBQo&feature=youtu.be&t=3476

Even with a very high transaction usage, the bandwidth required will be about that of a High Definition movie or two.  

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=850070.msg13588841#msg13588841

When the system starts to process more transactions than the average node bandwidth can handle, that is where the p2p network sharding comes into effect.  Since all entries in the system need to declare a ChainID, then there is room for lots of parallelism.  We are anticipating this.  For example, Identities are a big part of how the servers will be chosen and managed.  They are forced to start with 0x888888 to be valid by using brute force hashing.  https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/blob/master/Identity.md#factom-identity-chain-creation  This will put all identities into an easily identifiable network shard.  Since most people won't care about other people's applications, they only join the network shard that handles their application.  The shard is there for real time communication.  After the blocks are made, everyone needs the directory blocks, but you would only download the entry blocks and entries related to your application.  For now everyone downloads everything.

Myfarm's conclusion about the federated servers being more powerful than nodes will come about if they span different network shards.

We will have 32 federated servers for M3.  More than that and we probably would have coordination issues.  

1.  By M3, who is a Federated and who is an Audit servers will be voted for by users of Entry Credits.  It could end up being you or me.  M3 will make it a decentralized system.  M2 will be centralized and Factom appears to be choosing who is running those servers.

2.  I suspect initially a Federated or Audit server could be run on a VPS.  I also suspect, in time, Federated and Audit servers will require MUCH MORE computing power as use of the protocol grows.

3.  www.factom.live for the rich list -- it is widely suspected the top is Poloniex's cold wallet.

The whitepaper does not have any code in it.  In my opinion, there might be a little too much fluff and exposition.  It is approachable by those who cannot read code.  Most, if not all your questions posted are answered in the whitepaper.

You are asking for a 5 minute read to "fully understand" the project.  It take would probably take a years worth of study to fully understand it.  If you won't even read the whitepaper, then it seems you do not want to understand Factom.

We do have some informative explainer videos.  These may help, and will only take a few minutes to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NF7ZqaQHqs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dj3qZeSLdY&list=PLz_L4-CmLmkf2hAcCEnM_5RM1Gs7XPuuN&index=2

I glanced at the white paper, but I'll give it more than a cursory glance this time round.  I was hoping factom "could" be surmised in a paragraph, but if it can't no big deal.  Also Brian, are you part of the factom team?  Reason I asked is you used the word "we" Thank you

The whitepaper does not have any code in it.  In my opinion, there might be a little too much fluff and exposition.  It is approachable by those who cannot read code.  Most, if not all your questions posted are answered in the whitepaper.

You are asking for a 5 minute read to "fully understand" the project.  It take would probably take a years worth of study to fully understand it.  If you won't even read the whitepaper, then it seems you do not want to understand Factom.

We do have some informative explainer videos.  These may help, and will only take a few minutes to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NF7ZqaQHqs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dj3qZeSLdY&list=PLz_L4-CmLmkf2hAcCEnM_5RM1Gs7XPuuN&index=2

A good place to start is with the whitepaper.  This will catch you up on the basics.

https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/blob/master/Factom_Whitepaper.pdf

If you still want more after digesting the 38 page whitepaper, we have another follow up paper with more details.

https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/blob/master/FactomLedgerbyConsensus.pdf

I think margin trading is certainly bad for alt currency. crypto currency is volatile even without leverage, with the added option of leverage it makes the swing even more dramatic which makes it usability as a currency even more difficult.

when ever there is a Bitcoin or ether reversal some exchanges conveniently shut down for maintainence or the currency in question mysteriously vanishes from exchanges.

Hello everyone, I'm only guessing here but I assume those 3.5 million VOX came from an investor at Uphold.
I personally never had 1/3 of that amount coins to begin with.

I stated this before, but I received .005% of all VOX, in other words I got 1 million coins for my services to create the crypto VOX for Voxelus.
Of my million coins I shared and/or gave away over 100,000 of those coins to my core team members and supporters.
I kindly ask to stop with the claims that "the dev got rich quick" because that's not the case guys. I still work everyday on Crypto projects and I still hold VOX.
As many of you know already, I make cryptos for companies. I don't run these companies by any means. I'm simply subcontracted to make their crypto for them.
I recently created eBoost for mockit.gg and I have other clients waiting for their cryptos after that. I've never hid anything from you guys and I never will.

I'm sure no matter what I do or say, there will always be some people who will personally attack me here and ignore every bit of transparency that I can provide.
I apologize to everyone else for these people who wish to see me fail, and or make me look bad, and use that to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt on a project.  

I enjoy interacting with the crypto community, especially in person. I'm only human so I do get tired of false accusations and like I said before, I don't respond to trolling directly but I felt I needed to explain again exactly how many Voxels I was given because the "dev dumped and got rich quick" is not even close to accurate.

Thanks everyone,
Jim

The success of VR has nothing to do with Voxelus or Voxels as a crypto. Read the last few pages. They are completely useless bunch of people involved in this team who don't like to answer questions and dismiss us as FUD and trolls. The Voxelus forum has been dead for a long time. There have been people on the forum that have been trying to make Voxelus work but they gave up trying to get a response. Voxels is private checkpointed closed source garbage. Every once in a while, they buy a press release at a paid site with the same crap rehashed to dump some more coins on us. The volume is highly manipulated on Polo. Price is already down to about 5k now and going to dump more as the truth about this crap gets out. Sooner or later, Polo will get rid of this coin and then there will be nothing stopping it from a free fall.
Also, who the hell cares about Halsey Minor anymore?

Did ya all missed out on VOX ICO? Here is your chance at early investment in their next venture EBOOST.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1630351.msg16397677#msg16397677

There shouldn't even be a Ripple speculation topic.  The entire asset, it's issuance, and its distribution are centrally controlled - the price will be whatever the company wants.  The entire idea of speculating or investing such an asset is absurd.

The launderette has run out of coins, to put into the washing machines. 

Ask the dev directly if you want to get some ideas.