[ANN] BitShares Exchange Network

The OP CCEDK announcement is starting to bring in questions in our email hopper.
While answering one of them last night I had the opportunity to address three Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
I figured others might have the same questions, so I'll post my answers here as well...

Astute Student of the State of the Crypto Art:

Quote

1. Fantastic! very powerful stuff. Lets talk about security for a bit.
"5. Security. No one can freeze, seize, hack or attack your wealth. You are always in control and your identity can never be stolen. "

They went on to ask these three questions in bold below:

Quote from: Stan on June 18, 2015, 02:24:08 AM

1. Where is BitShares in the centralized - decentralized spectrum?

BitShares lies in the "optimally decentralized" part of the spectrum. Every single share participates in selecting which nodes get to sign blocks and how many different block signers their should be. So control of the network is maximally decentralized among the Bitshareholders. They vote to build the multi-node "machine" that does the rote task of signing blocks that document all legal transactions. Everyone can observe whether this machine is functioning correctly and remove any malfunctioning nodes in ten seconds. Right now we have 101 of those nodes so no single node signs more than 1% of the blocks. In BitShares 2.0, the voters will control how many nodes they want to pay for. Compare that to bitcoin:

a) Three unelected companies sign 51% of the blocks while it takes over 51 of our 101 elected nodes each signing 1%.
b) If mining companies misbehave, they cannot be removed by the coin holders, vs our nodes can be fired by removing their votes in 10 seconds.

So we would say that Bitcoin is very near the centralized end of the spectrum while BitShares is completely decentralized where it matters - in who controls what nodes sign blocks and how often. The fact that 3 people vs 51 people do the majority of the book-keeping (block signing) is a red herring. Bitcoinholders have no control over their signers and Bitshareholders have absolute control over our signers.

http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2015/01/12/Decentralization-Scalability-and-Fault-Tolerance-of-Bitcoin/
http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2015/01/20/The-Minimal-Requirement-for-Decentalization/

Adding more than 101 nodes would not change how they are chosen, it would just add cost. The purpose of the 101 is for fault tolerance, not decentralization. These are two orthogonal design axes that people often get confused.

2. How does consensus work?

We call it "approval voting" the top 101 nodes with the most shareholder approval take turns signing blocks in random order.

http://bytemaster.github.io/bitshares/2015/01/04/Delegated-Proof-of-Stake-vs-Proof-of-Work/

3. Also, how do you manage 100k txs per second?

Bytemaster explained it in a 5 minute video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlAVeVFWFM&index=3&list=PLjgfpSQFJTLoR_CpYDBZMQ8hUSxKSflAF

and in a detailed article here:
https://bitshares.org/technology/industrial-performance-and-scalability/

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