Byteball is not decentralized, and never will.
It created a new concept: a twelve-centralized coin. Actually, tony-centralized coin.
But hey, there will be big companies! Their reputation will make us sure that never will attack the system, even if it is blatantly profitable to them!
Get rid of governments to depend on big corporations... I dont think it would be a good idea...
I don't think you understand how witnesses work. Let me try once more:
Byteball needs witnesses to be able to prevent doublespends. A transaction is always referred to by someone else’s transaction. Most of them are referred to by transactions by unknown users. But some transactions are signed by known users. For example, big merchants, exchanges, or just reputable individuals or organizations.
If a user sees 2 conflicting transactions, the user validating them will look for the 2 transactions’ previously referenced transactions and check if some of those are created by known users. The transaction with most “witness” referenced transactions is “best” and the other is deemed invalid. We call these users “witnesses”, because they “witness” the reality for those who come after them.
A witness is just a regular, frequently posting full node, with one big difference: the identity of the person or organization running it is publicly known.
A witness
witnesses transactions, they can not change them or otherwise influence them in any way. This means that a witness can not be held responsible for transactions it witnessed, they didn’t do anything to them but witness them taking place;
● This means that their reputation in the real world should not be negatively affected by bad actors on the Byteball platform but only if they, themselves misbehave by either:
○ Posting transactions out of order;
○ Not posting transactions at all;
○ Collude with other witnesses;
○ Doing anything that causes them to lose trust of the community.
There are 12 witnesses involved in every transaction. In exchange for the work involved, a witness collects part of the transaction fee (the payload fee). This list varies very little from transaction to transaction. There cannot be more than one change in the witnesses list. The witnesses majority (6+1) show the path to the “main chain”. A witness may even be down for an amount of time without it affecting the network. The security of the network would only be threatened if 6 witnesses colluded, which is theoretically possible but practically implausible.
So, we threw out miners and introduced witnesses. Doesn’t that make them a new privileged class? To some extent, but there is an important difference. While miners look at your transactions and
decide if they like this transaction or not, a witness has
no direct influence. It’s Users that look for witnesses to determine the consensus order of transactions.
Witnesses don’t decide anything about individual transactions. They ensure the integrity of the network simply by being there.The platform was set up with 12 witnesses all being the founder, Anton Churyumoff (Tony). He is, of course, "a highly reputable user with a real-world identity", and totally trustworthy. Byteball is his baby, after all. But this couldn't get more centralized; unwelcome in a going-to-become decentralized system. So we need to diversify, to start trusting others willing to stand up publicly and put their reputation on the line.
So far I'm talking to
more than 10 candidate witnesses, of which 4 are pretty much confirmed. We will present them to the community in the coming months. So yes, we are going to become decentralized. Step by step, but surely.
Just found this comment a few pages back. Its very interesting although does not explain a few things I still don't understand about witnesses. Does the whole network have to agree who the 12 witnesses are? ie there has to be a general consensus? What if a large percentage have a different witness list? Can I change my witness list? Could I pick 12 witnesses, none of whome are tony if I wanted to?
