Communist Bitshares Wealth Redistribution IS THEFT!

[DecentralizeEconomics]

In DPOS, the small owners can easily gang up on the larger stakeholders to dismiss unacceptable developers and marketers and block signers with one click -- from the comfort of their easy chairs, and still get back to the game by the end of the commercials.

Show me another leading chain that provides a better way to regulate the influence of the largest pools of power, and we will do our best to incorporate whatever best practices we can learn from them.

Lol.  DPoS is worse at regulating the influence of the largest stakeholders.  As I showed previously, the largest stakeholders can pay to run the most delegate candidates and strategically vote in the elections to ensure that they control a disproportionate amount of the forging power compared to their actual stake.  Regardless who the smallest stakeholders choose, most likely they will be removing their vote from one "delegate of the wealthy" to vote for another "delegate of the wealthy".

Say you have a big fish who owns 40% of the stake.

In DPOS, the big fish still can vote in 40% can vote in SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN 40% of the delegates, controlling SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN 40% of the blocks.
In POS, the big fish directly controls 40% of the blocks.

FTFY


Stan keeps attempting to divert the conversation around delegates producing bad blocks.  That's not the issue.  The attack that will be carried out on DPoS is one of manipulation and profiteering by the wealthy stakeholders to the disadvantage of the other stakeholders.  The delegates elected by the wealthiest stakeholders are not going to collude to destroy Bitshares, their revenue stream, but instead they will attempt to covertly occupy as many delegate positions as possible to maximize their chain subsidies.

[jonald_fyookball]

they are both issues IMO.

regarding no fake delegates, I thought it already happened...some guy got in five times.

[DecentralizeEconomics]

they are both issues IMO.

regarding no fake delegates, I thought it already happened...some guy got in five times.

It did -> https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10937.0;all

To the extent that Bytemaster was asking everyone what delegates the offending individual, "sfinder", controlled.  The assertion that Bitshares is the most decentralized crypto is absurd.  All of Bytemaster's figures in his blog post inaccurately assume the 101 delegates have unique motives which is impossible to ascertain.

[StanLarimer]

The attack that will be carried out on DPoS is one of manipulation and profiteering by the wealthy stakeholders to the disadvantage of the other stakeholders.  The delegates elected by the wealthiest stakeholders are not going to collude to destroy Bitshares, their revenue stream, but instead they will attempt to covertly occupy as many delegate positions as possible to maximize their chain subsidies.

Nominal gains would be less than real losses.

If BitShares hired 100% unproductive staff, then it would be a less profitable investment and capital would flow away from it.  So large stakeholders have better incentives to hire great staff to attract capital and grow the value of their investment.

Expected growth rate is in the hundreds of percent.  Max revenue stream is capped at about 6 percent.  So the incentives are properly aligned for any big investor to grow her stake not siphon off a trickle and everyone else rides along on that growth.

Even in the worst case with 100% of all streams being pocketed unproductively the amount wasted would be less than Bitcoin is burning unproductively as we speak.  And the system would still serve its customers and earn a profit.

[StanLarimer]

they are both issues IMO.

regarding no fake delegates, I thought it already happened...some guy got in five times.

This was answered earlier...

During the startup phase, when it was relatively easy to get elected, so some delegates were not well vetted.  One guy got 5 slots which were quickly challenged. As competition heated up, it became harder and harder to get elected and required an increasingly well established reputation to get into the top 101.  Every day that goes by, a Darwinian competition is purging weaker reputations and replacing them with more and more well known and respected candidates.  Currently, even our best known developers have taken days or even weeks to get elected.  Every delegate gets challenged to show "what have you done for me lately."

[DecentralizeEconomics]

The attack that will be carried out on DPoS is one of manipulation and profiteering by the wealthy stakeholders to the disadvantage of the other stakeholders.  The delegates elected by the wealthiest stakeholders are not going to collude to destroy Bitshares, their revenue stream, but instead they will attempt to covertly occupy as many delegate positions as possible to maximize their chain subsidies.

Nominal gains would be less than real losses.

If BitShares hired 100% unproductive staff, then it would be a less profitable investment and capital would flow away from it.  So large stakeholders have better incentives to hire great staff to attract capital and grow the value of their investment.

Expected growth rate is in the hundreds of percent.  Max revenue stream is capped at about 6 percent.  So the incentives are properly aligned for any big investor to grow her stake not siphon off a trickle and everyone else rides along on that growth.

Even in the worst case with 100% of all streams being pocketed unproductively the amount wasted would be less than Bitcoin is burning unproductively as we speak.  And the system would still serve its customers and earn a profit.

I never said that the delegates the wealthiest stakeholders would elect would be unproductive.  On the contrary, I think the wealthiest stakeholders would "support" business delegates which they have a vested interest in and who would maximize their investment, but at the same time, these businesses would be financed at the expense of all stakeholders.  While the smaller stakeholders might obtain an increase on their BTS investment, the wealthiest stakeholders would get the most benefit.  The wealthiest stakeholders would not only receive the appreciation on their BTS, but would also receive the business profit off the delegate businesses which they had a vested interest.  This is not "free enterprise", but instead, it is big business financed at the expense of all for the personal gain of the wealthiest stakeholders.  Any other startup business, which posed as competition to a business delegate backed by the wealthiest stakeholders, would be denied a delegate position and be forced to finance their competition.  DPoS creates a "government of the wealthy" and monopolizes the entire Bitshares' economy.  Such a system is NOT "decentralized" in any true sense of the word.

[hack_]

The attack that will be carried out on DPoS is one of manipulation and profiteering by the wealthy stakeholders to the disadvantage of the other stakeholders.  The delegates elected by the wealthiest stakeholders are not going to collude to destroy Bitshares, their revenue stream, but instead they will attempt to covertly occupy as many delegate positions as possible to maximize their chain subsidies.

Nominal gains would be less than real losses.

If BitShares hired 100% unproductive staff, then it would be a less profitable investment and capital would flow away from it.  So large stakeholders have better incentives to hire great staff to attract capital and grow the value of their investment.

Expected growth rate is in the hundreds of percent.  Max revenue stream is capped at about 6 percent.  So the incentives are properly aligned for any big investor to grow her stake not siphon off a trickle and everyone else rides along on that growth.

Even in the worst case with 100% of all streams being pocketed unproductively the amount wasted would be less than Bitcoin is burning unproductively as we speak.  And the system would still serve its customers and earn a profit.

I never said that the delegates the wealthiest stakeholders would elect would be unproductive.  On the contrary, I think the wealthiest stakeholders would "support" business delegates which they have a vested interest in and who would maximize their investment, but at the same time, these businesses would be financed at the expense of all stakeholders.  While the smaller stakeholders might obtain an increase on their BTS investment, the wealthiest stakeholders would get the most benefit.  The wealthiest stakeholders would not only receive the appreciation on their BTS, but would also receive the business profit off the delegate businesses which they had a vested interest.  This is not "free enterprise", but instead, it is big business financed at the expense of all for the personal gain of the wealthiest stakeholders.  Any other startup business, which posed as competition to a business delegate backed by the wealthiest stakeholders, would be denied a delegate position and be forced to finance their competition.  DPoS creates a "government of the wealthy" and monopolizes the entire Bitshares' economy.  Such a system is NOT "decentralized" in any true sense of the word.

there is a rumor that 3 people control +20 delegates

[StanLarimer]

All of Bytemaster's figures in his blog post inaccurately assume the 101 delegates have unique motives which is impossible to ascertain.

The number 101 is for fault tolerance purposes (less than one percent loss of throughput per lost node) not decentralization.  Decentralization is in the selection of which nodes are going to be the active set of nodes.   These are selected by the combined voting power of all stakeholders. Even that doesn't really matter for security purposes. They could just as well be randomly selected from the set of candidates that pass some threshold minimum number of votes. There literally is nothing bad that a signer can do beyond failing to sign or omitting transactions for the next node to process instead.  Bad blocks are rejected, bad nodes are fired, and the system moves on.  As long as at least 90 of the delegates are signing acceptable blocks the system is running green and all is swell.

It doesn't matter if some of the delegates are run by the same person, in fact, shareholders are free to assign several streams to one person if it is a highly sought after employee.  All it does is decrease the distribution of nodes a bit, but even if several collocated nodes are taken out at once, the system switches in standby delegates on the fly.  Long term, our preference is for delegates to be independent, but the world won't end if that happens in some special cases.  The space shuttle had 5 redundant computers and that was considered good enough for space flight.  We have a self-healing, continuously reconfiguring redundancy level of 101.  That's way beyond plenty.

The main reason for going with the 101 most preferred delegates is it gives us a mechanism for the stakeholders to select who they want to hire to grow the company.  If they fail miserably at this, the worst that happens is that a smaller percentage of new supply is wasted than bitcoin burns on mining.

Anything better than our worst case is an improvement over other methods.  We don't need it to be 100% efficient for it to be effective in growing the company for all stakeholders and we don't need it to be 100% distributed for it to be secure. 

That said, we don't even care if we win the argument about "who's the best algorithm".  We are out to build a new kind of company that will serve its customers and owners well.  BitShares is competing on features and quality of service like our flesh and blood competitors.  It is in business to do business and it will be judged by the service it provides and the growth it achieves for its investors.

[StanLarimer]

I never said that the delegates the wealthiest stakeholders would elect would be unproductive.  On the contrary, I think the wealthiest stakeholders would "support" business delegates which they have a vested interest in and who would maximize their investment, but at the same time, these businesses would be financed at the expense of all stakeholders.  While the smaller stakeholders might obtain an increase on their BTS investment, the wealthiest stakeholders would get the most benefit.  The wealthiest stakeholders would not only receive the appreciation on their BTS, but would also receive the business profit off the delegate businesses which they had a vested interest.  This is not "free enterprise", but instead, it is big business financed at the expense of all for the personal gain of the wealthiest stakeholders.  Any other startup business, which posed as competition to a business delegate backed by the wealthiest stakeholders, would be denied a delegate position and be forced to finance their competition.  DPoS creates a "government of the wealthy" and monopolizes the entire Bitshares' economy.  Such a system is NOT "decentralized" in any true sense of the word.

Now we are getting somewhere.  We simply disagree on philosophy.  

People who think like you do will simply not be owners in BitShares.  They aren't interested in that kind of product. That's ok.  Find something else that works for you.

BitShares appeals to those who understand and appreciate the company metaphor. Companies are formed to make profits and share them according to the percent of ownership.  Every share gets the same percent of the profits.  If you own more shares you get more profits.  That's how companies are supposed to work.  

BitShares can be viewed many ways.  You can view it as a coin that contains a built decentralized exchange that that produces smart coin products that track the value of other assets.  (In fact, it took Bytemaster ten different nested metaphors to fully describe it in What is BitShares?) There is nothing else like it in the world.  But, by using a variety of different metaphors to describe different aspects of how it works, people can begin to understand and appreciate whether they want to own some of its tokens.

People who don't like traditional profit sharing metaphors won't participate.  Those who do will happily explore a whole new world of possibilities.

[StanLarimer]

there is a rumor that 3 people control +20 delegates

I don't think that is true, but if it was it would merely be suboptimal and temporary.  As the company grows, the intent is for all 101 to be verifiably independent.  However, this policy is totally controlled by the stakeholders so it's up to them.

[Crestington]

I like the resounces from Bitshares shillers, attack with logic!



Interesting stuff, lets see more discussion and where it takes us, this is turning into some good discussion about economics and long-term profitability. I think I support the position of the Bitshares holders myself because I think Delegates would always want to work altruistically towards development of the Coin and need to be tech oriented in the first place. There's a lot of people who like to get paid a monthly salary to work on building their favorite Coin and in a normal situation they would only work part time on it so this allows them to work full time on it.

[fluxer555]

This is a fascinating line of thought and worthy of further discussion. 

Yes, but both sides need each other.  The big guys hold the market cap up and are likely to invest further in the ecosystem. The little guys keep the big guys honest.  Signers are those with the biggest consensus. The current system has network effect, so you don't fork off from it lightly.  If you abuse your influence, competition can arise and honor the stake of a subset of the stakeholders and take them away from you.

We are trying to form a balanced ecosystem with all the right feedback mechanisms to keep it balanced.  In some sense, this is a microcosm of the real world field of competition.  We are trying to engineer an incorruptibly fair playing field, at least much better than the current system. 

After that, let the market game theory begin!

I want to clarify, when I said "large stakeholder" I meant holders owning something like 30%+. So "the big guys keep the market cap up", however with somebody owning 30% of all stake, that market cap doesn't mean as much for you (a holder of <0.1%) in relative terms. You have much more to gain by forking him out, assuming he is not contributing anything else besides holding.

You said 'the current system has network effect' in regards to forking out shareholders, however in many cases, you could effectively kick out that 30% shareholder on the main chain. You would just need 31% of shareholders to vote in delegates that are willing to do so. If current delegates saw they were about to lose their jobs unless they complied with that 31%, then they would also have high incentive to.

[StanLarimer]

This is a fascinating line of thought and worthy of further discussion.  

Yes, but both sides need each other.  The big guys hold the market cap up and are likely to invest further in the ecosystem. The little guys keep the big guys honest.  Signers are those with the biggest consensus. The current system has network effect, so you don't fork off from it lightly.  If you abuse your influence, competition can arise and honor the stake of a subset of the stakeholders and take them away from you.

We are trying to form a balanced ecosystem with all the right feedback mechanisms to keep it balanced.  In some sense, this is a microcosm of the real world field of competition.  We are trying to engineer an incorruptibly fair playing field, at least much better than the current system.  

After that, let the market game theory begin!

I want to clarify, when I said "large stakeholder" I meant holders owning something like 30%+. So "the big guys keep the market cap up", however with somebody owning 30% of all stake, that market cap doesn't mean as much for you (a holder of <0.1%) in relative terms. You have much more to gain by forking him out, assuming he is not contributing anything else besides holding.

You said 'the current system has network effect' in regards to forking out shareholders, however in many cases, you could effectively kick out that 30% shareholder on the main chain. You would just need 31% of shareholders to vote in delegates that are willing to do so. If current delegates saw they were about to lose their jobs unless they complied with that 31%, then they would also have high incentive to.

The little guys benefit from demand for their stake.  Any chain that just forked over a major investor would not likely see much further demand from major investors.  

Like I said, if Donald Trump tried to buy up 30% of BitShares, I'm thinking that would be insanely great.

Best thing to do in these thought experiments is to ask, "What happens in such situations for traditional companies?"

Presumably all the old human strategies apply.  It's just that now, it must happen transparently on a level playing field where all owners can see what's coming and make their next moves accordingly.

[bytemaster]

Under communism all means of production are owned in common by "all" rather than by individuals.  This is a non-voluntary arrangement which denies property rights.  
  
Under capitalism all means of production are owned privately.

There is a limit to how much capital an individual can acquire which means some people voluntarily pool capital in the form of companies.

Companies issue new shares all the time when new investor money comes it.  This isn't considered wealth redistribution, it is an equal trade of new shares for new capital.  

All companies are ultimately managed by their shareholders who elect a board of directors who appoint management who hires employees.  

All companies are vulnerable to a hostile takeover from someone who acquires a large enough stake.  They don't even have to gain 51% ownership because often times the small shareholders don't vote or they delegate their vote.  

Businesses have been operating like this successfully for hundreds of years and hostile takeovers of large companies are difficult to pull off.

What makes DAC companies even harder to attack is that the entire company can be "copied" and exclude the attacker if the masses of users, business partners, and merchants don't approve of the behavior of the new owners.   The network effect is not tied to the software per-se, but to the fair business operation as intended by the code and stakeholders.  

So it is true that BTS is vulnerable to all the attacks that a normal publicly traded business is.  

Does it matter if there is a single dictator, 10 directors, or 101 directors?   The business behaves the same and the current shareholders approve of how it is being run.   It is still serving its customers.    

If you are going to propose "attacks" on BitShares then you need to show how the attack is "profitable" and "sustainable".  It would cost millions of dollars to gain control of all 100 delegate positions "instantaneously".    If it is not "instantaneously" then you must organize a "long-con" where you get "honest looking" people to behave as promised until they all go rogue at once.   Perhaps bribing all of the existing delegates to serve your purposes.  

In any event all attacks not long lasting and can be resolved and the attacker is unlikely to make money.

Attackers aiming to simply "disrupt" the network without profit can probably use cheaper alternatives that will also work on all other systems including Nxt and BTC.

[Bit_Happy]

Voluntary participation in "communist" experiments is not a problem. Everyone is free to ignore or join the community.

[fluxer555]

This is a fascinating line of thought and worthy of further discussion. 

Yes, but both sides need each other.  The big guys hold the market cap up and are likely to invest further in the ecosystem. The little guys keep the big guys honest.  Signers are those with the biggest consensus. The current system has network effect, so you don't fork off from it lightly.  If you abuse your influence, competition can arise and honor the stake of a subset of the stakeholders and take them away from you.

We are trying to form a balanced ecosystem with all the right feedback mechanisms to keep it balanced.  In some sense, this is a microcosm of the real world field of competition.  We are trying to engineer an incorruptibly fair playing field, at least much better than the current system. 

After that, let the market game theory begin!

I want to clarify, when I said "large stakeholder" I meant holders owning something like 30%+. So "the big guys keep the market cap up", however with somebody owning 30% of all stake, that market cap doesn't mean as much for you (a holder of <0.1%) in relative terms. You have much more to gain by forking him out, assuming he is not contributing anything else besides holding.

You said 'the current system has network effect' in regards to forking out shareholders, however in many cases, you could effectively kick out that 30% shareholder on the main chain. You would just need 31% of shareholders to vote in delegates that are willing to do so. If current delegates saw they were about to lose their jobs unless they complied with that 31%, then they would also have high incentive to.

The little guys benefit from demand for their stake.  Any chain that just forked over a major investor would not likely see much further demand from major investors. 

Like I said, if Donald Trump tried to buy up 30% of BitShares, I'm thinking that would be insanely great.

Best thing to do in these thought experiments is to ask, "What happens in such situations for traditional companies?"

Presumably all the old human strategies apply.  It's just that now, it must happen transparently on a level playing field where all owners can see what's coming and make their next moves accordingly.

Right, this makes sense. In the event there is a clearly malicious 'investor' who is trying to attack the network, what will happen in practice is probably very hard to predict. If the attacker gets wind that he's going to be forked out, he'll then try to sell everything back as fast as possible. But, if an attacker knew that being forked out would be a possibility, he wouldn't even try attacking this way to start with.

I'm liking DPOS more and more. Another thought:

Protocol-wise, DPOS does not consider 'individuals'. It just keeps a balance-sheet of addresses, how much they own, and what delegates they are voting for. However, since "community forks" are determined extrinsically, perhaps by downloading a modified version of the client, it now indeed matters more as to how many individuals collaborate regardless of their total stake. Does this make sense?

[jonald_fyookball]

Now we are getting somewhere.  We simply disagree on philosophy.  

People who think like you do will simply not be owners in BitShares.  They aren't interested in that kind of product. That's ok.  Find something else that works for you.

BitShares appeals to those who understand and appreciate the company metaphor. Companies are formed to make profits and share them according to the percent of ownership.  Every share gets the same percent of the profits.  If you own more shares you get more profits.  That's how companies are supposed to work.  

I get what you're saying.  My intuition tells me that these kinds of
ideas are just not scalable enough for a global currency.  Just
my own little opinion -- I'm much happier trusting in the protocol
of Bitcoin.   But good luck.

[StanLarimer]

Right, this makes sense. In the event there is a clearly malicious 'investor' who is trying to attack the network, what will happen in practice is probably very hard to predict. If the attacker gets wind that he's going to be forked out, he'll then try to sell everything back as fast as possible. But, if an attacker knew that being forked out would be a possibility, he wouldn't even try attacking this way to start with.

I'm liking DPOS more and more. Another thought:

Protocol-wise, DPOS does not consider 'individuals'. It just keeps a balance-sheet of addresses, how much they own, and what delegates they are voting for. However, since "community forks" are determined extrinsically, perhaps by downloading a modified version of the client, it now indeed matters more as to how many individuals collaborate regardless of their total stake. Does this make sense?

We seek the ability of humans to join groups of people under a set of rules they all support.  That's why Bytemaster's vision of DACs grows from companies to communities to (maybe someday) countries that are joined by choice more than an accident of birth.  This means that you can decide whether you want a community where voting is per person vs. per share.  BitShares is modeled after collaboration based on pooled capital, where the votes are allocated based on what each individual has contributed to the capital pool (as Bytemaster outlined above).  But a home owner's association might prefer to allocate it on a per residence basis.  We like the ability to join a group with rules we can support.  If those rules are changed by the majority, we like being able to leave.

Which brings up another point:  any design that depends on assurances that some group of people can be prevented from collaborating, is a fragile design.  Humans collaborate and compete.  We collaborate to compete.  

Block chains are just a transparent way of keeping score.

Remember that famous quote from Milton Friedman?  "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon."
I'm thinking up a fractured version of that quote:  "Collaboration is always and everywhere a human phenomenon."

We shouldn't think of block chains as a way to change human behavior.  It's just a way to transparently document what is happening.  What difference does it make if 51% of the owners independently or collaboratively or conspiratorially decide to vote in a particular way?  Do they not each have a right to base their actions on any combination of factors they choose?

A majority of shareholders of a traditional company can collaborate to change its by-laws.  
A majority of shareholders of a crypto company can collaborate to change its software equivalent.  

If they do so, the minority has the option to sell off.  So the majority must tread lightly.

Let humans continue to compete and collaborate as they always have.
I think many of them will prefer to do so on a robotically honest playing field.  

[StanLarimer]

Now we are getting somewhere.  We simply disagree on philosophy.  

People who think like you do will simply not be owners in BitShares.  They aren't interested in that kind of product. That's ok.  Find something else that works for you.

BitShares appeals to those who understand and appreciate the company metaphor. Companies are formed to make profits and share them according to the percent of ownership.  Every share gets the same percent of the profits.  If you own more shares you get more profits.  That's how companies are supposed to work.  

I get what you're saying.  My intuition tells me that these kinds of
ideas are just not scalable enough for a global currency.  Just
my own little opinion -- I'm much happier trusting in the protocol
of Bitcoin.   But good luck.

Thanks.  But, if you change your metaphor from "global currency" to "global company that produces stable smart currency derivatives" then what you have to compare it against is international companies like Alibaba or Google. There, the idea of stakeholders electing a board of directors to appoint management and hire employees is a well established model. We just aim to extend block chain technology to make global businesses transparent, incorruptible, efficient and profitable.

Those are the main reasons we started with POW, switched to POS, and then extended it to DPOS.

[bitcreditscc]

Now we are getting somewhere.  We simply disagree on philosophy.  

People who think like you do will simply not be owners in BitShares.  They aren't interested in that kind of product. That's ok.  Find something else that works for you.

BitShares appeals to those who understand and appreciate the company metaphor. Companies are formed to make profits and share them according to the percent of ownership.  Every share gets the same percent of the profits.  If you own more shares you get more profits.  That's how companies are supposed to work.  

I get what you're saying.  My intuition tells me that these kinds of
ideas are just not scalable enough for a global currency.  Just
my own little opinion -- I'm much happier trusting in the protocol
of Bitcoin.   But good luck.

Thanks.  But, if you change your metaphor from "global currency" to "global company that produces stable smart currency derivatives" then what you have to compare it against is international companies like Alibaba or Google.  There, the idea of electing a board of directors to appoint management and hire employees is a well established model.  We just aim to extend block chain technology to make businesses transparent, incorruptible, efficient and profitable.

Those are the main reasons we started with POW, switched to POS, and then extended it to DPOS.

 

Let's be honest about the actual reasons ok?