Communist Bitshares Wealth Redistribution IS THEFT!

[DecentralizeEconomics]

With less than 1 million or $17000 worth of NXT you're making a loss?

Even if you owned/pooled 1% of NXT or $170 000 worth it would only make you $328 a year or 0.02% interest even if you forged 365, 24/7?

I must have got the numbers wrong because if that's true you have an uneconomically viable business model.

With that model no-one will be incentivised to forge, they'd be doing it for charity/moral reasons and it would most likely end up with a handful of whales forging and distributing their stake to look decentralised. The incentives aren't there. I hope I'm wrong I didn't realise the situation was that bad.

Do you guys have a business plan for how you plan to make forging realistically profitable/attractive in the future?

You forge to protect your existing investment.

Unfortunately this doesn't work well in the real world, the majority think it's an SEP, someone else's problem/responsibility. This incentive structure leads to very low participation and probably only a few whales forging but trying to appear decentralized. Extreme centralisation of forging stake.

To prevent this centralization of power you might want to consider maintaining a good level of decentralization via a 101 delegate system.

NXT has more forging participation than Bitshares' 101 delegates.  I have offered two rational reasons an individual would forge even if they were not profitable:

1 - To protect their investment
2 - Because their business uses the payment platform.

Let's be honest.  How much does it really cost to run a forging node 24/7/365?  AROUND $30 A YEAR!  Most users run their computers anyway and have unlimited bandwidth.  Even if a business cannot ROI forging with their stake, do YOU REALLY THINK $30 A YEAR WOULD STOP THEM?  That's simply considered a business expense.

In addition, it doesn't matter if a large stakeholder forges more blocks than a small stakeholder.  Each earns the same percentage return forging.  This does not mean the system is "centralized" it means it is "fair".  If you argue against this, you are heading down the road to Communism or Crony Capitalism.  Centralizing forging to 101 delegates and forcing all stakeholders to subsidize their operations is establishing a forging monopoly which disenfranchises all.

[monsterer]

NXT has more forging participation than Bitshares' 101 delegates.  

It does, but higher number of nodes != more decentralisation.

The key is the number of blocks forged by each node - bitshares makes it even between the 101 delegates, but NXT is stake based, so it *could* be that the majority control of the NXT blockchain consensus lies with well less than 101 / 2 nodes.

[Pheonike]

There is performance and economic cost to having more nodes than is reasonably necessary to ensure security. You pay a penalty in transaction speed. If it's gonna take minutes/hours to form a consensus to confirm a transaction because of the extra overhead then how useful is that? It's about about being efficient. PoW is like a gas guzzling 40 year old truck that gets 5 mpg and takes $100 or more to fill the tank. It may be reliable but I'm not buying one. I and most people only want/need an efficient modern sedan/suv that get 30+ mpg and only takes $40 or less to fill. That is what DPoS is, a more efficient motor for the masses.

[testz]

...
Let's be honest.  How much does it really cost to run a forging node 24/7/365?  AROUND $30 A YEAR!  Most users run their computers anyway and have unlimited bandwidth.  Even if a business cannot ROI forging with their stake, do YOU REALLY THINK $30 A YEAR WOULD STOP THEM?  That's simply considered a business expense.
...

Because DPOS - BitShares transaction takes ~10 sec to confirm (in case is 50 delegates in a row miss the blocks - 8 min), I hear that Nxt devs promise to implement something similar, do they do it? If not yet, try to think how it's possible to implement same transaction speed using current Nxt forging.
Can you share with us the current transaction confirmation time in Nxt?

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/28350/what-is-the-block-confirmation-time-for-nxt-coin

Transactions are being included into blocks in 1 minute in average. Longer you wait - higher a chance that a double-spending won't happen. There is no such a number that guarantees 100% irreversibility.

1 confirmation is not secure at all. 10 confirmations is recommended for small amounts, 720 confirmations - for big ones.

[Daedelus]

...
Let's be honest.  How much does it really cost to run a forging node 24/7/365?  AROUND $30 A YEAR!  Most users run their computers anyway and have unlimited bandwidth.  Even if a business cannot ROI forging with their stake, do YOU REALLY THINK $30 A YEAR WOULD STOP THEM?  That's simply considered a business expense.
...

Because DPOS - BitShares transaction takes ~10 sec to confirm (in case is 50 delegates in a row miss the blocks - 8 min), I hear that Nxt devs promise to implement something similar, do they do it? If not yet, try to think how it's possible to implement same transaction speed using current Nxt forging.
Can you share with us the current transaction confirmation time in Nxt?

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/28350/what-is-the-block-confirmation-time-for-nxt-coin

Transactions are being included into blocks in 1 minute in average. Longer you wait - higher a chance that a double-spending won't happen. There is no such a number that guarantees 100% irreversibility.

1 confirmation is not secure at all. 10 confirmations is recommended for small amounts, 720 confirmations - for big ones.

Security is based on time so ten 1 min Nxt blocks = one 10 min BTC block. It is an initial number to ensure Nxt is at least a secure as BTC. As it says in the post, there is no such a number that guarantees 100% irreversibility in a decentralised system. Until Instant Transaction, this is what all decentralised systems have to work with.

Bitshares uses Ripples distributed, less trustless system. The network only has to monitor 101 nodes rather than x that occur in an uncapped decentralised network so it allows faster transactions with less chance or reversal. That's great, but if I wanted that I would have bought into Ripple.

Ripple also doesn't cap the number of nodes in the network, AFAIK, so you could make a case that maybe Ripple's distributed system is closer to decentralisation than Bitshares distributed system. But neither are.

[StanLarimer]

Bitshares uses Ripples distributed, less trustless system. The network only has to monitor 101 nodes rather than x that occur in an uncapped decentralised network so it allows faster transactions with less chance or reversal. That's great, but if I wanted that I would have bought into Ripple.

Ripple also doesn't cap the number of nodes in the network, AFAIK, so you could make a case that maybe Ripple's distributed system is closer to decentralisation than Bitshares distributed system. But neither are.

It's hard to have a pure technology discussion without looking at what a chain is trying to do.   It would be like saying I prefer a Tessla Sports Car to a John Deer Tractor because I like the technology better.

Bitcoin is digital gold.  Ripple is a banking backbone.  BitShares is a decentralized exchange with unique financial products.  Its perfectly reasonable to want to use and own all three.

Technology is fun to discuss for its own sake, but when it comes down to deciding whether you want to have anything to do with a particular block chain, its more about asking these kinds of questions:

Do I want to use the services it provides?
Do I think it will yield a good return if I own it?
Is it easy to use, secure, and reliable?
Can I trust the people developing it or avoid having to trust them?

Most of the second generation block chains out there have only a small amount of overlap in their features and it is entirely possible for reasonable people to own several of them for the unique utility they provide.

As long as a particular chain is decentralized enough to be sufficiently immune from evil doers, it has checked that square and now we focus on the other questions.

That said, there are two noteworthy distinctions between the Ripple and BitShares in how they implement their limited node strategies.  

1.  Node "Election":  Existing Ripple insider nodes elect new nodes vs. BitShares nodes are elected by the general owner population after a long reputation building and vetting period.  
2.  Ripple is much more centrally held - BitShares was widely distributed by two wide-open mining contests.

[Daedelus]

BitShares is a decentralized exchange with unique financial products.

You keep saying this. Bytemaster keeps saying this. The problem is, it doesn't appear to be true.

Remember the colour charts above? How can a system that caps the number of nodes to a small percentage of participants be decentralised? Let alone, more decentralised than a network that can sustain 'n' nodes.


Maybe we can finish addressing this point before going onto others.

[StanLarimer]

I guess it comes down to this in my mind:

Definition.  "A system is sufficiently decentralized if there is no likely to be reached number of individuals who can collude or be coerced or seduced into acting successfully against the interests of its owners without detection."

(It would be good to reach a consensus on this definition - I just made up this straw man on the fly.)

I think we are evolving away from the idea that the only way to achieve this definition is by brute force node maximization.  The bleeding edge of research in this industry is in systems that achieve sufficient decentralization more efficiently.  I summarized how BitShares aims to do this in an earlier post on this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=916696.msg10085453#msg10085453

So a better discussion to be having is whether a particular implementation has achieved adequate protection from bad actors, recognizing that further efforts to decentralize beyond "good enough" has other costs that must be traded against whatever else the design must sacrifice to decentralize beyond that threshold.

This will enable block chain businesses to be profitable sooner.  And that will be good for overall industry growth!

[testz]

BitShares is a decentralized exchange with unique financial products.

You keep saying this. Bytemaster keeps saying this. The problem is, it doesn't appear to be true.

Remember the colour charts above? How can a system that caps the number of nodes to a small percentage of participants be decentralised? Let alone, more decentralised than a network that can sustain 'n' nodes.


Maybe we can finish addressing this point before going onto others.

Let's look to this from your point of view, how you wish us to tell about BitShares decentralization?

• BitShares is centralized exchange
• BitShares is not decentralized exchange
• BitShares is semi decentralized exchange
• BitShares is decentralized exchange but not much decentralized as Nxt exchange

[Daedelus]

Maybe a distributed exchange?

It is easier than "Bitshares is a decentralized exchange, accepting that you agree with our definition of decentralization based on capping the nodes to a figure our founder believes gives 'enough' decentralization".

[StanLarimer]

Maybe a distributed system?

It is easier than "Bitshares is a decentralised system, accepting that you agree with our definition of decentralisation based on capping the nodes to a figure our founder believes gives 'enough' decentralisation".

That's a true statement but a bit awkward to say in a headline or a quick post. 

The key meaning to me of the word "decentralized" is "there is no longer a center" that has unfair control.

The only reason for saying this is not to concede the "who is most decentralized" argument, but to point out that it is not the most important thing to talk about.

That said, BitShares is very decentralized when you consider that ALL owners have control over who does the signing.  That's where decentralization really happens.  Looking at the 101 nodes they nominate to do some of the inner notary grunt work is not saying that control is capped at 101.  Any or all of those 101 can be changed in 10 seconds.  Maybe we should say "two-tiered decentralization" to make this point more clear.
 

[JohnnyBTCSeed]

The us federal reserve is also decentralized as it is made up of the 13 illuminati families.

[Daedelus]

Maybe a distributed system?

It is easier than "Bitshares is a decentralised system, accepting that you agree with our definition of decentralisation based on capping the nodes to a figure our founder believes gives 'enough' decentralisation".

That's a true statement but a bit awkward to say in a headline or a quick post.  

Then it is misleading at best or plain wrong at worst.

If I said...

"Bitshares has Smart Contracts, accepting you agree with our definition of having smart contracts based on the planned implementation our founder believes will be launched any day now".

...would you think it reasonable if I repeatedly posted..

"Bitshares has Smart Contracts" ? You have to accept my skewed definition for it to be true, but I also omit the definition I am using. It makes reasonable people believe you have Smart Contracts when you don't.


There are established definitions already, skewing them is misleading.


Two tiered in the sense that those with the stake has to cede control to a smaller minority. They can change the minority whenever they please but they will never be representing themselves in the network. See above about the use of decentralised.



I am not arguing who is the most decentralised, it is you who keeps trying to reframe the argument rather than answering it. I refer only to how Bitshares is described. I can't accept your definition of decentralised because it isn't, in any circles I have moved in in crypto. So you can understand why people (the OP) think you are misleading others.

[bitcoin2.0]

NXT WINS!!!

BitShares is a decentralized exchange

Chillax Kool Aid Fiend and start being more exact in your communication for those who sincerely want to learn.  It would be technically correct to say: “decentralized enough to make double-spending as mathematically unlikely as that on any Satoshi blockchain based coin technology.”  Saying “decentralized” implies 100% decentralization to us math geeks, and the only thing that us Einsteins can agree upon is that:  No Satishi blockchain based coin is 100% decentralized.  They just happen to all be decentralized enough for us to trade our fiat for them and sleep well at night.  So please be precise here, the last thing we need is a propaganda fart to clear the room:

BitShares is free market capitalism that has given power to the people of their own property

fuckin' propaganda  

F'n Fandango! WTF?!  Seriously dude, every Satoshi blockchain coin is really difficult to take from you.  BitShares is nothing special.  Lay off Dan's donk.  Everyone on this forum agrees on one thing:  double spending is unlikely enough to convince us all to put dollars into one Satoshi blockchain or another.  To be less ass-kissy you might say:
“Satoshi's block chain has given power to the people to own their own property”

it doesn't matter if a large stakeholder forges more blocks than a small stakeholder.  Each earns the same percentage return forging.  This does not mean the system is "centralized" it means it is "fair".  If you argue against this, you are heading down the road to Communism or Crony Capitalism.  Centralizing forging to 101 delegates and forcing all stakeholders to subsidize their operations is establishing a forging monopoly which disenfranchises all.

Yes, NXT is more decentralized based on the total number of active nodes being your major criteria for your definition of centralization (greater quantity).  So now the ButShares vs NXT discussion has evolved from which coin is easier to double spend on (NXT wins by .x%) to how they are distributed differently:  

NXT distribution is based on a de-regulated capitalist system, where the more coins that you have, the greater your percentage of your new foraged coin is.  So basically, a new miner who buys in today, can never get ahead of the guy in front of him because their forge percentages match their stake.  Like one of those Amway business models where if you are under the guy who introduced you to the business, then you will always be “under” him.  It is a multi-class system where it is impossible to climb the social ladder.
  
BitShares distribution is a meritocracy where the more value you bring to the party, the more money we give you.  You can climb the social ladder and get ahead of the fat lazy early adopter slob in front of you by working harder than him.  

If you think it's fair that the largest shareholders deserve to make the highest percentage of newly foraged inflation coins because they learned about the IPO  when it was cheap and bought a boat-load, then NXT is the coin for you.  Buy all you can.  

If you would like to invest in a coin where the hardest working miners get paid the most, no matter when they learned about the coin, then, BitShares might just be your flavor.
  
Dan Larimer makes just as much money mining BitShares as this poor guy who just heard about BitShares 2 months ago.  But we won't punish him for being broke and/or uninformed, instead, we will pay him as much as we are paying Dan Larimer (the creator of BitShares), and we will pay any dev as much as Dan Larimer if you come work for our blockchian:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=11847.0

You don't even need to be that impressive.  This guy makes as much as Dan, and all he does is talk to Dan on TV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzruOULgmng

Why should Dan make more money than Argentina Matt, who is sweating his ass off in the jungle?  Because Dan heard about BitShares a few months prior to Matt?  That's stupid, we choose to pay Matt a monthly wage that is equal to Dan's.  

Why are we doing this?  Because this is what a fair Bitcoin2.0 launch looks like.  Get a good look.  Recall all the "fair Bitcoin1.0 POW coin mining launches" last year (like the zero premine Protoshares POW coin launch which became BitShares)?  Well, this is what a fair launch looks like in 2015.  All miners are created equal, endowed by their creator with rights to life, liberty, etc...

BitShares only pay 101 miners.  Why?  Because we want to make them the next bitcoin millionaires.  Do you think that the world wants to give these guys more money?:

https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+millionaires&client=ubuntu&hs=eqw&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=d-GvVMu0HNWEyQSTmoC4BA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAw&biw=1535&bih=805

No, we would rather see Argentina Matt save thousands from:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/12/16/370979773/argentinas-approach-to-inflation-ditch-the-peso-hoard-u-s-dollars
(40% annual fiat devaluation)

So buy bitcoin if you want to listen to Taaki talk, Verr preach, Keiser laugh, Gavin babble, Levine plug, and the Winklevii ...well, whatever the Voss twins do in public.  Buy BitShares if you want to see rich miners change the world positively (because they won't get rich otherwise).  We pay only hungry miners and devs who have the eye of the Tiger, not the rich early adopters who sit on their high IPO percentage and make the highest mining money percentage for doing nothing but pay their electric bill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGGN_7mMRfU
(we want Balboa (Bitcoin))
This is how BitShares works.  We choose who we pay.  Can you ever give the NXT founders a pay cut?  Well good for them.  I love players.  BitShares is a public blockchain for people who want to work hard for the money.  And we only pay the very best.  Dan had to mine Protoshares (now BitShares) at the start of the zero premine POW launch just like everyone else.  Therefore, BitShares is owned evenly by good old fashioned POW miners and investors who paid those miners.  This Bitcoin2.0 coin was born of true BitcoinPOW1.0 so we are true to our bitcoin mining roots.  Litecoin holders can only sit there begging Chuck to upgrade LTC to multisig, TITAN, escorow, turing complete scripting, voting, user issued assets, robohashes, or any other BTC2.0 upgrades that BitShares already has (or is testing).  We tell our devs what we want them to work on, and they do it.

We can vote to make our coin faster than fastcoin, more secure than securecoin, funner than Dogecoin, fairer than NXT, more squatter-proof than Namecoin, more talked about on the Keiser Report than Maxcoin, sexier than sexcoin, lighter than both feathercoin and litecoin, more charitable than Vaticancoin.  Just support the miner who is making an effort to improve the particular aspect of your blockchain that is most dear to your heart, and when they succeed, your soul is rewarded.  What is the most charitable thing your miners did to help make the planet more sustainable/inhabitable? (my doges know where I'm at) What was the last fun thing you did while playing with your coin's features? I traded Bitcoins for fiat without Mark Kerfuffle or BitStamp stealing my coins.  So to bring it back to Stan who was hemmoraging BitKoolAid here:

BitShares is a decentralized exchange

No Stan, sorry to burst your Kool Aid bubble, but BitShares is an exchange decentralized enough to where you can trade bitcoins all you want without dreaming of:









http://dealbreaker.com/uploads/2014/02/markkarpeles.jpg
at night

[StanLarimer]

Communicating with others is admittedly challenging.

Using the english language correctly does not constitute "misleading" - which has dishonesty implications.

de·cen·tral·i·za·tion noun \(ˌ)dē-ˌsen-trə-lə-ˈzā-shən\
1:  the dispersion or distribution of functions and powers;

So just because decentralization can now be divided into categories of "brute force decentralization" vs "smart decentralization" or "tiered decentralization" does not make use of the term "decentralization" belong exclusively to just one of those categories.

The important thing about the word "decentralized" in marketing crypto products and services is that "there is no center" like the current financial system has.  Everything else is about different ways of implementing that goal which should be fully disclosed to those who want to dig deeper.

[bitcreditscc]

Maybe a distributed system?

It is easier than "Bitshares is a decentralised system, accepting that you agree with our definition of decentralisation based on capping the nodes to a figure our founder believes gives 'enough' decentralisation".

That's a true statement but a bit awkward to say in a headline or a quick post.  

The key meaning to me of the word "decentralized" is "there is no longer a center" that has unfair control.

The only reason for saying this is not to concede the "who is most decentralized" argument, but to point out that it is not the most important thing to talk about.

That said, BitShares is very decentralized when you consider that ALL owners have control over who does the signing.  That's where decentralization really happens.  Looking at the 101 nodes they nominate to do some of the inner notary grunt work is not saying that control is capped at 101.  Any or all of those 101 can be changed in 10 seconds.  Maybe we should say "two-tiered decentralization" to make this point more clear.
 

"Bitshares is a centralised system, that uses 101 specially selected nodes.

drawing comparisons between Satoshi's blockchain and try to market it as an improvement should stop as this is now a different system.

Please don't try to pervert the meaning of decentralization to fit your needs. BTS is essentially centered around 101 nodes.

A decentralized system has no definable center, the center of BTS is those 101 identifiable nodes.

[StanLarimer]

I encourage every developer to describe their products and services
in whatever way they think will best communicate what they have to offer.

 

[Daedelus]

How often can the number '101' be changed or is it hardcoded? I don't refer to voting, but to changing it to 1000 say.

[testz]

"Bitshares is a centralised system, that uses 101 specially selected nodes.

drawing comparisons between Satoshi's blockchain and try to market it as an improvement should stop as this is now a different system.

Please don't try to pervert the meaning of decentralization to fit your needs. BTS is essentially centered around 101 nodes.

A decentralized system has no definable center, the center of BTS is those 101 identifiable nodes.

Let's change a point of view again:

• Bitshares is a centralized system, that uses 101 specially selected nodes, connected over centralized Internet system that based on 75 Internet Exchange Points
• XYZ is a decentralized system, where nodes connected over centralized Internet system that based on 75 Internet Exchange Points

Can we call Internet decentralized enough to be able use it's for decentralized systems or Internet is centralized system?
Can we call decentralized the systems which use centralized communication?

List of Internet exchange points by size
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_points_by_size

PS: I like this discussion more and more 

[bitcreditscc]

I encourage every developer to describe their products and services
in whatever way they think will best communicate what they have to offer.

 

Does that include misleading statements? I do not disagree with the model, for the kind of services that will be born of it, that is likely the best way to go until it can be safely completely decentralized. But i think honesty is an important thing since a lot of trust will be placed in that system.

Marketing it as decentralized is misleading, trying to make comparisons with satoshi based models of complete decentralization is misleading if you do not clarify that you threw out one of the most important factors. The numbers posted on how much it costs to run a node are misleading, its much cheaper. There is a lot of conflicting statements surrounding BTand it's DPoS, which when compiled together paint a misleading picture.

1) is it a company or is it a currency? It cannot be feasibly both since the rules of either can have conflicts.
2) Find a new word to describe the system, tiered-decentralization wont work because all who know the word will know you are misleading them