Is my crypto decentralized?

[Daedelus]

My repeated point is that your interpretation of decentralization (almost as bad a "decentralisation is just a tool" btw) is a minority view. Most people wouldn't accept it and was the point of me starting this thread was to gauge the definition (away from BTS or Nxt holders in the main Bitcoin discussion with the relevant vocab and numbers changed)  so it would be useful to our current situation. I could show you that I am right. But FandangledGizmo chose to sabotage any hope of that.

I won't go into asking why someone decided to start a crypto with a single block signer.. Ok, just one question. Which dev proposed this idea?


Who cares about the ratio of users to block producers? = Who cares about government and corporate control of the economy?

I remind you that we can vote people in and out now (in many countries). Not as quickly as DPOS, granted, but in real life we have the advantage of knowing politicians can't come back under a different name. And Politicians can't easily buy themselves votes to keep themselves in power or buy votes for their cronies to stay elected. I haven't discussed this but DE did have a point in the other thread.


Decentralization is about who is in control. 101 people (in the best possible scenario) isn't enough for anything of significant size to stay decentralied.

[Daedelus]

To the contrary, RIGHT NOW all other systems are more decentralized because they are small enough to afford more than 100 validators. DPOS will only become more decentralized AT SCALE, when you cannot afford that many validators unless you force them to be distinct. The argument is presented in depth in a few places:

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/07/The-Most-Decentralized-Proof-of-Stake-System/
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS#Scalability

You assume it costs (and will cost) a lot of money to run a node. Maybe it does in Bitshares. Why do you think this is true in other systems?


Constantly posting the same links is getting tedious. DE answered this at length in the other thread. I reposted it. And I answered a question on it up thread.

I will get DE's post, in reply to Bytemaster's blog...



The first line is key, the rest is just humoring him. I added in the other thread not only businesses but encrypted messaging apps, MMO games etc. Basically anything that is already running and connected to the internet, adding a POS stake node has a negligible cost (tech is in development for these things).

@OP  you claim NXT is more decentralized, can you respond to specific points here?  http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/07/The-Most-Decentralized-Proof-of-Stake-System/

Bytemaster's entire argument falls apart when you take into account that businesses using any payment platform will be running their hardware anyway and therefore, the cost of running a PoS node is negligible.

But, let's assume for argument's sake that a node will ONLY forge if it can recoup its operating cost off of transaction fees alone.

An intelligent node operator will use an energy-efficient device (~20W) to forge.  You can get some fairly powerful computers running at ~20W.  Let's say a forger uses a 35W computer.

35W * 24 hours / 1000w/kW * $0.10 kWh = $0.084

It costs the node operator 8.4 cents per day.

Currently, NXT is worth over 1.7 cents.  He needs to generate 8.4/1.7 = 4.94 NXT per day to breakeven.

NXT's current average daily transaction fees amount to 5,095 NXT.

4.94 / 5095 = 0.000969808

The node operator needs to forge 0.0969% of all blocks.  We can now calculate the amount of NXT he needs to have by multiplying by the total amount of NXT.

0.000969808 * 1,000,000,000 = 969,808 NXT

The node operator must own 969,808 NXT to breakeven forging on a 35W computer.

Now, let's calculate how many forgers the NXT network can support running 35W computers.

1,000,000,000 / 969,808 = 1031

The NXT network can currently support ONE THOUSAND AND THIRTY-ONE 35W nodes.

Bytemaster's argument that as the network scales profitability decreases is fallacious, because the number of transactions increase proportionally to the transaction fees per block.  Therefore, if a forger would be required to run a more computationally powerful node, he would be able to afford to do so.  Bytemaster takes his argument to ridiculous extremes claiming that to process 1000 tps, you would need a server with 256GB of RAM, 2TB of expendable hard drive space per week and a synchronous 64Mbps connection.  Most people in the developed world have asynchronous residential internet connections that are close to or above this speed.  I fail to see why such a connection would need to be synchronous as the nodes would be downloading 1000 tps per second, but would only need to publish ONE block if they managed to forge it.  2TB of blockchain space per week seems extreme.  Bitcoin's blockchain is only 31 GB after six years.  If blockchain sizes increased to such a size, I imagine some type of blockchain shrinking would be implemented.  As time goes on and Moore's law continues, computational power and ram get cheaper, more efficient and more powerful.  By the time any cryptocurrency reaches 1000 tps, which I imagine will take years, the hardware landscape will have completely changed and the cost/power ratios of hardware will be even more efficient.  If you take into account the ability for nodes to figure out who the next forger is (aka NXT Transparent Forging) and route transactions only to that node, it makes Bytemasters' node requirements even more asinine.

It seems limiting forgers to 101 necessitates that the forgers run more powerful hardware to handle the load.  Each forger has to produce 0.99% of all network blocks and therefore consumes more bandwidth and electricity.  It also seems to decrease the resiliency of the network by placing the ENTIRE load on 101 individuals/computers.  This make the network an easier target for DDOS attacks too.

I don't see the necessity in centralizing a PoS system.  As others have stated, DPoS is a solution in search of a problem.  When one considers that there is no such problem to solve, they must ask themselves why was such a "solution" introduced.  As I have stated before and will continue to ascertain, it is my belief that the ONLY reason DPoS was chosen for Bitshares was to force centralization on its stakeholders, disenfranchise them of their forging profits and subject them to tax via inflation.  In addition, since DPoS is vulnerable to Sybil attacks and Stan Larimer has stated that it is acceptable for multiple delegates to be controlled by one individual, one can assume that it is the intention of the Bitshares' developers and business interests, which they have a vested interest in, to establish a type of delegate monopoly over the system.  Whereby, they continue to increase their profits at the expense of existing shareholders.  One may ask, why do they need to strip tx fees from stakeholders and impose inflation on them when they already hold, I am sure, a great amount of stake themselves.  The only rational explanation I can give you is that it is unfettered greed and a desire to maintain total control over the system via a delegate monopoly under the guise of free elections.  Ask yourself, since the network can clearly support more than 101 forging nodes, why are elections necessary?

I could sit here all day and debate back and forth with Stan and others who support Bitshares, but in the end, everyone has to form their own opinion on what the Bitshares' devs and business interests are really trying to accomplish with this venture.  Some people might call me a "troll", but the fact is that I intentionally made this post inflammatory to draw attention to what I believe is a threat to the original movement of Bitcoin, NXT and decentralization.  There is no greater threat to decentralization than corporatization masquerading as such.  The corporatization of the Bitcoin movement is what destroyed it.  I don't want to see that same fate happen to the cryptocurrency scene in general.  I don't want to see people fall victim to what I believe are faux movements.  The day when corporations take over the blockchain is the day our freedom dies.  I will admit to being a holder of both BTC and NXT.  If you believe that has skewed my viewpoint, so be it; but believe me when I say, I supported these movements not only in the hopes of making profit, but also because I believed in the ideology behind them.  It is my contention that Bitshares' imposed inflation on stakeholders is nothing less than taxation without representation.  You may say, "I can vote for delegates.  How is it without representation?"  I argue it is without representation because you yourself do not forge on your own behalf and instead are forced to hand over the security of your investment to business interests and developers who believe it is their right to be forever delegates and can easily manipulate the vote to form a permanent monopoly over the system.  Monopoly is the nemesis of free enterprise.  Why should a select group of 101 businesses get stakeholder subsidies?  What about the smaller businesses users might want to start?  Such users are forced to pay a tax to their competitors and fund their operations without such an advantage.  Your "freedom to choose" really isn't freedom at all, because all your choices result in you becoming a tributary slave to the delegates.

[toast]

Ok, that's a decent response. Here's some more thoughts.

Maybe "decentralized" means something different to most people. I hadn't thought that others might think it means something other than "lack of centralized control points". These concern us because they can be used by non-stakeholders to take money away from stakeholders. Again, I would like you to state the *goal* of building your system so that it is not centralized.

I'm still not totally clear what the cause of your concern for the small number of block producers is. Having more delegates does not give me more power or money unless the stakeholder choose it.

Maybe one day BTS stakeholders will do a cost/benefit analysis and realize that spending 10x on validation is worth the perceived extra decentralization. Heck maybe even spending a few thousand a year for anyone to opt-in to a mailing list that says "you, too, are helping secure the network" - equivalent to what small-time miners or forgers are experiencing right now.

I won't go into asking my someone decided to start a crypto with a single block signer.

Even stranger it was suggested by a hardcore anarcho-capitalist who hates centralized control! Either he is an idiot or onto something more fundamental about the nature of consensus...


This is a good thread, thanks for being civil. Does it really end with disagreement about the definition?

If we banned the words "centralized" and "decentralized" and started this topic over, would we still be disagreeing?
http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/    What are we actually talking about here, if not "avoiding robbery via takeover of control points" ?

[MisO69]

this OP is so low!

let assume i start a new coin, and only 50 people are the first shareholders. Do you call me fair distributed?

But i would never ask this in this way.

Of those 50, 45 are sock puppets of the dev. Proven by dev creating a secondary fork and trying the same shit, this time being caught red handed.

[Daedelus]

I think we would find it hard to discuss without those two words! But I think we would still be disagreeing, as I have failed to explain clearly why a limit of 101 nodes isn't much different from the world we live in today. And probably the % who say BTS is decentralised will be the same as % that say the world today is decentralised. DE has a special way of expressing himself but I think he is right in a lot of what he says and the logical thread in his thoughts is sound.


As long as most Bitshares users are in the bitsharestalk silo, I think Bytemaster should allow comments on his blogs   Or better still, come here. I get the impression bitsharestalk is an echo chamber for his ideas. And with comments, Nxters can correct some of the BS he writes about the platform, when he is aiming "to be objective as possible"

I did note that out of the 7-8 BTS guys I have spoken to, that I think I have only 1 (maybe 2) of them weren't node delegates. I never said it but it did feel a bit like a series of ASIC manufacturers telling me POW is the best thing in crypto   Stan gets paid $2500 a month as a node operator just to tell people BTS is great (evangelising, he calls it), I bet there are a lot of people out there who would say anything is great for $2500/month!   More ordinary guys views would reduce this feeling.

[StanLarimer]

The Secret Truth About Signing Insiders

I'll bet if you look at the Top 101 most frequent block signers for any major block chain you will find that this same group signs over 90%, maybe even 99%, of the chain's blocks inside a typical transaction confirmation window.   For all such windows.

For convenience, I'll call the members of this elite group the block chain's signing insiders.  

Everyone who is not a signing insider has a tiny fraction of that final 1% chance to sign a block.  This gratuitous honor is shared among all the outsiders and has no material effect on the reliability, integrity, or security of the network.

So it doesn't matter how many outsiders are eligible to sign a block, they have no relevance whatsoever.  Their chance to win the signing lottery is a mere placebo, designed to make them feel like they are involved.  

Only the insiders matter in determining whether any transaction gets confirmed.  

No outsider, much less the same outsider, will get honored with another turn in the same confirmation window to weigh in on whether any particular transaction should be confirmed.  Thus, all transactions are confirmed by insiders.

Outsiders don't matter.  
Arguing about how many powerless outsiders your chain has is meaningless.

All block chains are completely controlled by their signing insiders.

With Ripple, insiders must appoint new insiders and have economic incentives not to go any where near 101 of them.
With POW systems, you appoint yourself to be an insider by acquiring control of one of the top 101 pools of hardware.
With POS systems, you appoint yourself to be an insider by acquiring control of one of the top 101 pools of coins.
With DPOS systems, you get elected to be an insider by acquiring one of the top 101 most preferred reputations.

Only with DPOS do outsiders have any say at all in who gets to be an insider.

So, its your call.  Do you want your blocks signed by people who appointed themselves as insiders through their ability to acquire large pools of coins or hardware?  Or would you rather have that job done by the people, even very poor people, who have done the work necessary to earn one of the best reputations?

How do you get rid of a bad actor that owns a large pool of hash power or tokens?  
Um, You can't.

How do you get rid of a bad actor who just violated the trust she had painstakingly earned?  
"Click."

 

[Daedelus]

Put some research and factual numbers in and we could have a discussion. There are already two false assumptions I noticed (and one serious negative, presented as a positive). At the moment, these are just assertions in the same camp as your "trust me, I'm a rocket scientist" posts. They are style over substance.

Again, this is only considering today. At least one major blockchain is designed to become more decentralised over time. Bitshares path is fixed: it is distributed today and will tend towards centralisation as the network grows.

[toast]

I think we would find it hard to discuss without those two words! But I think we would still be disagreeing, as I have failed to explain clearly why a limit of 101 nodes isn't much different from the world we live in today. And probably the % who say BTS is decentralised will be the same as % that say the world today is decentralised. DE has a special way of expressing himself but I think he is right in a lot of what he says and the logical thread in his thoughts is sound.

It might be hard but it will shed some light. I think we still have the main disagreement where you think block producers have some sort of advantage over non-block producers. You would claim that increasing the cap from 100 to 1,000,000 would make it more decentralized, I would claim that's nonsense (remember I said 1 block producer only doesn't work because of technical challenges of swapping him out quickly which matters for network availability - not because it is a control point). Let's figure out why we disagree - what is the goal of decentralization, what metrics are useful for measuring goal, etc.

As long as most Bitshares users are in the bitsharestalk silo, I think Bytemaster should allow comments on his blogs   Or better still, come here. I get the impression bitsharestalk is an echo chamber for his ideas. And with comments, Nxters can correct some of the BS he writes about the platform, when he is aiming "to be objective as possible"

BM is quite open to debate and has changed his mind in light of better arguments many times - I will ask him to enable comments. I won't drag him here to BTT unless there is a specific question you'd like him to answer (IMO there is nothing new in this thread so I won't pull him here yet because he needs to be coding).

I did note that out of the 7-8 BTS guys I have spoken to, that I think I have only 1 (maybe 2) of them weren't node delegates. I never said it but it did feel a bit like a series of ASIC manufacturers telling me POW is the best thing in crypto   Stan gets paid $2500 a month as a node operator just to tell people BTS is great (evangelising, he calls it), I bet there are a lot of people out there who would say anything is great for $2500/month!   More ordinary guys views would reduce this feeling.

Yes, "leprechauns" - like trolls but they have a pot of BTS. Again an interesting thing to note is that I would think a BTS bagholder is just as likely to be a leprechaun as a delegate. Heck, eventually I hope to see delegates not be major BTS stakeholders at all, and have them work to improve BTS with razor thin margins. Until then you will obviously see major overlap because there are only a few thousand community members and a few dozen who can commit full-time.

[DecentralizeEconomics]

Ok, these are legitimate questions which I will try to help with, although I'm just an old retired rocket scientist.  We'll probably have to get one of the devs in here to cover the fine points when one of them comes up for air.

I've tried my best to explain it for you, but as I said, I'm just an old retired rocket scientist.  I'm sure Bytemaster will do a better job.

A vote for xeldel is a vote for his proposal to hire Stan for the blockchain.

Toast is a developer who runs his own delegate.  Guys like xeldel make it possible to hire marketers, celebrities, or old rocket scientists who don't have a clue how to run a delegate.

When the BitShares devs get a little uppity, I love to remind them that what they are doing is not exactly rocket science.  

But, while trying to find a way to communicate the architecture of BitShares to folks on other forums, I've stumbled on the following description, drawing on my past experience with continuously reconfiguring fault-tolerant flight control systems.  (Yes I wrote a technical report with that title back before there was an Internet or even a word processor.)

Stan, nobody cares.  Stop trying to validate your position via the fact that you were a "rocket scientist".

The Secret Truth About Signing Insiders

I'll bet if you look at the Top 101 most frequent block signers for any major block chain you will find that this same group signs over 90%, maybe even 99%, of the chain's blocks inside a typical transaction confirmation window.   For all such windows.

For convenience, I'll call the members of this elite group the block chain's signing insiders.  

Everyone who is not a signing insider has a tiny fraction of that final 1% chance to sign a block.  This gratuitous honor is shared among all the outsiders and has no material effect on the reliability, integrity, or security of the network.

The issue with Bitshares is that you have turned who is a "signing insider", as you call them, into a POLITICAL POSITION with the power to tax the rest of the stakeholders.  This political hierarchy that you have created is NOT, as you frequently refer to it, a representative government similar to the republican government of the US.  If every stakeholder regardless of their wealth, got ONE VOTE then it would be, but it's not.  The Bitshares' "government" is a ruling body with delegates who are the most powerful and influential members of the group.  These "insiders" will use all sorts of tactics to stay in power.  Bitshares' now has two classes of stakeholders.  The "insiders" who receive subsidies and the "outsiders" who are subjected to taxation to pay them.  What you have created is a PLUTOCRACY (government of the wealthy).  By centralizing the forgers, which is exactly what you are doing whether you want to call it that or not, you are practicing a form of wealth redistribution (aka COMMUNISM!).

In NXT, there isn't a government.  Nobody VOTES!  No one has the power to levy taxation upon anyone else.  NXT is a coalition of stakeholders who secure the chain in proportion to their investment.  You can't say that NXT is a plutocracy because the wealthiest NXTers forge the most blocks, because there is NOT A GOVERNMENT!  NXT is most similar to separate nation states participating in international trade and forming a joint coalition to protect the trade routes.  Yes, different nation states have bigger economies and are wealthier than others, but they protect the international trade routes according to their defense budget (stake).

So it doesn't matter how many outsiders are eligible to sign a block, they have no relevance whatsoever.  Their chance to win the signing lottery is a mere placebo, designed to make them feel like they are involved.  

I think "voting" with DPoS is "designed to make them feel like they are involved."  In a PoS system, THEY ARE ACTUALLY INVOLVED REGARDLESS OF THEIR SIZE!

Only the insiders matter in determining whether any transaction gets confirmed.  

No outsider, much less the same outsider, will get honored with another turn in the same confirmation window to weigh in on whether any particular transaction should be confirmed.  Thus, all transactions are confirmed by insiders.

True for Bitshares.  FALSE FOR NXT!

Outsiders don't matter.  
Arguing about how many powerless outsiders your chain has is meaningless.

Wow.  This certainly is revealing as to your outlook on "decentralization".  Lol

All block chains are completely controlled by their signing insiders.

With Ripple, insiders must appoint new insiders and have economic incentives not to go any where near 101 of them.
With POW systems, you appoint yourself to be an insider by acquiring control of one of the top 101 pools of hardware.
With POS systems, you appoint yourself to be an insider by acquiring control of one of the top 101 pools of coins.

What are you talking about?  With Ripple, you participate in consensus if you run a node and others mark you as a trusted validator.  With PoW, you participate in consensus if you contribute hashpower.  With PoS, you participate in consensus if you own coins and forge.  There are not just "101 pools of coins" in PoS.

Only with DPOS do outsiders have any say at all in who gets to be an insider.

Am I to interpret this statement as a declaration of revolution by the proletariat?

So, its your call.  Do you want your blocks signed by people who appointed themselves as insiders through their ability to acquire large pools of coins or hardware?  Or would you rather have that job done by the people, even very poor people, who have done the work necessary to earn one of the best reputations?

How do you get rid of a bad actor that owns a large pool of hash power or tokens?  
Um, You can't.

How do you get rid of a bad actor who just violated the trust she had painstakingly earned?  
"Click."

 

Oh please, don't use that "meritocracy" argument again.  You, I and anyone with half a brain, knows that the type of political system you have implemented is not going to turn into a "meritocracy".  Interesting fact, the Communists used to use that same argument!

You act like it is impossible to invalidate the stake of a bad actor in PoS.  It's not.

[toast]

The issue with Bitshares is that you have turned who is a "signing insider", as you call them, into a POLITICAL POSITION with the power to tax the rest of the stakeholders. 

This is where we disagree, I think. It is not a political position because the delegate has absolutely no influence over the inflation rate or DAC policy outside of what is approved *before he is elected* by the stakeholders.

We keep saying "the shareholders rule the delegates, not the other way around" but you just don't believe it.

There *is* a group of powerful insider who form a plutocracy - it's the majority shareholders! In this sense yes, BTS centralizes power in the hands of BTS holders (+bitAsset holders) at the expense of non-BTS holders.


Again, the fixation on the delegate cap is bizzare. We considered making it unlimited with block production proportional to approval, and concluded this would make it *too centralized*.

[StanLarimer]

For the record, here is Bytemaster's latest blog article, offered up as a modest indication that he is indeed following the discussion here and refining the important take-aways for presentation to a wider audience.

Decentralization-Scalability-and-Fault-Tolerance-of-Bitcoin

I appreciate everybody who helped us refine the arguments.

[Daedelus]

When do I get my consultancy fee?   

[Pheonike]

Question:

Is it economically feasible to a mine in POW without joining a pool?
Is it economically feasible to join a pool that has less than 10% of the hashing power?

If it is not feasible then altruism is the primarily factor for the majority of miners to participate in POW.

[DecentralizeEconomics]

The issue with Bitshares is that you have turned who is a "signing insider", as you call them, into a POLITICAL POSITION with the power to tax the rest of the stakeholders. 

This is where we disagree, I think. It is not a political position because the delegate has absolutely no influence over the inflation rate or DAC policy outside of what is approved *before he is elected* by the stakeholders.

We keep saying "the shareholders rule the delegates, not the other way around" but you just don't believe it.

There *is* a group of powerful insider who form a plutocracy - it's the majority shareholders! In this sense yes, BTS centralizes power in the hands of BTS holders (+bitAsset holders) at the expense of non-BTS holders.


Again, the fixation on the delegate cap is bizzare. We considered making it unlimited with block production proportional to approval, and concluded this would make it *too centralized*.

You are omitting the key word.  "The wealthiest shareholders rule the delegates."

It is absolutely a political position.  The wealthiest stakeholders are ELECTING individuals to forge on everyones' behalf.  It is in the wealthiest stakeholders best interest to levy taxation (inflation) to increase their wealth through the subsidies from the poor.  Seeing that it is acceptable for an individual to control multiple delegate positions, the wealthiest individuals can ensure that they aren't subject to this tax.  Each delegate position they control allows them to hold 0.99% of the stake tax free.  If they own 4.95% of the stake, they need to control five delegate positions.  Since voting is one vote per stake and not one vote per man, the wealthiest stakeholders have the means to form coalitions and elect themselves into permanent positions.  This creates a forging monopoly and initiates a policy of wealth redistribution from the poor to the rich.

"There *is* a group of powerful insiders who form a plutocracy - it's the wealthiest shareholders!  In this sense yes, BTS centralizes power in the hands of biggest BTS holders (+bitAsset holders) at the expense of the smaller BTS holders."

[toast]

You realize BTS uses approval voting and not direct voting right?  (multi-winner approval voting:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Multiple_winners)

If they own 4.95% of the stake, they need to control five delegate positions.

Except that the *minimum* approval for any delegates is over 10% right now, while the *maximum* owned by any individual is on the order of 1%.

You can only get a delegate spot by appealing to the largest agreeing subset of BTS holders. This group will tend to vote in the interests of 51% shareholders.

[DecentralizeEconomics]

Except that the *minimum* approval for any delegates is over 10% right now

Since voting is one vote per stake and not one vote per man, the wealthiest stakeholders have the means to form coalitions and elect themselves into permanent positions.

while the *maximum* owned by any individual is on the order of 1%.

I REALLY don't believe that one.  You can't prove this statement either.

[toast]

You're right I can't prove anything about distribution, but I'll claim that it doesn't matter. The point I was making is this:

Each share gets one vote *per potential delegate*. Suppose 3 guys own 10% each, so their coalition owns 30%, and everyone else owns a tiny fraction.

Now suppose everyone is a perfectly rational voter and there is maximum participation. Obviously that's a stretch but bear with me.

How many delegates will the 3 richest guys get? 30? No! They will get 0, and 100% of the delegates will be those selected by the majority composed of tiny stakeholders. If that doesn't make sense to you, go read how approval voting works.

Now suppose there is a coalition that owns 51% of the stake. How many delegates will they get, 51? No! They will get all of them!

In this sense you are right - majority ownership is complete ownership. That's how companies work. If you are in the minority and don't like policy elected by the majority, split off with your own DAC.

At the end of the day, 51% stakeholders rule and cannot be diluted by any large stakeholder without 51% approval.

My claim is that there is no 51% coalition that can coordinate to do anything but enforce property (BTS and bitasset) ownership. That's how all these consensus systems work, they hide the ability to do anything "bad" behind a coordination problem of getting 51% of the consensus metric.

[StanLarimer]

Guys like xeldel make it possible to hire marketers, celebrities, or old rocket scientists who don't have a clue how to run a delegate.

It's a running joke, but you are right, it's clear I'm using it too much.

By centralizing the forgers, which is exactly what you are doing whether you want to call it that or not, you are practicing a form of wealth redistribution (aka COMMUNISM!).

You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

In NXT, there isn't a government.  

That's fine.  We are reengineering government.  You don't have to participate.

In a PoS system, THEY ARE ACTUALLY INVOLVED REGARDLESS OF THEIR SIZE!

The whole point of my article is that kind of involvement is meaningless and imparts exactly zero additional security.  The point was:

No outsider, much less the same outsider, will get honored with another turn in the same confirmation window to weigh in on whether any particular transaction should be confirmed.  Thus, all transactions are confirmed by insiders.

True for Bitshares.  FALSE FOR NXT!

Please show me an example where that has ever happened.

What are you talking about? ... With PoW, you participate in consensus if you contribute hashpower.  With PoS, you participate in consensus if you own coins and forge.  

When you contribute hash power or lease your stake you are giving someone else, probably in the top 101 signers that authority.  No different than voting for them in its net effect.

There are not just "101 pools of coins" in PoS. 

I was being generous, allowing you to take credit for the Top 101 pools of your coins as having some some impact on the actual outcome in the validation of transactions.  I suspect it's less. Prove me wrong and I'll eat a whole coconut cream pie.

So, its your call.  Do you want your blocks signed by people who appointed themselves as insiders through their ability to acquire large pools of coins or hardware?  Or would you rather have that job done by the people, even very poor people, who have done the work necessary to earn one of the best reputations?

Oh please, don't use that "meritocracy" argument again.  

I can see why you wouldn't want us to use it since its one of our most potent discriminators. 

[Daedelus]

How many delegates will the 3 richest guys get? 30? No! They will get 0, and 100% of the delegates will be those selected by the majority composed of tiny stakeholders. If that doesn't make sense to you, go read how approval voting works.

Expand on this part pls. Why would they get 0 delegates? Won't each get 20% approval of the Bitshares stakes, voting for each other? 30% if they also vote for themselves? Which is more than the threashold for getting elected

[Daedelus]

Pre-empt Stans next post: he is still assuming today's distributions are fixed and will never improve   For a fair comparison of his model, he should be using Ripple as his 'vs'. I said previously that distributed models are quicker at achieving consensus as they have a fixed number of nodes to consult, rather then a constantly changing x number that occur in decentralised systems. Last I heard, Ripple have 15 second confirmations. Bytemaster should know this is he truly was "objective as possible", his blog has turned into a hate campaign against Nxt with no right of reply. Comments would allow readers to judge the true value of what he is saying. He also writes as though he has found a big secret..