Vitalik on stable currencies and POS

[Rune]

A marketing solution: Ethereum has received major media coverage. It is a more developed brand name than "BitShares". So -- the hypothetical merged system would be called "Ethereum". 

I could live with this. Ethereum doesn't really make sense as the name of a protocol, but it works great as the name for the overall ecosystem. It's actually an issue I've been thinking about because I think it's so significant that all of bitshares put together forms a single "thing", but this "thing" doesn't really have a name. Usually it's described as "the bitshares ecosystem" or "the bitshares community", but those are not actual names, they just describe it. Bitshares and the blockchain itself is going to become such a huge part of the future that it deserves a proper name like a country or a planet. I was thinking Omega, for the lesswrongesque superintelligence. Ethereum is a nice name too.

[vbuterin]

BIT-HERIUM or ETH-SHARES? 

I'm afraid one of the two is already taken.

[kisa]

BIT-HERIUM or ETH-SHARES? 

[Pheonike]

All cars are basically the same: Mostly they have four wheels, an engine, a steering wheel, brakes, etc. However no one would argue, rationally, that all automotive companies should merge. The diversity of needs and desires of the market supports different approaches to the same problem.

The crypto space needs to be the same to avoid dieing to group think. While I don't support the open hostility common between competing crypto technologies the competition for market share is good for everyone.

Automakers do share a lot of components such as engines and gas caps. They recognize that's its a waste if resources to have  50 versions basic components such as gas caps, windshield wipers , etc.

http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/platform-sharing-for-dummies-feature

[CryptoPrometheus]

All cars are basically the same: Mostly they have four wheels, an engine, a steering wheel, brakes, etc. However no one would argue, rationally, that all automotive companies should merge. The diversity of needs and desires of the market supports different approaches to the same problem.

The crypto space needs to be the same to avoid dieing to group think. While I don't support the open hostility common between competing crypto technologies the competition for market share is good for everyone.

Necessity is the mother of Invention, and competition is the reason for necessity. If there is no competition, there is less reason to innovate. And innovation is badly needed to free humanity from the current centralized power structures. Ergo, the more competition, the better!

[jsidhu]

If the block producers of all bitshares sidechains are paid in BTS and voted in with BTS on the primary bitshares blockchain

So, there are fragility risks that you have to keep in mind here. Particularly, if you allow anyone to apply to specifically become a delegate of any blockchain, then an attacker can take over 80 delegates on sidechain #173, then repeatedly move BTS from that sidechain to other sidechains and double-spend themselves, all before getting voted out.

Additionally, there's the issue that after the fact the only way to tell which history actually came first after the fact is by looking at centralized providers (blockchain.info, etc), so you're actually implicitly moving back to a fully subjective Ripple consensus model. Of course, your ideology may be that Ripple-level subjectivity (which is much greater than traditional PoS weak subjectivity) is fine, but you should be aware of this.

Now, if you require people to apply only to be a delegate generally, and then randomly assign delegates to sidechains, and add cross-channels between individual sidechains so that cross-sidechain transactions don't need to all go through the master chain, then you've actually basically reinvented https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/10/21/scalability-part-2-hypercubes/

My side change approach has exactly 101 delegates that handle ALL chains.   You only have one set of trusted individuals that come to a common consensus.  The only purpose of side chains is to allow parallel processing of transactions which cannot possible invalidate each other.

Right so I dislike that because it requires there to be 101 nodes that process all transactions, and that leads to rather high levels of centralization and eventually croaks if the blockchain architecture gets popular enough that you simply can't do everything that people want to do on a single server or data center. Also note that if a new delegate gets elected, downloading the database is going to take them a long time. That's why I strongly prefer, as Dominic Williams puts it, "scaling out, not up".

It wouldn't all have to run on one machine.  The technology can scale.   The time to sync-up is a "ONE TIME COST".   Users don't ever have to download the full chain.

My concern with this is that it means that even if it can scale architecturally, you're exposing yourself to a lot of political centralization. Particularly, I predict that if delegates get anywhere near as large as you are suggesting, you'll see the equivalent of "delegate pools": 3-5 large entities that actually maintain and update the state, and then individual delegates that simply point to those entities and that are there basically only as a way of voting on who the revenue should go to. It's possible to set up such a delegate pool that is anonymous to connect to, so delegates would have the incentive to secretly repoint themselves to that pool as they can easily avoid being caught. And if you manage to stop this from happening, then you're creating a large barrier to entry to the delegate industry, to the point where they're not much more decentralized than modern corporations.

I can see how individuals vote will be worth alot more that any coin or token in the system as it should be. The will to act freely and apply that in the form of a vote to come to a consensus backed by a mathematical framework is invaluable. It will tie into dans thoughts on a voilence free society which punishes those that buy votes coercively. In the end I expect large entities to provide honest growth with no hidden agenda as it would be alot harder to hide it in an open blockchain framework.

The consensus of the drivers of the "economy" will find an equilibrium between central yet important authoritive, financial or social figures and the free hands of everyone else chipping in.

The whales with more voting power will see their power decrease as more coins are earned at the same time providing innovation to better all.

[Riverhead]

Sounds like bytemaster and Vitalaik should duke it out on the next Mumble session

Ethereum should just merge with us already

Give their community 10-20 100% delegates to pay their developer salary and inflate out stake that they can sharedrop to their ICO investors over time according to some social consensus (since they are a group of stakeholders we definitely want on board!). Then they can help develop whichever multi-blockchain system is best and then make ethereum the BTS blockchain for scripted smart contracts. Everyone wins and every group of stakeholders gain immediate returns from the massive spotlight that will shine on the BTS-Ethereum behemoth (that the ethereum investors can instantly begin to gain liquid shares in from the moment of the announcement).

You are not taking into account human egos. Just because something would be more profitable/more efficient doesn't mean that everyone will be able to overcome their needs to be the "winners". Neither Vitalik nor Dan are in sole charge of their projects and so, despite their ability to act rationally, the entire projects may not be able to do so.

 

A marketing solution: Ethereum has received major media coverage. It is a more developed brand name than "BitShares". So -- the hypothetical merged system would be called "Ethereum". 

Well played .

[werneo]

Sounds like bytemaster and Vitalaik should duke it out on the next Mumble session

Ethereum should just merge with us already

Give their community 10-20 100% delegates to pay their developer salary and inflate out stake that they can sharedrop to their ICO investors over time according to some social consensus (since they are a group of stakeholders we definitely want on board!). Then they can help develop whichever multi-blockchain system is best and then make ethereum the BTS blockchain for scripted smart contracts. Everyone wins and every group of stakeholders gain immediate returns from the massive spotlight that will shine on the BTS-Ethereum behemoth (that the ethereum investors can instantly begin to gain liquid shares in from the moment of the announcement).

You are not taking into account human egos. Just because something would be more profitable/more efficient doesn't mean that everyone will be able to overcome their needs to be the "winners". Neither Vitalik nor Dan are in sole charge of their projects and so, despite their ability to act rationally, the entire projects may not be able to do so.

 

A marketing solution: Ethereum has received major media coverage. It is a more developed brand name than "BitShares". So -- the hypothetical merged system would be called "Ethereum". 

[santaclause102]

All cars are basically the same: Mostly they have four wheels, an engine, a steering wheel, brakes, etc. However no one would argue, rationally, that all automotive companies should merge. The diversity of needs and desires of the market supports different approaches to the same problem.

The crypto space needs to be the same to avoid dieing to group think. While I don't support the open hostility common between competing crypto technologies the competition for market share is good for everyone.

I think so too. Also Innovation in this space will not end for a long time and there will be different systems that will suit different demands better than others.

But friendly cooperation is a valuable thing in any case.

[Riverhead]

All cars are basically the same: Mostly they have four wheels, an engine, a steering wheel, brakes, etc. However no one would argue, rationally, that all automotive companies should merge. The diversity of needs and desires of the market supports different approaches to the same problem.

The crypto space needs to be the same to avoid dieing to group think. While I don't support the open hostility common between competing crypto technologies the competition for market share is good for everyone.

[Troglodactyl]

Honestly, given the nature of open source and how far they seem to have converged already, I expect the tech will largely merge regardless.

The question is whether the communities and developers will waste energy reproducing efforts and squabbling with each other, or if they'll explicitly cooperate.  At least Vitalik and Dan seem to be off to a relatively good start.

[onceuponatime]

Sounds like bytemaster and Vitalaik should duke it out on the next Mumble session

Ethereum should just merge with us already

Give their community 10-20 100% delegates to pay their developer salary and inflate out stake that they can sharedrop to their ICO investors over time according to some social consensus (since they are a group of stakeholders we definitely want on board!). Then they can help develop whichever multi-blockchain system is best and then make ethereum the BTS blockchain for scripted smart contracts. Everyone wins and every group of stakeholders gain immediate returns from the massive spotlight that will shine on the BTS-Ethereum behemoth (that the ethereum investors can instantly begin to gain liquid shares in from the moment of the announcement).

You are not taking into account human egos. Just because something would be more profitable/more efficient doesn't mean that everyone will be able to overcome their needs to be the "winners". Neither Vitalik nor Dan are in sole charge of their projects and so, despite their ability to act rationally, the entire projects may not be able to do so.

[Rune]

Sounds like bytemaster and Vitalaik should duke it out on the next Mumble session

Ethereum should just merge with us already

Give their community 10-20 100% delegates to pay their developer salary and inflate out stake that they can sharedrop to their ICO investors over time according to some social consensus (since they are a group of stakeholders we definitely want on board!). Then they can help develop whichever multi-blockchain system is best and then make ethereum the BTS blockchain for scripted smart contracts. Everyone wins and every group of stakeholders gain immediate returns from the massive spotlight that will shine on the BTS-Ethereum behemoth (that the ethereum investors can instantly begin to gain liquid shares in from the moment of the announcement).

[Empirical1.1]

If the block producers of all bitshares sidechains are paid in BTS and voted in with BTS on the primary bitshares blockchain

So, there are fragility risks that you have to keep in mind here. Particularly, if you allow anyone to apply to specifically become a delegate of any blockchain, then an attacker can take over 80 delegates on sidechain #173, then repeatedly move BTS from that sidechain to other sidechains and double-spend themselves, all before getting voted out.

Additionally, there's the issue that after the fact the only way to tell which history actually came first after the fact is by looking at centralized providers (blockchain.info, etc), so you're actually implicitly moving back to a fully subjective Ripple consensus model. Of course, your ideology may be that Ripple-level subjectivity (which is much greater than traditional PoS weak subjectivity) is fine, but you should be aware of this.

Now, if you require people to apply only to be a delegate generally, and then randomly assign delegates to sidechains, and add cross-channels between individual sidechains so that cross-sidechain transactions don't need to all go through the master chain, then you've actually basically reinvented https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/10/21/scalability-part-2-hypercubes/

My side change approach has exactly 101 delegates that handle ALL chains.   You only have one set of trusted individuals that come to a common consensus.  The only purpose of side chains is to allow parallel processing of transactions which cannot possible invalidate each other.

Right so I dislike that because it requires there to be 101 nodes that process all transactions, and that leads to rather high levels of centralization and eventually croaks if the blockchain architecture gets popular enough that you simply can't do everything that people want to do on a single server or data center. Also note that if a new delegate gets elected, downloading the database is going to take them a long time. That's why I strongly prefer, as Dominic Williams puts it, "scaling out, not up".

It wouldn't all have to run on one machine.  The technology can scale.   The time to sync-up is a "ONE TIME COST".   Users don't ever have to download the full chain.

My concern with this is that it means that even if it can scale architecturally, you're exposing yourself to a lot of political centralization. Particularly, I predict that if delegates get anywhere near as large as you are suggesting, you'll see the equivalent of "delegate pools": 3-5 large entities that actually maintain and update the state, and then individual delegates that simply point to those entities and that are there basically only as a way of voting on who the revenue should go to. It's possible to set up such a delegate pool that is anonymous to connect to, so delegates would have the incentive to secretly repoint themselves to that pool as they can easily avoid being caught. And if you manage to stop this from happening, then you're creating a large barrier to entry to the delegate industry, to the point where they're not much more decentralized than modern corporations.

Unlike with PoW, stakeholders can actually prevent pools from forming. One of the clearest trends you'll see at the moment is that everyone are very careful with supporting only delegates that are clearly individual people and hosting their delegates seperately (with riverhead I think being the only exception). There will always be more than enough money ready to compensate a delegate whatever amount they need to cover their hosting costs and then some. It's not supposed to become an industry like mining, it's more like the top nodes in a big web of trust. You only ever need to replace delegates if they lose their reputation in the web of trust (which for instance could be by doing something stupid that centralises the network).

Yeah, unlike Bitcoin centralisation which Bitcoin holders have no say in. I think BTS shareholders will maintain a market acceptable level of decentralisation via voting and as the system matures will require various forms of proof that delegates have & are running their own full systems.

[fluxer555]

Sounds like bytemaster and Vitalaik should duke it out on the next Mumble session