Author Topic: Voting for more than 101 delegates? Also, privacy issue.  (Read 2045 times)

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Offline fluxer555

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Ah ok, this makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clearing this up vikram and bytemaster :)

Offline bytemaster

Not if delegate 102 is an pay raise of an existing delegate.  In which case you don't care which one gets in.  You don't want to weaken security during the transition.

I'm sorry bytemaster, I don't understand what part of my post you are specifically responding to with that. Can you elaborate?

In any case, if you "don't care about who gets in", I argue that that is a lack of discernment and an unintelligent, implicit delegation of discernment to the rest of the voters.

I am saying that delegate slots 102-111 are reserved for transition periods where you vote for 2 delegates owned by the same guy.  You don't care which one of his delegates gets in.
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Offline vikram

Note that the max slate size for voting allowed by the blockchain is 111 delegates. I believe the extra 10 was added to help support standby delegates.

Offline fluxer555

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Not if delegate 102 is an pay raise of an existing delegate.  In which case you don't care which one gets in.  You don't want to weaken security during the transition.

I'm sorry bytemaster, I don't understand what part of my post you are specifically responding to with that. Can you elaborate?

In any case, if you "don't care about who gets in", I argue that that is a lack of discernment and an unintelligent, implicit delegation of discernment to the rest of the voters.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2015, 09:20:26 pm by fluxer555 »

Offline bytemaster

What you lose is the necessity to be critical of your own value assessments. Actually, you don't lose the necessity; the necessity is still there, but allowing > 101 votes lets you passively lose touch with it unknowingly.

Limiting to 101 votes is a way to discern the best from the good. If there are 500 delegates who I think would add value to the system, and I vote for all of them, I'm basically shoving the responsibility of discernment to everyone else unintelligently.(Slates deal with this shoving of responsibility intelligently, or attempt to at least.)

Let's say you vote for 200 delegates. Let's take a subset of 50, whom are both unelected and not very popular yet. When you look at the 101 delegates getting paid, you realize that you are actually voting for all 101 of them, but those 50 that are not popular yet actually give more value to the ecosystem than the current lower 50. You then think, "I think these lower 50 elected delegates are doing a good job and add value, but these up-and-coming delegates look much more promising. I'm going to drop my votes for the current lower 50 delegates to give a chance for the new ones to move in."

If you were forced to limit your votes to 101, then this diligence with discernment would have to happen automatically. After hitting 101 approvals, you would have to make value judgements on each new delegate you approve, comparing new approvals to old approvals, pruning out the weakest link. The reality is that only 101 of the delegates we like have the ability to actually be elected, and this needs to be a part of how we vote. What I'm suggesting is that we force this responsibility upon voters so to keep them organized with their value judgements, with the added effect of making a stitch in time to save nine. With the current system, our approval lists will get longer and longer, and this will become more and more of an issue, which will be harder and harder to fix.

Not if delegate 102 is an pay raise of an existing delegate.  In which case you don't care which one gets in.  You don't want to weaken security during the transition. 
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline fluxer555

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What you lose is the necessity to be critical of your own value assessments. Actually, you don't lose the necessity; the necessity is still there, but allowing > 101 votes lets you passively lose touch with it unknowingly.

Limiting to 101 votes is a way to discern the best from the good. If there are 500 delegates who I think would add value to the system, and I vote for all of them, I'm basically shoving the responsibility of discernment to everyone else unintelligently.(Slates deal with this shoving of responsibility intelligently, or attempt to at least.)

Let's say you vote for 200 delegates. Let's take a subset of 50, whom are both unelected and not very popular yet. When you look at the 101 delegates getting paid, you realize that you are actually voting for all 101 of them, but those 50 that are not popular yet actually give more value to the ecosystem than the current lower 50. You then think, "I think these lower 50 elected delegates are doing a good job and add value, but these up-and-coming delegates look much more promising. I'm going to drop my votes for the current lower 50 delegates to give a chance for the new ones to move in."

If you were forced to limit your votes to 101, then this diligence with discernment would have to happen automatically. After hitting 101 approvals, you would have to make value judgements on each new delegate you approve, comparing new approvals to old approvals, pruning out the weakest link. The reality is that only 101 of the delegates we like have the ability to actually be elected, and this needs to be a part of how we vote. What I'm suggesting is that we force this responsibility upon voters so to keep them organized with their value judgements, with the added effect of making a stitch in time to save nine. With the current system, our approval lists will get longer and longer, and this will become more and more of an issue, which will be harder and harder to fix.

Offline toast

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How does it make your vote less impactful? Describe a contrived scenario where voting for more delegates causes a delegate you didn't want elected to become elected.

I'm still wrapping my head around it. Tell me if any of these are false:

0. Voting for no delegates has no impact on the system.
1. Voting for 2 delegates with your stake has 2x the impact of voting for 1 delegate.
2. Voting for 100 delegates has 2x the impact of voting for 50 delegates.
3. Voting for all delegates is essentially doing the same as not voting at all (no impact once again).

So, what does the impact curve look like between 2 and 3?

By impact I mean, "The level of influence my voluntary action to vote has on the election process".

I'm saying your notion of "level of influence" doesn't actually make sense. I understand your intuition, I used to think the same way. Approval voting is equivalent to independent elections that don't influence each other. Again, just try to come up with a simple example using 3 delegate slots with 5 candidates and 3/4 allowed votes. You don't "lose" anything by voting with more than the max number of delegate spots.

Quote
It is just as linkable as before because you pay the fee. TITAN is not magic like cryptonote or zerocash. We're making TITAN a hidden / advanced feature specifically because it gives this false sense of privacy.

If no votes are cast during the fee transaction, doesn't that help? Also, does this make faucets a way to 'tumble' the account registration process?

It doesn't help that no votes are case because the transaction is still linked to your other accounts. Faucets are a way to get around this, yes.
Do not use this post as information for making any important decisions. The only agreements I ever make are informal and non-binding. Take the same precautions as when dealing with a compromised account, scammer, sockpuppet, etc.

Offline fluxer555

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How does it make your vote less impactful? Describe a contrived scenario where voting for more delegates causes a delegate you didn't want elected to become elected.

I'm still wrapping my head around it. Tell me if any of these are false:

0. Voting for no delegates has no impact on the system.
1. Voting for 2 delegates with your stake has 2x the impact of voting for 1 delegate.
2. Voting for 100 delegates has 2x the impact of voting for 50 delegates.
3. Voting for all delegates is essentially doing the same as not voting at all (no impact once again).

So, what does the impact curve look like between 2 and 3?

By impact I mean, "The level of influence my voluntary action to vote has on the election process".

It is just as linkable as before because you pay the fee. TITAN is not magic like cryptonote or zerocash. We're making TITAN a hidden / advanced feature specifically because it gives this false sense of privacy.

If no votes are cast during the fee transaction, doesn't that help? Also, does this make faucets a way to 'tumble' the account registration process?
« Last Edit: January 09, 2015, 07:27:16 pm by fluxer555 »

Offline ripplexiaoshan

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How does it make your vote less impactful? Describe a contrived scenario where voting for more delegates causes a delegate you didn't want elected to become elected.

Quote
On a separate issue... Votes should by default NOT be cast when doing user registration functions. Any level of anonymity that TITAN provides is instantly lost. In the transaction I linked, I can now do blockchain analysis to determine with a degree of certainty any transactions that this account does.

It is just as linkable as before because you pay the fee. TITAN is not magic like cryptonote or zerocash. We're making TITAN a hidden / advanced feature specifically because it gives this false sense of privacy.

Is it true that we can now vote for more than 101 delegates? I thought 101 was the maximum.
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Offline toast

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How does it make your vote less impactful? Describe a contrived scenario where voting for more delegates causes a delegate you didn't want elected to become elected.

Quote
On a separate issue... Votes should by default NOT be cast when doing user registration functions. Any level of anonymity that TITAN provides is instantly lost. In the transaction I linked, I can now do blockchain analysis to determine with a degree of certainty any transactions that this account does.

It is just as linkable as before because you pay the fee. TITAN is not magic like cryptonote or zerocash. We're making TITAN a hidden / advanced feature specifically because it gives this false sense of privacy.
Do not use this post as information for making any important decisions. The only agreements I ever make are informal and non-binding. Take the same precautions as when dealing with a compromised account, scammer, sockpuppet, etc.

Offline fluxer555

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I noticed this block on bitsharesblocks:

http://www.bitsharesblocks.com/blocks/block?id=1481367

I realize now that it is possible to vote for more than 101 delegates. I feel like this introduces interesting (and probably unintentional) game theory mechanics, but I'm not sure exactly what all the implications are.

All your votes up to 101 delegates contribute to something meaningful, but after that, each delegate you vote for makes each of your votes less meaningful. Once you have voted for all delegates, your votes are now officially meaningless.

My question is: Should we allow users to make their votes less impactful by allowing them to vote for more than 101 delegates?

Naturally, in a system that restricted votes to 101 per balance, if somebody *wanted* to vote for more than 101 (either because they are stupid, or are doing some kind of game-theory manipulation), they could by just making more than one account. But, that would be a voluntary action, and not default behavior.

What mainly concerns me is how slates work: If I vote for 10 delegates, each of whom have slates of 101 exclusively unique delegates, am I now voting for 1000+ delegates?

On a separate issue... Votes should by default NOT be cast when doing user registration functions. Any level of anonymity that TITAN provides is instantly lost. In the transaction I linked, I can now do blockchain analysis to determine with a degree of certainty any transactions that this account does.