Author Topic: Dan's Interview is on 'Let's Talk Bitcoin'  (Read 6313 times)

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Offline Stan

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Hmmmm, this is just the sixth hit on Google for "some other castle"

Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline arhag

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Exactly, which is why it counters the statement made by BM during last Friday's mumble.

Yeah, I agree. I don't think witnesses are really a check on other parties' power. Which helps the neutrality argument.

I guess one situation in which they might be is during a hard fork that bypasses the conventional protocol of waiting for stakeholder approval. These would be cases where an immediate security fix was necessary to protect users' funds. In that case one would hope that the witnesses do their best to make sure the changes follow the spirit of the existing blockchain rules and protocol, and also are tested well enough to hopefully not cause even bigger issues. Witnesses could refuse to upgrade to new code by devs until they were convinced it met these standards. There is no conflict with the stakeholders in this case because the stakeholders wouldn't have even had the chance to evaluate the situation and vote in favor of the change yet.

If apathy was so bad that the delegates approved of a hard fork but no disapproval was voiced by shareholders,

Delegates don't have the power to approve of hard forks. As far as I understand, delegates can propose to change parameters of the system (like fees, block intervals, etc.) and unless the stakeholders veto, it will go through in two weeks. But a hard fork requires active support from stakeholders for it to be approved. It won't just go through by default after some period of time.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2015, 01:22:32 am by arhag »

Offline Thom

BM went on to say in this interview, "All hard forks or changes, due to the consensus protocol itself, must be contingent upon stakeholder approval". If that is literally the case, then any witness that fails to deploy anything, forks or parameter changes proposed and approved by the shareholders, would be acting against the shareholder consensus, and that would be very bad.

Seems like a very effective way for a witness to get fired from their job. If enough stakeholders vote to approve a hard fork and enough witnesses don't upgrade their nodes to the new software, then that must also mean that the stakeholders who voted for the hard fork have enough voting power to vote out the non-complying witnesses. Unless the witness wants to lose their job, I don't see why they wouldn't upgrade.
Exactly, which is why it counters the statement made by BM during last Friday's mumble.

What is the purpose of the multisig delegate vote if the shareholders must approve parameter changes?

I think the main idea is that action from the stakeholders isn't necessary for change to occur. Rather, action from the stakeholders is necessary to prevent change from occurring. When you consider voter apathy, this is a huge difference. Most changes that are good for the network but aren't important enough to motivate the stakeholders to vote for it can still occur in a timely manner with this system since the elected delegates will take care of it. However, if the delegates propose a change that is clearly not good for the network, stakeholders have two weeks to get motivated and vote to stop the change.

That makes a great deal of sense arhag. If apathy was so bad that the delegates approved of a hard fork but no disapproval was voiced by shareholders, yet witnesses felt it was detrimental to the ecosystem, in that case they might refuse to deploy the new code, but that isn't the best course of action to take under those circumstances IMO. I think it would be much better to try to inform the shareholder why it was detrimental and wake them up from their apathy. I don't expect that scenario is very likely however. Either the delegates wouldn't propose such a hard fork change or the shareholders would oppose it. Even if it did fall to witnesses to make such a choice I doubt they would, b/c as you say doing so puts their job in jeopardy.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline arhag

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BM went on to say in this interview, "All hard forks or changes, due to the consensus protocol itself, must be contingent upon stakeholder approval". If that is literally the case, then any witness that fails to deploy anything, forks or parameter changes proposed and approved by the shareholders, would be acting against the shareholder consensus, and that would be very bad.

Seems like a very effective way for a witness to get fired from their job. If enough stakeholders vote to approve a hard fork and enough witnesses don't upgrade their nodes to the new software, then that must also mean that the stakeholders who voted for the hard fork have enough voting power to vote out the non-complying witnesses. Unless the witness wants to lose their job, I don't see why they wouldn't upgrade.

What is the purpose of the multisig delegate vote if the shareholders must approve parameter changes?

I think the main idea is that action from the stakeholders isn't necessary for change to occur. Rather, action from the stakeholders is necessary to prevent change from occurring. When you consider voter apathy, this is a huge difference. Most changes that are good for the network but aren't important enough to motivate the stakeholders to vote for it can still occur in a timely manner with this system since the elected delegates will take care of it. However, if the delegates propose a change that is clearly not good for the network, stakeholders have two weeks to get motivated and vote to stop the change.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2015, 12:35:35 am by arhag »

Offline Thom

Hmmm...

At around the 7 minute mark as he is asked to explain the implications of CNX on past projects BitShares was doing, BM stated that BitShares has been "self funded and self sustaining since 1/1/2015"

What? That's the time the PTS / AGS ran dry and the marketcap took a nose dive, thereby putting the dev staff in "austerity" mode, and precipitating the formation of CNX in order to sustain the BitShares ecosystem.

Not only did he not answer the question, but he misstated the facts and reason CNX was formed.

The coverage and explanation of DPoS witness role was very well articulated, bravo!

BM's description of the delegate role was OK, but he failed to mention the veto power of the witnesses as a last resort to nullify delegate decisions that require hard forks. I am perhaps a bit unclear myself concerning this, tho it was discussed in last Friday's mumble. BM said in the mumble that witnesses were a final check & balance, in that they had veto power to disapprove a hard fork by not deploying it into service.

BM went on to say in this interview, "All hard forks or changes, due to the consensus protocol itself, must be contingent upon stakeholder approval". If that is literally the case, then any witness that fails to deploy anything, forks or parameter changes proposed and approved by the shareholders, would be acting against the shareholder consensus, and that would be very bad. I just don't get how the witness role can have veto power or be a check & balance in the system. Moreover, if they did have that power, it would be contrary to witnesses being non-political block producers only.

What is the purpose of the multisig delegate vote if the shareholders must approve parameter changes? Is it only for the purpose of accepting or rejecting proposals that should be put before the shareholders to vote on? Is it just me, or does this need to be explained in a bit more detail?

Good discussion concerning liability, tho perhaps not enough depth.

In general it was a a pretty comprehensive and thorough interview, and a job well done!




Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline AdamBLevine

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+5% That was a great interview.


One thing I don't understand - to what does 'Some Other Castle' refer? I've not heard the phrase before!

Not sure. What my mind immediately goes to is this:



You got it. 

The reference is to the development approach that has led to starting over with big parts of the core ecosystem (like the consensus method and now the entire blockchain portion of the codebase) where success appears right around the corner, but when you get there it turns out the journey was the valuable part of the lesson and you've got to start the journey all over again because what you seek simply isn't going to be found where you are now.

I quite enjoyed the interview and am looking forward to getting my hands on Graphene powered Bitshares (and potentially a custom blockchain for Tokenly)

There is an ulterior meaning, LTB usually talks about Bitcoin and a dip into bitshares is akin to visiting "some other castle" where other means different from bitcoin.
Email me at adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

Offline arhag

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+5% That was a great interview.


One thing I don't understand - to what does 'Some Other Castle' refer? I've not heard the phrase before!

Not sure. What my mind immediately goes to is this:


However, I have no idea what that could possibly have to do with this interview or more generally BitShares.

Offline hadrian

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It's a good overview of where BitShares now stands, well done bytemaster.
If I were ignorant of BitShares and then I listened to that, I'd be reading, learning, heading over to this forum and buying.
I wonder if this will bring in more people.

One thing I don't understand - to what does 'Some Other Castle' refer? I've not heard the phrase before!
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Offline rgcrypto

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Fantastic interview!  +5%  Well done.

Offline cass

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Offline hadrian

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Let's Talk Bitcoin! #223 Some Other Castle
@bytemaster is interviewed by Adam B. Levine
I haven't listened yet, but here's a heads up for you all...

edit:
Ha! I just thought! If you're gonna sign up at 'Let's Talk Bitcoin' you could use my referral link https://letstalkbitcoin.com?ref=9b29def8
« Last Edit: June 20, 2015, 07:38:31 pm by hadrian »
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