Well... the main reason that led me to bring this up... I have been debating a lot of Bitcoin/Altcoin people as to the merits of DPoS versus PoW. I am telling a half truth when I tell them that someone needs to obtain 51% of the money supply to attack the network... due to voter apathy that is not the case. It is not only a security issue, it is a public perception issue of a possible security issue. If someone really advertised that instead you only need 14% of the money supply due to voter apathy, I think people will think more negatively of DPoS. How can we expect people to trust DPoS if it isn't as secure as it can theoretically be? IT doesn't look good in a debate when someone brings up that only 14% of the money supply is needed... they give me a hard enough time about 51% being bad enough.
an extremely important point. This has been gnawing at me for some time now. I keep seeing these topics on delegates and voting recurring and yet no significant changes are proposed by the devs to address this. The last major change was with the creation of delegate slates months ago.
coinhoarder & oldman (among others) have made some excellent points.
We really need to solve the problem of apathy, and imo we need to look at incentives (and disincentives). Oldman's point about responsibility is spot on imo. Several of the suggestions made here would be better than what we now have. We need to get bm, toast or other devs involved in this and work out a plan to address this problem
ASAP.
It's the same thing with our govt. It works good enough for me so I don't waste my time with it. If they ever really start effing up I'll take some time to exercise my right to vote to change things. This is going to end up a lot like that and it's o.k. It is a better system because it is sooooo easy for people to vote when they want.
If you're actually a teenager I can understand why you think this way. You're a product of govt. influence on society which promotes apathy & irresponsibility. You're conditioned to think "govt. will take care of me" or "let the govt. pay for it". Govt. is force. Is that what you want? Your believe that voting can actually change things at the state & national level ignores the decades of evidence to the contrary that preceded your birth. Your thinking is seriously flawed and I couldn't disagree with you more deeply than I do.
Do BTS shareholders have a right to yield if they cannot be bothered to vote?
I wasn't aware BTS earns yield, I thought that was just on bitassets? Bitasset holders definitely don't need to vote.
I'm not in favour of punishing with fines people for not voting. BTS holders just need to be able to be able to easily vote someone out if they are attacking the network and have the rest automated as much as possible. I don't know why delegates can't just be ranked algorithmically with using the fields on bitsharesblocks.com/delegates such as
- feed frequency
- number of active feeds
- reliability
- frequency of updates
- time running as delegate (they'd become more trusted over time, would be a v important factor to make attacks more expensive)
There could be an algorithmically produced top 101 slate which could be auto-voted on (i.e. not voted on) and give its effect a weighting of say 50/50 vs the active votes of the BTS holders. So if there is 15% active stake, the algorithmically defined stake gets 15% voting power automatically taken from the inactive stake, doubling the active stake (while decreasing the voters power by half). Let an algorithm take some of the load.
Or at the very least an algorithm could serve as a back up, so that if the active stake falls below a certain level, the algorithm could step in and do the voting on the BTS holders' behalf. The only way to trick the algorithm would be to run a fleet of very reliable delegates for a long period.... which might end up being cheaper than just buying up the BTS... not sure.
Luckybit & I have been talking about bots & automation to help with this problem, so I agree with you on that. The metrics for delegates outside the 101 need to be determined. As svk pointed out the data and metrics for standby delegates cannot be exactly the same. Where I disagree with you is regarding the need for incentives, which encompasses disincentives. If I understood fuzzy's perspective, (a form of direct pay for people to vote) I have to disagree. Too much possibility for abuse and bribery. I very much like the 10x transaction fee penalty or options similar to that as a negative incentive.
How to incentivize becoming informed is definitely a tough nut to crack, but the closest to it would probably be related to Pheonike's idea of issue based voting. If we can couple what people are interested in or passionate about to a delegate or voting slate, and make it easy to them to see that connection and to vote, that may be the best we can do.
There are some really viable options being voiced here that will improve DPoS and I'm hoping to see some action taken by the devs before the green light is given to the marketing push.