Network security comes at a cost. Under PoW, that cost is explicit. Under DPoS, that cost is opaque, but real nonetheless - the cost of voting. I've made this point previously, that it is not a verifiable claim to say DPoS is lower expense than PoW for this reason. Either DPoS also has a high cost, or compromises security. This change brings that point home for me. Still, I believe there are strong benefits to DPoS because stakeholders have control rather than miners.

The key is to exercise that control in the most effective and efficient way possible. Until convinced otherwise, I strongly prefer stakeholders retain the ability to vote instantly rather than waiting 24 hours, as I worry that unforeseen attack types are possible in that time (unknown unknowns), that perhaps cannot all be captured by automated block-chain bans. I see the ability to instantly fire witnesses as a catch-all solution, if implemented effectively.

Quote from: arhag on July 07, 2015, 10:12:35 pm

Quote from: Ander on July 07, 2015, 09:46:06 pm

My thinking was that if the attacker used their own stake to vote in all their delegates, then transferred to an exchange and sold (losing the votes), they would have more time to sell and execute the attack if votes are only tallied once a day, instead of immediate.

I see. I'm not too worried about that attack considering the difficulty of controlling enough stake to unilaterally vote in enough active witnesses for an attack. And the 1 day tally is only a downside from the current 0.x system if you believe that voters would react fast enough to vote out that witness in less than 24 hours (which I do not believe at all).

You always have great depth of analysis arhag, but how confident can the community be that we can ever foresee every attack vector?

The best solution to instant firing I can think of is to allow voting power to be delegated by the community to members who prove themselves at being trustworthy, adept and responsive to such events in real-time. Users can in turn instantly change those delegations, leaving ultimate power in the hands of the wider community. This would help reduce voter apathy, as the job is much simpler and far less frequent for stakeholders with little input, while allocating the strongest voting power where the most information is held and highest responsiveness needed. To validate such an approach though, I'd want to be sure that we are not just shifting the problem of malevolent witnesses to malevolent delegates.
 
I'll need to rely on experts in this area to find the optimal solution, but just wanted to add my view. Bytemaster is yet to comment, and may allay some concern.

Finally I would like to strongly encourage bytemaster to test significant changes like this with the community first - at a minimum, by forming groups of trusted community members that can provide feedback on different policy areas. Why not take advantage of the depth of expertise at hand?

BTS doesn't have to handle micro payments to be an unimaginable success. all we need is one export/import industry to start using bitUSD or any of the other bitassets for currency hedging and we're talking about potentially billions added to our market value. now imagine if financial institutions started using bitassets to park capital, or if people in financial repressed countries started using bitassets to protect themselves from domestic political risk? we don't need to fight the micro payments battle alongside BTC or the other crypto currencies to be overwhelmingly successful in our core function of providing decentralized p2p asset exchanges.