How does this work? What is the difference between a DPOS block and a POW block that allows 1 block vs 6 blocks recommended confirmation times? Is this because the delegates are elected and thus the trust level is higher for the block-signers? Or is it something else?
1) The probability of a FORK after a block has been produced is very low. < 0.01% where as Bitcoin has 25 orphans in the last 22 days (about 1 per day) which translates into 0.7% of blocks are orphaned.
2) We are normally at 100% delegate participation and when we are less than that it is more often because a delegate was DOWN and didn't produce a block than because they produced a fork.
It would be interesting to have SVK produce a chart that shows the median time between orphaned blocks / forks. Right now bitsharesblocks reports 1 fork in the last 24 hours which puts us at .01%.
3) Forks are almost always resolved within 30 seconds.
4) When a fork is produced it is very likely that all delegates have seen and processed your transaction and thus no alternative transactions can be broadcast and the next delegate is almost certain to include your transaction.
5) All delegates are much more trusted than miners.
So after 1 block (10 seconds) we are mathematically over 70x less likely to orphan than Bitcoin after 1 block (10 minutes). After 3 blocks (30 seconds) any random orphan will have been resolved and the probability of alternative chains is much lower .000001 than Bitcoin. By the time Bitcoin gets to .7% orphan probability (1 block) BitShares has 60 blocks which would have a probability of being orphaned 1*10^-120.