Quote from: sittingduck on November 26, 2015, 03:24:02 pm

This fee can be lower it isn't our core business.  I say lower to 1 BTS

Committee Members, Make it So!

Quote from: bytemaster on November 25, 2015, 02:55:29 pm

With respect to recovering a proof-of-work chain, lets talk about it in terms of "recovering within a week".   If all mining hardware was turned into a unicorn people could still mine with their CPU/GPU, but it wouldn't be profitable and it would take days between blocks.

That's irrelevant. If you turned all DPOS delegates into unicorns the chain would be unrecoverable excepting for a hard fork.

I think you will need to be careful when describing DPOS as more decentralised than bitcoin when just one account controls the entire network - which is less decentralisation by a long way.

There is theoretical decentralization and then there is practical realities.  In theory DPOS could be more secure (more distributed influence).  In practice there exists a combination of voter apathy/laziness.   This voter apathy isn't a structural one, it is an incentive one.

I suspect that with a little economic incentive we could dramatically increase the voter turnout and render worries about this attack vector moot.

For example, charging a 0.1% tax per month on all accounts with more than 1M BTS that are not voting for at least 11 witnesses would really jack up the voter turnout. 

We just hired a new developer.  We have a lot of customers competing for our attention right now.  We are attempting to add capacity responsibly.

If it comes down to prioritization of scarce resources we will do whatever pays the most first (ECON 101).   

I would estimate it would take about 1 month of effort. Allowing for various delays etc, I would guess 6 weeks from the time we start on it.

But it is software, I wouldn't want to be penalized for taking longer than 6 weeks. 

The following practical, concise definitions are helpful in understanding Byzantine fault tolerance:[3][4]

Byzantine fault
Any fault presenting different symptoms to different observers
Byzantine failure
The loss of a system service due to a Byzantine fault in systems that require consensus

There are several different kinds of *faults* and degrees of damage that could occur.  Lets divide faults up into 3 categories:

1. Temporarily Halting Forward Progress
2. Permanently Halting Forward Progress
3. Corrupting Past Progress

Lets define the set of observers:

1. All full nodes are observers, this means that they serve the purpose of redundancy and irreversibility to a high degree (unlimited).  This protects the network against corruption of past progress in a manner that Bitcoin can never guarantee due to the concept of the Last Irreversible Block.
2. All witness nodes are observes that are actively involved in the consensus process, in other words they are required to allow consensus to advance. If 33% of these nodes "fail" then all forward progress is contingent (potentially reversible) but generally speaking consensus is still reached so long as there is a 51% majority.   Worst case, 49% of witnesses are corrupted (not just failed).  This will simply keep consensus in a "contingent" state until stakeholders can vote in 67% of cooperating witnesses.  Forward progress can be made at all times even if it is technically contingent.

If 67% of elected witnesses are corrupted then there are two options:

1. Consensus continues to advance and the elected witnesses censor transactions (or halt them all together) in which case forward progress is permanently halted.
2. If 99% of elected witnesses "fail" and stop producing blocks, consensus can still advance in a contingent state until stakeholders can elect new witnesses.

So lets compare this to Bitcoin:
1. If 99% of miners fail and stop producing blocks, consensus will "stop" (fall to 2 blocks per day)
2. Control can be purchased for a marginal increase on the profit associated with mining (not the revenue) and profit margins are constantly shrinking.
3. There are only 3 "generals" that matter in Bitcoin (the large pools) compared to 27 on BitShares
4. In any given set of 6 blocks there will be an average of less than 4 mining pools that confirmed it.
5. Transactions are never irreversible by-protocol, they can always be reversed with enough money.

So if you want to measure "fault tolerance" nothing compares to BitShares.

Quote from: onceuponatime on November 23, 2015, 11:32:26 pm

Quote from: bytemaster on November 23, 2015, 11:21:56 pm

Quote from: tonyk on November 23, 2015, 11:07:29 pm

I really do not get 'the no lifetime fees' crowd.

What is up with you people? Someone making too much money, according to you?

If yes go pay it yourselves, or get up and organize it as a UIA funding that you can buy into...


PS
And keep in mind that I say that while I have only 3 prime suspects for this secret investor - CNX being one of those.

CNX is not one of them, nor is it CCEDK nor Bunker.   In other words, there is no slight of hand here, I just wanted to air the idea without involving them.  Would the mystery investor please speak up if you are ok discussing this publicly?

I approached Stan and Dan with the thought of my paying CNX $45,000 to get the Stealth work funded. This is a huge chunk of my lifetime savings, and it is a huge risk for me to be taking. However, I am in total harmony with Bytemaster's philosophy and goals as far as I understand them and want this project to succeed, and to succeed .

I find that a lot of community members are expecting others to do the work needed to get this project rolling for free or for less than market rates. And out and out jealousy rearing its ugly head in some comments today.

Guess it's a matter of knowing how much you want to get per transaction as lifetime royalties and make a worker proposal to see if it will get approved.

Only thing I dont know, as it was mentioned, is what if it comes someone else and does the same and improves stealth transactions? what percentage will they get? I don't know how this would be managed knowing BTS already has a commitment with onceuponatime (if this goes forward)

And I'm very impressed by the fact you're going in with your life savings... really. If this happens, I really hope you get rich. It's not every day someone places the money where their mouth is this way, I admire you for that.

I would say that this whole discussion has shown us how the market would like to proceed with new feature requests in general.  We just need to work out a flexible long-term solution. 

What we have learned is this:

1. Shareholders are much happier letting someone else profit from our future revenue stream than increasing sell pressure today.
2. Dilution is so hated, that users would rather give up the value of future revenue than keep that value and dilute.

Technically speaking, BTS is paying far more than $45,000 by adopting this proposal. It is paying the net-present-value of the future revenue stream generated by this feature. Onceuponatime has realized that $45,000 is a steal for that revenue stream if BTS is successful. 

So the question remains, how much does the value of BTS rise/fall by selling off this revenue stream for $45,000?  On the one hand it should increase due to removal of dilution and short-term sell pressure.  On the other hand it should fall due to the decrease in expected future revenues, on the other hand those future revenues would never have existed without the $45K investment.

So if Onceuponatime is right, BTS loses and he gains.  If he is wrong, BTS gets a new feature at a bargain basement price. 

My bet is that onceuponatime is right.

I would also strongly recommend that we open up this deal to "crowd fund" a UIA with a buyback plan. This way onceuponatime can diversify his risk and we can have an "equal opportunity" policy.  I don't want anyone accusing us of playing favorites.  By being equal opportunity we should auction it off.  Raise as much BTS as possible to fund it and then burn the rest.  This way the network gets a proper market-determined-price for this revenue stream.

Just some ideas.



 

1. A 51% attack only applies to future changes, cannot impact past transactions.
2. Any and all changes to the code are known (no secret attacks where owners sell the assets out from under the company just before filing bankruptcy).
3. High concentrations of votes will impact risk profiles and thus lower value... but they also represent focus and adaptability which can increase value.

Minority stakeholders are protected by keeping all changes slow enough for them to sell prior to the change. If the 51% want to steal the funds of the 1% by dilution the 1% can sell prior to the dilution. This the smaller investor is more liquid than the larger investor.

Quote from: merockstar on November 23, 2015, 10:51:21 pm

Quote from: topcandle on November 23, 2015, 10:47:20 pm

Quote from: merockstar on November 23, 2015, 10:23:06 pm

Mark me down as in favor of this anonymous lender being allowed to recoup their investment plus a generous amount.

Alternatively, and even better in my opinion, create a UIA, crowdsource the funding, then use future stealth fees to buy back the UIA.

Mark me down as 100% firmly opposed to them having lifetime royalties forever. In fact, mark me down as insulted by the proposal,.

This is so misguided in so many ways.  There is absolutely no gaurentee that the investor will recoup his money back.  So you want him to to be exposed to all the downside (losing his initial investment) while you get all the upside.  How fair is that?

project succeeds and blows up. for 45,000 this person bought millions of dollars from bitshares' profits every year forever.

What would be a reasonable amount of money you would recommend capping the profit at?  4x the amount?

Here is my take on it:

1. The revenue split must be high during the "pay back period" and low during the "profit period".
2. $45,000 only buys so much UI work. Eventually others will want to fund additional improvements (QR integration, etc). The network can only reallocate its own cut of the revenue stream and therefore should make sure it has something left to allocate for future generations.
3. Each feature is like a MINI-DAC within a DAC.  If there is a UIA issued for the feature, owners of that UIA should be able to vote to issue new shares and fund improvements to their feature. This would be the ideal long-term solution for many different "rounds" of funds being used to enhance the same feature.
4. The Risk/Reward profile means that capping the reward will make some projects not worth the risk. In other words, it has significant impact on the potential funding.

If you think that there is a 1:4 chance that bitshares reaches 200 stealth transactions per day and maintains its current valuation for the next 3 years then a 4x return is "even odds" and doesn't even make the speculator any money.  In other words, rolling the dice over and over again will result in them breaking even. A game that isn't even worth playing.  Expecting BTS to appreciate is not compensation for someone who could just buy BTS and hold who has the added benefit of liquidity.    Only the possibility of unlimited upside potential even if it is only 1% of all relevant fees is interesting to most investors at this stage in the game. Later, if BitShares were as successful as Bitcoin then the odds of winning are greater and thus it becomes possible to limit the upside and still attract investors.

One last point, raising money for new features via the issuance of a UIA must be done very carefully to avoid creating a security. By encoding the payback methods into the blockchain and holding the funds hostage until the feature is delivered the value of the UIA can be arranged to never depend upon the actions of another and thus not a security. Spending the funds prior to delivering the feature can create a security.

A prediction market asset can be used to "pre-fund" the feature.  Anyone who wants to participate in the fundraiser can lock funds in collateral for the UIA and then transfer the UIA lent into circulation with the caveat that once borrowed you cannot cover your position until after the cut-off date (refund date).  If the desired level of funding is reached then you can never close your position except by selling the asset on the market.  The funds held as collateral get transferred to the company that produced the feature and the UIA get bought back over time from fees.   Anyway, there are a few small rule changes to the asset management code and a new operation or two and we can have a system in place whereby committee members can jointly act as escrow agents on the crowd fund (releasing the funds to the proper person only upon completion of the work).