Ok Fuznuts, I shall not use the A-word again on this forum. Is there a word I could have used to describe the contents of the post in that particular case, without it immediately being linked to the person making the post? Or should I make a disclaimer signature, with the declaration that my posts are only reactions on the words not reaction on the persona placing them?
The interconnectedness between the wallet and the blockchain cannot be ignored. These things cannot be built in isolation.
I think this point should be elaborated upon and is one of the crucial misconceptions AdamBLevine seems to have been perpetuating as well.
You cannot change (hard-fork) something as complex as a
distributed concensus system like the blockchain as if it's nothing, if only for the bolded parts. You also can't just switch from one blockchain technology to the other, just like that. Actually if you could, it would mean bitcoin and the invention of the blockchain is a joke and the rubbish most sceptics have been spewing on the mainstream is actually true, that you could just change things on a whim.
Also designing, coding, bugfixing/maintaining all those different systems at the same time is not nearly as easy, trivial or cheap as has been suggested in this thread, nor does it solve the problem of the PoW-model not being able to work for bitsharesX in the first place. Who in their right mind would waste everyones time, energy, money and his reputation on releasing a product which he is certain will fail just to prove that it will fail?
I think I'd better stop here, I'm having a hard time grasping why anyone even superficially familiar with software development in general, let alone projects like bitcoin would make claims like this. I suggest a thread be created where all these kinds of misunderstandings and myths or seeds of FUD are gathered and answered once and for all.
Maybe in a FAQ format, sort of like:
Why not (just) use (hashcash)PoW for a prediction-market blockchain?
A1 - Market manipulation: Because even with the simplest of attacks of just turning some miners on or off you can already influence the market by affecting the reaction-time of the participants on the
prediction market. If you time it right with a good FUD campaign you can really make a killing.
A2 - Cost: Because developing and maintaining a "new" PoW-system tailor made to address all the issues, is at best just as hard, but more likely than not much harder as developing a more effective PoS system and a lot more costly in several ways.
A3 - Centralization: Has up till now not been solved with PoW-solutions, but is more disastrous in case of xchanges and prediction markets.
Might actually be a good community project to create such a FUD-buster list, although unfortunately core devs seem to be best suited to fill out the technical details, or would at least need to review it, which would cost more time and effort that they can't spare at the moment.