Thanks everybody for the feedback so far!
The way we approach everything in live is pretty simple: Do no harm. And treat others as you would like to be treated.
One thing I have learned is to change my position if my position has a known logical flaw or does harm.
Before I continue I would like to point out how hardcoded delegate voting works on our thin client. At no point does anybody but the users have access to his private keys. The light client does transaction building in two ways: 1) for single signature transactions everything is build in the client. The Angular app would preset those delegates on each transaction. 2) for future multisig transactions the server builds the transaction with the vote pre-set, then sends the build transaction to the client, which then signs the transaction with his private key. The client can independently verify whether the transaction is OK. The server is in this setup only a relay and can never actually change any transaction as the blockchain would not accept such a forged transaction.
So far what I have gathered from this discussion:
- There is a considerable number of people against the hardcoded proposal.
- I believe that there is a serious problem with the Nash Equilibrium of the DPOS voting system
.
- The proposed fundraiser is in libertarian terms all OK. It is a voluntary trade and risk taking by all invloved parties, and all parties are individuals rather than collectives. Furthermore a public good is created and payed for by the public without the public taking any coerced risk.
- The people against hardcoded delegates voiced concerns initially based on the potentially exposed flaw in the DPOS voting scheme, but then dismissed this very problem as invalid
From my perspective, the reasoning behind being against hardcoded delegates has still not been explained by the people who are against it.
As I said, we can do the fundraiser differently, but people who are so vehemently against this approach need to please argue why it is so bad. Can somebody please explain to me what the core problem is?
My problem is that because the problem with hardcoding hasn't been defined by anybody of the people against, I am unable to formulate an alternative fundraiser approach. I feel like a physician being told by some of the community to do an operation without knowing what the illness is...
The problem with hard-coded delegates is similar to Bitcoin mining pools. Because hashers are lazy and want the best/most consistent returns they transfer their power to pools, this centralizes & gives control of Bitcoin to people who may not have the best intentions.
In our case users/voters are lazy and want the best/easiest product and may transfer their power to the 'wallet pools', this would centralize BitShares & give control of BitShares to people who may not have the best intentions.
With Bitcoin their lack of decentralisation hamstrings their value despite being the market leader and in our case it would be seriously damaging to the BTS price.
So while the libertarian free market can create a solution such as yours our free market response to protect the BTS share price would be to take back control of the forum and treat Moonstone like an infected wallet and warn people accordingly. Thereby maintaining market confidence that we are committed to remaining sufficiently decentralised and around delegates who are voluntarily selected.
In terms of the problems of voter apathy and incentivising projects like yours...
The solution to voter apathy is reward or punishment. The 5% annual fee in the original whitepaper for not voting, which while unpopular would have mostly addressed the issue, was part of the original design & would also have been infinitely more popular than dilution. Combined with transaction fees at a higher CAP, it would have given us comparable funding. (Unfortunately this is out of the question now that we already have a dilution tax, only voter incentives are now an option.)
The solution to attracting third parties to do projects like this besides voluntary delegate positions is transaction fees. Perhaps we need to decide on a standard transaction fee and give a percentage back to whichever third party generated the transaction. (With the understanding that if they ever introduced hard-coded delegates they would be treated as a serious and immediate threat to BitShares.)
I also think the blockchain can enter into longer term agreements of up to a year, even though the shareholders of tomorrow will not be the shareholders of today.
Why? Being able to attract talented developers and significant projects is extremely valuable to BTS. If a delegate pre-stated their work was conditional on a 6 month contract, even though their work might be finished sooner and we agreed & elected them on that basis but shareholders of tomorrow fired him, then unless those BTS shareholders had a very good reason, they wouldn't be able to attract other significant projects and developers as the blockchain's word would count for very little.
Show Posts
I think I've lost the password for that one otherwise I'd actually get it back up to 888. Some months ago when they updated the forum/something some people lost a few posts but it was left on 888 originally. 
Great that he mentions BitUSD & BitShares by name, he seems open to a lot of 2.0 projects. 
Ander thought it could be real, alas no.