Quote from: karnal on November 25, 2015, 01:38:30 pm

This is GREAT!

edit: Would be even better if we get BitUSD and BitCNY denominated pairs (like they have for USDT). Anyone working on *that*?

Yes, I am in contact with Poloniex. I don't expect that they will make BitUSD or BitCNY a base asset if there is no demonstrated volume. I will however encourage them to make BitCNY a base asset for ETH since a lot of the demand for ETH is coming from China but there are no ETH/CNY market. Bitcrab has already stated that he would help provide liquidity for such a market.

Also BitCNY coming soon to Bittrex if there are any people interested in trading there.

I think you mean quote asset? You want prices quoted in bitCNY?

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.

I wouldn't use the stick personally - I prefer the carrot: active voter participation lowers your fees.

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.

Oh yes - another point:

*) Make a single point of entry into the system for API calls, rather than having the API commands duplicated (but with different functionality) between the cli_wallet and the witness_node.

1. Long range attack is only viable against New Nodes on an ISOLATED network and can be completely eliminated with proper TAPOS accounting.  Under TAPOS it is possible to know what percent of the stake has directly confirmed the chain without going through intermediate witnesses.  A long-range attack would have to gather keys of individual accounts, not just keys of witnesses.   

And is TAPOS implemented?

What about keys to the past attack?

2. Potentially reversible simply means that they are subject to the longest-chain rule.  If a longer chain were to be produced that built off the last irreversible block then the node would automatically switch over to it.

Why is the 33% important here, not 50%?

3. The blockchain would not be recoverable if the reason the hash power was taken off line was due confiscation of mining hardware at large centralized farms (bomb, fire, law) and the chip manufacturers were shut down. 

Of course it would! You could turn every single piece of mining equipment into a unicorn and the chain would still be recoverable! Since bitcoin is permissionless, anyone can mine.

4. I was not referring to negative mining attack, I was referring to buying loyalty by guaranteeing an 2x increase in profits to existing miners which.  Profits are different from Revenue. 

Lets stick with plain facts here, though. Speculation doesn't win arguments about security.

5. Assuming a connected network, no node will automatically switch to any fork that branches prior to the last irreversible block. To reverse that block would require all of the passive observers to manually intervene. If the witnesses are compromised they could attempt to produce an alternative chain, but it would not be recognized as legitimate to active full nodes no matter how long it got.  All users of the blockchain would know the proper chain.  Compromise of 99% of the witnesses is like the 51% attack on Bitcoin so such an extreme case isn't generally considered possible.

What passive observers are you referring to here?

How would all users of the blockchain 'know' the proper chain without an objective measure of what it is?

Another point: how do you answer the accusation that DPOS is currently in danger of an 85% attack: right now 1 account could vote out the majority of witnesses and vote in his own colluding witnesses and bring the chain to a complete stop?

btc38-public-for-bts-cold has 278M BTS, and 21/27 top witnesses have less than that amount voting them in.

ref:

http://richlist.btsgame.org/
http://cryptofresh.com/witnesses

What measures are in place to prevent this? At least in bitcoin,  people switch pools when one has dominant power.

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.

What about long range attack, or keys to the past?

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)

Define 'potentially reversible'?

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)

...But the chain is recoverable without intervention.

2. Control can be purchased for a marginal increase on the profit associated with mining (not the revenue) and profit margins are constantly shrinking.

Not sure if you're referring to your theoretical negative mining attack here - if so this has been proven to be a straw man.

3. There are only 3 "generals" that matter in Bitcoin (the large pools) compared to 27 on BitShares

This is the wrong comparison to make. Really you should be comparing the percentage of hashing power in any one pool to the common stake which voted in the witnesses.

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.

I challenge you to prove that transactions are irreversible after the last 'irreversible' block.

Ok technically you're correct, but pooling shouldn't be significant.   The money you put into the pool is the collateral so having to maintain it  individually or not should not be a major issue.   Maintaining collateral for the shorts is just an expected part of the trade.   I will concede that being long is more hassle-free, but I believe it's a minor difference.

That's like saying the risk of the entire system getting black swanned == the risk of one user getting margin called.