upgrade-to-bts-2

is a 0% meta delegate that let's shareholders vote FOR the bts2 upgrade .. there is a corresponding no-upgrade-to-bts-2 delegate which does the opposite ..

please vote at least for one of those two if possible!

done

So I was contemplating the mumble session we had earlier today. I had asked a question regarding SPV (simplified payment verification...akin to that of a light wallet in Bitcoin) and if it was at all possible. The answer I got was that in the traditional sense (that being a trustless sense as SPV confirms based on a handful of block headers), no it is not. You will have to read from a central server website, the idea being that replication will ideally create the web of trust we are seeking here. However, there is something to be said for 'trustless' solutions. So a thought occurred to me. The witness nodes when thought of in the abstract as they are seem to form something of a ring...a ring that could be utilized as a distributed hash table methinks. So here's my proposal for a new operation in the blockchain to enable TRUE SPV.

Why not have a DHT integrated into the witness ring so that a light client could merely tap the DHT network and see the last N block headers (where N is also the number of witnesses). This could be supplemented for speed purposes by a full node broadcasting the block (we have to incentivize people to still run full nodes for the sake of security...why not create a role like witness in training or make it a worker section?) If we could find a way to prove that the "witness in training" delivered a packet of blockchain successfully to the light wallet, you may also have another way to generate economic gains to those simply running a full node. Granted that is going to be hard, but it is definitely something to think about (perhaps some form of a ranking system?)

One of the biggest problems with a DHT is the problem of Sybil attacks...something that the blockchain has effectively solved the problem of. One way we defend against sybil attacks is using the exact IDs that we have recorded in the blockchain as certified IDs. You aren't registered to the blockchain, you won't be delivered any data. Another is to find some way of implementing a proof of work, such that if a node reports that you delivered data that was incorrect (we see a node trying to fork the state), then we look for who delivered that data (not sure how exactly we do that outside of a ranking system) and can either a) impose a fee, b) kick them out of the DHT, or both. Kicking them out seems a bit harsh however, as an attacker could try to create false data and say that a full node did it, unjustly penalizing them....perhaps something involving the signing key? Another way is for a delegate/worker to administer a reverse turing test....think something like a CAPTCHA...only useful to the blockchain. Yet another way would be to simply have them pay to use the light wallet service (something like a small micropayment to access the DHT and make GET requests).

To me, this seems like it has even greater applications when we think of resurrecting DNS, content distribution, and reducing blockchain bloat. What do you guys think? Am I crazy or can this thing work?

Coinbase was offering referral fees a while back.  I think they stopped and may just be re-instituting them with different parameters.

Either way, I don't think it should be considered competition.

Bitshares 2.0 will be a superior referral system because the referrers will get a piece of every transaction fee going forward instead of just a one-time pay-off once a certain threshold has been met

Really? This had flown right over my head. Could you explain?

Quote from: cylonmaker2053 on July 10, 2015, 02:36:50 am

Quote from: kokojie on July 10, 2015, 02:06:25 am

Bitcoin is being spam attacked, so a lot of whales are seeking safer crypto, and LTC, NVC, NMC and PPC are perfect since they have been around for several years, well known, and were at the bottom of their value.

that's an interesting take on things...i do hope the BTC attack stops, those guys get their shyt together on block size, and it jumps back over $1,000

I'm surprised at the stalemate over the blocksize limit in bitcoin.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I saw an interesting read that might help explain the debacle. A lot of it has to do with the large Chinese mining pools and they say that if the block sizes increase, then they will not be able to keep up in terms of bandwidth (it's just not as developed over there), and they will then be forced out....and they own a very large share of the hashing power at this point and time. So yes, while it seems to me like a no brainer as well, this does kind of explain the politics of what is underlying the conversation.

1. We have limited transparency on the independence of the witnesses. Is it possible for users with a superior witness process (with the best witness stats) to clone that into more than one witness, perhaps in the extreme even controlling more than 51% of witnesses? Even if we were convinced that witnesses were controlled by different forum identities, might the individuals be related parties, for example working for the same entity (e.g. CMX or others)?


2. We have limited means to make reputation loss an effective deterrent. If the reputation is limited to BitShares, rather than real world, the sacrifice is a lot less for somebody willing to forsake ongoing involvement with BitShares for a highly profitable attack, than for somebody who carries that stigma with them into any future endeavours. Further, what's to stop an attacker from running one or more witnesses under a new alias after the attack is carried out?

well...yeah....that's basically what we're walking into here. You've just described the problem of a Sybil attack...which is what blockchains are supposed to be able to beat.
The best way to ensure that witnesses behave is to economically incentivize them to behave. Arhag's idea of a bond fits that description. Forcing a payment from every witness and monitoring the amount of stake each witness/delegate has (%-wise) is critical here.

That actually just gave me an idea for a GUI feature....colored flags for percentage of stake held by a witness.

Quote from: Stan on July 10, 2015, 12:35:28 am

We are moving toward a place where
steady user demand will begin to dwarf fickle speculator demand.
Most chains have no way to make such a move.

Ya'll should be very excited. This thing is going to be massive. I won't be surprised to see this competing with traditional stock exchanges....this will truly be THE platform to trade crypto in the future.

Friend sent me this from ycombinator. Pretty cool idea:

https://github.com/zrm/snow