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Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: bitcrab on January 02, 2016, 02:48:18 pm

Title: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: bitcrab on January 02, 2016, 02:48:18 pm
we now have voting in Bitshares 2.0, this made the platform far more decentralized than 1.0 stage.
but it is still too centralized, one important reason is the voting rule for committee members, as each account can vote as many committee members as he/she like, a person with 5% BTS can easily control the committee.
if we need real decentralization, we need to change this, I propose to restrict that one account can only vote at most 3 committee members.this will bring more decentralization and prevent dictatorship.
any thoughts?
I will prepare a BSIP issue if this get positive feedback from community.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: sittingduck on January 02, 2016, 02:55:38 pm
We had this debate two years ago with agent 86. How we do it now is the same way as corps.  Your approach has weaknesses greater than those you are attempting to fix. 
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: xeroc on January 02, 2016, 03:05:52 pm
We had this debate two years ago with agent 86. How we do it now is the same way as corps.  Your approach has weaknesses greater than those you are attempting to fix.
I can confirm this ..
what we need are committee members and or loyal proxies with more (combined) voting power than any attacker .. thats all we need
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: bitcrab on January 02, 2016, 03:14:48 pm
We had this debate two years ago with agent 86. How we do it now is the same way as corps.  Your approach has weaknesses greater than those you are attempting to fix.
I can confirm this ..
what we need are committee members and or loyal proxies with more (combined) voting power than any attacker .. thats all we need

how can you differentiate loyal proxies and attackers? A user with 5% voting power is loyal proxy and with 3% voting power is attacker?
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 02, 2016, 03:36:51 pm
We had this debate two years ago with agent 86. How we do it now is the same way as corps.  Your approach has weaknesses greater than those you are attempting to fix.
I can confirm this ..
what we need are committee members and or loyal proxies with more (combined) voting power than any attacker .. thats all we need
Imo votes for committee members are different than votes for witnesses.
If one have enough voting power to let herself stay as active witness, she may do something bad with it.
But if one have enough voting power to stay in committee, she'll have less influence since there is at least one more voting round and a review period for decision making.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: xeroc on January 02, 2016, 03:37:05 pm
I assume all proxies are honest until they fuck something up .. proxies have no way to prevent shareholders removing their votes from them ..
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Empirical1.2 on January 02, 2016, 03:41:46 pm
I assume all proxies are honest until they fuck something up .. proxies have no way to prevent shareholders removing their votes from them ..

Couldn't a proxy with enough support elect witnesses who refuse to process vote removals?
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: bitcrab on January 02, 2016, 03:48:11 pm
We had this debate two years ago with agent 86. How we do it now is the same way as corps.  Your approach has weaknesses greater than those you are attempting to fix.
I can confirm this ..
what we need are committee members and or loyal proxies with more (combined) voting power than any attacker .. thats all we need
Imo votes for committee members are different than votes for witnesses.
If one have enough voting power to let herself stay as active witness, she may do something bad with it.
But if one have enough voting power to stay in committee, she'll have less influence since there is at least one more voting round and a review period for decision making.
yes, so I don't think my proposal "has greater weaknesses than attempting to fix", we need to make balance in decision making, if the one with most voting power can control the whole committee, there will be no balance. dictatorship will come... 
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: xeroc on January 02, 2016, 03:50:58 pm
I assume all proxies are honest until they fuck something up .. proxies have no way to prevent shareholders removing their votes from them ..

Couldn't a proxy with enough support elect witnesses who refuse to process vote removals?
only in the case of a 51% attack where ALL witnesses are replaced .. and there would definitely be NO financial incentive to do so
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Samupaha on January 02, 2016, 04:29:50 pm
What is exactly the problem you are trying to solve here? I think the system works as it should be working. Those who have the most BTS will have the most voting power.

Bigger problem right now is that we don't have enough high quality committee members. One reason is the lack of GUI for committee, I suspect that many aren't interested using the text client.

Correct if I'm wrong, but I have the understanding that when shareholders vote for committee, they don't vote only for individual members but for size of the committee also. If everybody votes for only three members, there won't be more than three members in the committee, and that's pretty much centralized then.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: bitcrab on January 03, 2016, 03:50:35 am
What is exactly the problem you are trying to solve here? I think the system works as it should be working. Those who have the most BTS will have the most voting power.

Bigger problem right now is that we don't have enough high quality committee members. One reason is the lack of GUI for committee, I suspect that many aren't interested using the text client.

Correct if I'm wrong, but I have the understanding that when shareholders vote for committee, they don't vote only for individual members but for size of the committee also. If everybody votes for only three members, there won't be more than three members in the committee, and that's pretty much centralized then.

we have more people that can act as good committee members, such as @clayop, @Bhuz, but they are now not voted in.
on the contrary, we now have 5 inits accounts in the committee that taken the places.

(http://i4.tietuku.com/ba5731404a15462c.png)

one fact is, among the current 11 active committee members, I am the only one that do not depend on BM's support.
if one owns enough voting power, he can control all, and the necessary voting power is far less than 50%.
we can not call such a  platform a DAC. we need to make it a real DAC, this is the problem I want to solve.
everyone voting 3 committee members will not result in centralization, because it is clearly not always the same 3 be voted.


Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: JonnyB on January 03, 2016, 04:02:03 am
What is exactly the problem you are trying to solve here? I think the system works as it should be working. Those who have the most BTS will have the most voting power.

Bigger problem right now is that we don't have enough high quality committee members. One reason is the lack of GUI for committee, I suspect that many aren't interested using the text client.

Correct if I'm wrong, but I have the understanding that when shareholders vote for committee, they don't vote only for individual members but for size of the committee also. If everybody votes for only three members, there won't be more than three members in the committee, and that's pretty much centralized then.

yep we need the ability to stand as a committee member built in to the gui asap
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Xypher on January 03, 2016, 04:13:38 am
What is exactly the problem you are trying to solve here? I think the system works as it should be working. Those who have the most BTS will have the most voting power.

Bigger problem right now is that we don't have enough high quality committee members. One reason is the lack of GUI for committee, I suspect that many aren't interested using the text client.

Correct if I'm wrong, but I have the understanding that when shareholders vote for committee, they don't vote only for individual members but for size of the committee also. If everybody votes for only three members, there won't be more than three members in the committee, and that's pretty much centralized then.

we have more people that can act as good committee members, such as @clayop, @Bhuz, but they are now not voted in.
on the contrary, we now have 5 inits accounts in the committee that taken the places.

(http://i4.tietuku.com/ba5731404a15462c.png)

one fact is, among the current 11 active committee members, I am the only one that do not depend on BM's support.
if one owns enough voting power, he can control all, and the necessary voting power is far less than 50%.
we can not call such a  platform a DAC. we need to make it a real DAC, this is the problem I want to solve.
everyone voting 3 committee members will not result in centralization, because it is clearly not always the same 3 be voted.

That's a scary situation to be in!
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Musewhale on January 03, 2016, 07:33:23 am
Agree to limit the number of elected people
 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: sudo on January 03, 2016, 09:57:33 am
we now have voting in Bitshares 2.0, this made the platform far more decentralized than 1.0 stage.
but it is still too centralized, one important reason is the voting rule for committee members, as each account can vote as many committee members as he/she like, a person with 5% BTS can easily control the committee.
if we need real decentralization, we need to change this, I propose to restrict that one account can only vote at most 3 committee members.this will bring more decentralization and prevent dictatorship.
any thoughts?
I will prepare a BSIP issue if this get positive feedback from community.

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Samupaha on January 03, 2016, 11:15:48 am
The rules of the real DAC are not changed whenever somebody is unhappy with the result of current voting.

If you want to change the rules, you have to make a case that will prove that the new rules produce good and fair results no matter who are the voters or the candidates. The point of this is to have a sufficient mechanism to elect reliable people to change blockchain parameters. Not just this time but every time.

I don't even see any reason why there is a need to decrease Bytemaster's power on blockchain parameters. On the contrary, I would like him to take more active participation on these decisions, because he knows the system best. So far he hasn't changed or proposed any parameters that I would consider harmful for Bitshares.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: bitcrab on January 03, 2016, 11:47:48 am
The rules of the real DAC are not changed whenever somebody is unhappy with the result of current voting.

If you want to change the rules, you have to make a case that will prove that the new rules produce good and fair results no matter who are the voters or the candidates. The point of this is to have a sufficient mechanism to elect reliable people to change blockchain parameters. Not just this time but every time.

I don't even see any reason why there is a need to decrease Bytemaster's power on blockchain parameters. On the contrary, I would like him to take more active participation on these decisions, because he knows the system best. So far he hasn't changed or proposed any parameters that I would consider harmful for Bitshares.

ya, there are always people that like to live under the rule of a dictator, because he think the dictator is the wisest people he ever met.

but humankind finally select democracy, not because they cannot find wise people to be the ruler, but because they come to understand that unrestricted right will always lead to disaster.

can anyone prove that each time the elected US President is always relied person? no one can prove, but few US people think US need to go back to monarchy, like north Korea. no need to explain.

DAC is not compatible with dictator, we built committee in order to push the decentralization, not to put it under one people's control, I think this is easy to understand.

it's ok for you to trust BM mostly, you can support him by voting, but this is not the consensus of the whole community. the community need a mechanism to avoid dictatorship.




Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 03, 2016, 02:23:12 pm
Correct if I'm wrong, but I have the understanding that when shareholders vote for committee, they don't vote only for individual members but for size of the committee also. If everybody votes for only three members, there won't be more than three members in the committee, and that's pretty much centralized then.
You're correct on the "also voting for size" point. However there is a hard-coded minimum size of 11. If everybody votes for less than 11 committee members, there will be 11 members.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: gamey on January 03, 2016, 09:42:36 pm
The rules of the real DAC are not changed whenever somebody is unhappy with the result of current voting.

If you want to change the rules, you have to make a case that will prove that the new rules produce good and fair results no matter who are the voters or the candidates. The point of this is to have a sufficient mechanism to elect reliable people to change blockchain parameters. Not just this time but every time.

I don't even see any reason why there is a need to decrease Bytemaster's power on blockchain parameters. On the contrary, I would like him to take more active participation on these decisions, because he knows the system best. So far he hasn't changed or proposed any parameters that I would consider harmful for Bitshares.

ya, there are always people that like to live under the rule of a dictator, because he think the dictator is the wisest people he ever met.

but humankind finally select democracy, not because they cannot find wise people to be the ruler, but because they come to understand that unrestricted right will always lead to disaster.

can anyone prove that each time the elected US President is always relied person? no one can prove, but few US people think US need to go back to monarchy, like north Korea. no need to explain.

DAC is not compatible with dictator, we built committee in order to push the decentralization, not to put it under one people's control, I think this is easy to understand.

it's ok for you to trust BM mostly, you can support him by voting, but this is not the consensus of the whole community. the community need a mechanism to avoid dictatorship.

So what am I missing?  What would prevent someone from just splitting their stake across multiple accounts to get around this?  It seems like a soft rule that is only meaningful to those who choose to stay within the parameters.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 04, 2016, 12:50:19 am
The rules of the real DAC are not changed whenever somebody is unhappy with the result of current voting.

If you want to change the rules, you have to make a case that will prove that the new rules produce good and fair results no matter who are the voters or the candidates. The point of this is to have a sufficient mechanism to elect reliable people to change blockchain parameters. Not just this time but every time.

I don't even see any reason why there is a need to decrease Bytemaster's power on blockchain parameters. On the contrary, I would like him to take more active participation on these decisions, because he knows the system best. So far he hasn't changed or proposed any parameters that I would consider harmful for Bitshares.

ya, there are always people that like to live under the rule of a dictator, because he think the dictator is the wisest people he ever met.

but humankind finally select democracy, not because they cannot find wise people to be the ruler, but because they come to understand that unrestricted right will always lead to disaster.

can anyone prove that each time the elected US President is always relied person? no one can prove, but few US people think US need to go back to monarchy, like north Korea. no need to explain.

DAC is not compatible with dictator, we built committee in order to push the decentralization, not to put it under one people's control, I think this is easy to understand.

it's ok for you to trust BM mostly, you can support him by voting, but this is not the consensus of the whole community. the community need a mechanism to avoid dictatorship.

So what am I missing?  What would prevent someone from just splitting their stake across multiple accounts to get around this?  It seems like a soft rule that is only meaningful to those who choose to stay within the parameters.
This makes sense.
BM has about 45% of active voting power, so he voted in 5/11 of his own committee members, it's nothing wrong (at least by now).. theoretically he is able to vote in more inits with current rule.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: BTSdac on January 04, 2016, 01:49:58 am
support this!
and I have a other  suggestion
the Proxy can not get more than 7 times of vote than he own
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: gamey on January 04, 2016, 02:10:49 am

This makes sense.
BM has about 45% of active voting power, so he voted in 5/11 of his own committee members, it's nothing wrong (at least by now).. theoretically he is able to vote in more inits with current rule.

I don't think it matters.  You are reducing the ability of everyone to vote linearly.  So he can only vote for 1/11, but he is competing against 1/11th the votes.  I may very well be wrong here, but intuitively it seems to be of little value.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Samupaha on January 04, 2016, 08:13:51 am
ya, there are always people that like to live under the rule of a dictator, because he think the dictator is the wisest people he ever met.

but humankind finally select democracy, not because they cannot find wise people to be the ruler, but because they come to understand that unrestricted right will always lead to disaster.

can anyone prove that each time the elected US President is always relied person? no one can prove, but few US people think US need to go back to monarchy, like north Korea. no need to explain.

Democracy in a country is a totally different thing than a democracy in a DAC. In a country everybody has a one vote and in a DAC every share has a one vote. So it is a build-in feature in DAC that voting power can be centralized – just like in any other company.

Also, there are lots of different governance models besides democracy and dictatorship. There has been lots of good critique of democracy, like Bryan Caplan's book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter) which explains why democracy usually results in disastrous politics. Also look Eric X. Li: A tale of two political systems (https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_systems).

DAC is not compatible with dictator, we built committee in order to push the decentralization, not to put it under one people's control, I think this is easy to understand.

it's ok for you to trust BM mostly, you can support him by voting, but this is not the consensus of the whole community. the community need a mechanism to avoid dictatorship.

The point of DAC is not decentralization, the point is to make profits. To take care of the profitability we need somebody to make good decisions on blockchain parameters. This is what committee is for. It is not very reasonable to do decentralization just because decentralization. You have to always justify it.

If you think we need more decentralization, you have to explain how it will exactly help us make more money.

As I said, I think more imporant is to elect high quality committee members. We need people who really understand how the system works so they can make wise decisions. When our blockchain is finetuned to be so good as it can be, we will be able to make lots of money.

When we are going to make fundamental changes to blockchain governance, you really need to analyze it fully. You can't just say "no need to explain" or "I think this is easy to understand". You have to explain the mechanism for step by step how this new change will result our blockchain to be better, and as a result of that, will make us more money.

Also, isn't the voting mechamism for witnesses same as it is for committee? If so, then we would have to also prevent shareholders for voting more than three witnesses.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: xeroc on January 04, 2016, 08:28:06 am
Ho does this help AT ALL?
If you only allow to vote for 3 witnesses, then we have 3 witnesses from china, 3 from europe and 3 from the US. all of them will have LESS votes and will be easier to overtake

edit:
Quote
The point of DAC is not decentralization, the point is to make profits. To take care of the profitability we need somebody to make good decisions on blockchain parameters. This is what committee is for. It is not very reasonable to do decentralization just because decentralization. You have to always justify it.
^^ this


Quote
Also, isn't the voting mechamism for witnesses same as it is for committee? If so, then we would have to also prevent shareholders for voting more than three witnesses.
Almost: you cannot downvote witnesses, but could for committee members (afaik)
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 04, 2016, 08:46:06 am

Quote
Also, isn't the voting mechamism for witnesses same as it is for committee? If so, then we would have to also prevent shareholders for voting more than three witnesses.
Almost: you cannot downvote witnesses, but could for committee members (afaik)
I thought down votes are only for workers..
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: wallace on January 04, 2016, 09:27:39 am
if you have bitcrab1, bitcrab2, bitcrab3, bitcrab4, bitcrab5... on top eleven, I'm sure BM will change the rule immediately ;D
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 04, 2016, 02:01:51 pm
if you have bitcrab1, bitcrab2, bitcrab3, bitcrab4, bitcrab5... on top eleven, I'm sure BM will change the rule immediately ;D
Sounds interesting.. Just do it!
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: bitcrab on January 04, 2016, 03:17:14 pm
Ho does this help AT ALL?
If you only allow to vote for 3 witnesses, then we have 3 witnesses from china, 3 from europe and 3 from the US. all of them will have LESS votes and will be easier to overtake
not easier than now, because each people's voting power will decrease.
diversify will help a global DAC,

Quote
The point of DAC is not decentralization, the point is to make profits. To take care of the profitability we need somebody to make good decisions on blockchain parameters. This is what committee is for. It is not very reasonable to do decentralization just because decentralization. You have to always justify it.
DAC surely should be dencentralized, otherwise it should not be named DAC,

actually in my view currently Bitshares 2.0 is more like a country than a company, because its revenue comes from the fees paid by the shareholders, in another word, more exactly the fees can be called tax.

for a company, normally the more revenue, the better, but this is not the case for a country. high revenue of a country often means high tax rate, and high burden of the people. these all always deactivate the economy.

at first Bitshares announced to be a decentralized autonomous company, but up to now it is not really decentralized yet, we need to improve further, we need to keep updating the management infrastructure to what we really needed,  but anyway decentralization is needed. as a company, we should not put the company under the control of CEO himself. the CEO should report to the board and work under the supervision of the board.

 


Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Stan on January 04, 2016, 03:48:51 pm
Ho does this help AT ALL?
If you only allow to vote for 3 witnesses, then we have 3 witnesses from china, 3 from europe and 3 from the US. all of them will have LESS votes and will be easier to overtake
not easier than now, because each people's voting power will decrease.
diversify will help a global DAC,

Quote
The point of DAC is not decentralization, the point is to make profits. To take care of the profitability we need somebody to make good decisions on blockchain parameters. This is what committee is for. It is not very reasonable to do decentralization just because decentralization. You have to always justify it.
DAC surely should be dencentralized, otherwise it should not be named DAC,

actually in my view currently Bitshares 2.0 is more like a country than a company, because its revenue comes from the fees paid by the shareholders, in another word, more exactly the fees can be called tax.

for a company, normally the more revenue, the better, but this is not the case for a country. high revenue of a country often means high tax rate, and high burden of the people. these all always deactivate the economy.

at first Bitshares announced to be a decentralized autonomous company, but up to now it is not really decentralized yet, we need to improve further, we need to keep updating the management infrastructure to what we really needed,  but anyway decentralization is needed. as a company, we should not put the company under the control of CEO himself. the CEO should report to the board and work under the supervision of the board.

If a company has a billion shareholders each with one share and they all vote for the same people, is it not still decentralized (because they had the option to vote differently)?

If all but one of those shareholders chooses not to vote, thereby allowing the last shareholder to select the committee all by herself, is it not still decentralized (because they still had the option to vote)?

As long as each share has the decentralized option to vote, that's all we can and should do about decentralization.

To do otherwise is to disenfranchise those who choose to vote in an attempt to redistribute their legitimately owned decision power onto others who don't want or deserve it.

Forced decentralization is its own form of tyranny.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 04, 2016, 03:50:47 pm
Ho does this help AT ALL?
If you only allow to vote for 3 witnesses, then we have 3 witnesses from china, 3 from europe and 3 from the US. all of them will have LESS votes and will be easier to overtake
not easier than now, because each people's voting power will decrease.
diversify will help a global DAC,

Quote
The point of DAC is not decentralization, the point is to make profits. To take care of the profitability we need somebody to make good decisions on blockchain parameters. This is what committee is for. It is not very reasonable to do decentralization just because decentralization. You have to always justify it.
DAC surely should be dencentralized, otherwise it should not be named DAC,

actually in my view currently Bitshares 2.0 is more like a country than a company, because its revenue comes from the fees paid by the shareholders, in another word, more exactly the fees can be called tax.
A person who only owns bitUSD is a user, not a shareholder. Make more use of the 'products' but not the 'shares' would let the platform look more like a company.

Quote

for a company, normally the more revenue, the better, but this is not the case for a country. high revenue of a country often means high tax rate, and high burden of the people. these all always deactivate the economy.

at first Bitshares announced to be a decentralized autonomous company, but up to now it is not really decentralized yet, we need to improve further, we need to keep updating the management infrastructure to what we really needed,  but anyway decentralization is needed. as a company, we should not put the company under the control of CEO himself. the CEO should report to the board and work under the supervision of the board.
Is the committee in BitShares purposed to be something like the board in a company? I'm not sure.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: bitcrab on January 04, 2016, 04:57:12 pm
If a company has a billion shareholders each with one share and they all vote for the same people, is it not still decentralized (because they had the option to vote differently)?

If all but one of those shareholders chooses not to vote, thereby allowing the last shareholder to select the committee all by herself, is it not still decentralized (because they still had the option to vote)?

As long as each share has the decentralized option to vote, that's all we can and should do about decentralization.

To do otherwise is to disenfranchise those who choose to vote in an attempt to redistribute their legitimately owned decision power onto others who don't want or deserve it.

Forced decentralization is its own form of tyranny.

this is not forced decentralization, this is seeking more reasonable voting rules.

think of  the US election, 2 senators for each state,  representatives numbers proportional to population, according to your logic, is the senator voting logic deprive the power of the people from the state with more population?

maybe you can say that, but the point is that the designers are seeking some balance, follow the population based logic and meanwhile prevent "Tyranny of Majority" .

we now obviously need to prevent "Tyranny of Dictator", we need to design the rule accordingly. it may deprive the power of one account to control the whole committee, but this is necessary.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Thom on January 04, 2016, 05:10:38 pm
Ho does this help AT ALL?
If you only allow to vote for 3 witnesses, then we have 3 witnesses from china, 3 from europe and 3 from the US. all of them will have LESS votes and will be easier to overtake
not easier than now, because each people's voting power will decrease.
diversify will help a global DAC,

Quote
The point of DAC is not decentralization, the point is to make profits. To take care of the profitability we need somebody to make good decisions on blockchain parameters. This is what committee is for. It is not very reasonable to do decentralization just because decentralization. You have to always justify it.
DAC surely should be dencentralized, otherwise it should not be named DAC,

actually in my view currently Bitshares 2.0 is more like a country than a company, because its revenue comes from the fees paid by the shareholders, in another word, more exactly the fees can be called tax.

for a company, normally the more revenue, the better, but this is not the case for a country. high revenue of a country often means high tax rate, and high burden of the people. these all always deactivate the economy.

at first Bitshares announced to be a decentralized autonomous company, but up to now it is not really decentralized yet, we need to improve further, we need to keep updating the management infrastructure to what we really needed,  but anyway decentralization is needed. as a company, we should not put the company under the control of CEO himself. the CEO should report to the board and work under the supervision of the board.

If a company has a billion shareholders each with one share and they all vote for the same people, is it not still decentralized (because they had the option to vote differently)?

If all but one of those shareholders chooses not to vote, thereby allowing the last shareholder to select the committee all by herself, is it not still decentralized (because they still had the option to vote)?

As long as each share has the decentralized option to vote, that's all we can and should do about decentralization.

To do otherwise is to disenfranchise those who choose to vote in an attempt to redistribute their legitimately owned decision power onto others who don't want or deserve it.

Forced decentralization is its own form of tyranny.

^^^^This - puts it in the proper perspective. Thanks Stan for stepping in here to enlighten those who don't quite get the point of self governance. It's not about making the playing field "equal for all" but rather "earned strength". The only fairness that needs rules to enforce is fair for everyone to earn his standing (ability to earn shares based on their own efforts).
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Stan on January 04, 2016, 05:31:09 pm
If a company has a billion shareholders each with one share and they all vote for the same people, is it not still decentralized (because they had the option to vote differently)?

If all but one of those shareholders chooses not to vote, thereby allowing the last shareholder to select the committee all by herself, is it not still decentralized (because they still had the option to vote)?

As long as each share has the decentralized option to vote, that's all we can and should do about decentralization.

To do otherwise is to disenfranchise those who choose to vote in an attempt to redistribute their legitimately owned decision power onto others who don't want or deserve it.

Forced decentralization is its own form of tyranny.

this is not forced decentralization, this is seeking more reasonable voting rules.

think of  the US election, 2 senators for each state,  representatives numbers proportional to population, according to your logic, is the senator voting logic deprive the power of the people from the state with more population?

maybe you can say that, but the point is that the designers are seeking some balance, follow the population based logic and meanwhile prevent "Tyranny of Majority" .

we now obviously need to prevent "Tyranny of Dictator", we need to design the rule accordingly. it may deprive the power of one account to control the whole committee, but this is necessary.

Yes, those rules were the American Founders attempt to reach a compromise that enough people would sign onto to form a country.

But a company that want's to attract capital must treat each quantum of capital equally - or that capital will flee.

It doesn't matter who owns each quantum.   An investor purchases some percentage of shares to have that percentage of control and earnings.

Shares are property.  Their attributes (control and earnings) give those shares value.  When you meddle with the attributes of a share after the fact you are redistributing that value.  Can the majority vote to redistribute the value I thought I was buying when I acquired my shares?


Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Samupaha on January 04, 2016, 05:49:24 pm
Quote
The point of DAC is not decentralization, the point is to make profits. To take care of the profitability we need somebody to make good decisions on blockchain parameters. This is what committee is for. It is not very reasonable to do decentralization just because decentralization. You have to always justify it.
DAC surely should be dencentralized, otherwise it should not be named DAC,

Decentralization in the word DAC stands mostly for the existence of the company. DAC is a company that exists as code that is run in several computers around the world. There is no central place where the DAC is located. This is very good reason for decentralization because it makes the company very secure. It will be very difficult for anybody to stop the company. Even if several of the computers where a DAC is running are destroyed, a DAC can continue it's existence on other computers and new ones are easy to set up.

actually in my view currently Bitshares 2.0 is more like a country than a company, because its revenue comes from the fees paid by the shareholders, in another word, more exactly the fees can be called tax.

for a company, normally the more revenue, the better, but this is not the case for a country. high revenue of a country often means high tax rate, and high burden of the people. these all always deactivate the economy.

Shareholders are not requied to pay anything. A fee for voting is closest to a tax, but even that is very low at the moment. If a shareholder pays something, it's because he is in the role of a customer, he is using the services that Bitshares provides.

If you want Bitshares to be a country, that would probably mean that Bitshares focuses on producing services only for it's shareholders. It will be very difficult to be profitable then. That would mean we stop trying to attract paying customers and pay everything ourselves.

In my view Bitshares is and should be a company. The point is to make money by offering high quality services for our customers, that will bring revenue and make BTS price go up.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Empirical1.2 on January 04, 2016, 05:53:26 pm
The objectives of a centralized company and a decentralized one are vastly different.

A decentralized company seeks to decentralize control so that no bad actor or large shareholder with a fairly small amount of stake (Who could be compromised) is able to dictate events.

Silence in DPOS does not mean consent. Otherwise the share price would have risen on the back of the merger and various 'value adding' dilutionary activities. In DPOS dissent is expressed through selling. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitshares/#charts

BitShares was one of the worst 2015 performers (possibly the worst among top 10-15?) partly on the back of this flawed thinking.

Unless you're the first mover, monopoly crypto like Bitcoin, market percetion of the D in DAC is very important. Considering BitShares has thus far only been able to do blockchain based improvements via CNX and they also largely have voting control, BitShares is largely viewed as centralized. (Mainly CNX representatives tend to disagree...)

So I'm generally in favour of measures that encourage more voting and that don't allow a single actor/group to control the DAC as unlike a centralized company, actual, not theoretical decentralization of control adds value to a DAC imo.

This is also why a DAC attempts to be more decentralized from the outset than a centralized counterpart would be in terms of ownership.

The downside of this is that the main entrepreneurs/developers will be putting in more relative effort which creates group trap, so it's important to invest in entrepreneurs who understand this and have a passion & purpose that transcends this.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: gamey on January 05, 2016, 08:42:10 am

I am still not sure this idea addresses the problem it attempts to overcome.  I think it is just a matter of moving around numbers, but I am too lazy to try to prove it to myself. I was hoping someone could explain it to me a bit better...

I will say that restricting voting is better in human ability terms. By this I mean that by not being able to vote on multiple committee members, you are reducing the time burden required to vote.  One only has to research one committee member versus creating a list. Maybe this factor is more important than the objective outlined in the original post?

Perhaps reduce voting to one member, then let the member distribute their excess votes?
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 05, 2016, 09:51:34 am

I am still not sure this idea addresses the problem it attempts to overcome.  I think it is just a matter of moving around numbers, but I am too lazy to try to prove it to myself. I was hoping someone could explain it to me a bit better...
Simple calculation here:
Assume that there are 100 committee member positions, and overall 100 stakes distributed to 100 holders (and many others have 0 stake)
* if one stake can be voted to only one member, then who owns 51 stakes would be able to vote in at most 51 members;
* if one stake can be voted to 100 members, then who owns 51 stakes would be able to vote in all 100 members.

Quote
I will say that restricting voting is better in human ability terms. By this I mean that by not being able to vote on multiple committee members, you are reducing the time burden required to vote.  One only has to research one committee member versus creating a list. Maybe this factor is more important than the objective outlined in the original post?

Perhaps reduce voting to one member, then let the member distribute their excess votes?
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 05, 2016, 10:49:31 am
Silence in DPOS does not mean consent. Otherwise the share price would have risen on the back of the merger and various 'value adding' dilutionary activities. In DPOS dissent is expressed through selling. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitshares/#charts

Good point.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: gamey on January 05, 2016, 02:16:33 pm

I am still not sure this idea addresses the problem it attempts to overcome.  I think it is just a matter of moving around numbers, but I am too lazy to try to prove it to myself. I was hoping someone could explain it to me a bit better...
Simple calculation here:
Assume that there are 100 committee member positions, and overall 100 stakes distributed to 100 holders (and many others have 0 stake)
* if one stake can be voted to only one member, then who owns 51 stakes would be able to vote in at most 51 members;
* if one stake can be voted to 100 members, then who owns 51 stakes would be able to vote in all 100 members.



I guess you are right. It still seems wrong to me. Perhaps what is bothering me is that even if you keep the 51% stake holder from voting in every committee member, they still can vote in 51% of the committee members by redistributing their stake. Although I guess this proposal is an improvement, it doesn't fix the problem of inactive voters.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: abit on January 31, 2016, 09:45:35 pm
I'd like to bump this thread as someone who didn't agree with bitcrab in the past is now trying to follow bitcrab's ideas.
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: lovejoy on January 31, 2016, 09:59:06 pm
^^ Thanks @abit ... I'm also trying to comprehend the various lines if thinking here... It's like a full time job in and of itself. 
Title: Re: proposal to restrict voting numbers for committee members
Post by: Ben Mason on February 01, 2016, 10:58:25 am
I think the only way to address the issue bitcrab has raised that doesn't change the expectations of current network participants, negatively effecting the network at a time when consolidation and growth are the most important factors is...

We increase the expectation of transparency and become more mindful of suitability characteristics of those wishing to hold a committee position. Whenever a parameter change is put forward, we must increase the amount of empirical reasoning behind it's effects in order to bring the maximum number of participants to a position of objective support.  That goes especially for a change that brings short term pain for longer term gain.

If we succeed in the above, then assuming a large stake holder wishes to make a change that works against the network or majority and has voted for committee members believing they will put his interests first, there will be checks and balances that minimize the likelihood such a strategy will be successful.  This is similar to the peer review of blockchain code.  Intentional, exploitable flaws are revealed.