I'm wondering if Bitshares has scope to support assets where the holder might expect a high return for holding.

For example the Russian rouble currently has a 14% interest rate - is there any mechanism that would support a 14% interest return on a holding of BitRub?

I'm just getting to grips with these slates - got some questions -

Is there any way yet to see who is publishing slates, and which delegates are on those slates?

Does a delegate need to republish his slate every time it changes? Or is the delegate publishing the fact that his slate is available, and is automatically updated?

If I send funds, using another delegate's slate, and the delegate then updates his slate, is my vote updated with his most recent slate, or do I need to send funds again to vote his most recent slate?

I'm just getting started with Bitshares, wondering if anyone could recommend a good VPS provider to run a delegate on.

Ideally it would accept BTC as payment and offer a package with technical specs that are a good fit for a delegate.

Also wondering if anyone is keeping track of the number of delegates hosted on different providers. Would an outage at one of the popular hosts take down a lot of delegates?

Here's my proposal for generating fair random numbers in a distributed manner. I'll explain with a worked example with the smallest number of participants - three.

Three brothers, Jack, Bobby and Teddy agree to have a random draw to choose which one of them wins a prize, but they are in different locations.

They each create a public/private key pair and publish the public keys.

Each brother signs an agreed string with his private key, the resulting signature is his secret. The hash of the concatenated three secrets is used as a seed to generate the random number.

We want to guard against the possibility that one brother has access to the result before he has revealed his secret, enabling him to discard his secret and prevent the result from becoming known.

Round 1.

Step 1. Limited Disclosure
Jack sends his secret to Bobby. Bobby sends his secret to Teddy. Teddy sends his secret to Jack.

Step 2. Vouching
Bobby vouches that Jack has disclosed to him. Teddy vouches for Bobby. Jack vouches for Teddy.

Round 2 (Final Round for 3)
Step 1. Limited Disclosure
Jack sends his secret to Teddy. Bobby sends his secret to Jack. Teddy sends his secret to Bobby.

All three brothers now have all three secrets and can generate the random number.

Let's say Teddy waits in the final round to receive Jack's secret, generates the random number, doesn't like it and doesn't send his secret to Bobby. Bobby can always request Teddy's secret from Jack. As long as a majority are not dishonest or in collusion, the random number generated is fair, and there is no optionality problem.

For DPOS, you'd probably want to use it in combination with the existing chain of delegates - so the block would be generated first with the existing method, and then the random number is generated by N previous delegates. It should be possible to expand to N delegates, using a number of rounds of disclosure and vouching. For 101 delegates, the first round might involve each delegate disclosing to 10 other delegates, followed by vouching, followed by 10 more etc

Okay, we've got a hard fork coming up at 10,468.

It is to support two new developments -

Dice Game - 0% House Edge
It contains a new dice game - with a variety of odds, and a 0% house rake.
(Don't play the dice game before block 10,500, it doesn't pay out for dice games played before that block)

Faster block times
It supports faster block times (down from 150 seconds to 40 seconds).

Please pull the latest code from github and re-compile.

You can now check your balance with just your public address -

Use the following address -

http://lottoshares.42tx.com/

(Enter your PTS, MMC, AGS, BTC, DOGE address in the searchbox to see your LTS address and associated balance.)

Alternatively you can use the URL
http://lottoshares.42tx.com/address/PXx1xjy2ALQaTMWKrRZdStsPMR4LbAWVQG

(Replace the PTS address with your address)

Note, this does not display maturation blocks yet.

Here's what LottoShares income statements will look like -

http://pastebin.com/CdDCNTXA

I've finished coding the MVP and a test platform is now running.

My plan is to conduct testing and polishing and then reset the platform for a launch on July 8th.

You're invited to take part in the testing - only those capable of compiling source code at the moment please.
https://github.com/FreeTrade/lottoshares

I'll be seeking to secure development, testing, marketing, infrastructure, review and audit services with the remaining 30% shares. These should be fully allocated by the time of the launch.