This is a sad, sad thread. As ABL warned my similarly-minded friend, this will probably be pearls before swine, but I suppose I just can't resist the opportunity to do the right thing.

AB and GM are more than aware of Bitshares and DPoS, they just think that neither are any good, or even worth spending any time talking about. They laugh at 1:19:54 because all of the proof of stake ideas floating around today are just repeats of what was tried (and abandoned) in 2011 or earlier.

Having corresponded with Blockstream about this in particular, I know that at 1:21:28 Adam Back refers to "Working on What?" in my own anti-PoS blog post ( http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-and-mining/ or, more specifically, his post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=907157.0 ). Then they discussed Nothing-At-Stake, and finally 1:23:45 AB refers to stake-grinding (from Poelstra's paper). All of that is in my post, and, in fact, after writing my post, multiple early Bitcoin-wizards wrote to me to basically say "You seem like a smart guy, you shouldn't waste your time on this because we've all moved on a long time ago. No knowledgeable people care about proof of stake anymore. Try working on X instead."

It is as RH comments here ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/ ). That "people who learn the answer leave the conversation".

At 1:25:05, and 1:27:08, GM is poking fun at Bitshares (among other things).

As for BitUSD, there is no clear documentation of the constantly-shifting, constantly-ridiculous technical and economic methods by which BitUSD is constructed. There are too many examples of this to list, try https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=4692.msg59823 and note that "Howard" at http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/bitusd/ couldn't even source the BitUSD interest rate after several days of searching. All kinds of new, untested stuff (delegate feeds, market-matching algorithms) has been thrown together in an essentially embarrassing way.

Out.

In long range NaS, the attacker has access to many private keys that used to own BTS (some assume 51% stake worth). With this he can control 100% of the delegates, at the cost only of recovering old private keys that are no longer in use. This may cost very little, as old private keys are not worth much to their previous owners, but the attacker can buy them (and check that he is getting what he paid for) and use them to attack the network. Over time, the number-of-old-private-keys increases drastically, as does the stake-of-old-key, the age-of-key, and the potential-attack-damage. So over 50 years or so this might be a problem.

If he cannot ever accumulate 51% worth of old-private-key, (it appears to me based on my current understanding) in dpos he can still eventually control 100% of the delegates with <51% old-stake by selectively broadcasting valid tx and controlling certain few addresses and ex-delegate accounts. For example, the normal network history might have some individuals rise from #107 and #108 up to #97 and #98, displacing my delegate at position #99. If I control the alternative chain, I can instead avoid brodcasting the tx that bumps my delegate.

What do you mean when you say "Nope"? This is the long-range NaS as described by everyone I could find who wrote about it.

Which of the 6 steps do you disagree with?

Why couldn't they make the same claims about all cryptocurrency and then ban Bitcoin? Why would Bitshares make it on their radar?

Did you read what I wrote? Nothing in life can be 'banned', in the sense that you can magically prevent it from happening. Bans are enforced with arrests, with Bitcoin there is no one to arrest but with dpos there are 100 people. Bitcoin, BTS, and most particularly"BitUSD" (and others) are likely to be banned, crippling the BitsharesX experiment. Its a very simple and boring point.

I don't really understand the points you're even trying to make.

I'm sure you can if you try.

I'm not a lawyer, and I hadn't really planned to represent my position in a debate, but I just want to point out a few things.

1. "US senators complain" is not the same as "illegal". Regrettably, in 2014 only the former is important.
2. The US has arrested non-Americans in many ways and on many occasions. I also point out that, instead of being arrested, "terrorist financiers" might just get killed via drone.
3. Even though the next 100 people may step up in line and continue the BTS-service offering, these people might be reluctant to do so. Moreover, they will have no reputation, may themselves be NSA employees, etc.

Again, I don't plan to run a full debate, the above points are very obvious to me. I anticipate some here to raise objections to which there are, again, obvious rebuttals. I don't really plan on pursuing the point, it was just something that crossed my mind, so if I don't respond please do not assume it is because I would have nothing to say.

merockstar has it right.

To be more specific...

I do not know of any laws that a delegate could be accused of violating.

...that is crazy. What about AML / SAPs (terrorist financing/tax-evasion)/ KYC, before we even touch the entire world of SEC / Treasury / FED regulations?

Put simply: If US senators start complaining, what then? Of course the NSA will know the physical location of the delegates' computers.

Dpos certainly has a powerful regenerative force, in that delegates 101 through 200 can just just step up and keep the system moving, but (I argue) the entire value-proposition of Bitcoin was that there would be nothing for an attacker (government / moral or otherwise) to shut off. It was LibertyReserve without a target. 100 people is smaller than most organizations...if a few executives from a-Canadian-bank-that-allowed-individuals-to-withdraw-money-from-InTrade can be arrested while vacationing in the USA and face 5 years in prison, so can essentially anyone.

Sounds like being a delegate is a lot of (crucial) work, and you might be arrested (LibertyReserve had way more than 100 employees). Maybe all of the delegates can be from Switzerland, or something.

This is going to be pretty complicated to analyse now...I suspect that with 12 delegates comes instant victory. Getting 12 might even be easy, if 88 are going to be left in the dust, you wouldn't want to be one of those 88. 1 for free if you are a delegate yourself... I don't know when I'll have time to try and figure this out.

Quote from: bytemaster on April 03, 2014, 08:35:07 pm

Lets address the issues here:

1) front running ... this particular issue does not apply given my matching algorithm.  The person placing the order will get the same price regardless of what any other party does.   In fact, one could argue that the blockchain earns revenue by intentional front-running and that the shareholders are the ones to benefit from it.   

Suppose every buyer wants to maximize the probability that their order is filled, subject to the constraint that the price is less than HPBWP (Highest Price Buyer Is Willing To Pay).  Obviously, a buyer can achieve these goals by setting a bid price equal to HPBWP.

However, the person who assembles the block might have a better option which achieves the same goals.  Since they know all other transactions in the block, they can compute exactly where in the order their transaction will be.  They can then compute the best Ask price at that point in the sequence, and set their order to that price (Best Ask At Time Of Execution or BAATOE).

There is value in the spread HPBWP - BAATOE.  One goal of BitShares X is to capture this value and return it to shareholders.  If the person who assembles the block has the capability to input their own transaction as the last transaction in the block, they can effectively circumvent the capture mechanism and extract the value for themselves.

My solution is a protocol design which requires all transactions to be signed by several randomly chosen notaries to be included in a block.  Thus a single notary or a small group of colluding notaries cannot perform the above attack.

I request a follow-up to this from Bytemaster, as it seems that the proposed matching algorithm actually does not prevent front-running, nor mitigate the (very real) damage.