Best Selling Option

[luckybit]

If the security is as good with 17 as with 100 then we just have to explain this to the buyer and that's it.

If we don't lose anything with 100 then we should stick to 100 and change it later if there is a need for optimization. I doubt that 100 vs 17 is a significant optimization and the cost in terms of perception isn't worth it.

[Empirical1.2]

People LOVE the idea of having 10000 potential block producers with no barrier to entry.  But what this really means is that people love having the ILLUSION of direct control.

BitShares is supposed to be an exchange, so what people love is having all their trading needs fulfilled. If you go to the polo troll box no one cares how many block producers there are. What they care about is this:
-Liquidity
-Variety of markets accessible in one place
-Lending for shorting
-Talking to the community of traders (troll box)
-Beautiful trading GUI

We dont yet have any of those things.

Yes but they do care about getting GOX'ed. The advantages of decentralization are BitShares USP over centralized exchanges.

So if the average user doesn't 'think' you're adequately decentralized then you have no USP and no market.

 

[speedy]

People LOVE the idea of having 10000 potential block producers with no barrier to entry.  But what this really means is that people love having the ILLUSION of direct control.

BitShares is supposed to be an exchange, so what people love is having all their trading needs fulfilled. If you go to the polo troll box no one cares how many block producers there are. What they care about is this:
-Liquidity
-Variety of markets accessible in one place
-Lending for shorting
-Talking to the community of traders (troll box)
-Beautiful trading GUI

We dont yet have any of those things.

[Erlich Bachman]

what about all witnesses to donate (the first 3 months of bts2.0 existents) their profit's to... immigrants around the world?
Imagine immigrants to say thank you on camera winking with their smart-phones with installed bts2.0 mobile wallets 

you know what, that just might be a brilliant idea and i would personally donate to compensate our miners in the process.
The reason why its so brilliant is because this is the type of charitable stuff that our community is going to be doing eventually:

crowd sourced charity (as well as many other positive community actions)

its not a cheap marketing ploy as much as it is us behaving like we are going to behave forever
( weather we are profitible or not)

So, here, here, produce an initiative, set it up and watch the love and generosity from our community pour forth.  What better fanfare for our launch. Lets show the world that we are a dac for the people!

We not only get to show the world what we are about and what we can do, but we are will be making a difference in their lives.   It will be much harder to spin our community motives as selfish from then on. And considering the whole BTS AGS BS that is constantly flying around damaging our reputation and causing us to have a small markt cap and not be able to pay as many nodes as we would like to, this initiative would guarantee that we would have the moral high ground in any "bts people are greedy because of protoshare " or whatever negative press is ailing us.

[liondani]

what about all witnesses to donate (the first 3 months of bts2.0 existents) their profit's to... immigrants around the world?
Imagine immigrants to say thank you on camera winking with their smart-phones with installed bts2.0 mobile wallets 

[Empirical1.2]

but let me ask you how much you think our shares would be worth after Max Keiser announces the existance of the world's first  profitible Bitcoin? and coindesk and forbes and any news article who mentions our name has to proclaim this major human evolutionary milestone

then after you answered that question you can calculate how many more nodes we can afford for our security while maintaining our profitibility

Daniel has already said, part of the reason for suggesting the lower end of the viable range was that it could free up more funds for development and maintenance, the basic monthly costs of which are considerable, $40 000+ per month?

The extra $5000 per month for more witnesses is not going to make a significant difference to when BTS becomes profitable. 

While you personally may 'trust your own family', the wider market, most agree wouldn't feel comfortable with 15 witnesses. Even BM acknowledges that to the market, more is better -

People LOVE the idea of having 10000 potential block producers with no barrier to entry. 

For a relatively small expense we can attract far more users, which will result in BTS becoming profitable far sooner.

More users = more transaction fees = DAC income

[Method-X]

that's why we must not fall in the trap to decide again (and with pressure) how much witnesses to use.
Let the number be dynamic and the decision be taken from the shareholders, the market, or the code.... or all together... but not only from one guru or a community that could be take a right decision now but prove to be wrong tomorrow when  circumstances change...  We must be more flexible!

  Let the market/shareholders decide.

[monsterer]

but let me ask you how much you think our shares would be worth after Max Keiser announces the existance of the world's first  profitible Bitcoin? and coindesk and forbes and any news article who mentions our name has to proclaim this major human evolutionary milestone

then after you answered that question you can calculate how many more nodes we can afford for our security while maintaining our profitibility

The world's first profitable bitcoin, is bitcoin!

101 delegates existed at the start of bitshares - their profitability wasn't a concern then, and it shouldn't be now.

[monsterer]

but if the problem gets fixed and all we did was suffer some downtime, then how are my shares insecure of being stolen?

How much do you think your shares will be worth after this event?

[Erlich Bachman]

but if the problem gets fixed and all we did was suffer some downtime, then how are my shares insecure of being stolen?

If our core forum members have been setting up a long elaborate con here to steal a few bucks and ruin their rep forever then so be it. Personally, i would rather know who the snakes are especially if there actually are 50% of our trusted delegates.  I am not afraid of the red pill. If BM and friends are evil, then I would rather find out sooner rather than later. Those who would rather keep their head in the sand and allow these crooks to walk among us are loving that blue pill flavor imo.

realistically this discussion is moot as soon as the voting starts but i for one am voting for 15 delegates if it means that we are instantly profitible and that only the collusion of 8 of my "closest family members" stabbing me simultaneously in the back is the only

only

only way that i can be harmed in the slightest

et tu brute. then fall cesar

in other words, if i cant trust my own family then im fucked anyway, at least i can stop living the lie and bask in the truth ( that I should not have been hanging out here in the first place and that the loudmouths on bitcointalk have been correct in warning me all along that BM simply wants to steal a few bucks from me and ruin his lifes work

[r0ach]

look at it this way:

whats the worst thing that can happen?

The worst thing that happens is nobody on the outside accepts a security model like that because it's not a valid solution.  I explained why in detail here:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,18570.msg238946.html#msg238946

[monsterer]

look at it this way:

whats the worst thing that can happen?

double spend a few blocks and then they are kicked out?

8 block producers collude to produce a majority fork which freezes all transactions, including voting, rendering the chain useless.

[Erlich Bachman]

look at it this way:

whats the worst thing that can happen?

double spend a few blocks and then they are kicked out?

whats the best thing that can happen?

we are instantly profitible as a dac

I for one am willing to risk having one of my transactions getting sniped early on in order to prove to the planet that we are profitible. and really? what are the odds? i dont know but what I do know for sure is that the odds of a double spend decrease exponentially as soon as the news of our profitibity gets around which will definitely raise our cap as the worlds first profitible chain which would instantly allow us to add more nodes and thus more security

so imo the plan should to start wherever we are actually profitibble and just dont get carried with large transactions initially.  and realisticly who is going to be performing gigantic transactions initially.

we have to look at the risk reward potential here. and the potential risk that those who built bts are going to suicide their investment is really pretty low. Realisticly

the chance to become the only profitible dac is so compelling that i say we should take the risk ( of BM and his friends stealing a few transactions and getting fired immediately). If we are correct, and the devs are not crooked, the. we win huge!  If we are wrong, the. one of your transactions could get sniped

[puppies]

I don't think anyone is proposing that we will not be selecting number of witnesses by voting in real time once the chain goes live.  What we need to decide is number of initial witnesses and initial payrate.  We also need to figure out how to best market our decision.  We will be able to adjust number of witnesses quickly. 

If you feel that we should have 1000 witnesses, then you can vote for 1000 witnesses.  If you think 17 is enough then just vote for 17.

Xeroc also proposed having each witness run multiple keys from each node.  That would increase the number without increasing the cost, but could perhaps be viewed as sneaky. 

I also like (I think it was empricals) the idea to pay standby witnesses a lesser amount.  We would have to find a good way to ensure that their nodes are active.

One attack vector that I haven't heard mentioned might have an effect on initial witness number.  If someone was able to get the private keys of a majority of the init witnesses they could build an alternate history and attempt to get syncing nodes to download it.  I am not sure if Tapos would prevent that.  Would having more init witnesses help, or would we rather start with fewer inits in hands we trust?

At this point my proposal would be:
33 init witnesses paid 2 bts per block produced (20 total blocks per minute, 28,800 per day, 864,000 per month.  1,728,000 bts/$10278 fixed network cost per month at current price.  26,181/$309 a month per witness @33 witnesses
11 standy witnesses paid 300 bts per day

In regards to standbys we could randomly select each standby to produce 1 block per day.  If they produce their block on time they are paid their daily salary.  If they do not then they are not paid and need to have their votes removed.  In this way we can build a talent bench without a major problem developing if we don't have one. 

paying per block will increase pay per witness with fewer witnesses and reduce pay per witness with more witnesses. 

edit.  Also it wouldn't hurt to double check my maths.

[liondani]

@bytemaster - this whole discussion is based on the misconception that 101 delegates would not operate at a loss, when clearly this is not the case and the inception of the bitshares 1.0 chain (and almost all other POS chains) proves this.

You and @stan have already spent the best part of 1 year arguing that 101 is the optimal amount of decentralisation, and now you propose to throw all that work away?

 

that's why we must not fall in the trap to decide again (and with pressure) how much witnesses to use.
Let the number be dynamic and the decision be taken from the shareholders, the market, or the code.... or all together... but not only from one guru or a community that could be take a right decision now but prove to be wrong tomorrow when  circumstances change...  We must be more flexible!