RDPOS - Recommended Delegated Proof of Stake

[gamey]

Dont think that the electoral college is a good analogy. The analogy I thought of is shareholders = shareholders, slate selectors = directors, delegates = executives. Differences: Shareholders do not directly select executives which is possible with RDPOS. With RDPS it is not a yes or no decision for the delegates/executives. With RDPOS there are many slates you can select or you dont have to select a slate at all and vote for 101 delegates (only at 101 approved delegates you vote has the full effect) of your own choice or just a few you know personally. Then all the different votes are proportionally weighted as opposed to the electoral college where a relative majority approves a canditate. The executives/directors analogy is also not perfect as shareholders here only vote with yes or no on one proposed slate of directors and dont vote at all for the executives.
With RDPOS there is also no http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate

What ways to game the system could you come up with?

I agree electoral college isn't a good analogy, it wasn't meant to be, but it is something where a middle layer of voting screws up things in a really profound way.  The electoral college is useless and far from what it was intended to do.  It effectively disenfranchises whole states.  There is no way the founding fathers saw it coming.  I'd really need to think about the details etc and how it relates to say whether it is more accurate as an analogy.

By gaming the system, I mean horse-trading and backroom deals.  Things that are not intended by the original system, but will come into play.  The system meaning not just underlying voting system, but the whole system of people involved.  The psychology, things said, voter, etc.

absolutely realistic. People are minimizing effort and maximizing benefit /effect. Maximizing their positive influence on the system as they are interested in it's success as they are shareholders. And minimizing effort by trusting others, delegating effort, appreciating specialization.

It does not follow for me that we are maximizing positive influence.  You could just as well be maximizing negative influence, or neutral influence at the cost of lost positive influence.

I don't think "political parties" are at all inevitable with pure approval voting; I don't see the incentives for them.

Voting for delegates should be easy because delegates have a VERY simple and verifiable job.  It's not rocket science; vote for a bunch of people who come across as trustworthy and if you pick a bad one it's no big deal as it will soon be apparent.

- I think we may have political parties, but they'll be smaller groups and thus less powerful.  A slate of 101 delegates gives a lot of power to just imbed randomly on various websites.


I think we are far better waiting for more organic solutions to form around this.  Websites dedicated to these things, where they can imbed the URL for each individual.  In fact it seems plausible you could create a website that votes for slates without any of this RDPOS.  If there is a need (and there is), the market will find it.  What you don't need is the ability for people to embed slates all over the places and have teams of people pushing them on every relevant website.  Spamming forums, etc.  That is what you are enabling more than incentivizing voting.

We're also giving people something to complain about.   Political parties, centralization, yadda yadda.  It is just not a good marketing move.

I don't want to be so negative, but for some reason this idea really really bugs me.  I will try my best to read all the responses and see if I can come up with a better way.  I realize that a lot of this has to be balanced with technical requirements which I don't fully understand, but shrug.. Maybe we can figure something out.

[CLains]

Cynical Economy Threat: People will vote for delegates and slates that pay the most for individual votes (not via burn that appreciates everyone, but directly).

I'm not too concerned about that. I know miners vote for Ghash.io for example, even to the point it threatens Bitcoin, but now that the people with the power are the shareholders, I don't think we'll see the same results.

Approval voting removes the incentive for vote buying and it won't happen or be rewarded.

Anyone want to walk me through this? I don't understand it, le why

[bytemaster]

Just an idea that delegates could be given more icons to make the selection process easier.

I multi-table online poker, so have to make a lot of quick decisions which I wouldn't be able to do just by looking at people's names. So the poker software takes the players statistics and colour codes them and gives them a few icons. With this system just looking at a few icons you can get a very accurate picture of a player and I imagine the same is true of a delegate. (If you want you can click through and see in more detail.)

So a delegate would choose/system a main icon for them such as a marketing icon, development icon, burning for shareholders icon, pay for votes icon, Charity icon, all rounder icon etc. (Depending where they directed their funds) 

Maybe an icon if they have verification of their identity. A video/web presentation icon.  Maybe an icon if they are currently endorsed by developers etc.  It looks like there are already performance icons which is good etc.

That is very close to many of the ideas we have been thinking.   

[Empirical1]

Just an idea that delegates could be given more icons to make the selection process easier.

I multi-table online poker, so have to make a lot of quick decisions which I wouldn't be able to do just by looking at people's names. So the poker software takes the players statistics and colour codes them and gives them a few icons. With this system just looking at a few icons you can get a very accurate picture of a player and I imagine the same is true of a delegate. (If you want you can click through and see in more detail.)

So a delegate would choose/system a main icon for them such as a marketing icon, development icon, burning for shareholders icon, pay for votes icon, Charity icon, all rounder icon etc. (Depending where they directed their funds) 

Maybe an icon if they have verification of their identity. A video/web presentation icon.  Maybe an icon if they are currently endorsed by developers etc.  It looks like there are already performance icons which is good etc.

[Empirical1]

1) Every delegate may optionally specify a slate ID as part of their public data.  This slate ID identifies up to 101 delegates supported by that delegate.
2) Every user can select one or more delegates to approve of
3) The wallet will automatically combine the public slates of the delegates that user approves of to produce their votes.

So it's possible to vote for a delegate you like but choose to completely ignore their slate?

[Agent86]

I agree with you on the two classes with different thresholds of approval.   

The only tweak I would have is that you require 50% of "active shares" vs 50% of all shares.    Active means any share that is voting for someone.  Inactive are shares that don't vote for anyone.

I agree with you except for the definition of "active" shares.  Shares that have not moved in over 1 year (paid inactivity fee) are inactive and should be removed from all voting algorithms.  People who choose to abstain are voluntarily inactive.  Not voting for someone should not automatically disqualify your shares from the voting algorithm. The act of not voting is the way that one opposes all current candidates.

[bytemaster]

I agree with you on the two classes with different thresholds of approval.   

The only tweak I would have is that you require 50% of "active shares" vs 50% of all shares.    Active means any share that is voting for someone.  Inactive are shares that don't vote for anyone.

[Agent86]

Basically we got two unintended, inevitable consequences of DPOS:

1. People can delegate the job of voting to a slate.
2. Delegates can pay the individuals who vote for them.

We are now mitigating the risks these schemes pose.

Like Delulu I am most concerned about the Cynical Economy Threat: People will vote for delegates and slates that pay the most for individual votes (not via burn that appreciates everyone, but directly).

Clains, both of these "inevitable" consequences have already been addressed by using approval voting.
Approval voting removes the incentive for vote buying and it won't happen or be rewarded.
There is also no incentive for "political party slates"

We are complicating things because we are overpaying delegates.  There is no reason to give fees for things like registering an asset to the delegate that processed that block.  Delegates should be paid a fair amount for the service provided.

What does it have to do with the delegate pay?

Delegate pay is relevant because if it is excessive then voters have to balance voting for delegates they trust to perform the job of delegate (easy to do) vs. keeping track of how all the delegates spend money (hard to do)

Bytemaster, I honestly don't understand how one minute you're acting like people don't have time to evaluate delegates for the simple task of writing blocks, and the next minute you want to give delegates the additional power of spending all the profit.  If voters are lazy, don't force them scrutinize delegate spending!! KEEP IT SIMPLE.  Don't overcharge users for delegate profit!!  Our system is truly way cheaper than Bitcoin.  We want to encourage use of the system with low fees.   We could compete in 3rd world and micropayment applications.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, reinvestment through control of dilution and profit spending requires a separate class called "workers" where the "real money" goes and those people need 50%+ support.  A worker could even give prizes to the delegates with best uptime for the month.

[Empirical1]

Like Delulu I am most concerned about the Cynical Economy Threat: People will vote for delegates and slates that pay the most for individual votes (not via burn that appreciates everyone, but directly).

I'm not too concerned about that. I know miners vote for Ghash.io for example, even to the point it threatens Bitcoin, but now that the people with the power are the shareholders, I don't think we'll see the same results.

[bitmeat]

Basically we got two unintended, inevitable consequences of DPOS:

1. People can delegate the job of voting to a slate.
2. Delegates can pay the individuals who vote for them.

We are now mitigating the risks these schemes pose.

Like Delulu I am most concerned about the Cynical Economy Threat: People will vote for delegates and slates that pay the most for individual votes (not via burn that appreciates everyone, but directly).

This is a case where negative voting "might" help. However I am still against it, since then people would be paying for negative votes.

That said - is it really possible to track who is voting for you?

[CLains]

Basically we got two unintended, inevitable consequences of DPOS:

1. People can delegate the job of voting to a slate.
2. Delegates can pay the individuals who vote for them.

We are now mitigating the risks these schemes pose.

Like Delulu I am most concerned about the Cynical Economy Threat: People will vote for delegates and slates that pay the most for individual votes (not via burn that appreciates everyone, but directly).

[santaclause102]

Gamification - The more options you give a system, the more gaming will be done.  Now we have this extra layer between the voter and the delegate.  I could probably sit here and come up with a dozen scenarios that previously could not have happened.  Granted, a lot would not be the most plausible, but I'm sure I could come up with some decent ones.  Look at how the electoral college screws things up in the US !

Dont think that the electoral college is a good analogy. The analogy I thought of is shareholders = shareholders, slate selectors = directors, delegates = executives. Differences: Shareholders do not directly select executives which is possible with RDPOS. With RDPS it is not a yes or no decision for the delegates/executives. With RDPOS there are many slates you can select or you dont have to select a slate at all and vote for 101 delegates (only at 101 approved delegates you vote has the full effect) of your own choice or just a few you know personally. Then all the different votes are proportionally weighted as opposed to the electoral college where a relative majority approves a canditate. The executives/directors analogy is also not perfect as shareholders here only vote with yes or no on one proposed slate of directors and dont vote at all for the executives.
With RDPOS there is also no http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate

What ways to game the system could you come up with?

Delegates are our politicians; slates are our political parties........... ...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Unfortunately so...  the primary thing I want to have everyone consider is this:
1) Whether we support a particular system (parties) or not... they will form
2) If we make it hard to join/use/combine parties by attempt to "stomp it out" then the organized minority will vastly outmaneuver the disorganized majority.
If you cannot beat it (political parties) then do as much as possible to embrace and extend the concepts in a controlled manner.   
People want to avoid thinking and want to trust others.  They will seek this out or abstain... abstaining is worse than allowing them to at-least defer to someone they trust easily.

absolutely realistic. People are minimizing effort and maximizing benefit /effect. Maximizing their positive influence on the system as they are interested in it's success as they are shareholders. And minimizing effort by trusting others, delegating effort, appreciating specialization.

I guess it'll be like the board of directors of a corporation. The shareholders elect the board of directors, but the board of directors recommends their slate to the shareholders. Almost always, the shareholders go along with the slate - but every once and a while they hold a revolt.

As far as I remember executives suggest the director slate? Could be wrong though.

I don't think "political parties" are at all inevitable with pure approval voting; I don't see the incentives for them.

Voting for delegates should be easy because delegates have a VERY simple and verifiable job.  It's not rocket science; vote for a bunch of people who come across as trustworthy and if you pick a bad one it's no big deal as it will soon be apparent.

The problem is that unless you approve 101 delegates you have not used your full voting power. The shareholder has to decide whether it is better to vote only for those he knows are good delegates or whether he should vote for a slate that has been suggested by a trusted delegate. The latter might make sense because a bad player can only be voted out effectively if everyone uses his full voting power.

We are complicating things because we are overpaying delegates.  There is no reason to give fees for things like registering an asset to the delegate that processed that block.  Delegates should be paid a fair amount for the service provided.

What does it have to do with the delegate pay?

As long as the user has not voted yet, their client should by default automatic vote the most popular slate id* of delegates or at least a default slate id that is focused more on  network security than on any other aspect (charity, marketing, etc.) until of course they pick up manual  one by them self!

This is just randomly amplifying good or negative voting tendencies.

BM, what about automatically firing delegates? Is that implemented or still planed?

[liondani]

What happened to the idea of having automatic votes based on past performance as default?

Light weight nodes have no means of independently verifying past performance and even evil nodes can appear to be performing well.

Could this proposal be included with yours in parallel?

You said that one of the biggest challenge is to make voting easy for the average user , and you are absolutely right...  I will add to that,  that a big challenge also is to make the average user  to vote in the first place!  Of course with your suggestion the percentage of voters will increase dramatically, but always there will exist a percentage of users that will never vote. So my proposal is this:

As long as the user has not voted yet, their client should by default automatic vote the most popular slate id* of delegates or at least a default slate id that is focused more on  network security than on any other aspect (charity, marketing, etc.) until of course they pick up manual  one by them self!


* or better, to pick up randomly a slate id that is on top x%  of the slate popularity list
   so for example if x=30 and the differend slate ids are 1000 we know that all users that didn't' vote
   have picked up by default one of the best first 300 slate ids

[Shentist]

1. at the moment i choose some delegates with little fees, but honestly i don't know i 5% or 100% is required to operate the delegate. maybe you can add how much fees this delegate will earn with his fee structure in 1 month or so. then maybe everyone could see if 100% or 5% is required or are 100% delegates just greedy.

2. why not force the network user to vote?

"at the moment you picked zero delegates. please be aware that to pick  trustworthy delegates are an importent job to secure the network. your transaction will be delate for x time as long as you are not voting"

something like that?

[bytemaster]

I don't think "political parties" are at all inevitable with pure approval voting; I don't see the incentives for them.

Voting for delegates should be easy because delegates have a VERY simple and verifiable job.  It's not rocket science; vote for a bunch of people who come across as trustworthy and if you pick a bad one it's no big deal as it will soon be apparent.

We are complicating things because we are overpaying delegates.  There is no reason to give fees for things like registering an asset to the delegate that processed that block.  Delegates should be paid a fair amount for the service provided.

You are not thinking 4th dimensionally....