RDPOS - Recommended Delegated Proof of Stake

[Agent86]

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.

[maqifrnswa]

One slate will dominate in the long run, no? And won't this provide an impetus for others to hard fork and launch a new company?


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that's a good point

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.

I think a hard fork to launch a new company won't be as successful as putting together enough votes to get elected. Because if you can't get enough votes to get elected, how do you think you can build enough support behind your new company? but you're right, I don't know if it will consolidate into a oligarchy or not.

I guess it'll be more like the web of trust. well connected individuals will be on the most slates and have the highest chance of being elected while high-value loners won't be able to push their own through as easily.

[bitbro]

One slate will dominate in the long run, no? And won't this provide an impetus for others to hard fork and launch a new company?


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[bytemaster]

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


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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.

[bitbro]

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


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[gamey]

You're also going to have negative campaigning now.  Previously having a negative campaign against person would have limited benefits, so it wasn't likely that we would see much of it.  Now with a slate, it all at once becomes a tactic that has a lot more strength behind it and so I would expect that we see it once delegate slots become competitive.

For example-
My group of 10 guys, only 7 are making it as delegates.  Well...  maybe being a halfway decent tactician, I decide it makes more sense to have those 3 guys negatively campaign against the delegates sitting on the edge approval.

This is just one example...

[toast]

It is inevitable because it requires no changes to the blockchain but I agree turning it on by default might be premature

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[bytemaster]

I think not knowing who to vote for is not the reason for low participation; I suspect it's people haven't even got the wallet yet or imported private keys.   People with a huge stake are not attacking the chain.

With RDPOS I can already see the horsetrading between delegates:  You add me to your slate and I'll add you to mine, I'll only add you to my slate if you help me fund my "pet project" etc... 

Anyone is free to make recommendations or publish a list but encouraging people to vote blindly for a list they haven't looked at doesn't help.  There are other ways of making the process easy.

Think of it more as following twitter feeds... and all users publish slates, not just delegate.s

[Agent86]

I think not knowing who to vote for is not the reason for low participation; I suspect it's people haven't even got the wallet yet or imported private keys.   People with a huge stake are not attacking the chain.

With RDPOS I can already see the horsetrading between delegates:  You add me to your slate and I'll add you to mine, I'll only add you to my slate if you help me fund my "pet project" etc... 

Anyone is free to make recommendations or publish a list but encouraging people to vote blindly for a list they haven't looked at doesn't help.  There are other ways of making the process easy.

[gamey]

This is just great!! 

The big structural benefit I see is that it makes use of the social net the delegates now have to form.
The discussion has shown that the byzantine's general's problem is not completely solvable. Economies of scale and uneven distribution of stake lead to centralized systems. The general has to trust the few miners/frogers/delegates even if they are (well) incentivized to be honest.
What is added with your suggestion to the overall system is "social control" if you will: Delegates have to know each other. And the pressure to be honest is much stronger than before, because all delegates have to know each other and are not good delegates if they miss judge.
In other words, further specialization: It takes the judging work away from the shareholder and gives it to specialized delegates. Delegates specialized on this can make far greater due diligence than shareholders ever could! They can get to know the delegates in person etc...

Social net ?  Why is that good ? The basic problem here is there is this assumption that delegates have the network's long term interest at heart.  Which is somewhat true, but maximizing the number of fellow friendly delegates is going to outweigh that.  Much like miners in POW, there is no reason delegates necessarily care about the network's long term health.  We assume they will, but there is no requirement to have a large stake to be a delegate.  Delegates will first and foremost be profiteers (nothing wrong with that) and their slate selection will most likely reflect this.

There will be lots of backdoor dealing and crap that will leave a bad taste.   

Are politics better with political parties ?  Maybe they are....

As far as the technical reasons, I won't begin to comment as I'm sure BM+team have it figured out so I can't weigh that in.

If BM goes with this though, do not rename it to RDPOS...  Just leave it as DPOS and consider this a feature.

It also means that people will be required to become part of slates and deal with all that, instead of giving that time/effort directly back to improving the network.  More time will be spent glad handing in PMs etc. 

edit - ok ok ok.. I popped off a bit before reading all the responses.  I see that the slates are additive etc.  This will greatly mitigate my concerns.  I would like to see it implemented in a UI.  If you can add slates to each other, then that goes a long ways.  I mean, it is kinda obvious it should be like that, but ... one never knows.

edit-2

Interesting comment! Well worth thinking about. Summary:
- delegates can provide self serving slates. I think that would be easily obvious. And if he creates a lot of names that are not obviously his name but operated by him. All those strangers would not be very trustworty anyway.
- "Such and such was removed off slate GOOD GUYS for petty reason #4923" <- needs un-emotional discussion style, true!
- "gamification" (ways to game the system) - in which way?

It won't necessarily be obvious they are self-serving.  If we can't tell who is self-serving individually, then how will you tell that the least trustworthy 50% of a slate aren't just put in there for reasons unbeknownst to us ?

It isn't so much the discussion style, as just how parties/cliques play out.  Mud slinging, negative campaigning, etc.

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 !

Edit 4 - If you do allow readily additive slates, then I think slates  will be sufficiently randomized that most blockchain space savings will be lost.  So I'm not sure what to think there..  I assume there would also be negative slates ?  Oh my.

[bytemaster]

Right now the network is vulnerable to takeover by just 9% stake.    I am being asked by everyone "who should I vote for" and the change is simple and easy to implement. In fact, it is already done.   

In the mean time I am also working on the BitUSD system..... however, BitUSD depends upon a very secure network and so it is good to get a solid foundation for that.

[bytemaster]

Not saying there is a flaw in approval voting.... I am just saying that the number of times I have been asked "who should I vote for" by "non technical" people is high enough that I can already see that recommendation systems will form with or without official support.   

Everything I am suggesting here is done without any modifications to the blockchain and without any hard forks. 

I agree we will not rename it to RDPOS... because at the core it is still DPOS.

[Agent86]

It is like political parties.  I can't see anyone seriously argue this doesn't increase centralization.

The guy who mentioned Ripple is off base, but that is the criticism we are going to see.  This definitely has upsides, but meh.

Giving it a different name (RDPOS) isn't a good idea.  You guys had problems with the weird BitShares X branding.  Now we'll have RDPOS and DPOS.  Explaining how RDPOS improves anything will not be an easy sale.  In fact, "recommended" psychologically frames the whole process negatively in terms of what crypto people are wanting.

The basic problem is that the motivations of stake holders are not the same for Delegates.  Delegates are in it to profit off transaction fees by being elected.  Users are in it to profit of appreciation or the burn rate.  Delegates aren't necessarily looking after users.

Delegates will provide a self-serving slate that end-users will not easily be able to discern.  In addition, we may end up with a lot of nastiness. "Such and such was removed off slate GOOD GUYS for petty reason #4923".  It just won't look good.  You are centralizing things on different levels, allowing more gamification of the system.

"RDPOS" is not a good idea.   I don't know if I have the energy to argue about it anymore though.

What specifically is the flaw in approval voting that is bothering you so much??  Give people a chance and some time, this is new to everyone and is just released.   Why not wait until we have a working windows wallet before declaring shareholders too lazy to vote?  Not everyone will drop what they're doing and download a buggy client to participate on day 1.

[donkeypong]

A happy medium that isn't too cumbersome for average people and doesn't lend itself to too much criticism for being automatic? Sounds perfect.

[bytemaster]

This is just a simple automated system for making recomendations and not full delegation of authority.   You can "follow" anyone and votes are only cast when *YOU* make a transaction.