You are assuming that all stakeholders will be diligently watching the chain for bad actors. I can guarantee you this isn't the case. Of course, there is "little damage
A rogue delegate can do", but as I assume you know, the issue lies in
multiple delegates colluding together and the fact that with DPoS it is
IMPOSSIBLE to know how many delegates one individual controls.
PoW and PoS will always be more decentralized and secure than DPoS because it is mathematically provable through PoW and PoS that the chain is secured by a verifiable amount of hashpower or stake.
If I want to attack Bitcoin's PoW algo, I have to acquire 51% of the hashpower.
If I want to attack NXT's PoS algo, I have to acquire 51% of the stake.
If I want to attack Bitshare's DPoS algo,
ALL I have to do is convince the stakeholders to vote me in.
Can you please answer my previous questions?
1 - How is DPoS an "improved" version of PoS seeing that it is clearly a more centralized consensus mechanism?
2 - How does Bitshares rationalize that it is "decentralized" when it is susceptible to and
previously undergone a Sybil attack, where actually, Bytemaster voted ONE person into FIVE delegate positions?
3 - Can you please prove for all parties that this attack on your consensus mechanism has been thwarted and that this individual no longer controls a delegate? Please provide verifiable blockchain proof.
4 - Are you of the same opinion as Toast,
that multiple delegates being controlled by one individual aren't a problem? If you agree, please explain why having any type of consensus mechanism is needed for Bitshares at all. If not, why does one of Bitshares' devs mislead people to believe otherwise.
I spent a long time answering each of these questions in great detail further above.
Since 101 delegates is just an arbitrary number that could have been 50 or 150, the fact that the number of independent delegates might vary if shareholders allow it is not a big deal. To become a delegate, you really have to work to convince people to vote for you. You have to develop a reputation. You can destroy that reputation in 10 seconds by misbehaving -
because everyone can see what you are doing. We all instantly know if you signed a bad block - and we know who did it.
That's the big difference. We know who did it.
As for Bitcoin, there's no way to know how much hash power is controlled by one individual. We do know that too much is controlled by too few. There is no way to know if a couple of the big pools or mining farms are colluding either.
In fact, they openly do it when a problem comes up. And we do know that the only way to unseat them is to acquire a huge amount of hashing power from somewhere. The only way to acquire similar power in BitShares is to drive everybody's price up trying to acquire a large stake. We like those kinds of attacks.
With BitShares, a misbehaving delegate is instantly flagged to all shareholders who immediately wake up, vote him out, and go back to sleep.
It only takes one person paying attention to raise the alarm. Then it takes several more trusted experts to verify the problem and post their opinion. Then the rank and file owners respond and the problem is gone. You can't do that with Bitcoin without inciting a damaging fork war - at huge cost to enforce any discipline at all.
Bottom line: My only purpose here is to give fair-minded individuals a chance to recover from disinformation in the OP. All these issues have been put to bed over the past 18 months in countless public discussions on the way to becoming a Top Five cryptocurrency. We are all available to answer questions at bitsharestalk.org and in the live world-wide Mumble sessions every Friday. Stop by if you are intrigued and want do your own homework. I leave you with the chance to discover the magnitude of the opportunity for yourself. Or you can wait until everybody agrees that it was obvious. By then it will be too late to be an early adopter. Choose wisely...