Quote from: DecentralizeEconomics on January 06, 2015, 10:32:48 PM

You didn't answer these 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?

...

The truth of the matter is that no one can be sure that he only controlled those five delegates. He could very well still control multiple delegates. As Stan Larimer says, If multiple delegates being controlled by one individual isn't an issue, then why is Bytemaster trying to figure out how many delegates he controls by asking the community?

Your question 1 would be a great question to bring to Friday's world-wide mumble session and ask Bytemaster himself in front of God and everybody. These sessions are recorded so anybody can get a download of you putting Bytemaster on the hot seat. They are usually wide ranging and full of info like what you are looking for. I've tried my best to explain it for you, but as I said, I'm just an old retired rocket scientist. I'm sure Bytemaster will do a better job. I will say that our evolution from POW to POS to TAPOS to DPOS is well documented in the bitsharestalk.org forum discussions last spring. Each step was done to eliminate problems discovered along the way. DPOS was judged by all involved as the most highly evolved we have come up with to date.

That said, it's key innovation is IMHO
using the voting stake of all owners to select delegates
that can then be held accountable
by observable performance and public reputation.

Your question 2 points to a period in our early history where delegates did not get enough vetting because... it was early in our history. Back then, some delegates got elected without proper vetting since it wasn't hard to get into the top 101. Now it is increasingly harder to get elected as a delegate and every time a new vetted delegate takes her slot, a less vetted delegate is bumped. So it's an on-going Darwinian distillation process where over time the delegates that survive at the top get vetted better and better and have reputations that are worth more and more, making them unlikely to risk those hard-earned reputations on misbehavior that can instantly be detected. A Sybil attack at the delegate level would produce candidate with no reputation from vetting. Who would vote for it? Right now our star developers have taken days or even weeks to accumulate enough votes. Further, it costs two week's non-refundable salary (about $1100 right now) to apply to be vetted as a delegate, making any attempt to flood the system with nefarious delegates impractical and unaffordable.

Finally, because of the competition, every delegate gets challenged from time to time by people who want their job.

I went through such an aggressive rectal exam myself a few days ago:
"The worth of Stan's contribution to BitShares"
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12851.msg169114#msg169114

Thus, we have engineered a system where it is very competitive to become a delegate, and only the most trusted best of the best survive. Thus BitShares grows stronger every day.