Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Re: The state of crypto - The only serious thread on the subforum
by
smooth
on 11/09/2015, 00:32:48 UTC
State of Crypto v0.04 changelog
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Added to DPoS section:

I)  A common complaint of DPoS is that it can't be decentralized because it has the word "delegated" in the title, yet anyone mining with a pool in PoW is doing the exact same thing.  Satoshi made the claim of one CPU, one vote, yet you are delegating your vote to the pool owner in PoW.  Some argue you are not delegating in PoW because you can solo mine.  While this statement would be technically correct, the miniscule portion of the Bitcoin userbase able to do so makes it functionally infeasible.  It's only a question of what percent of the hash rate is being delegated.

I disagree with this analysis. In analyzing incentives it is often important to have an option to do something even if that option in rarely exercised in practice. For one thing, it puts a cap on the degree of abuse that can be performed by those who can be opted out. Now you can vote out particular delegates in DPoS but you can't opt out of the delegate system, you can only do a "meet the new boss same as the old boss" switch. If the abuses are inherent in the power structure, then replacing Boss Alice with Boss Bob will not fix them.

However, in Bitcoin if the pool system were to be became sufficiently abusive (but it likely won't by the argument in the third sentence of the previous paragraph), miners really could just opt out entirely and solo mine. It would have a cost, but the cost is bounded and even measurable.