Quote from: monsterer on January 11, 2016, 07:37:51 PM

Quote from: Fuserleer on January 11, 2016, 07:34:01 PM

So $9000 in fees at 100tx/s load as stated in my post up thread is no real cost? What planet are you on?

Can you remind me why I need to spam the network in order to become a validating node?

If you don't spam and endorse your own nodes, then the the only option is to run a large number of nodes that collect endorsements naturally.

To have any real voting power you would need to be endorsed for 30%+ of all transactions in the network. Which means that you need to be connected to 30%+ of all transaction producing nodes at all times AND to be the node selected to receive the endorsement by that transaction producing node from all of its connections. If that node has 4 connections you have a 25% chance of being selected.

Furthermore as transactions are generally made in reaction to some other event, usually outside of the system, you'll never know when any particular node in the system might produce a transaction, so there is no way to target who you need to be connected to and when. The only way to be sure is to be connected to everyone, at all times.

In the 100 tx/s example I presented above, there will likely be 10000s of transaction producing nodes live in the network, and you need to be connected to them all. There will also likely be a few 1000 nodes vying for the endorsements, so even if you could handle 1000+ connections per node you control, and you might get a high number of endorsements to that node, you'll only get one vote. If the selection set for the next vote is just 10 voters (it'll likely be a few 100 at these loads), you only have one vote.....wasted effort.

So lets recap, at 100tx/s network load without spamming, you need 1000s of nodes, connected to everyone, at all times.

People have many times said to me "Well I can just make 1M nodes on Amazon and take over your network" and these people live in lala land with no consideration at all for the cost of operating 1M nodes in the real world.

As per Amazon here http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html

1000 Linux t1.micro nodes is $14640 per month - these wouldn't even be able to handle a load of 100 tx/s with 1 connection
1000 Linux m3.medium nodes is $38070 per month - would struggle to keep up
1000 Linux m3.medium nodes is $49050 per month - more like it, HD IO would cope, CPU would struggle with too many connections
1000 Linux m3.large nodes is $97360 per month - would handle up to 300 tx/s and many connections reliably

So you see, 1000 nodes, let alone 1M has a significant cost still attached to it.