In order to determine the delegate rank position, Lisk has a decentralized voting mechanism built directly into the client. Users can vote for any delegates registered on the network. One vote equals 0.00000001 LISK, and a user can only vote with his entire LISK balance. One vote costs the user 1 LISK and he can vote for 33 delegates in one go. He can vote for 101 delegates in total, for this he needs to initiate 4 votes (33+33+33+2 = 101). It is not possible to vote for the same delegate twice.
The number of votes are represented as an Approval within the client, and is shown as a percentage. An approval of 1% equals 1% of all LISK in the network. At launch this would be 1,000,000 LISK (later more, due to inflation) or 100,000,000,000,000 votes.
I'll accept that this is a reasonable system if a balance vote is split among the 101 delegates. For example if a wallet has 101 LISK and votes for 101 delegates, each would get 1 LISK worth of vote.
However,
the way the above reads is that if a wallet has 101 LISK and votes for 101 delegates, they each get 101 LISK worth of votes. If this latter case is true, then the whole network could be controlled by someone who simply holds a plurality of LISK.
The balance in a voting account is not split among the people who that account votes for. Everybody that person votes for gets the full balance of the voting account added into their vote total from all other accounts.
Yes, the whole network could be controlled by someone who holds a majority of Lisk. This is equivalent to a 51% percent mining attack in Bitcoin.
Max, please correct me if what I have said here is wrong. Also, please edit the phrase in red above to "At launch this
1% of votes would be 1,000,000 LISK (later more, due to inflation) or 100,000,000,000,000 votes." This change helps to clarify the big numbers are referring to "1%" and not "all LISK in the network". I was a little confused the first time I read this.