Quote from: iamnotback on February 25, 2017, 06:32:26 PM

I mean as new blocks and accounts are minted/created, the investors can buy this supply the private key they want for them perhaps. So they own them outright. Buying them from the various minters.

Yes, that's possible and legitimate. New accounts will be a fungible good that can be bought by anybody.

Quote from: iamnotback on February 21, 2017, 08:51:49 PM

How can you prove in zero knowledge that the private key for the new account has been signed by the key of the minter and not the buyer of the new account?

It seems that I misread your initial statement, sorry. The minter signs the new account's public key as depicted in the diagram. So, of course, the new buyer will get full control over his account and can henceforth contribute to consensus. So, there's no need for a zero knowledge proof for the new account's private key.

Quote from: iamnotback on February 21, 2017, 08:51:49 PM

But you aren't addressing the reason I mentioned that. Refer back to the prior discussion.

I don't expect everybody to become an investor and take part in mining. The majority of users will probably only use free accounts. But given the fact that the number of accounts will correspond to the number of blocks, there will be a considerable supply of new accounts at all times. (I'm not sure if I got your point though.)

Quote from: iamnotback on February 21, 2017, 08:51:49 PM

It is not what they think is better off, but what is actually better off. Economies-of-scale are more efficient at manipulating centralized FUNGIBLE value. Here is that key term fungible again.

I think we both agree on the importance of fungibility when it comes to centralization. On the other hand, I'm not sure if we are on the same page with regard to the notion of centralization/decentralization. In my opinion, a blockchain is set to stay decentralized if regular users are, regardless of their wealth, disincentivized to get a higher influence on consensus than "one man, one vote".

Regular users a) act rationally and b) don't have the (financial) means and the political power to beat the consensus as such by colluding or bribing/extorting the majority of their peers. If someone is able do that, then I consider the currency as being corrupted as it could show any arbitrary behaviour. The important question is if decentralization of regular users makes it more difficult to corrupt the coin. I think yes, even though the Bitfury paper argues otherwise:

Quote

As there is a relatively small number of miners in the Bitcoin ecosystem, participating in the attack would damage their reputation. In case of a PoS system, there is no reputation to speak of because most stakeholders are likely anonymous.

Quote from: iamnotback on February 21, 2017, 08:51:49 PM

Hint: IMO you can't achieve real decentralization until you actually employ a "resource" (an effect actually) that can't be made fungible due to its natural attributes, not some artificial barrier that you try to construct which nature will route around.

The question if people can circumvent the artificial barrier is not binary but of degree. All you need to attack a traditional cryptocurrency is the financial means to acquire the necessary stake (PoS) or +25/33% of the hashrate (PoW). Whereas, in my design, you also need plenty of time (years, even decades) or the necessary power/creditibility to control 50% of the active miners without buying accounts.

Quote from: iamnotback on February 21, 2017, 08:51:49 PM

For example the act of sexual intercourse is very difficult to centralize or make fungible. No, my design is not Proof-of-I(ntercourse) ... that's NEM.

LOL! What non-fungible resource other than sexual intercourse are you using to secure your coin? (Btw, ShagCoin would be a nice name... Wink

)

Quote from: iamnotback on February 21, 2017, 08:51:49 PM

Now you are telling me new accounts can be sold? So why do you think these won't be power-law distributed? They always are.

New accounts can be sold on the market just like the currency itself. They won't get centralized because it simply doesn't make sense for an investor to have more than one account since he gets the same interests on his stake, while the profits from selling child accounts will get neglibile over time.

Quote from: alkan on February 22, 2017, 06:18:39 PM

Ultimately, the attacker would have to keep paying the market price for at least 50% of the ongoing production of blocks/accounts as long as he wants to maintain his attack.

Quote from: iamnotback on February 21, 2017, 08:51:49 PM

If mining is profitable why wouldn't the "attacker" (or natural power-law effect) do this? If mining is not profitable, why would anyone buy new accounts?

Investors will buy the accounts because they get regular interests on their stake with every block attached to the blockchain, even if they never mine a single block.
However, everybody who owns an account has an incentive to mine since mining is profitable and the costs are very low without PoW.

The profitability of mining will decrease over time due to the growing competition. If you buy your first account 10 years after the genesis block, you will have to wait another 10 years on average to get your first child account (provided that every investor is actually mining). Now, you can decide if you want to sell your child account or keep it and retain your relative mining power. If you opt for the latter, you will have to you wait another 10 years to get your first grand child account. If you sell it, you can cash out with the current account price and will only have half the minting power as of now, which means that you would have to wait 20 more years for your first grand child account.

Accounts that haven't been sold at their birth, will be practically unsalable for the future due to the buyer's risk I already mentioned. That's a fundamendal difference to traditional PoS where you can grow your stake just by keeping it mining and sell it any time you want. In my design, the price you pay for an account will be sunk costs. So, it's only profitable to mine once you own an account (which you have bought in order to get interest on your coins). Whenever you get the chance to build a block, it will be more profitable to sell the child account and invest the price back into the underlying currency, rather than keeping the account in the hope of selling grand-child accounts later on.