Re: [ANN][KMD][dPoW] Komodo - Zcash Zero Knowledge Privacy Secured by Bitcoin

Notaries are an important part of the security of the entire network.......IMO, I don't think the community will elect someone who "buys" a node.

elections are always transactional, things given & votes received in return, and there isn't a moral dimension here, so offering 'hope' and 'vision' like regular politicians isn't relevant

the current notaries have the advantage of incumbency, but those who think competency alone will be enough to keep getting elected will serve one-term only

eventually the community will only elect people who "buy" votes, i.e. share revenue

future notaries should probably operate like mining pools - fixed costs covered, % return to the operator, proportional share per 'vote'

PoW rewards are competitive, based on hardware costs & electricity (i.e. how much $$ spent)

PoS rewards are competitive, based on coin ownership (i.e. how much $$ spent)

KMD notary rewards will be competitive too, based on $$ spent. There's no other way to secure the network that maintains decentralization

I'm still not sure how these notaries work, but don't they cause centralization in the long-run?

No, to the contrary there is much less centralization with KMD notaries as all the notaries have equal power.

Look at: https://blockchain.info/pools

Notice the top 16 have well over 90% the hashrate.

So which is more centralized?

I may not be stating this correctly but is't it that whoever has larger number of KMDs also has higher voting power/rights?

yes, that is how it should be. you wouldnt want people without much at stake to control the voting.

Bittrex is the "PoW" equivalent right now as anybody can buy voting power. However, other than the free money part, a notary node does not have a lot of direct powers to affect things. A notary mined block still has to be validated by all nodes, there is no ability to create arbitrary transactions. But like with any mined currency, the miner has discretion on what goes into the block.

In my opinion, it is harder to centralize stake as that only requires money to purchase stake and anybody with money is able to do this. That seems pretty fair. With PoW mined coins you need both money and expertise in mining, which limits the number of participants. The fewer the participants, the more likely it is to get centralized.

There are thousands of KMD holders now. If any one of them tried to corner the market and buy up all the KMD ...., that doesnt make economic sense as the cost of such market activity is unlikely to be recouped from a notary node.

Also, notary nodes are split into 4 geographic areas, so no single region can have more than 16 (25%) of notary nodes. That alone seems to make centralization a challenge