Re: BYTEBALL: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments

Right now if Tony dies the project is over and out, so witnesses can still be centralised in Tony, as the project is still fully dependent on him anyway. Over time though it is indeed important that more people take on leadership roles so that the project can go on without him if necessary, and indeed witnesses become more decentralised as well.

True.

The cashback witness MEJ... http://www.cashback-witness.com has already been adopted by many people (see: https://byteball.fr/stats.php) but will never be a full replacment of Tony original JED....

True decentralization will come only when independant witnesses will be added in the default list by Tony. There is not sufficient attention/motivation from end users to the witnesses to make them change their default wallet parameters (actualy they just don't care...). Or in other words: thoses who are concerned will never be the majority.

Which brings me to the question: Why are the 12 default witnesses all controlled by Tony? Okay, the fees, I get that, but Tony already keeps 1 % of all bytes. Does he really need the transaction fees?

Honestly I think Tonych does not care at all about earning the transactions fee (only the payload part of, actually). He still holds the vast majority of the witnesses because Byteball is still in its growing age and no major Witness candidate operator has emerge. He already told he is willing to keep only one witness at the end.
One can say in any case that end users are sole responsible for other witnesses adoption (it is in the protocol and in the wallet).
My talk was to say that since end users do not very much care actually, Tonych will certainly have to push independant witnesses in the default list at some point to force for witnesses decentralization.