Can a dev explain me why voting for 12 witnesses is better than automatically assigning witnesses to the biggest wallets. In case of schism/ collusion they lose everything so why trusting democracy instead of those who have money at stake?
Not a Dev but the way I understood it from Tony is that outside interested can buy a big stake in the project and still be financially motivated to see it go down in favor of the other interest they have. By using 12 witnesses selected based on real world reputation, the witness has more to lose than just his Byteball reputation. If the witness is dishonest within Byteball it will also damage his/her other interests.
Not sure if correctly represented but this is how I understood it. It's not a democracy as there are no elections. It's Tony trusting an individual/company enough to make him/her a witness, very much like how companies select their leaders.