Quote from: ChuckOne on February 10, 2014, 09:15:21 PM

Quote from: pandaisftw on February 10, 2014, 08:57:28 PM

Quote from: ChuckOne on February 10, 2014, 08:33:14 PM

Okay, I do it:

The forger:
- has to have a client
- risks all his stake if the client is malicious
- risks his hardware if the client is not secured against malicious attacks
- has to pay the electricity bill
- has to pay for the hardware/renewal of such
- has to pay for a place that hardware can exist in
- has to pay for the bandwidth he contributes to the network
- has to implement security measures (attacks, heat etc.)

I think there is pretty much at stake, literally.

So, forgers should be paid for their expenses. But nothing more or just a little bit of it.

As I said, I see forger as an equivalent to bankers with a most important difference (both keep the system running):
- forgers do the least what is necessary to sustain the system - verifying transactions and doing all the hard computational work
- bankers generate the drive to keep the system running by generating money and debts (watch the videos of freigeist) and therefore creating the urge of the society to drive forward, work and repay debts

Bankers have the unfair advantage of creating and manipulating the ways the system works. They therefore make profit at the expense of others.

Forgers can't and therefore don't. BUT they have to be compensated. The (compensation - expenses) should be close to 0 but maybe bit more to create incentive for people to join and explore the possibilities of NXT.

When Account Controls are implemented, I imagine you can simply lease a "puppet" account your forging power. So you could have a 10mil+ NXT account forging through an account with 1 NXT, so the only risk you take is is the 1 NXT.

It's a tradeoff. If your business relies on NXT being healthy, then you have a very good reason for forge. If you're simply a user with a small balance, but you aren't really affected by hiccups in the service, then obviously you wouldn't forge.

Tbh, I think the rewards justify forging, although it may seem not to be so. For example, if you hold Bitcoin, you are paying a ~10% inflation tax every year. Your stash is literally generating -10% BTC a year.

In NXT, your stash (according to jL7777) appreciates by 0.5% a year. This is a +10.5% difference vs. BTC per year.

So, what's your point?

Just because, we might be might workaround some security issues does not mean the forger can lean back forever.
Just to make that sure: There will always be a bug! Could somebody create a meme for that?

The real world/hardware etc. issue won't go away anyway.

Hm, what bug are you talking about?

The costs of forging are already taken into consideration when you decide to forge or not. If you depend on the NXT network being very robust, the incentive to forge (supporting the network) vs. not forging (making the network more vulnerable to attack, and making you lose potential profits), then there is a clear economical advantage to forge. There is no true "selfless" forging (maybe rarely), forging aligns the desire of a stable platform with network security, as it should be. This is different from selfish mining, where the only reason to mine is for the block reward, and no one really cares about actually supporting the network.

Both are economically driven, thus forging is not a charity service.