Quote from: tarmo888 on August 31, 2019, 01:07:35 PM

Quote from: CryptoRobert on August 31, 2019, 09:16:53 AM

Quote from: CryptKeeper on August 31, 2019, 06:26:12 AM

Quote from: CryptoRobert on August 30, 2019, 02:14:59 PM

One factor which was missing in this equation is "skin in the game"

I second your opinion. Although I abhor the waste of resources by proof-of-work, I have to give it exactly this advantage.

Thumbs up from me for your post in the ivory tower, a good read and exactly my way of thinking.

I too abhor the waste of resources by proof-of-work, but reality is not what is fitting our wishes, but what is fitting the laws of causality. As ethically perverse as it may be, proof-of-work happens to have this probably in the origins unintended feature of introducing a powerful deterministic skin-in-the-game variable into the mechanism. Once this principle becomes clear and acknowledged, it's up to the best minds in the crypto society to find out alternative ways to force efficient skin-in-the-game variables into less waistful networks as for example Obyte.

I can't comment on Ivory Tower board, but if you have $1 million or 100 BTC (doesn't matter if you inherited it or got it for cheap long time ago), isn't that a "skin in the game" too?

(...)

Metcalfe's law worked for Obyte case too, people had to take part of the "Bytes to BTC holders distribution", airdrop is a misleading name for it. The network value went up, people had to link their addresses by making BTC transfer or by signing the message, but since they didn't convert into users, the Obyte value game down again. That doesn't mean that Obyte whales doesn't have "skin in the game", but I don't know any whales either who is talking sh!t about Obyte, it looks to me that the 2 biggest whales on Draw Airdrop will do anything to increase their GBYTE bags.

Most of your argoments are correct and they are not contraddicting mine, just fine tuning them. I don't pretend to state absolute truths, just want to draw attention to the complexity of the creation of value in crypto, where Metcalfe's law is only one of the agents in play, and it doesn't apply if the nodes are not real nodes.
But in one one thing you are not correct. If you have $1 million or 100 BTC which you've somehow got for free or super-cheap, you don't actually have any skin in the game. You have a lot of money which you didn't have to pay for, which means you didn't have to put your skin at risk to get it. What you have is a free lunch, which of course you wouldn't like to lose, but you could sell it any moment at any price and you would always be in positive territory, since it didn't cost you anything. Money that you had to work for you have paid it with your life - that is skin in the game. During the last bullrun a few years ago I got theoretically rich in FIAT terms because the alts I had got for nothing suddenly mooned - but I didn't sell and after the crash I am again just poor as before. But in real terms I didn't lose anything crucial, like thirty years of life or more which usually you would need to put aside such amounts of money - that would have been skin in the game - I've just lost an amazing free lunch, a Black Swan which has suddenly popped up in my living room and then has suddenly flown out of the open window.
People who instead lost millions of $ of money they had actually to work for - have eventually suicided, there have been cases. THEY had skin in the game, too much of it.
Whales without skin in the game who believe in the Obyte project can be good nodes all the same. But should they some day for any reason lose faith in the project they could easily quit the game at any stage with no real loss, just because of their lack of skin in the game.
Skin in the game is an amplifier of other causes, is what makes other factors of causes more real.