Quote from: inBitweTrust on September 22, 2014, 01:54:37 AM

Quote from: CoinHoarder on September 22, 2014, 01:31:05 AM

Voting power is directly proportional to the amount of coins you own, so if you own 1% of the money supply your voting power would be 1% of the total votes, regardless of how many DPOS nodes you run.

Damn, I must have read 20 pages on the site, wiki, and forums with regards to voting and they fail to clarify that.

Ok, that makes it clear the difference between Bitcoin and BTSX and reinforced some serious dilemmas within BTSX:

With DPOS the largest stakeholders can simply vote themselves as delegates to collect a salary and control the approval of transactions. Stakeholders could try increasing the delegate quantity above 100 but that would increase costs and thus it is likely that they will settle for a smaller amount of delegates.

It is true that they could vote themselves in as delegates, but as soon as they start doing nefarious activity such as blacklisting or selectively approving transactions, they risk the community forking the coin leaving them holding worthless coins. That alone should be incentive enough for a large stakeholder to not act nefarious. If not it isn't really a big deal.. we fork, burn their stake and move on.

Quote from: inBitweTrust on September 22, 2014, 01:54:37 AM

With Bitcoin the amount of "stake" you own is essentially tied to the amount of hashing power your own. Thus the health of the network is comparing the distribution of hashing power in PoW to the largest stakeholders in DPOS. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what the distribution ratio is in BTSX unlike with Bitcoin where we can see the accumulation of miners within pools and the quantity of miners and where they are located in realtime.

This is not necessarily a good thing, there are benefits for users being able to select who profits from securing the network. By voting in delegates that are improving the cryptocurrency in some way, it gives the users a way to compensate people that are doing good work in the community.

For instance, There is someone creating a multi pool that will automatically exchange mined coins for BitsharesX, which will increase buying support. We have supported this initiative by voting him in as a delegate. There is someone creating a nice block explorer and statistics website. We have supported this user by voting him in as a delegate.

One problem with Bitcoin is that it cannot select who profits off of Bitcoin mining. It is mostly for-profit ventures that are not really giving back to the community. Being able to select who profits from this activity is a good way to pay developers and other entities that are working on improving the cryptocurrency in some way.

Quote from: inBitweTrust on September 22, 2014, 01:54:37 AM

A large stakeholder could make it appear that he is many users and make it appear that a fair vote exists.

A lot of people will only vote for delegates whom can publish and prove their identity. I don't believe this is a big problem unless there is some complicated and massive social engineering scheme at play. I can count on one hand the number of multiple delegates that are under one persons control, and again that is because they are developing something cool for the community that will improve it in some way. Maybe I am naive, but I don't see this as a big issue.

Quote from: inBitweTrust on September 22, 2014, 01:54:37 AM

With PoW the expense of equipment and electricity decrease the value incentive of miners as it makes it very costly to conduct a 51% attack. With DPoS it would be much more costly if an outsiders tries to buy up a stake to conduct a 51% attack

A 51% attack on both chains would be equally expensive. You could say it would be less expensive if delegates were hacked, but you could say the same about Bitcoin pools being hacked.

I see less electricity being used as a benefit to DPOS, because millions per month are not being spent to secure the network and can instead be spent developing the infrastructure or providing buy support.

Quote from: inBitweTrust on September 22, 2014, 01:54:37 AM

This of course wouldn't need to be done as the existing stakeholders could "irrationally" attack themselves, or hackers could hijack the stakeholders, or a series of scams /ponzi schemes from grifters could slowly or quickly accumulate all the stake. A Mtgox scenario with DPoS is really dangerous (like with Vericoin) but with bitcoin Mark merely stole the coins and doesn't control the miners or nodes.

I see these all as non issues, as if something extreme were to happen we can fork the coin and move on. Leave the attackers to play with themselves on the original chain, and everyone else move to a new one. It is not a huge deal.

You are bordering on FUD as to your current arguments for DPOS, because you are ignoring all benefits and only focusing on the negatives.