Quote from: CoinHoarder on November 04, 2014, 09:39:14 PM

@both of you - DPoS works under the realization that all forms of PoW tend towards centralization anyways, and it gives a way for stakeholders to manage that centralization. I see it as being better than PoW in terms of centralization.

Well, there is Spreadcoin but I consider the "jury still out" on it. Possibly some "hardened spreadcoin" might work some day. I might even try implementing such a thing before long.

Quote

PoW centralizes around centralized mining pools where users aggregate their hash power. For instance, with Bitcoin about 50% of the hash power is centralized to 3 Bitcoin pools. I would venture to say DPoS is less centralized than this, seeing as though there are 101 delegates that thus control less than 1% of the network's processing power.

My main concerns with DPoS (as distinct from PoS) are primarily that any centralization becomes a point of weakness so intentionally re-introducing it seems misguided to me, and that people tend to be lazy and often don't delegate in a way that will serve their own best interests. Otherwise my concerns about general PoS are pretty well eumerated elsewhere (nothing at stake attacks, retroactive 51% attacks, etc) so I won't speak much to those.

Quote

Furthermore, centralization is mitigated by being able to vote in and out delegates... stake holders choose who secures the block chain and if they are doing a poor job of it then they can be removed. This also provides another benefit as with PoW you cannot decide who profits off of securing the blockchain, but with DPoS you can vote in delegates that are developing code for the project, marketing, or building 3rd party services. It is a form of funding development for the cryptocurrency that uses DPoS.

I consider these to be separate concerns, and conflating them may be downright dangerous. In recent history of alt-coins the ones doing the developments are also usually the ones with the least interest in the well-being of the network! In most cases it is the developers, themselves, who attack and destroy. Why should we promote a model that just affords them even more facility to do so?

Quote

If the PoW algorithm you choose, or you make a new one an Zennet is wildly successful, is a popular one then ASICs are sure to be made eventually as soon as it is economically feasible. This centralizes mining power to big mines which are setup in places where power is cheap and cold environments where the equipment can be cooled cheaply. Furthermore, people with deep pockets get advantages by developing their own hardware for a fraction of the cost consumers can purchase it and via bulk discounts. With DPoS this type of centralization will not occur.

This is just a trade off, with PoS instead providing incentive to hoard. I'm not sure we can reasonably call one or the other the "lesser or two evils" and should strive to avoid both problems.

Furthermore, there is some theory that PoS is actually not different from PoW, and one could imagine a "stake grinding" ASIC. I don't know of any such hardware, but it wouldn't surprise me much to see. From what I understand of DPoS it does solve the problem of stake grinding in general, but does so in a way that re-introduces both incentive for collusion and potential for Sybil. (I have my own theories that this may end up putting DPoS back at the "wrong security threshold" of 30% (like any traditional consensus mechanism) as well!)

Quote from: HunterMinerCrafter on November 04, 2014, 05:22:59 PM

You guys bring up a good point here and this (although you don't seem to realize it) is another reason against PoW. Zennet will be renting out people's processing power, and it is foolish to think that the people renting out this processing power will not act in their best interests. The Zennet supercomputer could become unusable during times when mining is more profitable than renting out the processing power, rendering the service useless for a matter of time. With DPoS this would not be cause for concern.

Understand that the only monetary reward for providing the work would be tx fees, no new coin-base subsidies, so it is unlikely that there would ever be a time where mining work would be more profitable than providing service. I think we can assume that providers (rational providers, acting in their best interests as you say) would apply only excess resource, that they are not renting out, toward mining. As such, I think all that we can infer is that a PoW hash-rate might be of higher natural variance because of this, and little more can be said.

Quote

It is ironic that all of these topics can be tied into DPoS... DPoS is more suited for micro payments than Bitcoin... as I said it is a fast and efficient consensus algorithm. Block times can be reduced to as fast as 10 seconds with an average confirmation time of 5 seconds,

There is no real reason that block times in PoW couldn't be similarly reduced. (Misconceptions about this abound, though, so perhaps I will need to say more?)

Quote

and each confirmation is more secure than one Bitcoin confirmation (or any other coin that is based off of Bitcoin's PoW).

How do you figure? This sounds a lot like rhetoric to me, can you please expand upon your reasoning?

Quote

In the time it takes Bitcoin to produce a single block a DPOS system can have your transaction verified by 20% of the shareholders and by the time Bitcoin claims the transaction is almost irreversible (6 blocks, 1 hour) your transaction under DPOS has been verified by 100% of the shareholders through their delegates.

I'm not sure if this is a meaningful comparison. These relative numbers seem rather arbitrary to me.... shouldn't any meaningful comparison account for relative network size? Isn't any measure of security derived from a metric of participation? (Can it be otherwise?)

Quote

I don't think DPoS should be written off as a valid option until all of the details are discussed. There is a lot of misinformation that exists about it and some are "set in their ways" so to speak around these forums as to PoW being the only answer for consensus. I know there are a lot of other people that disagree with this sentiment, although they might not be here posting in this needle in the haystack.

I think this sentiment arises mostly out of comparison of the "self evident" security of PoW versus the "implied" security of PoS. We have now solid formal models around the relationship between PoW incentives and the relative security it provides. We lack comparable formal treatment of PoS, though I understand there are those attempting to rectify this. In other words, I think this is largely born out of "fear of the unknown" which may actually be a legitimate fear for Zennet to carry.

Finally, a simple argument can be made that PoS models are relatively new and not well "battle tested" where PoW has been attacked from pretty much every possible angle and has held strong.

Anyway, while this is all intellectually interesting I think it is possibly largely out of context. Much of what we are discussing here has nothing at all to do with Zennet itself, and is just general discussion about PoS versus PoW. I think this is a holy war that should perhaps be fought elsewhere.