RE: In the Beginning, There Was DPoS

[buggedout]

How about a post outlining some of the flaws of DPoS that we have witnessed since 2014 and maybe some ideas on how to address them.

1. More votes than top witnesses - Allowing a large stake to effectively centralise and control the blockchain (as we have witnessed here on STEEM)

2. Bribery / Corruption of Witnesses - Where witnesses offer a kickback to voters as a bribe to vote them in (or than relying on merit). We have seen this on other DPoS chains, leading to unreliable block producers being elected and then poor performance of the overall network.

I'm sure there is more....

Comments

[raycoms]

I think the biggest problem related to any "voting-based" system is:

• Voting Apathy

A lot of people won't participate in the democratic process and do not hold the elected accountable for their actions. This not only leads to the problem that only relatively little stake is voting but also to the problem that once someone has a certain amount of votes he most likely won't be kicked out of the top 20 so quickly again.

• Transparency

While decisions in terms of hardfork and softfork are visible to the user a lot of the discussions surrounding it are not. We cannot see if the elected are doing what they should be doing.

I did outline in a post of mine ideas how voting apathy could be combated. And, as soon as we got people participating in the democratic process, forcing the elected to be transparent becomes a solvable problem.

[buggedout]

Maybe we should have downvotes available for block producers too?

[raycoms]

Read my blogpost, it's not a solution either.

[ew-and-patterns]

Make it so that you cannot post or comment until you voted all 30 witnesses (or whatever the number might be in the future)
Should be quite easy to code.

[raycoms]

My idea was more in the lines of not giving people SP inflation unless they use at least 50% of their slots to vote for active witnesses.

[ew-and-patterns]

I would agree with this idea as well. But I don't see why you should not force people to take part in the stability of the network. It benefits everyone and there is no downside.

[raycoms]

I think it sets the entry barrier to high for new users. Someone who just arrived doesn't know anyone and has no stake to vote anyway. But with increasing stake there should be a financial incentive to vote for witnesses. An easy way to do this would be through the SP inflation.

[ew-and-patterns]

Noted, it is an entry barrier. But if you accumulated or bought 1000 Steem and powered that up, I think those accounts should be able to form an opinion to set a voting proxy for 1 witness they like. Not everyone needs to make 30 vote decisions on their own. Witnesses and everyone with influence here should be more vocal about them being a possible voting proxy.

[raycoms]

If you were allowed to vote infinite witnesses you could even set several proxies. That would make it more trustless. I might not trust 1 persons decisions, but I might trust the average among 5 people.

[fknmayhem]

While I hate repeating the same reply in same thread, I'm going to do it:

That would just lead to people voting for 1-15, the quickest possible path to get theirs. Without caring about the actual importance of their vote.

Additionally, you are preparing for vote buying, via return incentives, much like it happens on TRON. You may end up centralizing more with forced voting in order to contribute.

[onealfa]

...not giving people SP inflation unless they use at least 50% of their slots to vote...

I LIKE this ^

[ezzy]

Fantastic idea. This solves the problem of "dormant" investors too by forcing them to participate.

[fknmayhem]

That would just lead to people voting for 1-15, the quickest possible path to get theirs. Without caring about the actual importance of their vote.