Wow this concept is completely amazing!!
Question
How many block producers are they?
There is a lot of data around the world, then, in order to avoid the centralization, we need thousands of block producers.
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Yes, there will be thousands.
the white paper says there will be 20 block producers elected by token holders, they will produce one block each, in a rotating schedule, the "delegated" proof of stake. There will be others competing to enter the top 20 but they will not be delegated to produce blocks unless they get voted in. From my understanding, each of these 20 block producer will have a copy of all the stored data, providing the distributed redundancy, and i guess any serious competitors will also need to provide a copy of all the data to be eligible to enter the elected 20... Once this data store grows large it will be only super well resourced operations that could compete for election. Have I understood this correctly?
I'd say you understand it pretty damn well! Somebody who knows more than us should provide further clarification if necessary.
If this is true we have a problem... 20 block producers storing PetaBytes? only big companies can do this. We need more and more block producers in order to avoid centralization.
One response I have seen to this concern is to say the DPOS with a voting system is the lesser evil in terms of centralisation when compared with the massive mining pools that have formed with the POW system in bitcoin et al... I would welcome some more arguments about this...
My point of view is the POW system in bitcoin is essentially DPOW (Delegated proof of work): If you want to mine you need to delegate your power to a pool, you can't do this alone. In addition, the pools are not part of the blockchain protocol, you have to thrust in the pool and its statistics of mining (total power hash, etc), there are no proofs.
The advantage of DPOS is that the delegated voting is part of the blockchain protocol. There is no need to delegate hash power, then there is no need to use electricity in hash power, then there is no need to pay to the people that delegate their vote, then the fees per transaction are reduced (free). We only pay to the block producer a little amount taken from the inflation of the coin.
In terms of technology I think DPOS is better, but in terms of centralization I think there is no big difference (only the part I've mentioned).
The centralization will be reduced in function of the number of block producers. What do you think?
Bitcoin is becoming more centralized as the miners, "block producers" begin to pool their resources. The key to limiting the number of block producers is two fold in that 1) if pooling resources (centralizing) is a constant threat, then its the same problem for thousands of miners as it would be for twenty, but only making 20 block producers improves speed and reduces friction 2) they are "voted" into position and can be "voted" out if they misbehave. You cannot vote out a bitcoin mining pool as there is no built in governance that allows for it. EOS provides the governance and therefore the constant ability to defend against centralization. I'm mostly paraphrasing the many videos that I have watched of Dan Larimer explaining Bitshares and Steemit, so I hope I have explained this correctly.