Why do I say that? Well, in DPoS, it's ruled by stake, i.e. money. A rich controller (or controllers) can be in a position to single-handedly control who is or isn't in the top decision making tier of running the blockchain and what code is accepted (i.e. witnesses).
If you don't do what the rich controller(s) want(s), you will not be supported by them as a top tier witness. If you do what they want, then you get to have their vote and be a top earner.
Anyone looking at what has happened today April 4 on Steem with softfork 22.888, can see that Justin Sun has implemented code to freeze the activity of accounts he has a grudge with, this includes being able to powerdown and transfer funds. He has essentially robbed people of their assets, based on his personal whims.
Those who didn't adopt the new fork 22.888, were unvoted by the SteemIt dev365 account, knocking them out of the top 20 if they were there. This includes the top witness blockbrothers, who was at position #1 yesterday, and stayed on fork 22.5. Other were also removed from the top 20 witness spots.
DPoS is showing cracks of integrity when it comes to respecting private property, like the ownership of cryptocurrency. Code can be created to remove the ability for an owner of the stake/tokens to do what they want with their property. And this code can be implemented by witnesses who are voted in to make sure that code is running on the blockchain.
In PoW, like bitcoin, I doubt such a measure would ever get approved by independent nodes who can't be voted in or out.
The main reason this was so easy to push through on Steem (and possibly can be done on other DPoS chains), is the huge stake that was ninja mined. The ninja mined stake was always a point of contention. Now the threat it posed is being demonstrated. Formerly, it was not misused to such a degree under the previous owner of the SteemIt stake. But with Justin Tron, we are seeing how the large stake can be used to corrupt the integrity of the blockchain and the principles it's supposed to stand on. But anyone (obviously rich) can buy 20% of a chain's stake and do the same anyways.
Regardless of how this has been done, it demonstrates to the outside observers that it can be done: that your control over your own stake/tokens can be removed at the behest of one or more large stake owners who can control the witnesses in the top 20.
Will this action by SteemIt/Justic Sun tarnish the viability of DPoS in the short term alone, or will this be a wound that DPoS will find hard to recover from?
HIVE is also DPos... we must come up with something better for governance. Perhaps hybrid PoS/PoW similar to Decred.
I think this shows two different things. To the common person it may appear that DPoS is broken. After all you can look at this along with a number of other examples in other DPoS communities to find even more examples.
I also think it shows something different to people who are deeper in the space. These people don't see this as a failure of DPoS but rather of centralization. After all anyone with power will always stand the potential to be corrupted. If no one has the power to come together then you have a stalemate.
I tend to fall in the second group more than the first for determining a network functions. If a community has enough members willing to put value into it and it doesn't start from a flop-sided stake level then I think that you don't have most of these problems. That being said the potential is still there so there's always a chance of power moves.
That chance is why I still believe the only digital store of value at this time is still Bitcoin. It's the only distributed network, that I've seen, that actively pushes all stakeholders to engage in a hivemind. That doesn't mean I don't value DPoS networks but certainly don't see them as the level of asset security provided by Bitcoin.
Yeah, uniting to combat a centralized stake can work, but organizing is often lacking.
I agree on Bitcoin and pow vs dpos for security of assets. Thanks for the feedback.
The whole reason we froze the ninjamine and then forked away from Steem was because Justin could do whatever he wanted. The fact that he is now doing whatever he wants doesn't really damage DPOS's reputation any more than it already was. Everyone already knew these things were possible.
There's a difference between possible, and it actually happening though. A president could send nukes to blow up a country, vs. actually sending nukes to blow up a country, starting WWIII and destroying humanity. Difference.
Yeah but in blockchain everything that can happen, will happen. Every road is being tested.
Nah, not everything that can happen will happen. Ninjamined stake wasn't removed from accounts, beit Steemit Inc or other ninja miners. It may never be removed, hence not everything does happen.
I'm talking about DPOS and crypto in general.
Clearly not everything can happen on Steem specifically.
That would create the impossible contradictions that you've mentioned and a million more.
Centralized authoritarian control of a DPOS chain was the obvious biggest attack vector of the entire consensus algorithm. It was guaranteed to happen sooner or later. Looks like sooner.
So you think this is a bad thing for Hive?
I see it as the natural progression.
I wasn't considering this situation to be bad news for Hive.
Quite the contrary I assume this is very good news for us.
this really comes from the witnesses (the original ones) not being decisive enough with justin's /ned's stake, especially considering justin's known penchant for blockchain fuckery
they should have nuked that stake as soon as ned sold it, because ned's selling of it broke the promise he made to the community to use that stake in support of the community
lesson for the future: when you have a bead on a known piece of shit, you pull the trigger, you dont piss and moan about about niceties, legalities, or platitudes. you do what is necessary to protect yourself
I can see your points, although taking away someone's property I have never agreed with, ninja mined or not. SUn wouldn't have bought Steemit Inc if they didn't own the stake they did, or he would have paid a lot less. How mcuh did he pay? Anyone know?
iirc, it was75 million, but I dont remember if that was the actual amount of STEEM, or what he paid for it
my code of honor allows me to lie to liars, to steal from thieves, and to kill murderers with no qualms at all; it's all the more reason to act morally myself.
what comes around, goes around
DPoS is wounded but may be improved. May this be a hard lesson about ninja mined stakes.
Justin's reputation is forever lost.
Yup, it can be improved. Ppl must be led by popularity or money to still favor Justin's actions.
Curated for #informationwar (by @truthforce)
Delegate to the @informationwar! project and get rewarded
I haven't been able to log into steempeak for a few days now. Was wondering what was going on?
I concur with this conclusion.
In Bitcoin there is a bit of obscurity of who controls which coins apart from the lack of power a large stake holder has. Perhaps there are exceptions but aren't there super-whales for every alt-coin?
Even Bitcoin is an experiment and; Steem and Hive are experiments. When soft-fork 444 happened this fundamental became in your face but it was always there.
I think there are some good aspects to Steem and Hive but I pity the people who keep many thousands in Steem or Hive.
What happened to our STEEM for sale there, could it be a money that we are willing to lost now as most investment guru often preaching.
This is not completely true, in PoW networks those who controls the majority of the hash power will be able to skip some transactions and prevent them for being added as an update of the ledger status...
What prevents this from happening on Bitcoin is the economy cost associated with such an attack, and this economic cost is high because of the value the Bitcoin network is high... Justin was able to pull all of this out because of the stupid price Steem has, if Steem was decently priced 2ish$ I doubt he would dare to endanger the credibility of the network with these actions... Because for a man that pays millions to have a lunch with someone, messing with a 70M$ worth network is like playing with a backyard toy.
Other day I was reading about Zano and it uses hybrid PoS/PoW. Perhaps a route Hive can take.
Also, one of the exchange I invested in followed DPoS mechanism (and it exit scammed). Not saying it has to do anything with the mechanism but we definitely need better ways!