[Cryptography] asymmetric attacks on crypto-protocols - the rough consensus attack

[Lodewijk andré de la porte]

Beneficial dictator.

It's not uncommon for a single person to be able to very justly parse
arguments and make a choice. A good "beneficial dictator" will pull rank
only with regards to "roadmap" and as a Deus Ex Machina decision-maker.

Another advantage is how a person can be the central repository for the
team's spirit and goals. And it is convenient for public communication, too.

To ensure adoption - get commitment to include in softwares early on. Get
commitment of engineers to continue working on it, unless the dictator
calls it quits or a time period expires (after which new commitment should
be arranged).

The original post specifically stated no democratic solution could be made.
A board could be better, but then one would have to find a board-full of
beneficial-dictator quality people. Also, a board's internal communication
is strained far more than a single person's communication. So long as a
single person has sufficient expertise, there is little pain in having only
a single person.

We can take Bitcoin as an example; Gavin Anderson has a lot of coins
himself (incentive to make it work) and he worked on the software for a
very long time (extensive expertise). He's not the best (or maybe even
good) at everything, but he's humble enough to admit that. If he had more
power it would probably be good for Bitcoin. He would probably make some
unpopular choices, and some of them will even be bad choices. But at least
the choices would be made, and progress would be much faster.

Linus is another example of this being helpful. Without him calling the
canonical versions things would be probably fracture a thousand incoherent
manners.

If there's any truth to Steve Jobs' biography, it seems he was quite the
beneficial dictator too.

So, that'd be my fix for this threat.
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