[Cryptography] Our leader opines on cryptocurrencies

[jamesd at echeque.com]

On 2019-07-26 12:18 am, james hughes via cryptography wrote:
> but will 
> the number of peers be enough to prevent collusion among the peers?

How many big bitcoin mining pools are there?  Probably about four that 
matter.  Few enough to be worrying.

In general a board with half a dozen to a dozen or so board members 
mostly avoids collusion by board members against shareholders - in part 
because a board member and a big shareholder are the same sort of 
people, who probably play a round of golf together from time to time, 
and a big shareholder the same sort of person as many of the smaller 
shareholders.

So my wild assed guess is that a hundred or so peers, with half a dozen 
or a dozen or so of the peers with the biggest weight of stake delegated 
to them by the biggest client wallets usually being sufficient to sign 
the latest block, would probably suffice.

Each peer checks the entire blockchain, and autoforks if the rules are 
broken. Each client checks that small part of the blockchain that 
directs affects himself.

In order to scale, need centralization.  For users to be secure, need 
decentralization.  The Paxos protocol combines the two in manner 
analogous to a corporation.



---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus