You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Why STEEM Is Such The Secret Nobody Knows
@taskmaster4450 thank you for this informative post! 😊
Just a sincere question. I was recently talking to someone about Steemit and he was quite skeptical about its potential. He cited the centralization as one issue - in that power is concentrated in the hands of the Witnesses. His point was that there is a possibility for collusion amongst the Witnesses, which makes it nothing more than a ponzi/pyramid scheme.
I didn't know how to counter as I am not very knowledgeable about the technical aspects of Steem.
May I just ask your opinion of this? (:
Really appreciate your input! (And anyone else's as well.)
Thanks once again!
That is the argument many use against DPOS. It takes a super majority, 17 out of 21, to get anything done. That is quite a collusion to get. So the likelihood of that isnt great. Plus, those 21 can be voted out at any time if word got out. Unlike elsewhere, votes can be placed or removed at any time.
Also, DPOS is faring better than POW in decentralization. In POW the miners took over. Bitcoin is basically run by 5 or 6 mega-miners who control more than half power.
Finally, I would say the fact that the reward system is ever in operation helps with that issue. STEEM is consistently being doled out to users, 75% which goes to authors. Over time, we see more hands holding STEEM, which affects the possibility of Witness make up if people do vote.
It is not an easy question because none of us can see the future. One interesting note is Ethereum is going moving to POS after using POW...Is that confirmation for POS?
@taskmaster4450 I truly appreciate you taking time to answer my query! Learnt alot from your response (:
It is super important to cast your vote for witnesses if we want this platform to grow and be a good place for all of us , but we need good witnesses . Currently among top witnesses we have some serious fraudsters like @themarkymark who only got there by opening new accounts and casting witness votes for himself . The only thing he does here is running bots that upvote his own accounts and flags users he disagree with . That is not the job of the witness and that has to change ....
flagged for percentages @steemflagrewards
Hey, @joeylim.
I'm wondering what this person you were talking with would want as far as decentralization goes that would be better than witnesses? I mean, the practical use can get messy when humans are involved, yes, but a purpose of being a witness is to run a witness server to keep the blockchain up and running and blocks validated. This is done on several servers in different locations throughout the world, rather than on one server usually ran by a corporation or an organization. So, in that respect, witnesses are decentralized.
If we speak to governance, well, the witnesses would have to have a 17/21 supermajority to make any kind of changes. Right now, I'm not sure how well that works, but when everyone is doing in their job as they should, things that aren't ready for the blockchain don't go on the blockchain, and unless there's that level of consensus, changes aren't supposed to take place. I think in theory, that's a good thing. How the execution of it takes place is another story.