Good morning prof. I appreciate the opportunity given to me to participate in your class and in confirmation of my understanding of the teaching below is my assignment.

Home work

1. What is the difference between PoS and DPoS? Advantages and disadvantages? Name a few block chain project that uses the DPoS concensus mechanism and indicate the scaling capacity?

The vitality of block chain in the crypto ecosystem cannot be over emphasized.

Blockchain as a decentralized embodiment have the ability to compute data of transactions of users in the blockchain without the need of a middleman via peer to peer process.

Blockchain is a chain of data-containing blocks linked to a server.

Blockchain is void of corruption because of the absence of middlemen.

Blockchain which is a decentralized system, unlike the centralized system where decisions are made by the leader or the leading group, has no leader and to that effect, no pivot authority.

Now, the question is, how are decisions made? How are the aims of blockchain achieved?

Decision in block chain are made by consensus reached by everyone on the block chain both the big investors and the small investors.

People are given the authority to determine the the validity of a transaction.

The mechnism by which people on a blockchain achieve consensus is known as consensus mechanism.

What is consensus mechanism?

Consensus mechanism talks about how consensus is reached in a blockchain by its users.

It is through this mechanism that users agree on a thing before its execution. Consensus in a block chain ensure security agreement and trust.

The **proof -of - work was the first consensus statistics in blockchain history.

There are many types of consensus mechanism utilized by different blockchain they include;

• Proof-of-stake (PoS)
• Delegated Proof-of-stake (DPoS)
• Proof-of-capacity (PoC)
• Proof-of-work (PoW)
• Proof-of-burn
• Proof-of-authority
• Proof-of-elapsed time (PoeT) etc

The Proof-of-stake (PoS)

In the year 2011 PoS was proposed to substitute proof-of-work. Although PoS and PoW shared the same goal, they achieve it through different means.

In PoS, miners are removed, there is a reduction in energy consumption and there it is also void of nodes.
PoS, unlike PoW you stake your assets.

Individuals placed their staking on intervals, and transaction validation is don by a randomly selected node. i.e the system selects a node for block or transaction validation.
User's selection for the next block is determined by the user's staked amount.

Factors that determine selection in PoS as validator

• Age of coin: the period of stake determines the chances of user's selection. i.e how long have a user stake his coin.
• Amount of stake: high stake = higher chance of being selected.
• Randomization: users with the highest stake and lowest hash are being selected at random for validation.

Validation for next transaction is been signed and added to the blockchain by Nodes.
The node is then being compensated with transaction fees linked to the block it mined after a successful validation.

Miners are also compensated with funds gotten from transaction fees.

Advantages of PoS

• High level of security: because a node can loose his stake on any little mistake, PoS prevents fraud and any form of fraudulent act.

• Autonomy : due to the randomization process, PoS is decentralized overwriting the need for a mining pool.

• User-friendly: it is easily accessible by users and have no need for high electrical energy.
  The amount of energy consumed in PoS is reduced by forging of blocks.

Delegated Proof-of-stake (DPoS)

Delegated proof-of-stake was established to eliminated centralization in blockchain and the fraudulent activity associated with centralization.

DPoS was developed in the year 2014 by Daniel Larimer an american software developer founder of steemit, bitshares and EOSIO software.

DPoS was developed as a substitute for both PoS and PoW because it is more feasible and scalable. And for the fact that DPoS does not require high energy consuming machines it was more preferable.

Bitshare was the first DPoS based blockchain developed.

How it works

It is arranged usually through an election process. Some influential users are being voted for for the role of witness by the people in the blockchain.

Witnesses create or add blocks to the blockchain.For example, the affairs of steemit blockchain is governed by 21 witnesses, and they are in charge of transaction validation.

The duty of delegates include;

• To determine the blockchain transaction fees.
• To determine the pay of a witness.
• To ascertain the interval of the block on the blockchain
• To determine the size of blocks on the blockchain.

It is likely impossible for witnesses to indulge in spiteful activities for the fear of loosing their position to others, because there is a continuous election process on the blockchain.

DPoS as a democratic approach to blockchain gives everyone equal opportunity to be elected by users as a witness.

Advantages

• Autonomy and democracy due to its decentralized nature.
• Low energy consuming
• mild transaction fees.
• Honesty in the part of witnesses for the fear of loosing their position.
• The democratic nature gives users the opportunity to make their choices as to who will be their witness.

Disadvantages

• Reduced number of witnesses
• There is high probability to minimum vote.
• The presence of delegates, witnesses and reps makes DPoS look like a centralized system, where friends of whales are granted control of the network.

Differences between PoS and DPoS

PoS	DPoS
1) Minimum scalability	High scalability
2) To worst for financial use cases	To worst for social use cases
3) Block creators are selected via evolution	The masses vote block creator
4) Partiality in selection because only those that have high stake and low hash are selected	Everyone is provided with equal right to be voted for
5) Randomly determined consensus	Trust plays the highest role in consensus

Name a few blockchain project which use DPoS consensus mechanism and indicate the scaling capacity.

The ability of a blockchain to enlarge its capacity to process more transactions per second is known as the scalability of the blockchain.
Some blockchain that uses the DPoS consensus mechanism and their capacity are listed below;

Steem

Source

Authors recieve steem and some other tokens for sharing information on steemit platforms. Its scaling capacity is rated above that of bitcoin and ethereum network.

Bitshares

Source
Bitshares scalability is 100,000

EOS

Source

EOS has a scalability of 10,000 transaction per second

Tron

Source

Tron has a scalability of 1,000 transactions per sec.

Nano

Source

Nano has a scalability of 1,000 transactions per second

Conclusion

DPoS from this teaching have been ascertained to be the best consensus mechanism for use in blockchain.

I appreciate prof. @ sapwood for the teaching

CC
@sapwood
@awesononso
@reminiscence01

Best regards @wilismith