An Interesting Discussion about LIPS and the potential implementation of a Dynamic Delegate System
Recently, on reddit, the delegate Tesla 369 wrote an interesting post in which he addressed some questions regarding LIPS and a possible implementation of a Dynamic Delegate System. The answers brought to an interesting discussion.
The first question concerns the ease of use of the Lisk software, especially if it should be designed to work on PCs that are used every day or on more powerful machines such as technically minded server admin type. Juan Gonzalez has answered this first question by stating that the two things are not mutually exclusive, but that it is preferable to run Lisk Core via admin types server, both to avoid an offline delegate that could slow down the network and for the need to accept incoming connections to forge.
The second concerns the pros and cons of having ‘as with the territory’ fixed delegate groups. This question (as for the remaining ones) was answered by Jan Hackfeld, stating that in general the groups of delegates imply less decentralization by increasing the likelihood of attacks by the collusion of many delegates. The current voting system provides a high incentive for delegates to form groups, which is why a proportional voting system has been proposed.
The third question concerns the possible repercussions on the individual active delegates changing every 4 to 6 months. Jan replied that, while social dynamics are difficult to predict, as regards the effects on the network / blockchain, if the new active delegates have similar productivity and are honest, there should be no impact on it.
The fourth question concerns the repercussions that fewer groups of delegates would bring. The answer was that, since the security guarantees of a blockchain usually depends on the honesty of a part of stakeholders (delegates, miners), having a decentralized network with many different stakeholders is important because it reduces the chances that they violate the security assumptions.
In the penultimate question Tesla369 asks whether there are currently LIPs in favor of a dynamic delegate system. Jan replies that if on the one hand they want to encourage a decentralized system and make it easier for new delegates to be voted among the active delegates (for the reasons expressed above), on the other he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to force the system of delegated to be dynamic because this would mean limiting the time a delegate can stay active at 4 months. This way, since people cannot be mapped into accounts, a person could create a new one after 4 months and push voters to change their vote.
The last question concerns the percentage of standby delegate wallets have had outbound / send type transactions within the last 4 to 6 months, which was obviously answered to consult Lisk Explorer regarding an example of standby delegates. For complete statistics, instead, you need to use the API of Lisk Core.
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