Byteball as solution to blockchain governance

Byteball is an innovative cryptocurrency, launched in 2016 25th December.

Unlike many others, it has an interesting take on many concepts, including a solution to the governance problem, it is not only r_ule-enforcing_, but also has a very innovative governance process for rule-making which includes the users.

Digital currencies such as Bitcoin is very good at rule-enforcing, without specifying mathematically who the rule makers are and their intent. As Bitcoin scaling problem shows where miners, full node operators, businesses and users are in conflict over which rule, how and when or if to activate it — a rule making process is needed.

Cryptocurrencies must not only rule-enforce but also have a mechanism to resolve future issues and follow new rules.

Ethereum showed with its forking and changing of existing rules, ie mutable immutability, that a rule-maker can be the initial developers and investors. To protect their investments, the immutable promise and rule was changed, breaking the cryptographic/mathematical promise. This solution, from the perspective of users, is similar to trusting a third-party. Most cryptocurrencies with a Foundation follow this path.

We need a cryptocurrency where the users of the system are also part of the governance model and can hold the rule-makers accountable and replaceable. Where the power of each rule-maker is limited.

Byteball is the solution. The unique composition of decentralized, distributed system, not fully trust-less, with a DAG instead of block-chain, and without trading Proof-of-Work/energy-waste for security — also hands power to the users.

The rule-enforcement is done by a majority of 12 witnesses, each of which can be replaced, and each of which does not have to be trusted individually, or continuously online. Only a majority of witnesses has to be trusted to not conspire. The users are allowed to change 1 witness in their witness-list relative to the the rest of the network — this allows gradual replacement of all witnesses, and more witnesses to be active at same time on the network.

The user has the power to select and replace the rule-enforcer in Byteball, with a simple click in a change of settings, becomes the rule-maker.

The witnessing in Byteball gives users of the system a powerful voice over rule-enforcers, while avoiding wasting energy for security as in traditional systems. A potential weakness could be dis-interest of users to select their witnesses, or merely selecting a group who would conspire for total control, the given choice is as much a potential weakness as it is powerful.

This article was inspired by Vili Lehdonvirta from http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/policy/the-blockchain-paradox-why-distributed-ledger-technologies-may-do-little-to-transform-the-economy/ if you like it, see https://byteball.org and help us build the best currency in our Slack.

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