suggestion for the protocol - make 12 the minimum number of witnesses rather than the exact number about ocore

[tonyofbyteball]

First, what's the point?
Second, how would it look like? what would the 1-mutation rule be like? how the majority would be defined?
No doubt, more flexibility means more complexity, greater attack surface. It must be justified.

[thedavidmeister]

@tonyofbyteball yes that's fair.

the point is to try and make the system of witnesses naturally more decentralised by making the pool of witnesses larger.

personally i think a lot of the difficulty changing witnesses currently comes from the wallet UI rather than the protocol (see linked issue), but this issue is a summary of discussions that have been happening in slack.

[SY-MEDIA]

As I understand it... This at first may sound like a way to allow a wallet to improve protection as needed, but it could actually also allow for a detrimental concentration of poorly selected witnesses along a particular chain. Seeing as the network as a whole allows an unlimited number of witness, having this 12+1 limit per wallet keeps things flexible and evolving, yet modulated; so witness influence (or possible collusion) is kept consistently inconsequential across the network. The current witness and finality rules are simple, elegant and deliver mutually safe chains.

[thedavidmeister]

@SY-MEDIA you are correct in theory, but please also see byteball/obyte-gui-wallet#175