RE: Reputational Enhanced Delegated Proof-of-Stake (REDPOS)
Thank you @stoodkev! In my opinion "STEEM REDPOS" doesn't need to be theoretically perfect. Actually any protocol will have its flaws.
But "STEEM REDPOS" should just be better than "STEEM DPOS" to try it.
The STEEM community is an already 4 years old one. Time and experience is an human factor. If "REDPOS" was implemented on day 0 year 0, REP could have been heavily distorted by "evil" witnesses.
The fun fact, is that they didn't knew that they were "mining REP" for 4 years.
Also, "REP" is not the current STEEM REP, REP should be a better REP system as defined by @blocktrades
What community on the real world elects babies as representatives? You need to be at least 18 years old (or more), depending the community or even have been a steady resident before becoming an authority.
Likewise, STEEM is already 4 years old. Why not demand that a witness account is at least 2 years old?
If STEEM was a 40 years old chain, why not demand that a witness has at least a 10 year presence on the chain?
Ok, if STEEM was 100 years old, don't demand at least 50 years presence, but you can set a max cap (I don't know, 15 years).
So idealy a "REDPOS" should create "defense power" that emanates from experienced members of the chain.
Experience and residence time, is a factor of any community. That should be coded somewhere on a social chain governance.
I don't think the accounts'age should matter. A malevolent actor could buy old accounts and in the other hand a benevolent new actor with lots of experience should be able to witness.
Other than that I agree that rep could and should be better.
I agree each parameter that constitutes a REP could be gamed. A malevolent actor could buy not just an old account but a "good REP" account, after analizing the REP system. In any case it is another level of defense for the social blockchain (compared to plain DPOS).
I don't agree on this point. Here comes into consideration the "community" aspect of social blockchain. That benevolent actor could have lots of experience on other blockchains or even o other community oriented blockchains. But a representative is not the kind of position that is usually of global reach, a witness on a REDPOS would not be just an engineer.
An engineer is a global reach position. It doesn't matter if his previous job was on another company or even if that company was located on another country.
However, a community representative usually isn't "imported" or "exported". If he changes community, he needs to build trust. It's not that a Senator from "country A" then goes to "country B" and can be elected. We don't see that happening on the real world.
That's the reason why a newly created user can´t become witness from day one on a 4 years old chain.
It would be sort of a "conservative flavor" (towards the community) added to the protocol. In my opinion, a valid one.