Vlad Zamfir of Ethereum recently made a blog post describing a new Proof of Stake algorithm called Casper “the friendly ghost”. Its name is derived from its relationship to the GHOST (Greedy Heaviest-Observed Sub-Tree) proof-of-work protocol. For the full details of the proposed approach see their blog post.

I have been following MaidSafe since before I learned about Bitcoin and I learned about Bitcoin back when I could still mine full blocks with my own CPUs. Back in those early days MaidSafe was not creating a crypto-currency and instead focusing mostly on distributed storage. Much has changed since then and there are many great things that MaidSafe is doing. Today I would like to offer my opinions on their efforts.

Front running happens when a broker executes his own orders prior to executing the orders of his customers. This can be extremely profitable to the broker which can buy a stock just before a large buy order pushes the price up and then sell the stock just before a large sell order pushes the price down. This can occur any time one market participant has the ability to see orders from other participants and insert new orders in front of them. BitShares has an open order book and all transactions are broadcast for all to see with up to 10 seconds notice. This means that anyone can see your order and change their order to maximize their own profit. To protect users BitShares uses a you get what you asked for (YGWYAF) market engine that produces the same result for the market participants as perfect front running. This article explains why.

A black swan event is a very unlikely, yet possible event. The concept was first introduced by Nicholas Taleb in his book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”. All debts and contracts are vulnerable to sudden and unexpected movements in the market and investors would be unwise to fail to account for these events which are more common than we would like to believe. BitAssets, such as BitUSD and BitGold are no different than any other financial instrument and have limits beyond which they are unable to maintain their market peg. Today I would like to explore what scenarios would cause the peg to fail and how the BitShares network automatically responds to them.

Fluxer555 from bitsharestalk.org recently asked for my opinion on Basic Income. Seeing as how this topic has been brought to my attention many times since I started down the path of creating BitShares I thought it would be worth while to address it.

Everyone who has been following the evolution of crypto currency exchanges has learned how expensive it is to comply with all of the regulations in the money transmission business. It can literally takes years and millions of dollars to get permission from the government to start an exchange that accepts dollars for crypto currencies. All alt-coin communities have experienced the frustration of having to go through two exchanges (dollars to bitcoin and bitcoin to alt-coin) just to enter or exit the ecosystem. This two step process is expensive and ultimately limits adoption. Today I would like to present the case for abandoning fiat all together and adopting a truly free market currency: gold, silver, and other metals.

The following is a repost of the delegate bid by Indolering. Indolering spent a week with us in early January to help revive our vision for DNS under BitShares. Indolering has presented one of the best, most comprehensive delegate bids to date. Here is what he had to say:

It isn’t easy taking a hard line against violence while searching for viable solutions to secure the life, liberty, and property from all. I don’t just preach non violence and then hope for the best, I actively look for creative solutions that can be implemented today. Every now and then someone like Vitalik Buterin will post a challenge to my views. Today I would like to address this most recent challenge.

Decentralization is a key characteristic of all crypto-currency projects, yet it is a concept that is often loosely defined. Understanding the minimal requirements for decentralization can help us to optimize performance, minimize cost, and ultimately make the debate over who is most decentralized moot.

Fractional reserve banking has been practiced almost since the beginning of banking. It is at the heart of all bank runs and is the reason the Federal Reserve was created. I have long believed fractional reserve lending to be an inherent evil leading to the inflation of the money supply and the boom/bust business cycle. I suspect that a most libertarians and crypto-currency enthusiasts have also developed a negative opinion about fractional reserves. In fact I have often referred to the system as fictional reserve banking.