dPoS or PoS? Definitions and examples

Polkadot Validators
#1

So, I’d class Cosmos and Polkadot as PoS but seems others don’t…

Yes, the staking structure that forms might resemble dPoS if most staking falls to just a few large commercial operations but I still see difference in rules of operation regarding how you get to validate, how consensus is formed, etc. (After some googling, I can’t find anything that makes me see things different - on a technical or applied level.) EOS on the other hand - that’s clearly an example of dPoS…

Am I off-the-mark? Can anyone point me to writings explaining how Cosmos or Polkadot are actually dPoS or explain it to me? Different PoS infrastructure designs target different totals for number of participating validators - but just because they’re low-ish (with higher requirements) compared to say what’s planned for Ethereum, I’d not necessarily tag them as dPoS.

#2

Defining DPoS is kinda irritating. I would want to define it as any PoS where nomination / delegation is possible (that includes Cosmos and Polkadot). However, some people only strictly define DPoS as the scheme that Dan Larimer came up with. That wouldn’t be my preference, but given that it may lead to confusion I try to be careful with how I use DPoS.

With Polkadot, there is the intention that the network will allow you to ‘delegate’ your tokens to another address.

#3

For me, an electoral voting system for deciding who can validate defines dPoS… Eg, EOS. As a consequence, only 20-50 or so validators… Guess it’s use of the term ‘delegate’ - can mean bond, can mean stake via (ie. a staking ‘pool’) or can mean delegate a nominee to be considered as a validator in a vote…

#4

Well firstly DPoS is PoS. There might be things I don’t like about EOS’s implementation of PoS, but it is the same idea!

If we consider DPoS as a general idea, where many delegators delegate to validators who commit to being online and are required to be backed by a decent minimum stake to participate, then yes, Polkadot, along with e.g. Cosmos and Tezos are DPoS. The specifics of our NPoS are certainly different than Dan Larimer’s design.

Polkadot’s design calls for validators to be online and have decent network, but it also calls for a lot of them! The more guys we can convince to be online and have a decent network and get stake support, the more parachains we can support. We need way more than 21 validators if we want to have 100 parachains. If we have enough validators for that, probably 200-1000, we will be more decentralised than EOS and any Cosmos chain.

Part of the reason why are switching away from Tendermint style Byzantine agreement on every block is because we will have too many validators to do it fast.

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