After releasing the article “DPoS Explained — Simply”, and providing instructions on node deployment, we have received an extensive array of feedback from the community and delegates in-regards to the ADAMANT network.

Since decentralization is a critical attribute of ADAMANT, our team has assessed the possible improvements within the ecosystem, taking lessons of experience from our fellow Lisk colleagues.

How much do you believe that Lisk is decentralized? To become a Lisk delegate, you must attain a total of 29 million tokens worth of votes — this is currently equal to 145,000,000 USD in LSK tokens. Furthermore, over 1,600 delegates in the Lisk Network have been forever suspended into Standby mode.

Let’s take a look at the lowest-ranked delegate in the network (Rank 101), that is, the last in the list. Vote weight — 28,727,737 LSK. Hard entry point, isn’t it?

This is because in the current dPoS based system, one «thick» wallet can give «equally thick» votes to a large list of users at once. Thus, it is possible that one wallet can vote for a list of 101 delegates, subjecting the entire network to its control.

We decided to reconsider this approach by dividing the vote weight of each wallet by the number of its votes:

Vote weight = ADM / Votes,

Where Vote weight is the value of the wallet’s vote, ADM — the number of ADM tokens on this wallet, Votes — the number of votes of this wallet.

Suppose Bob has 100 coins, Alice has 80. Bob votes (delegates influence) for Bill and Helen, and Alice for Mark. Since Bob votes for two delegates, his vote is 100/2, that is, 50. Then Bill and Ellen have the following impact on the blockchain: 100/2 = 50, and Mark — 80. That is, Mark’s influence is greater than that of Bill and Helen. In the case of Lisk’s dPoS, Bill and Helen are more influential (100) than Mark (80), and that is unfair.

Another important paramater that affects Vote weight in ADAMANT is Productivity. Network needs diligent delegates, which guarantie no missed blocks—so that every message within the ADMANT Messenger will be delivered with no delay. High-productivity of delegates means that the produced block count is far greater than missed blocks.

Final formula for Vote weight is:

Vote weight = ADM / Votes * Productivity,

Productivity counts from 0.05% to 100%, reducing Vode weight for delegates which don’t bring the necessary attention to their nodes. When a delegate begins to forge, its Productivity will not be taken into account for first 200 blocks (sum of missed and produced).

We called this approach «Fair dPoS». Thus, the impact of «thick wallets» will be reduced to reasonable, and the entry point for forging will become much more attractive. Impact of Productivity will motivate delegates to run nodes on more powerful machines, rather than cheap ones. No less important is the dynamics — buying and selling ADM and delegates’ Productivity will regularly rebuild the list of 101 forging delegates, and each delegate in waiting (Standby) is more likely to return to forging when rebuilding the network’s votes.

Users who have very few ADM tokens on their wallets also have the opportunity to participate in forging, merging into pools.

Thus, registering as a delegate within the ADAMANT network becomes more interesting.

These changes go live starting release 0.4.0, from block 4359464.