Neo Review Part 5: Important Unanswered Questions About Neo

In our previous posts on Neo we discussed Neo Basics, Economics, the Consensus Protocol, and How to Set Up Nodes. Today we want to pose some questions to the development team and Neo community. This post is not meant to spread FUD, but rather to gain understanding of the blockchain design, seek community input, and determine timelines for updates.

In fact, we the authors of this article, hold Neo as one of our top 10 investments in our overall cryptocurrency portfolio. We are also working on setting up a Full Node in hopes of soon having a Bookkeeping/Validator node.

1. Questions about Voting

When will Neo holders be able to vote for Bookkeeper/Validator nodes? How often do these votes occur? Do Neo holders have to vote every cycle or will their vote stand until changed? How is the voting system protective against possible cartels?

Currently the Neo PC wallet does not have the voting functionality coded in. We assume this is a high priority as it is how trustless consensus and dBFT are enforced. Perhaps there is command line code options for this but we have not heard of one.

As we showed in our last article, it appears as though the VotingTransaction function by which Neo holders vote will allow for voting for anywhere from 1 to 1024 Validators. There is also a 10 GAS fee assigned with this function, presumably to prevent spamming the system. Since it costs GAS to vote we would like to know how often voting occurs (every block, every day, every week, etc) and the time in force of each vote (i.e. does the vote last till the next voting cycle or until we revoke it?) If voting is too frequent, 10 GAS will be a barrier to voting as the price of the underlying increases with market demand.

2. Questions about rating Validator nodes

How will Bookkeeper/Validator nodes be evaluated by Neo holders? Will metrics be released to Neo holders regarding the percentage of validated blocks each Bookkeeper/Validator performs? Will these metrics be created in a decentralized way?

Lenders check a potential borrower’s credit score before giving them a loan to ensure the borrower is credit-worthy, i.e. honest. In the same way how will Neo holders determine which Validator is the best? Neo holders will obviously want to vote for the most honest, highest functioning Validators. Will there be something akin to a credit score for Validator/Bookkeeper nodes?

3. Questions about becoming a bookkeeper/validator

Is a CA certificate required to become a Bookkeeping/Validator node? How do non-Chinese obtain a certificate? When will people be able to enroll as Bookkeeper candidates?

It is unclear from documentation if CA certificates are required. If it is required, how do westerners go about getting them and what is the cost associated to acquiring it?

Also, the Neo wallet does not yet have the functionality coded in for enrolling as a bookkeeper/validator. Checking the Antshares/Neo block explorer here you can see that no one has done this for almost a year and enrollment has only occurred 8 times since the creation of the Neo blockchain.

4. Questions about new validators

How will new Bookkeeper/Validator Nodes with no history of block validation be able to enter into the Validator pool? How many validator/bookkeeper nodes can be elected?

As discussed in question 2, we presume some metric (akin to a credit score) will be available to Neo holders. Creditors are cautious to lend money to individuals with no credit history. Likewise, Neo holders will be unlikely to vote for new Validator Nodes. Is there any mechanism proposed to prevent early Validator Nodes from monopolizing consensus space and thus obtaining all of the transaction fees?

Closing Remarks

Again, this post was designed to stimulate discussion regarding the design of the Neo Protocol. We hope it leads to important insights for the development of this new, exciting technology.