Wow, after reading about how PoS and forging works in NXT, I think POI is a much better idea. I don't have a mountain of NXT so there really isn't much of an incentive for me to leave the server portion running. To me, the more people that contribute to the network the more secure it is (decentralization), and as the currency dilutes, more people will be in the same position. More people will hoard to create stake and that defeats the point of a currencies fluidness. If you want to use the currency as a store of wealth (gold, you don't transact in it, just keep it for stability), fine. But, for a "fiat" to succeed by its' very nature, a lot of people need to want and use it.
Maybe I don't fully understand PoS, but this just doesn't feel all that terrific. Still, better than PoW I think...
Also, on the one hand, I like the idea that perhaps increasing one's node(s) with infrastructure results in a direct benefit (like adding infrastructure to a utility and increasing customer base). If I want to be a big participant I can do it on my own dime for fun and it benefits the network. On the other hand, it seems like it might encourage centralization again if folks wanted to build huge node farms then we are back to ASIC farm dangers again. So it is almost like you need some sort of "difficulty" co-efficient like in mining where the participating nodes have scale to a point and then diminishing returns. I have no idea how you'd enforce that as any method I can think of easily bypassed (by IP? by client ID?, etc.)
Enlighten me if you know better. I'll need to pour over the NEM POI docs.
(This may be offtopic so feel free to ignore)
In NXT to don't secure the network when you forge with a small NXT balance, that is why you don't get any rewards. If you run a node with few NXT you "stabilize" the network, but for security purposes you don't add anything. That is the reason why the Balanceforging/Totalbalanceforging blockforgingchance was introduced. This can't be exploited. If the POI can be exploitet is yet to be seen.
I have been talking about this on the NXT forum but have met a lot of resistance. The top 15 accounts take 2/3 of all transaction fees for themselves. Probably another 20-30 accounts are taking a big part of the 1/3 left over, but I can't say for sure because I didn't see the numbers.
The problem with this is that the top 20-40 accounts are taking most of the transaction fees. These are all people that have close to $1,000,000 in NXT or actually much more in some of the cases. So basically if a person doesn't have $500,000 in NXT, there is no benefit in forging. To me in the long term, this makes for an extremely flawed system for protecting a network. I'll admit though I am not much on a technical side.
I always liked the idea of in bitcoin that there were thousands of people running a node. In NXT hearing that 20-40 people have the only nodes that matter is a little scary to me.
With NEM, we start off with thousands of users and lots of people incentivised to run a node, even people that don't own a lot of NEM.
I really like NXT a lot, and I mean A LOT. I think NXT is the best thing since bitcoin, and Ripple is also pretty promising too. But still, until Ripple actually gets partners and a decent user base, it is worthless (the partners they want to have will actually lose money if they join Ripple). And until NXT can convince me that their POS is actually stable long term, I am a bit worried. On top of that the fee now for making a NXT transaction is 8 or 9 cents, where in other services it can be magnitudes time cheaper, like in Ripple where it is 10,000,000 times cheaper. I have brought up the fact that the fee being so high on NXT forums and get blasted that it isn't too high, I am guessing by some of those accounts with over a million USD as they are getting nice profits from those transaction fees.
With NEM and POI, we have people that can form a network and a good way to strengthen the network (in theory, we have to see the code first to know for sure). NEM has also addressed the continual thorn in the side of NXT too which is the original stakeholder problem.