Monetary value as data object or projection of ledger entries

[neo]

@oetyng, I found this post from a couple of years ago where someone has basically said what David just did above but perhaps a little more concise. Just click on the quote title and it should take you to the post in the topic. Actually you might find the whole topic interesting even though some of it is outdated.

Also when you read what I quoted remember that group size was 4 for testing and is in no way suitable security wise.

@dirvine, is the following quote accurate enough?

@oillio

Here is my cocktail party explanation of the concept of consensus:
Every coin has a record stored on the network with a coin ID and an owner.
Within the network, there are a set of nodes randomly chosen to act as the manager of a given coin. A group is currently 4 nodes.
When nodes enter or exit the network, churn events are generated. These churn events will periodically change which nodes make up the management group for any given coin.
There are a set of rules that define how a coin record can be changed (for instance, the current owner must sign a request to transfer ownership).
The management group is responsible for maintaining the current state of the coin and for validating any change requests. 3 of the 4 members of the group must sign off on any change for it to be valid. Similarly, when you request the current state of the coin, you must get an answer from 3 of the 4 managers for the response to be valid.
Now, 3 out of 4 nodes is not secure enough for a currency, so this is where the chain comes in. Each of the 4 manager nodes has a manager group of its own. All actions and responses of the coin manager group are monitored by the node managers. In the same way as with coins, any action must be signed off on by 3 out of the 4 members of the manager’s management group for it to be valid. This management of manager nodes concept can be continued to chain as many management groups as is required together. In this way, the designers can choose how many nodes must be included in any decision to reach consensus. This is in contrast to a blockchain based system where every node in the network must validate every transaction ever recorded in the chain.