DPoS Explanation (google came in handy for this one)
DPoS stands for Delegated Proof Of Stake. It's essentially just a system of block producing that involves witnesses, fast blocks, and voting. (lots of voting)
What is a witness, anyway?
A witness is someone who is voted on by the community to be able to produce blocks. This person should be someone trusted by the community, and someone who is knowledgeable about how the system works. Don't just vote for anyone. Vote for the people that you know are going to keep this platform a good place to be at. Voting for witnesses is one of the most important things you can do for the blockchain itself.
With that out of the way, we got decentralized block producing without mining (pretty cool huh)
Mining isn't a factor in DPoS. It's all done by the witnesses. What's great about it is that anyone can become a witness, but they aren't able to hold a position of power unless they are voted into it. These people also have safeguards in place so that they can't just block transactions and blocks. Taken from themerkle.com: Any transaction not included in the next block – or a block failing to create – will mean the next network block is twice the size. (https://themerkle.com/what-is-delegated-proof-of-stake)
this makes sure that we don't get people who will just block specific transactions (like voting) and keeps censorship at a minimum so low that it doesn't happen.
DPoS powers Graphene, the brainchild of the devs of BitShares.
Graphene is a high powered, high tx/s, high block rate MACHINE that pumps out blocks. It also provides little to no fees in steems case, and is and will power projects like BitShares, Steem, Eos, and others. it's pretty great.
This was kinda my first quality work, so thanks for reading through this.
Please, leave any constructive criticism or just jokes in comments, I love reading what people have to say about what I did. (i sound really egotistical for saying that.) With that being said, cya.