proposer

The incentive for the proposer is that they can't afford to keep purchasing rings.

Not only does the cost of the ring signal that the proposer is genuine.

The value of the ring compensates the proposer if the proposer divorcees.

You might expect it to be slightly different when the proposer is not the usual one (if a girl asks you out, is it different?

The burden is on the proposer if he wants me to believe that the age of brain structure maturation is determined by which toys a child plays with.

The result is that they direct all traffic to a single node, and don't spend a much time talking about leader/proposer selection (which could be useful to your needs).

Google essentially fixes their proposer because the have used Google specific details about the number of participants and their availability.

The proposer and the top five members are invited to participate in the development.

A personal note: Francesco Boccia (the proposer), Enrico Letta (old prime minister) and Matteo Renzi come all from the same politic party, Partito Democratico.

It makes this safe by requiring that each acceptor tell the proposer of the value for the highest ballot number it has accepted, and requires the proposer to switch proposal values when receiving such a message.

Given this configuration, it's impossible for A to be the proposer for 2 blocks in a row unless some of the other validators were absent.

Well, I'd disagree with at least two of your premises: 1) That the proposer of the question often understands the job.

Often the problem with an initial "no" to a proposal is that the proposer identifies the proposal tightly with the purpose and suggesting an alternative to the proposal without validating the goal reads as rejection of the goal.

For example if you say, "a random trader gets to be the first proposer", then the firms with more money just flood it with trader entries, increasing the chance that they get to be first.

Upon re-reading the paper, I also noticed that it says "In the beginning of the Propose step the [deterministically chosen] designated proposer for that round broadcasts a proposal to its peers via gossip" but it's not obvious to me what happens if that proposer fails to participate.

This allows the potential proposee to ensure that they aren't just one of many target (it would be expensive for the proposer to offer this token to many people) demonstrating long term commitment on the part of the proposer, and, at the same time, protects the proposer from "gold diggers" - the token, (e.g.