Qwizzie over the years I've had a lot of respect for you, I recognise you provide a very useful service in the dash ecosystem,. Information you share is useful, you are always friendly and helpful to newcomers. The way you have fought trolling on this very thread over the years is also commendable. I can forgive your perma bull outlook. However I feel I have to point in the debate with toknormal about the reward allocation, it comes across like you think you are fighting a troll. But you are not. This conversation with toknormal is a debate about economics of Dash between people who on all sides want dash to succeed and are invested in Dash. Therefore I would prefer if you would stop attacking personality, accusing of being a cult, calling up on grammer, and things like that, I suggest either debate on the same terms you are presented or don't debate and please don't fall back to troll fighting tactics against your fellows.

To toknormal i would suggest this is looking like a lost cause, particularly on this thread. Would you consider going back to discord where your arguments meet a wider audience? (I actually do not believe the dash masternode community is in any way ready to accept these ideas yet sadly)

I  agree with the idea that masternode rewards do not support the price the way mining rewards do. It would be nice to see real, heavyweight debate on this matter.  However I also acknowledge that speculation can dwarf those effects at times, masking them in effect (though not forever). While the masternode network was growing this effect was hidden. Also during the last speculative bubble, also hidden. Dash went to the moon based on being an alternative to bitcoin which was struggling to scale and grappling high fees and facing the bitcoin cash hardfork. Dash was one of the main beneficiaries of this as a hedge against the fork and a project which could scale. The heady days of that bubble are long gone. The draining effect of masternode rewards are not and also not hidden anymore if you care to look. As a dash community we have to seriously consider this idea. We can't rely on an ever growing masternode network to boost the price (which seems to be Ryan Taylor's main hope) to recall days gone past when there was lots more room to grow it. Perhaps there is an unforseen set of circumstances that will once again make dash flavour of the month and another big speculative bubble looms somewhere unseen on the horizon ready to temporarily hides the drain of value from masternode rewards being set too high. The drain of value, wether obscured or not is a constant negative effect on price. Assumption ;-)

Peace out

Yes, and the famous "We don't need all the hashrate"

I think that could be read as "We don't need all the scarcity or store of value"

Very true another argument that the proposal will aggravate the problem its trying to remedy

I've superimposed the price chart with the number of masternodes. And with as much accuracy as I can scaled the timescales on both to line up.

chart

Interested on how people view this.

Some of my thoughts..

Initial ramping up of masternodes, first 3000 or so barely affected price. I'm assuming whales creating masternodes from their existing stash (obtained in large part from fast/instamine origin) would account for a lot of that?

After first year of masternodes price and number of masternodes both growing. Can probably assume growing masternode count was a big factor supporting price until start of 2019 with people buying dash from the market to use as collateral.

Big distortion caused by speculative bubble. However by start of 2019 number of masternodes saturated (it had already been slowing down for some time before that). Bear market in price had already been underway for a year. No more support from growing masternode layer. Dash bear market prolonged, seen by dash crashing out of the green price channel I've marked.

Today, it looks like masternode number is roughly at a ceiling. May be able to go slightly higher. Price is still down approx 95% from its high. Dash masternode community trying to enforce more rewards for masternode owners. To entice more dash to be bought and hodl'd as collateral. Will this work? Will it be sustainable? How high can the number of masternodes go?


I think toknormal made good points in above post and other posts. we need to plan for equilibrium state of a masternode layer no longer growing. Which will be hit at some point if not already. This shouldn't be something to fear, most coins manage to find holders who want to hold only for capital gains and store of wealth. Dash needs to do what they do, to attract store of wealth, the same way. By maximising scarcity of supply. Which is what toknormal has patiently explained many times

Price is possibly/ hopefully sustainable at this level. However if price rises we should factor that the masternode rewards get more and more expensive for the market to sustain the higher price goes.  

Sorry to hear. I can understand disappointment in Dash since 2017 but that doesn't mean scam IMO. None of us had crystal ball. I thought the features and innovations combined with governance would cement dash in the top 5 or 10 back then. Hadn't realised at that point how  important scarcity through mining actually was. Thought the masternode rewards were a free lunch  (as most masternode owners still do)

Dahaa whats the deal with you? Are you invested in monero?

That is fine for those few  that live in countries like yours. Doesn't help the rest much

Based on cherry picking just 2 other bad performers. I gave you a list of other 100% mined coins doing significantly better. You can ignore reality all you want. You can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. Or maybe in your case you can

Just because other factors at play doesn't mean ignore the elephant in the room

What we can conclude is Dash is the worst of those three, also worse than litecoin down 84.57%, worse than bitcoin SV down 62.4%, worse than monero down 74.1%. we can conclude you cherry pick other worst performers as if they are the average and Dash is still worse. Bitcoin down 33.35%.

I'll help you understand scarcity. It would be higher, not because emission rate changes. Because more difficult to obtain, more expensive. Scarcity does not just mean limited quantity but also how desirable and how difficult to obtain.

With all the innovation, features, superior governance etc of Dash you'd think it would be one of the best performers not worst wouldn't you?

The mining difficulty would adjust higher, making the scarcity /store of value attribute much stronger.

Consider that in 100% proof of work coins they already have 100% of the reward. This idea is already tested and in action in real crypto market

Dash versus bitcoin

chart

So heres Dash versus bitcoin on log scale. Two long standing channels still engulfing all the Dash BTC price action. Dash in a bearish channel since 2017 still not close to trying to break up out of it. An even bigger channel has defined DashBTC for most of Dash history. Bottom of which is a very well tested (and should be solid) level, I've marked with green arrows. Last time Dash hit that bottom there was a big ultraradar inspired pump, after which he got out of dash. Lets hope someone steps in to pump dash again.

Did you see the impact of those Dash innovations versus for example proof of work coins with much less innovation? Did you see the way the market reacted to the release of chainlocks?

Don't you question how Dash with all those features struggles even against coins with almost no innovation?

Anyway I hope you are right qwizzie because my dash bags are heavy and I want a big dash pump to lighten them.

Bitcoin innovator of proof of work. Peercoin innovator of proof of stake.

The market shows me that proof of stake coins have not held value as well as proof of work. Dash is only 45% proof of work, soon to be lowered even further to only 40% proof of work. This is where most of its store of value comes from and is only 40% effective.  

ie 9 millions coins that are produced at 100% proof of work with competitive mining, I would expect to be valued more than 9 million coins produced with 40% proof of work which would be valued more than 9 million pure proof of stake produced coins. If all else is equal. You only need to look at the (store of value) market to see that preference.

Masternode owners refusing to consider they will be better off if the masternode reward is lowered (instead of raised). It reminds me of the monkey trap parable where the monkey grabs some nuts in a pot and then can't escape because it won't let go of the nuts and its cleched fist is too big to pull back through the small hole. Trapped by own greed.

The threshold be passed as low as 60%. Hardly a convincing majority.

Silly of me to think you were replying to the last two posts and not stuff from weeks ago. Well I guess we disagree on something afterall. If this threshold can be changed willy nilly, whats the point of it at all?

I think I missed the part where we disagreed. What I read was toknormal elaborating on why the block reward hammers dash. Which I completely endorse.


Hold on this isn't a normal update though.  Dash core group make proposal to take away rewards from miners AND lower the miner threshold needed to activate the change at the same time. Doesn't that smell bad?
Why lower to 60% if not because you are worried 80% won't be reached? Dash Core Group are afraid they don't have support from miners?
If this is true its a big deal.

Dash versus USD

(Dash vs BTC included in faint cyan colour)

chart

This dash versus fiat chart shows two large timescale channels, one bullish dating from 2014 to 2018. Followed by bear channel which Dash is still in the bottom half of, trying to push up through the centre line.

There are reasons to hope, based on technicals, that dash might be starting a new bull trend. (Bitcoin appears much more clearly to be heading that way and will probably drag all alts with it). But based on the long timescale picture from this chart Dash is still very much in its bear channel. It does appear like the low was around the end of last year with a brief lower spike back in March. I'd like to see dash break up into the top half of that bear channel.

I've marked a few milestones on the chart too. I think you can strongly argue that Dash benefited a lot from the bitcoin scaling war. After the creation of bitcoin cash however, there is now arguably a more obvious candidate than dash to take the big blocker  / low fees demand, not forgetting bitcoin SV and litecoin. Big blocks and cheap fees will not be a unique or big selling point for Dash.

Disappointingly chainlocks entered with a massive whimper.  It seems like the market doesn't care about chainlocks.  

Dash wants to be the best payments option, which means best digital cash. Instant transactions, cheap fees, optional privacy. Dash already has these. The forever promised decentralised evolution of easy user names instead of guids still to materialise. But even when it does. How do we know the market demands that? It didn't seem to demand Dash's instantsend, privatesend, chainlocks protection very much. Dash platform when it finally does arrive. Will it be demanded? Or are nice usernames just a nice to have that isn't really valued? Or, is dash platform supposed to take on etherium and provide a superior smart contracts platform or something ?  (a fools errand if so)

Does the world demand digital cash right now? Maybe it prefers digital money, ie store of value. In these unprecedented times are you better off spending cash or saving money.
 
Dash has fallen versus bitcoin much more than versus fiat (the faint cyan chart superimposed). In times like these (deep in bear markets) there is a lot of soul searching and introspection. Every dasher has an opinion what has gone wrong.

Ryan Taylor thinks miners are selling too much of the fresh supply, he thinks the dash network 'pays' them too much. He thinks we don't need the hashrate, we already have too much hashrate (AND has managed to engineer an actual change to the block reward protocol to take away miner reward). This will be implemented soon assuming miners support. Is Ryan correct with this assumption? Most masternode owners jump at the chance to take miner reward for themselves and voted accordingly. I am extremely unconvinced.

Toknormal and very few others ( I include myself with him) have very vocally on forums argued that this is the exact wrong approach. That the market appears to value 100% mined cryptos. And that dash should increase the allocation to miners to have a chance of competing without such strong headwinds. Far from decreasing miner allocation it should be increased. We think the market demands these coins born from the crucible of competitive mining. The market values them for scarcity and store of value.

There are others with different opinions still. Bigrcanada thinks speculation is still very unsophisticated and not based on any real fundamentals and in large part this is because dash is a victim of trolling. (dahaa anyone)

Anyway, I'll try and conclude. Dash still in a bear trend but chances high it will be dragged up with the whole cryptosphere. It does look like bottom reached versus fiat and bitcoin. Block reward changes will improve store of value if you are to believe the masternode community. In my opinion this will most definately not improve the store of value proposition for Dash. Dash is better than fiat and I predict will have a bull run against fiat. Against other pure proof of work coins. I believe Dash has fundamental headwinds because of the block allocation.

I lay it on the line. I hope the bigrcanada idea has merit and dash has sudden pump on some whimsical unsophisticated crypto wave I am so far not seeing evidence 'payments' is it.

Who decided to lower the miner approval to 60%? I dont remember voting on that. Has it always been 80% for past hardforks?

What happens if not enough miners signal approval ?