Tok, If you want to use info-graphics to dumb down the debate, that's your prerogative. And if you want to claim that dash is good because it does the same thing other money has done throughout history (rely on trust), that's fine and a different argument that should be made on another thread. But the point of this thread is that dash has no way to objectively verify that it is decentralized--so argue that that isn't true or stop wasting everyone's time.

LOL, as the first post illustrates, you can't build decentralized governance by starting with a 2 million coin mine in two days and then creating a paynode scheme that aggregates coins into the hands of the instaminers--any argument that states that the coins are redistributed expects you to trust that markets aren't being manipulated and the instaminers aren't lying about their holdings, which is Satoshi's nightmare and the reason Bitcoin was created in the first place--and while Bitcoin has its problems, you can look at its data and determine trustlessly whether it is centralized or not.

Qwizzie, the problem with any graph that supposedly shows that dash is decentralized by coins being moved is that no one can verify that the coins are moving to different owners or being moved between an owner's controlled addresses. Again, market manipulation just as easily explains this movement as anything else, so it fails the trustless test.

TLDR: Unless you can prove that coins or masternodes changed hands, dash still fails the trustless test.

So using this helpful chart we can see that in roughly a year, that someone who controlled 2000 masternodes could accrue 200 more and increase their voting power by 20% without lifting a finger or producing a useful project. I use 2000 as this is the number that could be bought by those lucky enough to be mining the first 2 days of the coins existence (2 million coins of 18.9 million).


I'm taking a break to watch a movie and go to bed, but anyone can step in and show logically why dash can't be verified  trustlessly decentralized. At this point it's more of a PSA than an argument.

Would you say masternodes are controlled? Or are they in the ether of non-existence and the fees go to no one? When I say owned, I mean that someone is controlling them and that person paid for their use with collaterall, so when you're done playing semantical hopscotch, I'll be over here waiting for an apology for all my time that you wasted with linguistic parlor tricks and half-truths.

Yes, and since you can't verify the owner, you don't know how much power they wield in the form of voting rights or any of the other things layered on them, this is why I say dash can't be trustlessly verified as decentralized, which if we use the system rules that Satoshi and others laid out before us, we should assume it is centralized--though the dashers want to use the old banker rules of trust, which as I've stated before, misses the point of why these systems were built. The biggest problem here isn't the nodes per se, it is how they are being used to collect fees and as a governance mechanism.

Actually it was what inspired me to write it, please read as it dismisses your faulty logic.

That is a list of masternodes, which in no way refutes my claim that ownership can't be proven trustlessly decentralized. Unless you can tie a person to each of those nodes, the list is useless in this discussion.

Also, Tok, please refrain from hiding behind media--either make a sound argument, preferably concise, or don't bother as I don't have time to watch videos and any argument you have should be able to be made without the distraction or help of media.

Anything of substance to add? Or does intimating that I get paid count as a counter-argument?

And dash's spin without merit or substance. 

Tired of correcting your semantic juggling in an attempt to hide the fact that dash's power structure is centralized--however you want parse it doesn't really matter as you can't trustlessly prove it and therefore it is BS by cryptosystem standards.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1443867.0

First they ignore your unmoderated thread
Then they make fun of your unmoderated thread
Then they fight you unmoderated thread
Then you win

The question is now, "Why are they threatened by an unmoderated thread?"

And this is absurd logic as it only accounts for the few that have posted on here about the need for an unmoderated thread, but highlights the absurdity of making "they" claims and making (or intimating) logically fallacies hinged on those claims.

Dude, I'm not getting involved in the argument, but that Ghandi quotation only works when you apply it to civil disobedience, when you apply it to fights you not only started, but have continually maintained, and are more about market share than fighting an oppressive regime that is attempting to hold you down, it becomes a little absurd. If you had to fight to buy vanilla cash and that was an act that was actively attacked by some authority, then that quotation would be apt.

Can't make this shit up.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/i-wrote-isis-beer-funds-in-a-venmo-memo-and-the-feds-detained-my-42/

Not necessarily, algorithms could be programmed to move your funds between coins if an attack threshold is passed--of course this requires trustless exchanges to fill in the gap left by the inability to decentralize mining, and also produces lemming effects if the coin's mining doesn't adjust responsively, though this assumes the attacker is just greedy and not actually trying to destroy the coin. In a full-on attack of crypto,  a war to end the battles,  the algorithm approach forces the attack to be multi-pronged, but would not prevent coins from attacking each other to gain market share, though my guess is miners would make algorithm adjustments and speed becomes an asset as much as hashing power--I'm rambling possabilities, my guess is that there some noob assumptions to flesh out, if not totally dismiss.

The point is that you can see it for yourself and make your decision based on data rather than hype. Put another way: do you want the kinda-cute puppy that you can see, or the one in a lock-box that the salesman swears is "the best dog ever and has never bitten anyone"?

Dash's failure at trustless decentralization is the test case that formed my understanding of why trustless decentralization is necessary for any cryptocurrency to succeed at being disruptive. Dash's failure is that it built a centralizing flaw that aggregates coins to those who run nodes and layering power functions (votes, fees, privacy, etc...) onto these nodes.

Dash's nodes have two major weaknesses in design: first, they are pay based, or paynodes, which means that they can be bought and sold. The second flaw in design is that they collect fees, which means node holders collect money that in turn can be used to buy more nodes that in turn can collect more fees, and so on and so forth. Where this especially becomes troubling is that dash's launch produced 2 million coins in 2 days and this initial distribution cannot be verified to be fairly distributed, which means the resources to buy 2000 nodes (more than half of current existing at this writing) were made available to a few lucky guys who happened to be mining at that right moment--considering this is 30% of current distribution and given that they could have bought 2000 or more masternodes since that scheme was introduced, the number of masternodes these initial miners could have may be considerably more than 30%, and considering that this control can aggregate over time, it illustrates why these systems need to be trustlessly verified.

I apologize for all the numbers just thrown at you, but lets make it simpler, since the masternode system collects the revenue that determines its degree of centralization, and that centralization can't be verified to any statistical certainty, we should assume that it is increasingly trending towards a traditional oligarchy or monarchy, where one or a few have undue power over the entire system--how it behaves, the distribution and security of its benefits.

What is misinformed in this assessment? Also, am I any more repetitive than Tao's copypaste "Satoshi's dream, decentralized, we're controlling the narrative" get the noobs to these links hurry before they learn how craptacular we are speeches disguised as pleasant cheerleading?