I think the practical reality of bitcoin superstructures is starting to sink in with a few people.

It looked the obvious solution but it's fitting a fiat "outer" to a crypto "inner" and that example is probably just the tip of the iceberg of a square peg in a round hole.

For example, if the users are going to trust the trade to 3rd party superstructure anyway, why not just run the whole thing in an SQL database anyway and make it a lot cheaper ? And conversely, from the payment channel's perspective, if you're going to make it work for a blockchain, why not make it work for the clearing banks as well ? (Oops - somebody already did that   )

LoL ! You're too generous. I'm afraid all there is to "understand" in that regard is excellence in the art of mockery. Not too difficult to pick up you'll find 

For everybody who wants to access dashtalk (to make backups, to see your private messages and so on) but don’t know how to do it - it is still possible to enter forum and even your personal account directly on server (without domain dashtalk.org) :

you have to locate file «hosts» in your OS and add this line into hosts file:

85.159.209.13 dashtalk.org

path to hosts file is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)

I wouldn't have said a thing if Dashwhale had been funded. All I'm doing is pointing out the gross hypocrisy.

DailyDecrypt is a great show, my rant is not a reflection on them, it's a reflection on the priorities of Dash's blockchain governance.

What I'm saying is that it should never EVER give money to ANYONE unless there is a rock solid guarantee of a return. That return must be specified and measured, otherwise rejected.

No serious enterprise has ever survived on any lesser principle. Notice in all of this discussion, no-one has made an economic case for the funding of the DailyDecrypt proposal. Thats the reason I'm saying it should be rejected.

Let us know when you want some "testers". I have a pi and a pi2 just collecting dust at the moment. I don't have a cool display/touchscreen... yet. Where did you get the touchscreen? I may have to get one... Also, were you planning on getting a camera, too?

25,000 USD? Cool, now you can buy a car for Dash, and just drive away!

HoHooooo NICE
tipped and posted around !
 

Very nice! Looks slick. You guys are keeping me busy...

https://twitter.com/taoofsatoshi/status/679819159249764352

I'm reading this thread and a whole lot of lightbulbs are going of in my head.

That thread is fascinating because it's bringing the stark contrast in priorities between adopters and designers to light.

I've just realised that the 0-conf "sector" is a distinct market. In commercial terms there's a discontinuity between the "0-conf" currency market and the 1+conf market and the pro "RBF"ers are not getting this. This is something I never really thought about before because I generally saw things the way Peter Todd does - i.e. that a 1+ confirmation is just a bit further up the "wedge" of security but the product's the same. The adopters, however, do not seem to agree. They see it as distinct.

Having read that thread I just see things completely differently now. InstantX suddenly makes a whole lot of sense because it independently addresses the concerns of that distinct market while at the same time retaining the "security product" that's being sold (mining confirmations).

Here's the problem mono-tiered protocols have (and why there are almost none in existence amongst network protocols).

Also why bitcoin has problems trying to be both a cash medium AND a settlement layer.

usually from 0.02 to 0.001 Dash but there is a possibility, although that vary on different resources

I've been reading the Evolution docs docs (in the park). Just started.

Having lived and worked through the eightees computer revolution I think I can save people a lot of time and effort in dissimilating Dash and Bitcoin.

Dash is Apple and Bitcoin is Microsoft. That will be the story from now on and the playout will be the same.

Apple had control of the software and hardware which meant that they could move faster than anyone else. They used this "total control" to build an ideal computing environment.

Meanwhile, IBM and microsoft played the "bitcoin game": Everyone was allowed to participate in the economy. Motherboards by X. IBM received a royalty on "X" while allowing everyone else to make them. Microsoft changed "PC-DOS" to "MS-DOS" and became the biggest tech company ever. cryptowas contracted out. Technology accounted for nothing. Adoption counted for everything..

Apple did not allow anyone to make anything Apple compatible. Just as Dash does not contract out its anonymisation technology. Dash masternodes only work on the Dash network. They don't work on any other network.

NOTE: Commercial priorities - Adoption vs Development. Dash think’s it’s garnering adoption through development but it isn’t. Bitcoin is garnering adoption through marketing, just as Microsoft did. Dash is'nt garnering any adoption and yet it's setting the precedent for the industry. Just as Apple did.

That is the challenge for Dash. IMO it is unlikely to meet that challenge. People do not buy technology, they buy need.

Right now, bitcoin is at the front door of "need" as far as crypto currencies go.

Apple Computer had a GUI operating system a full 10 years ahead of Microsoft. Think about that - it's a massive lead. They also had desktop publishing, native networking (Appletalk) and Fonts.

But Microsoft and IBM between them created an economy, because everyone could get a "piece of the action" - hardware manufacturers, software builders, alternate OS's like Linux, you name it. So the PC economy grew far larger despite the fact that Apple was leading the way the whole time. It was a kind of uneasy, competitive come co-operative relationship between the two technologies that ultimately was very productive for both.

Now lets turn to Dash and bitcoin.

Dash has created a second tier. It is not a literal tier - only a logic tier which is important to emphasise. However this tier is not a third party commercial tier as far as protocol goes. It is totally integrated with the Dash network protocol in the same way that Apple hardware was integrated with Apple software. This is going to give Dash a huge advantage technologically because it controls both tiers. The bitcoin economy will require all the same features that Dash had - and will get them. It's just that the secondary tier will be supported by third parties and technologies  such as Etherium blockchain apps, stock market ETF's, Coinbase, Sidechains etc. The resulting bitcoin economy will be huge for the same reason that the IBM/Microsoft economy was huge - i.e. loads of people can have a piece of the pie.

But it will also be ugly.

And thats the catch for investors. Both options are attractive for different reasons. When I read the Dash Evolution docs I suddenly encountered myself from 30 years ago: using an advanced technology that was about to not do justice to itself commercially.

Why ?...because it retained control of its own ecosystem, thereby leaving the field bare for others. Dash is showing the way. But only symbolically and on a prototype basis. The industrial equivalent of masternodes will have the entire crypto world running a commercially diverse second tier against a commercially diverse tier of store of value assets. How that economic model plays out is as yet ambiguous. Whats for sure is that all crypto assets will find a role - no one will dominate that business model.

Where Apple was back then is where Dash is now: in control of a symbolic equivalent of what the world-wide market is about to become.

The bitcoin economy will acquire the equivalent of masternodes, decentralised voting, anonymity, scaleability and everything that Dash has. It just won't develop it as a single technological unit. If you want privacy you'll buy through an ETF who will keep your contracts private for you. If you want scaleability you'll use payment channels which will end up being owned by Visa. If you want decentralised voting - forget it. There's no way an economy that size is going to leave policy to "the people".

Regarding the Apple/Microsoft legacy, the question for Dash investors is: How does this technological precedent apply to money ?


There are two answers to that: [1] a technological one. [2] - a financial one

A. Technology
To answer the technological one is easy. Bitcoin has already thrown in the towel on protocol development. Technologically it is parked and all future services will be taken up by third party support services such as Etherium apps, stock market ETF's (Winklevoss twins), banks using bitcoin as capital assets and proprietary payment channels that use the bitcion blockchain as simply a 'clearing' layer. In other words, Bitcoin is not going to fulfill Satoshi's vision - a store of value that could also function as a currency. Monetarily, the banks will turn it into what CDO's are: a capital asset that backs other capital assets that ultimately back fiat currency.

B. Capital
The question of Dash as a capital investment is far more open. Lets calculate Dash's marketcap as a proportion of bitcoin's.



Ask yourself this. If you really think Satoshi's vision of a fully integrated, self contained monetary medium is worth preserving, which approach does more justice to it ?

[1] - SIDECHAINS: a coders Frankensteinian boilerplate that has no historical precedence in monetary history which requires you to "bake" your bitcoin for a day or two to in order to "hide" it, thereby turning the "ghost" bitcoin market into a premium version of the original and thus destroying all pretences to fungibility that bitcoin ever had.

[2] - ETF's: the paper gold version of bitcoin

[3] - PAYMENT CHANNELS: Do you really think that the last 30 years of research into cryptography a la David Chaum were busting their a'ss's just so that their discovery could be proxied ?

No. They weren't. What those people were looking for was an electronic asset that could be traded DIRECTLY.

The only two people I've ever seen in this entire field who've understood that principle implicitly and that don't appear to be scared of censorship are Evan Duffield and Andreas Antonopolis. Notably, they are also two people who have never aligned themselves with any particular approach. That tells you all you need to know.

In all the time I've been observing this industry, I've never seen Evan make one single adverse remark towards an industry peer. The same with Antonopolis. He is tireless in his ability to articulate the philosophy of monetary integrity as Evan is tireless in his pursuit of monetary fidelity.

The test is whether it gets adopted.

Dash's precedent is Apple. Bitcoin's is Microsoft. Take your pick. I've already seen how this plays out got the T-Shirt, picked my side except this time it's going to be played out a lot faster , if for no other reason than it has the space to itself.

Sources:

Dash Paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IZYs5C6CmJyC4MqY_2P_WnPcxaea6yy6cFkorkStDBM/edit
MS Cap: https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/market_cap
Apple CAP: https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/market_cap
History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.
History: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/history#T1=era0

You people figure it out. The people always decide. Not us. No matter how great the technology.

The only thing I can say for a representative system, such as a Republic vs a Democracy is that in a Democracy, everyone turns into factions, majority rules, and stomps on the minority, whereas a Republic will protect the minority's interests - at least better than a Democracy. 

Democracies also vote themselves money until the entire society collapses on itself, landing in, usually, some sort of totalitarian system. 

A representative system could be worth considering, imho it'd be an ideal thing to test out the ID and trust systems on. There's likely to be a lot of proposals covering areas that few really give a damn about but someone they trust might and would let them decide on their behalf if given the option.

Why can't it continue to be a flat % of the total MN count?   I agree that 10% is way too low though.  

we need a wallet that knows if it's a masternode's. Then you get a special voting screen and pie charts for every proposal.

Thread also on Dashtalk forum : https://dashtalk.org/threads/how-to-strenghten-dashs-voting-system.7309/

How to strenghten Dash's Voting System

Problem : masternode budget proposal voting participation is currently too low,  this can be observed on below overview's last column (Total Ratio).


Focus-point 1 :

How to reach more masternode owners with regards to budget proposals to vote on, taking into account the difference in location, language and use of forum ?

Possible solution :

Treat and publish every budget proposal the same way, regardless whether it is originating from the Dash development team or from someone in the Dash community. This means every single masternode budget proposal will need to get published on all available communication channels (Bitcointalk forum, Dashtalk forum, Dashwhale, Twitter and Reddit) and will most likely need to get translated on localized forums by local Dash representatives there as well.

Focus-point 2 :

Once we have reached the masternode owners with regards to new budget proposals, how do we keep them motivated to keep participating in the voting process ?  Both for now and in the future ?

Possible solution :

Incentivize masternode owners to participate in the voting system. Current payment schedule is as follows :

45% of each block goes to Miners
45% of each block goes to masternodes
10% of each block goes to the decentralised budget fund

Lets say for sake of argument we lower the % of each block going towards masternodes from 45% to 40% and
create a piece of code or a spork that will randomly verify masternodes on whether they have voted
on all budget proposals or not.

If they have voted on a budget proposal it will pay them 5% of the block per budget proposal.
If they have not voted on a budget proposal or reached their max voting reward they get skipped for that 5% payout.

Process :

Code / spork checks random masternodes and finds one of the following conditions :

A : masternode voted on a budget proposal and has not been rewarded for it yet --> it gets 5% of the block as reward
B : masternode voted on a budget proposal but got rewarded already* --> it gets skipped for the 5% block reward
* max number of rewards = total number of budget proposals on which the masternode voted, this means if a masternode voted on 5 budget proposals it will be eligable for 5x 5% payouts, after which it reaches its max.
(this means each masternode will need to build up a voting score, so the system knows if it is eligable for the 5% block reward or not).
C : masternode did not vote on a budget proposal --> masternode gets skipped for that 5% block reward
D : network finds all masternodes voted on all budget proposals (100% participation, highly unlikely but a man can dream ) -->  it will deactivate the spork and the 5% flow back to the masternodes

This all could both encourage masternode owners to vote on budget proposals and inspire people
to create new budget proposals.

I'm thinking of asking the oracle part of the masternode network for advice but for now lets first discuss and see where it leads....

This is Sender's digital signature with Private key and Nano-ink.