VegaWallet partnering with Dash to utilize some of the first Evolution integrations

Both consumers and merchants are ideally looking to make their transactions as quickly as possible while also saving money and still getting what they want. Thus, it makes sense
to use Dash to be able to quickly convert cash into Dash, in-store at the CoVault ATM, and then quickly turn around and spend that Dash at the VegaWallet PoS device, all while having
each transaction being fully recognized as valid. Dash’s latest upgrade with automatic InstantSend makes this quick and inexpensive secure transaction possible. VegaWallet CEO, Tarek Hajri,
explains the benefits of this feature.

“We are excited to work with Covault on increasing the presence of cryptocurrency remittance for businesses that need it the most. We feel the partnership will open new avenues for greater transaction liquidity.
Payments with Dash and other supported assets are the future of business.”

It seems to me that Dash has not yet fully opened.  Because I'm sure that it can be much more than it shows now.

A few cryptocurrency projects have made headlines recently due to threats of 51% mining attacks. In a 51% attack, a mining entity that controls a majority of hash power can secretly mine a separate chain that is longer than the public one, then publish it — causing a reorganization and orphaning previous blocks on the original chain. This can result in users of the network losing money as transactions in the invalidated blocks are also invalidated.

ChainLocks will significantly reduce the risk of a 51% attack occurring on the Dash network. A Long Living Masternode Quorum is selected, and each member signs the first block it sees — extending the active chain at the current height. When enough members see that block, they will propagate a message to all nodes in the network. When this message is received by a node, it rejects all blocks at that height that do not match the block specified by this message. This not only makes reaching consensus quick and unambiguous, it makes chain reorganizations below this block impossible.

This means that transactions can be considered fully confirmed after the first on-chain confirmation inside a block protected by ChainLocks, and there is no need to wait for more confirmations until a received transaction is considered secure. This feature also removes all incentives for miners to cause chain reorganizations by mining in secret, because a failure to publish blocks immediately could give an honest miner the opportunity to publish a block that would be locked by a LLMQ, and thus made irreversible. This would result in the secret chain being ignored when the malicious miner attempted to publish it.

The longest-chain rule is one of the most important parts of Proof of Work based consensus. The idea is that every node should consider the chain with the most accumulated work as the locally active chain (but only if it is also valid by all other consensus rules). The reason for this rule is that otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to find consensus on which chain to extend. Nodes need to find consensus based on limited information, and the only reliable information which is viable for this is the information found from the chain of headers. Using only the accumulated work (calculable from the headers) makes sure that every node can disconnect and reconnect, and still find consensus at any time.

With ChainLocks, this rule is still in effect, but it can be overridden by a valid CLSIG message. Effectively, only the members of the responsible LLMQ are fully following the longest-chain rule, as they are the ones creating the CLSIG message in collaboration. As the CLSIG message can only be created if enough LLMQ members agree, the presence of the CLSIG message serves as a proof that the referenced block was (or still is) the block resulting in the longest-chain.

This puts quite some trust into CLSIG messages and the Masternode network, but we consider this to be an acceptable tradeoff. The assumption is that the majority of the masternode network is honest, which is basically the same assumption applied to miners in a plain Proof of Work system.

The difference with ChainLocks is that miners AND Masternodes representing 51% of each of the layers would have to collude in order to perform a working attack. And even if an attack succeeded, the attackers would still not be able to cause deep reorganizations, as previous CLSIG messages can’t be invalidated by the attackers. The worst thing that could be achieved is to NOT sign blocks, which would be noticed by all nodes. Also, if any LLMQ with mostly honest masternodes signed a block in-between the attack, all previously unsigned blocks would become fully confirmed as well, making reorganizations for these impossible as well.

Great news! anti 51% attack ChainLock is now live on the mainnet!

Dash Core Group is pleased to share that Dash Core v0.14.0 binaries are released and ready for deployment on mainnet by node operators.

This software release focuses on improving the user experience while increasing network security. Highlights of this release include:

Long-Living Masternode Quorums (“LLMQs”), which will increase scalability through improved consensus and expand the universe of potential use cases of the network.
LLMQ-Based ChainLocks, which leverage LLMQs to improve network security by mitigating 51% mining attacks.
LLMQ-Based InstantSend, using LLMQs to not only improve network scalability, but in combination with ChainLocks will allow for secure, real-time payments.

This release represents a major step towards making Dash the most user-friendly blockchain based payment system in the world. Long wait times make it hard for today’s
crypto networks to truly compete with traditional payment methods like credit and debit cards. For a user trying to purchase groceries, for example, waiting more than a minute
for a transaction to process simply isn’t acceptable. Beyond this, once a payment is received, users accustomed to traditional payment methods expect to be able to re-spend
that received money immediately.

Other networks that have managed to reduce wait times have typically done so at the cost of network security by overly centralizing the authority over which transactions go through
and which don’t, creating greater opportunity for manipulation and attack. Dash, on the other hand, will provide users with the real-time payments they expect at an extremely high
level of security through the second layer masternode network. Someone who wanted to try to manipulate or attack the system would need to spend hundreds of millions in USD to do so.

In order to facilitate the development of this new wallet, as well as many other use cases, DCG is building Dash Platform, an application development platform leveraging Dash’s masternode network and blockchain. Comprised of two main architectural components, Drive and DAPI, these components turn the Dash p2p network into a cloud, through which developers will be able to integrate their applications. For our MVP release, the platform will primarily act as a Database as a Service, using data contracts to define custom data structures for applications, storing that application data on our masternode network, and notarizing that data via our blockchain.

Dana Alibrandi, Product Owner at Dash Core Group, further outlined that both Drive and DAPI will be written in written in Node.js and that “Dash Platform will be available for development as part of Release 1.0”. However, they “will continue evolving the platform, eventually providing developers with a full stack for development” after the initial release.

I skimmed the thread, so I apologize if my questions were asked or answered.

I love how Dash is aggressive in S. America.  So much of crypto is pure speculation (buy and hope it goes up, then sell to somehow else).  So see easy applications and actual retailers embracing it, is kind of the dream for crypto (or should be)

With Dash, does the blockchain/confirmations work the same?  Is there a risk for doublespend like bitcoin?   If paying at a retail outlet, are you made to wait until the transaction has a confirmation?  (I saw the video of the girl paying for chicken and it seemed fast, but I've done Dash transactions where it seemed like sometimes it can be a few minutes between confirmations)

The cryptocurrency with the most activity on its network was Dash, which saw a massive spike in usage in Venezuela,
where sanctions and inflation pushed people into using the fast and reliable Dash. The network saw a 58 percent increase in
the number of active addresses and went from 46,000 to over 74,000 in a single year.

A troll that cares works much harder at trolling, then a troll that does not care.
- qwizzie