Is DASH too Centralized?

[Abiky]

The collateral required to run a masternode on the DASH blockchain is 1,000 DASH. Based on current prices, that is a hefty sum of money not everyone can afford these days. Only the wealthy will be able to invest in a masternode, greatly undermining the decentralization of the blockchain. For those unaware, masternodes are able to participate in the blockchain's governance, manage privacy-oriented transactions, among many other things. The average person will be left out of the governance process, while wealthy people will be able to dictate the future direction of the project. If developers wanted to make DASH more decentralized, they've would've changed the collateral in DASH from being a "fixed one" to a "dynamic one" according to the coin's market price in terms of Fiat.

What are your thoughts? Do you think DASH is too centralized these days? If not, why? Is DASH a good long-term investment? Or are there better options out there on the market? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[TheUltraElite]

Firstly it is sad to see the lack of discussion to this thread till now.

Now back to topic, masternodes do bring in a bit of "old boys club" type of concept in the governance. They tend to accumulate more and earn more - what usually happens is they these people start their own private groups where they start to recruit more users, essentially selling them the coins they own to allow them to get a masternode themselves. This private selling of masternodes is very common with any MN-based coin.

It is not similar to mining of a PoW coin. The miners usually dump their coins on the open market or OTC. They need to ROI fast to pay the miner costs and that keeps the market liquid. Comparatively the MN-coins tend to more of accumulation game. This problem is common to all PoS coins.

I would still consider DASH to be centralized since these people have the influence to manipulate the new users into buying masternodes and essentially controlling the supply. But then the market stats also determine how people trade with that coin, so profitability from trading is a different thing here. If there will be more merchants accepting it, likewise since BTC, ETH, DOGE, and after than DASH is the next one that gets named on any layman's list of crypto, the markets will becomes more profitable for traders.

Defenitely not going to recommend they buy a DASH MN but trading DASH is their own choice.

[Bttzed03]

~ If developers wanted to make DASH more decentralized, they've would've changed the collateral in DASH from being a "fixed one" to a "dynamic one" according to the coin's market price in terms of Fiat.

Is it up to the developers to make the network more decentralized as you describe? Or that's up for voting? If it's the former, wouldn't you call that more centralized because there are lesser people who would decide?

About the price, It's 1 DASH = 1 DASH I guess? They do not based it on the fiat value of the coin. It's the same with people saying 1 BTC = 1 BTC.


When you look at the Dash ANN when price was over $1400 in 2017, I'm pretty sure these questions have been raised and answered already. It doesn't look like they are in a hurry add more with over 4000 active Dash MN.

[jrrsparkles]

The collateral required to run a masternode on the DASH blockchain is 1,000 DASH. Based on current prices, that is a hefty sum of money not everyone can afford these days. Only the wealthy will be able to invest in a masternode, greatly undermining the decentralization of the blockchain. For those unaware, masternodes are able to participate in the blockchain's governance, manage privacy-oriented transactions, among many other things. The average person will be left out of the governance process, while wealthy people will be able to dictate the future direction of the project. If developers wanted to make DASH more decentralized, they've would've changed the collateral in DASH from being a "fixed one" to a "dynamic one" according to the coin's market price in terms of Fiat.

What are your thoughts? Do you think DASH is too centralized these days? If not, why? Is DASH a good long-term investment? Or are there better options out there on the market? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

More the nodes then the decentralization will be better so yeah the future of DASH is at risk of very limited people if they don't adjust the staking value to become a master node but for an average investor they never care about the decentralization, they just aim to make money and once they made it they will leave such coins to move towards better coins like BTC.

[slaman29]

The collateral required to run a masternode on the DASH blockchain is 1,000 DASH. Based on current prices, that is a hefty sum of money not everyone can afford these days. Only the wealthy will be able to invest in a masternode, greatly undermining the decentralization of the blockchain. For those unaware, masternodes are able to participate in the blockchain's governance, manage privacy-oriented transactions, among many other things. The average person will be left out of the governance process, while wealthy people will be able to dictate the future direction of the project. If developers wanted to make DASH more decentralized, they've would've changed the collateral in DASH from being a "fixed one" to a "dynamic one" according to the coin's market price in terms of Fiat.

What are your thoughts? Do you think DASH is too centralized these days? If not, why? Is DASH a good long-term investment? Or are there better options out there on the market? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If I recall correctly, the early DASH days even was just full of scandals and shady tricks, like premining and even carbon copy code. So I think to be fair this is just one of the lesser evils, to see something like this is normal. MN minimums have always been high anyway but last year 1000 DASH wasn't as costly as today because of the bull run.

Don't they have delegated voting these days though?

[Ucy]

Any open source public crypto project that requires money from participants to take part in decentralized consensus could be regarded as scam, especially if it regards itself a public network that promotes true decentralization.
People have yet to realize how abominable it's in the world of decentralized cryptocurrency to require people to cough up huge amounts of money to be part of consensus.
Your hardware, encrypted unique ID should be enough to take part in true consensus.
 It's very risky to take part in such cryptocurrency project even if you can afford to pay the money

[Abiky]

Is it up to the developers to make the network more decentralized as you describe? Or that's up for voting? If it's the former, wouldn't you call that more centralized because there are lesser people who would decide?

About the price, It's 1 DASH = 1 DASH I guess? They do not based it on the fiat value of the coin. It's the same with people saying 1 BTC = 1 BTC.


When you look at the Dash ANN when price was over $1400 in 2017, I'm pretty sure these questions have been raised and answered already. It doesn't look like they are in a hurry add more with over 4000 active Dash MN.

Yes. A few people making decisions on the network, would make DASH utterly centralized. After all, not everyone can afford a DASH masternode. I'd prefer cryptocurrencies that are driven by developers and the community as a whole than just a group of wealthy people that will lead the network towards their own interests. 1 DASH may be equal to 1 DASH, but most people use Fiat to determine a cryptocurrency's value. Not changing the collateral according to market price, will leave many people out of the system.

I'm surprised to know that there are well above 4,000 masternodes on the DASH blockchain. That's a lot of money if you consider DASH's current price on the market. Imagine how much a masternode will be worth if DASH goes back to $1k? It'll be insane! At least, the project is open source. Thanks to this, we now have various masternode-based cryptocurrencies. I'd put my money into other masternode coins that are focused on decentralization above all else. Ultimately, the market will decide whenever DASH will remain the leading masternode-based coin or go all the way down the drain. I wouldn't worry about DASH's centralization since there are plenty of options to choose from. Just my opinion