The Reality of Masternode Centralization

[generalizethis]

For most coins, nodes being hosted on a corporate server isn't a big deal, but when their advertised anonymity depends on those nodes, it's a massive security breach waiting to happen.

Here's a list of active Dash masternodes, the hosting company (or privately held node), and their address:

Accelerated IT servers: Frankfurt Germany: 95
Amazon USA: 44
Asmunda Frankfurt Germany: 150
Bhost ltd: England/Amsterdam: 3
Choopa, NJ, USA: 162
City Network Hosting Stockholm Sweden: 4
CJSR Russia: 1
ColoCrossing NY USA: 14
Comcast PA USA: 3
Crisis Solutions LLC USA: 7
Deutsche Telekom Germany: 1
Digital Ocean NY  USA: 75
DNA Oy  Finland: 4
Earthnet CO USA: 1
Evanzo ECom Germany: 1
Fevvo Inc CT USA: 11
Hetzner Online Germany: 2
Hostinger Intl. Cyprus: 1
HostUs USA: 1
IDC*China or MA USA: 10
Internet Assigned Numbers: 3
Microsoft USA: 3
MyLoc Managed Dusseldorf Germany: 104
Neterra Bulgaria: 1
NodeServ LLC FL USA: 32
Online SAS France: 213
PP KOM i TEX Ukraine: 1
Private Layer Inc Zurich Switzerland: 110
QHoster Ltd  Bulgaria: 96
QuadraNet CA USA: 4
QuickPacket Llc GA USA: 4
RackSpace Hosting TX USA: 2
Rogers Cable Com Canada: 3
Serverius Netherlands: 1
TDC A/S Denmark: 1
Telecom3Sverige AB Sweden: 1
Time Warner USA: 1
UAB Technoloigu Lithuania: 4
VideoTron Telecom Lte Canada: 1

--Of the 1175 active nodes I only found 4 that could be considered run on privately held nodes (3 Internet Assigned Numbers and 1 PP KOM i TEX). The other 1171 were listed under hosting companies.

By country:

Germany: 352 (29.95%)

Accelerated IT servers: Frankfurt Germany: 95
Asmunda Frankfurt Germany: 150
Deutsche Telekom Germany: 1
Hetzner Online Germany: 2
MyLoc Managed Dusseldorf Germany: 104

USA: 364 (30.97%)

Amazon USA: 44
Choopa, NJ, USA: 162
ColoCrossing NY USA: 14
Comcast PA USA: 3
Crisis Solutions LLC USA: 7
Digital Ocean NY  USA: 75
Earthnet CO USA: 1
Fevvo Inc CT USA: 11
HostUs USA: 1
Microsoft USA: 3
NodeServ LLC FL USA: 32
QuadraNet CA USA: 4
QuickPacket Llc GA USA: 4
RackSpace Hosting TX USA: 2
Time Warner USA: 1

France: 213 (18.12%)

Online SAS France: 213

Switzerland: 110 (9.36%)

Private Layer Inc Zurich Switzerland: 110

Bulgaria: 97 (8.25%)

Neterra Bulgaria: 1
QHoster Ltd  Bulgaria: 96

Other: 38 (3.23%)

Bhost ltd: Englad/Amsterdam: 3
City Network Hosting Stockholm Sweden: 4
CJSR Russia: 1
DNA Oy  Finland: 4
Hostinger Intl. Cyprus: 1
IDC*China: 10
Internet Assigned Numbers: 3
PP KOM i TEX Ukraine: 1
Rogers Cable Com Canada: 3
Serverius Netherlands: 1
TDC A/S Denmark: 1
Telecom3Sverige AB Sweden: 1
UAB Technoloigu Lithuania: 4
VideoTron Telecom Lte Canada: 1

--Over 95% of the masternodes are on servers owned by companies located in 5 countries. If this coin ever reached the market cap levels of Bitcoin or threatened global monetary supply, it would certainly gain the inquisitiveness of LEA worldwide who would likely share data in order to prosecute criminals or those that threatened their monopoly of wealth. This shouldn't be made this easy. This is further proof that cryptosystems that rely on users to follow best practices are relying on failure.

*IDC China telecommunications (subsidiary of US company or a Chinese company) listed and counted as China/Other.

Figures gathered 6/1/15 https://www.dashnodes.com/index/masternodes/?sorts%5Bisp%5D=1&perPage=100

[BlockaFett]

Trollero™ strikes again  

Get ready for 100 pages of "Dash is a scam" Trollero pumping from:

Smooth - Epic-troll / slightly unhinged Monero core "dev" with 1000s of attack-Dash posts to his name.  Was ranked the 4th biggest troll on the Dash thread by post count.  Recently took over Monero competitor AEON.

Fluffyponzay - Monero lead "dev".  Joined Monero after trying to scam USD 200,000 from Vertcoin investors (aka 20% of their market cap) to "develop" his Vertpay.com website.  Took control of Monero and setup MyMonero.com, centralized Monero web wallet.  Likes to go offline and gives Monero core team / their ISP / NSA acccess to majority of Monero's "anonymous" transactions / users from one handy spot.  And because Monero official wallet doesn't work, it's MyMonero all the way.  Oh also trying to make his 3rd centralized payment site PayBee.com...Lots more but can't be bothered.

Harrison Ford aka Generalize this - he made this thread already.  (I like that he actually did some research, even though I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized, but kudos to Generalize for once )

G2M - Chronic Monero troll

Icebreaker - Extremely unhinged head Monero troll aka Eduardo de Castro the Hashfast scammer.  Everyone knows him so no introduction needed.

GTO911 - known cat fiddler.  Do not let this person near your family or the family pet.

I will tick off the list as they appear.

If you are just starting this thread, make your life easier and just buy Monero..  They will probably go away if you just give them your BTC.  Wait for them to dump on the dumber Monero users who don't get it's a clone of something else that has been stalling for 14 months already, then BCT can be a more pleasant experience for all of us seeking innovation / decentralized crypto..

Things to watch out for:

1. Trollero users repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of what arguments, reason or logic are put in front of them.

2. All replies to Trollero users must have any text offensive to Monero removed from them.  Sorry, you're text was just Trolleroed™

3. All Trollero replies to non-believers must start with "are you stupid?" and maintain the fact that everyone is stupid who doesn't "get" Monero (not any other Cryptonote clone though, even the ones with active developers and GUIs - Monero is special and the next bitcoin - FACT.

4. Lots of talk of 10,000 XMR pizzas - like we never heard it before..

5. Anything competing with Monero but not Monero itself is a centralized scam, including any exchange or website that even mentions them, period.

Can't think of anymore right now...oh yeh Poloniex is 100% trustworthy.  The fact that 95% of Trollero volume goes there whilst people on any other exchange like Bittrex or BTC38 won't touch a Trollero with a 10 foot poll means nothing.  And Dash price is fake even though volume is spread across all major exchanges.

Anyway...have fun

cheers

[obit33]

Trollero™ strikes again  

Get ready for 100 pages of "Dash is a scam" Trollero pumping from:

Smooth - Epic-troll / slightly unhinged Monero core "dev" with 1000s of attack-Dash posts to his name.  Was ranked the 4th biggest troll on the Dash thread by post count.  Recently took over Monero competitor AEON.

Fluffyponzay - Monero lead "dev".  Joined Monero after trying to scam USD 200,000 from Vertcoin investors (aka 20% of their market cap) to "develop" his Vertpay.com website.  Took control of Monero and setup MyMonero.com, centralized Monero web wallet.  Likes to go offline and gives Monero core team / their ISP / NSA acccess to majority of Monero's "anonymous" transactions / users from one handy spot.  And because Monero official wallet doesn't work, it's MyMonero all the way.  Oh also trying to make his 3rd centralized payment site PayBee.com...Lots more but can't be bothered.

Harrison Ford aka Generalize this - oh he made the thread already.  (I like that he actually did some research, even though I think it's obviously and idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized, kudos Generalize for once )

G2M - Chronic Monero troll

Icebreaker - Extremely unhinged head Monero troll aka Eduardo de Castro the Hashfast scammer.  Everyone knows him so no introduction needed.

GTO911 - known cat fiddler.  Do not let this person near your family or the family pet.

I will tick off the list as they appear.

If you are just starting this thread, make your life easier and just buy Monero..  They will probably go away if you just give them your BTC.  Wait for them to dump on the dumber Monero users who don't get it's a clone of something else that has been stalling for 14 months already, then BCT can be a more pleasant experience for all of us seeking innovation / decentralized crypto..

Things to watch out for:

1. Trollero users repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of what arguments, reason or logic are put in front of them.

2. All replies to Trollero users must have any text offensive to Monero removed from them.  Sorry, you're text was just Trolleroed™

3. All Trollero replies to non-believers must start with "are you stupid?" and maintain the fact that everyone is stupid who doesn't "get" Monero (not any other Cryptonote clone though, even the ones with active developers and GUIs - Monero is special and the next bitcoin - FACT.

4. Lots of talk of 10,000 XMR pizzas - like we never heard it before..

5. Anything competing with Monero but not Monero itself is a centralized scam, including any exchange or website that even mentions them, period.

Can't think of anymore right now...oh yeh Poloniex is 100% trustworthy.  The fact that 95% of Trollero volume goes there whilst people on any other exchange like Bittrex or BTC38 won't touch a Trollero with a 10 foot poll means nothing.  And Dash price is fake even though it's on 10 exchanges.

Anyway...have fun

cheers

Wauw, so desperate, not one single argument to refute GeneralizeThis evidence of centralisation...

well, go ahead, add me to your insulting list with ad-hominems...

best regards

[BlockaFett]

Trollero™ strikes again  

Get ready for 100 pages of "Dash is a scam" Trollero pumping from:

Smooth - Epic-troll / slightly unhinged Monero core "dev" with 1000s of attack-Dash posts to his name.  Was ranked the 4th biggest troll on the Dash thread by post count.  Recently took over Monero competitor AEON.

Fluffyponzay - Monero lead "dev".  Joined Monero after trying to scam USD 200,000 from Vertcoin investors (aka 20% of their market cap) to "develop" his Vertpay.com website.  Took control of Monero and setup MyMonero.com, centralized Monero web wallet.  Likes to go offline and gives Monero core team / their ISP / NSA acccess to majority of Monero's "anonymous" transactions / users from one handy spot.  And because Monero official wallet doesn't work, it's MyMonero all the way.  Oh also trying to make his 3rd centralized payment site PayBee.com...Lots more but can't be bothered.

Harrison Ford aka Generalize this - oh he made the thread already.  (I like that he actually did some research, even though I think it's obviously and idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized, kudos Generalize for once )

G2M - Chronic Monero troll

Icebreaker - Extremely unhinged head Monero troll aka Eduardo de Castro the Hashfast scammer.  Everyone knows him so no introduction needed.

GTO911 - known cat fiddler.  Do not let this person near your family or the family pet.

I will tick off the list as they appear.

If you are just starting this thread, make your life easier and just buy Monero..  They will probably go away if you just give them your BTC.  Wait for them to dump on the dumber Monero users who don't get it's a clone of something else that has been stalling for 14 months already, then BCT can be a more pleasant experience for all of us seeking innovation / decentralized crypto..

Things to watch out for:

1. Trollero users repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of what arguments, reason or logic are put in front of them.

2. All replies to Trollero users must have any text offensive to Monero removed from them.  Sorry, you're text was just Trolleroed™

3. All Trollero replies to non-believers must start with "are you stupid?" and maintain the fact that everyone is stupid who doesn't "get" Monero (not any other Cryptonote clone though, even the ones with active developers and GUIs - Monero is special and the next bitcoin - FACT.

4. Lots of talk of 10,000 XMR pizzas - like we never heard it before..

5. Anything competing with Monero but not Monero itself is a centralized scam, including any exchange or website that even mentions them, period.

Can't think of anymore right now...oh yeh Poloniex is 100% trustworthy.  The fact that 95% of Trollero volume goes there whilst people on any other exchange like Bittrex or BTC38 won't touch a Trollero with a 10 foot poll means nothing.  And Dash price is fake even though it's on 10 exchanges.

Anyway...have fun

cheers

Wauw, so desperate, not one single argument to refute GeneralizeThis evidence of centralisation...

well, go ahead, add me to your insulting list with ad-hominems...

best regards

Dude you are no where near getting on this list.   These guys have 1000s of posts behind their names over months attacking Dash.  You need to step up first, what is this your first day?

BTW you didn't read my point about why Dash isn't centralized - "I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized" - Centralized means centralized, with a central point, e.g. MyMonero.com...not user's wallets running in different countries, I thought this was obvious...but I wasn't here to argue that, just point out what this thread is about so maybe Trollero doesn't waste another 10,000 hours of crypto people's time in their quest to "replace" Bitcoin with a dysfunctional Cryptonote clone with zero development and constant flow of trolling.

[DaveyJones]

BTW you didn't read my point about why Dash isn't centralized - "I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized" - Centralized means centralized, with a central point, e.g. MyMonero.com...not user's wallets running in different countries, I thought this was obvious...but I wasn't here to argue that, just point out what this thread is about so maybe Trollero doesn't waste another 10,000 hours of crypto people's time in their quest to "replace" Bitcoin with a dysfunctional Cryptonote clone with zero development.

From the MyMonero.com website....

The private spend key is never stored or known by the Services, which means that it is cryptographically impossible for us to spend funds on your behalf.

Or if you want to read for yourself https://mymonero.com/#/terms Chapter 4

[BlockaFett]

BTW you didn't read my point about why Dash isn't centralized - "I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized" - Centralized means centralized, with a central point, e.g. MyMonero.com...not user's wallets running in different countries, I thought this was obvious...but I wasn't here to argue that, just point out what this thread is about so maybe Trollero doesn't waste another 10,000 hours of crypto people's time in their quest to "replace" Bitcoin with a dysfunctional Cryptonote clone with zero development.

From the MyMonero.com website....

The private spend key is never stored or known by the Services, which means that it is cryptographically impossible for us to spend funds on your behalf.

Or if you want to read for yourself https://mymonero.com/#/terms Chapter 4

So what?  Fluffypony can still *see* all the transactions, know what is moving around, know when a pump or dump is coming, take the site offline to stop people withdrawing, it gives Monero core team / his ISP / the NSA full *acccess* to Monero for all intents and purposes.  And he keeps any information on MyMonero usage, or even the MyMonero source code, to himself.  And he has *tried this before* on Vertcoin, and is *trying it again* with Paybee.com

MyMonero.com is 100% centralized and undermines all Monero's claims of being anonymous / untraceable - it's a fucking centralized payment website for a coin they are marketing as 'untraceable' lol.  And you defend that and say Dash is centralized because it works with users on the official wallet in different countries, like Bitcoin

just more alternate reality Monero bullshit....keep going Trollero.

[dEBRUYNE]

BTW you didn't read my point about why Dash isn't centralized - "I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized" - Centralized means centralized, with a central point, e.g. MyMonero.com...not user's wallets running in different countries, I thought this was obvious...but I wasn't here to argue that, just point out what this thread is about so maybe Trollero doesn't waste another 10,000 hours of crypto people's time in their quest to "replace" Bitcoin with a dysfunctional Cryptonote clone with zero development.

From the MyMonero.com website....

The private spend key is never stored or known by the Services, which means that it is cryptographically impossible for us to spend funds on your behalf.

Or if you want to read for yourself https://mymonero.com/#/terms Chapter 4

So what?  Fluffypony can still *see* all the transactions, know what is moving around, know when a pump or dump is coming, take the site offline to stop people withdrawing, it gives Monero core team / his ISP / the NSA full *acccess* to Monero for all intents and purposes.  And he keeps any information on MyMonero usage, or even the MyMonero source code, to himself.  And he has *tried this before* on Vertcoin, and is *trying it again* with Paybee.com

MyMonero.com is 100% centralized and undermines all Monero's claims of being anonymous / untraceable - it's a fucking centralized payment website for a coin they are marketing as 'untraceable' lol.  And you defend that and say Dash is centralized because it works with users on the official wallet in different countries, like Bitcoin

just more alternate reality Monero bullshit....keep going Trollero.

These ad hominem attacks are getting ridiculous, you're not even taking the time to respond to the original post. Nowhere is stated that you, as a Monero user, are obligated to use MyMonero, it's basically the same as blockchain.info. Does blockchain.info make Bitcoin centralized?

Oh and PS, the official CLI wallet does work, but I guess you can't be bothered to try.

[BlockaFett]

BTW you didn't read my point about why Dash isn't centralized - "I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized" - Centralized means centralized, with a central point, e.g. MyMonero.com...not user's wallets running in different countries, I thought this was obvious...but I wasn't here to argue that, just point out what this thread is about so maybe Trollero doesn't waste another 10,000 hours of crypto people's time in their quest to "replace" Bitcoin with a dysfunctional Cryptonote clone with zero development.

From the MyMonero.com website....

The private spend key is never stored or known by the Services, which means that it is cryptographically impossible for us to spend funds on your behalf.

Or if you want to read for yourself https://mymonero.com/#/terms Chapter 4

So what?  Fluffypony can still *see* all the transactions, know what is moving around, know when a pump or dump is coming, take the site offline to stop people withdrawing, it gives Monero core team / his ISP / the NSA full *acccess* to Monero for all intents and purposes.  And he keeps any information on MyMonero usage, or even the MyMonero source code, to himself.  And he has *tried this before* on Vertcoin, and is *trying it again* with Paybee.com

MyMonero.com is 100% centralized and undermines all Monero's claims of being anonymous / untraceable - it's a fucking centralized payment website for a coin they are marketing as 'untraceable' lol.  And you defend that and say Dash is centralized because it works with users on the official wallet in different countries, like Bitcoin

just more alternate reality Monero bullshit....keep going Trollero.

These ad honimem attacks are getting ridiculous, you're not even taking the time to respond to the original post. Nowhere is stated that you, as a Monero user, are obligated to use MyMonero, it's basically the same as blockchain.info. Does blockchain.info make Bitcoin centralized?

Both of my posts stated why I disagree with the OP.  For the third time:

"I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized"

and.....

"Centralized means centralized, with a central point, e.g. MyMonero.com...not user's wallets running in different countries, I thought this was obvious"

But I see you side-step my point......

Anyone who reads the XMR thread knows that most users can't get the wallet to work and get recommended to use MyMonero and it is safe to assume most people use it.

Something is extremely wrong with a coin that is over 1 year old that still has an essentially "crippled" official wallet where most people have to use a centralized payment website instead .. a site that gives just the owner visiblility on distribution / transfers that no one else can see - on a coin that the marketing claims is "untraceable". An *extremely* strange choice of vehicle for such a coin, no?

Coupled with 2 facts: Fluffypony has a *history* of doing this, and secondly from investigating Ryan Kennedy I know that people who make a big effort to get 'in the middle' of a coin like he did with Doge, and Fluffy tried with Vertcoin and now succeeded with Monero, are often scamming (and often intelligent / good with people / controlling perceptions at the same time).

Did you stop to consider, how involved is Fluffy in the actual XMR market?  If he is a large investor / trader, he has positioned himself quite nicely to be ahead of the market and also be the voice of Monero to guide things how he wants.

Then add in some other facts like how Monero volume is just through Poloniex with no effort to get onto other exchanges, and they have setup XMR with it's own market and made it the landing page.  And Polo is the only entity apart from MyMonero.com that has info on XMR distribution / movements that they keep to themselves too.....nice single point to control at too.

I am not saying this is certainly the case. I am just looking at it myself and saying hmm....structurally, if Fluffy / his buddies were scammers, they are positioned nicely to take advantage....

Above is off topic, and not saying with a Dash investor hat on...this is stuff you should think about (assuming you aren't a Monero dev which I am guessing a lot of these acccounts are)

[bathrobehero]

As long as people host their masternodes properly with encrypted wallets with backups, I can't see anything that could cause any issues. If a hosting company were to refuse hosting masternodes for whatever magical reason, nobody would lose anything and there are plenty of them around so I wouldn't call it centralized. I mean there are much fewer pools than masternode hosting services so for the time being I think we're fine.

[G2M]

Hey that's a good point.

Someone should test it out though.

It should be easy enough and I'm gonna draw on my past dash dumping experiences on cryptsy.

See, I noticed a funny thing. If I saw a meaty buy order for 500ish dash that I wanted to drop a stack into, I started by transferring a load to craptsy.

Only magically, the buy order disappeared or moved way down in the ten minutesor so it takes to show up.

Every time. Were talking about over ten times bc I got bored and wanted to do it for luls.  Of because I have a tendency toward the number ten for the convenience of this post.

Obviously I could just move it in small amounts as I later found out, but it still begs the question: is cryptsy manipulating the market, or is someone not trading based on blockchain tracking data?

I found the second situation more likely, which is another screwy story all together.

Anyways point here is - when I move largish amts of monero to polo, this doesn't happen like it did at cryptsy. Free to dump at market value if you wanted.

So why isn't that the case? Is it a conspiracy to get me to write this post, or should you put up some actual money and run it through mymonero and then send it to polo to see if the buy orders move in line with when you move large amounts to the exchange?

[celestio]

Interesting, OP. Thanks for the factual information, and not resorting to biased, opinionated bullshit that comes out of the posts of trolls like BlockaFett.

[generalizethis]

(1) As long as people host their masternodes properlywith encrypted wallets with backups, I can't see anything that could cause any issues. (2) If a hosting company were to refuse hosting masternodes for whatever magical reason, nobody would lose anything and there are plenty of them around so I wouldn't call it centralized. I mean there are much fewer pools than masternode hosting services so for the time being I think we're fine.

1. My point is that hosting companies are privacy breaches waiting to happen for masternodes, and most people don't follow best practices in this regard, so why would they in other ways? Are you in the "they got this wrong, but they'll get that right--because it validates my opinion" business?

2. My stated concern (listed at the beginning an end of the post) is not that peoples funds are at risk, but their privacy and security.

For most coins, nodes being hosted on a corporate server isn't a big deal, but when their advertised anonymity depends on those nodes, it's a massive security breach waiting to happen.

(Facts and figures)

--Over 95% of the masternodes are on servers owned by companies located in 5 countries. If this coin ever reached the market cap levels of Bitcoin or threatened global monetary supply, it would certainly gain the inquisitiveness of LEA worldwide who would likely share data in order to prosecute criminals or those that threatened their monopoly of wealth. This shouldn't be made this easy. This is further proof that cryptosystems that rely on users to follow best practices are relying on failure.

[GTO911]

BlockaFett guy is like, please dont do it, please let me get rich with this scam

[illodin]

--Over 95% of the masternodes are on servers owned by companies located in 5 countries. If this coin ever reached the market cap levels of Bitcoin or threatened global monetary supply, it would certainly gain the inquisitiveness of LEA worldwide who would likely share data in order to prosecute criminals or those that threatened their monopoly of wealth.

Can't wait that to happen, as that would currently mean each masternode earning $6,500/month in rewards. People might then afford moving their masternodes away from Amazon.

[qwizzie]

Trollero™ strikes again  

Get ready for 100 pages of "Dash is a scam" Trollero pumping from:

Smooth - Epic-troll / slightly unhinged Monero core "dev" with 1000s of attack-Dash posts to his name.  Was ranked the 4th biggest troll on the Dash thread by post count.  Recently took over Monero competitor AEON.

Fluffyponzay - Monero lead "dev".  Joined Monero after trying to scam USD 200,000 from Vertcoin investors (aka 20% of their market cap) to "develop" his Vertpay.com website.  Took control of Monero and setup MyMonero.com, centralized Monero web wallet.  Likes to go offline and gives Monero core team / their ISP / NSA acccess to majority of Monero's "anonymous" transactions / users from one handy spot.  And because Monero official wallet doesn't work, it's MyMonero all the way.  Oh also trying to make his 3rd centralized payment site PayBee.com...Lots more but can't be bothered.

Harrison Ford aka Generalize this - he made this thread already.  (I like that he actually did some research, even though I think it's obviously an idiotic conclusion to say wallets hosted around the world in different countries running as masternodes are centralized, but kudos to Generalize for once )

G2M - Chronic Monero troll

Icebreaker - Extremely unhinged head Monero troll aka Eduardo de Castro the Hashfast scammer.  Everyone knows him so no introduction needed.

GTO911 - known cat fiddler.  Do not let this person near your family or the family pet.

I will tick off the list as they appear.

If you are just starting this thread, make your life easier and just buy Monero..  They will probably go away if you just give them your BTC.  Wait for them to dump on the dumber Monero users who don't get it's a clone of something else that has been stalling for 14 months already, then BCT can be a more pleasant experience for all of us seeking innovation / decentralized crypto..

Things to watch out for:

1. Trollero users repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of what arguments, reason or logic are put in front of them.

2. All replies to Trollero users must have any text offensive to Monero removed from them.  Sorry, you're text was just Trolleroed™

3. All Trollero replies to non-believers must start with "are you stupid?" and maintain the fact that everyone is stupid who doesn't "get" Monero (not any other Cryptonote clone though, even the ones with active developers and GUIs - Monero is special and the next bitcoin - FACT.

4. Lots of talk of 10,000 XMR pizzas - like we never heard it before..

5. Anything competing with Monero but not Monero itself is a centralized scam, including any exchange or website that even mentions them, period.

Can't think of anymore right now...oh yeh Poloniex is 100% trustworthy.  The fact that 95% of Trollero volume goes there whilst people on any other exchange like Bittrex or BTC38 won't touch a Trollero with a 10 foot poll means nothing.  And Dash price is fake even though volume is spread across all major exchanges.

Anyway...have fun

cheers

That was one of the best posts i read for some time. It has drama, truth, humor and intelligence all nicely packed together.
Thank you sir for posting it

cheers 

[wpalczynski]

Yeah, great job, bravo.

[toknormal]

A bit desperate this one is it not ?

Blockchain daemons can be run by anyone, anywhere, anytime. For that matter, half of them can be run in the foyer at Langley HQ for all the difference it makes to the network's behavioural logic. Thats the whole point of a decentralised network.

Don't worry, if TPTB truly feel the need to de-anonymise one of your addresses, they'll have easier ways of doing it than waiting for one of your transactions to be handled by some random masternode, attempting to find out where in the world it and its participating partners for that transaction are, commandeering those virtual servers only to discover that they can't detect your transaction originating address anyway. They'll probably just knock on your door instead.

(On the other hand, since they "own" cryptonote tech and all known jiggery pokery, scam logic, corrupt transactional behaviour and heists are totally hidden from public view and therefore void of public accountability, I'm sure they won’t mistake which one has the “low hanging fruit”).

P.S. Masternodes are secured by a collateral populated coin address, not hosted servers.

P.P.S. Mind your definitions.  

Centralised:

CJSR Russia: 1

Decentralised:

Accelerated IT servers: Frankfurt Germany: 95
Amazon USA: 44
Asmunda Frankfurt Germany: 150
Bhost ltd: England/Amsterdam: 3
Choopa, NJ, USA: 162
City Network Hosting Stockholm Sweden: 4
CJSR Russia: 1
ColoCrossing NY USA: 14
Comcast PA USA: 3
Crisis Solutions LLC USA: 7
Deutsche Telekom Germany: 1
Digital Ocean NY  USA: 75
DNA Oy  Finland: 4
Earthnet CO USA: 1
Evanzo ECom Germany: 1
Fevvo Inc CT USA: 11
Hetzner Online Germany: 2
Hostinger Intl. Cyprus: 1
HostUs USA: 1
IDC*China or MA USA: 10
Internet Assigned Numbers: 3
Microsoft USA: 3
MyLoc Managed Dusseldorf Germany: 104
Neterra Bulgaria: 1
NodeServ LLC FL USA: 32
Online SAS France: 213
PP KOM i TEX Ukraine: 1
Private Layer Inc Zurich Switzerland: 110
QHoster Ltd  Bulgaria: 96
QuadraNet CA USA: 4
QuickPacket Llc GA USA: 4
RackSpace Hosting TX USA: 2
Rogers Cable Com Canada: 3
Serverius Netherlands: 1
TDC A/S Denmark: 1
Telecom3Sverige AB Sweden: 1
Time Warner USA: 1
UAB Technoloigu Lithuania: 4
VideoTron Telecom Lte Canada: 1

[generalizethis]

A bit desperate this one is it not ?

Blockchain daemons can be run by anyone, anywhere, anytime. For that matter, half of them can be run in the foyer at Langley HQ for all the difference it makes to the network's behavioural logic. Thats the whole point of a decentralised network.

Don't worry, if TPTB truly feel the need to de-anonymise one of your addresses, they'll have easier ways of doing it than waiting for one of your transactions to be handled by some random masternode, attempting to find out where in the world it and its participating partners for that transaction are, commandeering those virtual servers only to discover that they can't detect your transaction originating address anyway. They'll probably just knock on your door instead.

(On the other hand, since they "own" cryptonote tech and all known jiggery pokery, scam logic, corrupt transactional behaviour and heists are totally hidden from public view and therefore void of public accountability, I'm sure they won’t mistake which one has the “low hanging fruit”).

P.S. Masternodes are secured by a collateral populated coin address, not hosted servers.

P.P.S. Mind your definitions.  

Centralised:

CJSR Russia: 1

Decentralised:

Accelerated IT servers: Frankfurt Germany: 95
Amazon USA: 44
Asmunda Frankfurt Germany: 150
Bhost ltd: England/Amsterdam: 3
Choopa, NJ, USA: 162
City Network Hosting Stockholm Sweden: 4
CJSR Russia: 1
ColoCrossing NY USA: 14
Comcast PA USA: 3
Crisis Solutions LLC USA: 7
Deutsche Telekom Germany: 1
Digital Ocean NY  USA: 75
DNA Oy  Finland: 4
Earthnet CO USA: 1
Evanzo ECom Germany: 1
Fevvo Inc CT USA: 11
Hetzner Online Germany: 2
Hostinger Intl. Cyprus: 1
HostUs USA: 1
IDC*China or MA USA: 10
Internet Assigned Numbers: 3
Microsoft USA: 3
MyLoc Managed Dusseldorf Germany: 104
Neterra Bulgaria: 1
NodeServ LLC FL USA: 32
Online SAS France: 213
PP KOM i TEX Ukraine: 1
Private Layer Inc Zurich Switzerland: 110
QHoster Ltd  Bulgaria: 96
QuadraNet CA USA: 4
QuickPacket Llc GA USA: 4
RackSpace Hosting TX USA: 2
Rogers Cable Com Canada: 3
Serverius Netherlands: 1
TDC A/S Denmark: 1
Telecom3Sverige AB Sweden: 1
Time Warner USA: 1
UAB Technoloigu Lithuania: 4
VideoTron Telecom Lte Canada: 1

So you believe LEAs won't subpoena, coerce, or just ask hosting companies to provide billing information? How many instamine recipients own the nodes in Germany, or France, or the USA? If you had only those three countries supplying node intel, you'd have over 80% of all masternode traffic. They wouldn't even need to ask for the operator's permission; they just need to hack nicely. but I'm sure people who spend so much time covering their tracks by using hosting companies follow best practices with their personal computers also.

Dashers learn to make private nodes and how to obfuscate your IPs--too hard? Then give up the anonymity game--you already lost.

[NorrisK]

Doesn't really matter as nobody else than the dash fan group cares about it. Too much shit surrounding it, only being defended by a huge number of insiders.

[toknormal]

So you believe LEAs won't subpoena, coerce, or just ask hosting companies to provide billing information? How many instamine recipients own the nodes in Germany, or France, or the USA? If you had only those three countries supplying node intel, you'd have over 80% of all masternode traffic.

So what ? They can probably get that just by reading bitcointalk.

It's not the machine that hosts the masternode that matters strategically, it's the anonymous address that hosts its collateral. Blockchain daemons can disappear and pop-up anywhere, hosters can have open access to masternodes for all anyone cares - it's decentralised remember ?

The "Evil NSA" doesn't need to hack into any hosting company's virtualised servers to get access to a masternode daemon, they can just download one from here and run it themselves.

P.S. Notice something about that page by the way ? It contains the official Dash client, complete with hash's so you can conclusively verify your download is not(a hacked-to-peices wallet that's showing you a JPEG of a phony balance from a blockchain that has no support for public consensus to endorse its veracity or otherwise) 

Thats because in crypto, to any self respecting developer, the meer idea of "third party wallets" is synonymous with third party "please-help-yourself-to-my-money" tech, so an official, native, clean, verified, GUI client is usually the first order of business, not the last.

Dashers learn to make private nodes and how to obfuscate your IPs--too hard? Then give up the anonymity game--you already lost.

Sorry, but in crypto (unlike fiat) preventing people from seeing and verifying the anonymous addresses at each end of a transaction is not anonymity - it's monetary clownery.

Nice subject title though - "The reality of masternode centralisation". That sure took some creativity. Your next assignment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations)