[ANN][DASH] Dash (dash.org) | First Self-Funding Self-Governing Crypto Currency

[eduffield]

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).

https://dashninja.pl/budgets.html

The main reason why I don't vote anymore, is that I have no incentive to vote, since the vote is primarily (solely) defined by the three founders (Evan, Daniel and ?) and Otoh. Together they probably own up to 1,000,000 coins. This is public knowledge. I don't know if they have set up masternodes for all the coins they own, but it would seem reasonable to assume they did so (or largely so). The voting threshold was set to 10% (Yes - No) votes, which is far too low to consider this to be somewhat of a democratic voting process, taking into account the total amount of masternodes these 4 individuals (probably) own. It's safe to assume they control the outcome of the voting process.

Evan avoided the question from the interviewer at the Mexico conference regarding this specific point. Evan didn't answer it truthfully, avoiding the essence of the question, so I'm sure he's aware this is not a long term (viable) setup. In the end it will just be a few people who will still vote, if nothing changes. A lot of time has gone by and it seemed to me that the initial configuration would remain so. This would effectively render DGBB a pointless functionality.

How can you motivate anyone who just owns 1 or even 10 masternodes to participate, in the current setup/configuration? It's just a formality without any significance whatsoever. This was entirely to be expected and I'm somewhat surprised it has taken this long to actually being discussed, as if you all don't know what's going on? You think people are incapable of executing simple commands in their wallet console? It was obvious from the first post regarding DGBB that this was going to happen. I personally imagined this to be changed once the DGBB functionality was proven to be successfully implemented (which seems to be the case), but it hasn't and there's been no communication on changing this threshold, so up to now I'm still disappointed to see new proposals before actually fine-tuning DGBB to a more righteous configuration.

Since I'm not being penalized for not voting and there's no financial incentive to vote, despite it primarily not being democratic, I've completely lost interest in voting for any new proposal. Why should I waste my energy on it? I have other projects I'm involved in, so I use my time where I'm of actual value.

The technology is probably good, but the threshold to pass a vote with DGBB is obviously wrong. Why such low targets? Scared no proposal would ever pass through? The Dash team really needed that salary proposal to pass through didn't they? So going for 10% made it a sure thing.

It's my opinion that the setting must be 50%+1 (Yes - No). If you don't achieve this, your proposal is simply not good or important enough. Feel free to try again. Yes this also means that some proposals from the Dash team itself may have a hard(er) time getting through. In my opinion, that's actually a good thing and would truly require (pretty much) the whole dash team ánd masternode owner community to vote and discuss/challenge/refine each proposal.

It's not about being notified there's a new proposal, it's not about how easy the voting process is, ... it's the treshold.

Raising the threshold will bring me back to the voting process.

Right now raising the threshold to 50%+1 would result in no budget proposal ever passing, therefore nullifying the entire budget system in the first place. If you want the threshold to be raised, then start voting and maybe the team will raise it. If enough people stop voting, then the team will likely lower it. There have to be enough people participating in order for budgets to be able to pass.

For what it's worth, iirc Otoh never votes his nodes.

P.S. I'm not really concerned. Most people in democracies don't vote in any event.

Shouldn't we start with the lowest hanging fruit? This whole system was thrown together in about 2 months and is pretty rough at the moment (although it's working really well I think). This Dashpay wallet could actually support viewing new proposals, it could keep track of the ones you've seen and ask you to vote on the ones you haven't. It's much easier to write really intuitive and friendly software that encourages this type of behavior without enforcing anything.

About me and Otoh, both of us combined control ~800-900 masternodes, which is 23-26% of the current amount. This percentage is actually falling due to the additional masternodes being added every day, I would buy more Dash and start more nodes, but my wife would kill me  

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[Salkenex]

I would buy more Dash and start more nodes, but my wife would kill me  

Mr. D, I have this exact same problem. 

[splawik21]

I would buy more Dash and start more nodes, but my wife would kill me  

Mr. D, I have this exact same problem.  

You guys think you`re the only ones?
Looks like all woman are the same

[aigeezer]

P.S. I'm not really concerned. Most people in democracies don't vote in any event.

I never vote irl or in crypto fwiw.

Over time I came to realize that voting implies agreeing to be bound by the outcome.

I much prefer to make my own decisions in life rather than feel bound by group decisions, and since I don't buy the "accept vote outcomes only if you win" ethos, I choose not to vote - anywhere.

Of course this position was originally formed in the context of political forced-choice false-dichotomy voting and I am definitely not saying that is the voting climate in DASH. However, for me the principle holds in even the most benign voting situations - I must ask myself if I am willing to be bound by the outcome, win or lose. If not - if I would want to sell my DASH after a particular outcome for instance, then I would have the dilemma of feeling locked in to a course I did not agree with. If I don't participate in the making of a decision - if I don't have skin in the game - then I can more objectively assess whether the resulting product is a good fit for me.

For those of you who believe the "voter apathy" meme - sometimes it's not about apathy at all.

Don't get me wrong - voting is a useful tool for breaking deadlocks in a group, for choosing a group path. I have no objection to its use but it's not a tool this (contented) MN holder will ever use. On reflection, I am a consumer/user/fan of DASH rather than part of its developer community. In the unlikely event that something better popped up, I would jump ship with sadness but not regret.

I felt a need to explain my position, for some reason, and it helped me to think it through.       

[tungfa]

Anybody speaks Indonesian ??
Help Please
 
https://dashtalk.org/threads/new-video-translations.6159/page-6#post-76649

Indonesian done
i love this community !
tx setyawan

[AlexGR]

LOL Noah! I was about to make a Star Wars reference as well

You know it really feels like Rebels vs Empire.

Rebels: DASH and BitcoinXT crowd (which are very receptive to Evan's suggestions to scaling and funding!)
Empire: XMR-brigade and bitcoin-core

DASH should not be in any way affiliated with the rogue BitcoinXT.

Bitcoin's scaling is bitcoin's issue. These guys were trying to fork Bitcoin in two with something like a power grab. Dash is an altcoin, so it can do whatever it likes with its own blockchain and possible strategies on how scaling can be accomplished.

[ddink7]

LOL Noah! I was about to make a Star Wars reference as well

You know it really feels like Rebels vs Empire.

Rebels: DASH and BitcoinXT crowd (which are very receptive to Evan's suggestions to scaling and funding!)
Empire: XMR-brigade and bitcoin-core

DASH should not be in any way affiliated with the rogue BitcoinXT.

Bitcoin's scaling is bitcoin's issue. These guys were trying to fork Bitcoin in two with something like a power grab. Dash is an altcoin, so it can do whatever it likes with its own blockchain and possible strategies on how scaling can be accomplished.

I'm personally a big fan of Bitcoin XT. After two years of arguing and doing absolutely nothing, a couple of developers had the balls to actually DO something. It's like my dad says "Do something, even if it's wrong."

[AlexGR]

LOL Noah! I was about to make a Star Wars reference as well

You know it really feels like Rebels vs Empire.

Rebels: DASH and BitcoinXT crowd (which are very receptive to Evan's suggestions to scaling and funding!)
Empire: XMR-brigade and bitcoin-core

DASH should not be in any way affiliated with the rogue BitcoinXT.

Bitcoin's scaling is bitcoin's issue. These guys were trying to fork Bitcoin in two with something like a power grab. Dash is an altcoin, so it can do whatever it likes with its own blockchain and possible strategies on how scaling can be accomplished.

I'm personally a big fan of Bitcoin XT. After two years of arguing and doing absolutely nothing, a couple of developers had the balls to actually DO something. It's like my dad says "Do something, even if it's wrong."

The whole argument on scaling is wrong and their action is wrong too.

Satoshi accepted the 1MB patch because the system had a vulnerability. This vulnerability has not been fixed. How can you revert the patch if you haven't found a solution?

Real action = find a solution = apply a proper patch.

Reverting the patch, especially when there is no real need = idiotic.

[ddink7]

LOL Noah! I was about to make a Star Wars reference as well

You know it really feels like Rebels vs Empire.

Rebels: DASH and BitcoinXT crowd (which are very receptive to Evan's suggestions to scaling and funding!)
Empire: XMR-brigade and bitcoin-core

DASH should not be in any way affiliated with the rogue BitcoinXT.

Bitcoin's scaling is bitcoin's issue. These guys were trying to fork Bitcoin in two with something like a power grab. Dash is an altcoin, so it can do whatever it likes with its own blockchain and possible strategies on how scaling can be accomplished.

I'm personally a big fan of Bitcoin XT. After two years of arguing and doing absolutely nothing, a couple of developers had the balls to actually DO something. It's like my dad says "Do something, even if it's wrong."

The whole argument on scaling is wrong and their action is wrong too.

Satoshi accepted the 1MB patch because the system had a vulnerability. This vulnerability has not been fixed. How can you revert the patch if you haven't found a solution?

Real action = find a solution = apply a proper patch.

Reverting the patch, especially when there is no real need = idiotic.

The only thing that's idiotic is not doing anything until you have a perfect solution. It's the real world--you do what you can to solve the immediate crisis and THEN you continue your work on the perfect solution.

[AlexGR]

LOL Noah! I was about to make a Star Wars reference as well

You know it really feels like Rebels vs Empire.

Rebels: DASH and BitcoinXT crowd (which are very receptive to Evan's suggestions to scaling and funding!)
Empire: XMR-brigade and bitcoin-core

DASH should not be in any way affiliated with the rogue BitcoinXT.

Bitcoin's scaling is bitcoin's issue. These guys were trying to fork Bitcoin in two with something like a power grab. Dash is an altcoin, so it can do whatever it likes with its own blockchain and possible strategies on how scaling can be accomplished.

I'm personally a big fan of Bitcoin XT. After two years of arguing and doing absolutely nothing, a couple of developers had the balls to actually DO something. It's like my dad says "Do something, even if it's wrong."

The whole argument on scaling is wrong and their action is wrong too.

Satoshi accepted the 1MB patch because the system had a vulnerability. This vulnerability has not been fixed. How can you revert the patch if you haven't found a solution?

Real action = find a solution = apply a proper patch.

Reverting the patch, especially when there is no real need = idiotic.

The only thing that's idiotic is not doing anything until you have a perfect solution. It's the real world--you do what you can to solve the immediate crisis and THEN you continue your work on the perfect solution.

The patch is there because there is a vulnerability. Removing the patch and pretending the vulnerability just isn't there is simply going to make matters worse.

There is no immediate crisis. The blockchain can get 10MB blocks tomorrow morning and a script kiddie can fill them with zero-fee txs by tomorrow evening. Will people cry "ohhh the blocks are full, we are in crisis"?

The network capacity of BTC is at least double the amount of non-dust/non spam TXs and trivial value TXs. The dust/spam TXs should, over time, be eliminated altogether through higher fees. The blockchain is a very valuable resource and it should not be treated like a dumpster.

When legitimate and non-trivial / non-spam transactions start to crowd the 1MB limit - let's say ~80-90%, that's the time of action.

[ddink7]

The patch is there because there is a vulnerability. Removing the patch and pretending the vulnerability just isn't there is simply going to make matters worse.

There is no immediate crisis. The blockchain can get 10MB blocks tomorrow morning and a script kiddie can fill them with zero-fee txs by tomorrow evening. Will people cry "ohhh the blocks are full, we are in crisis"?

The network capacity of BTC is at least double the amount of non-dust/non spam TXs and trivial value TXs. The dust/spam TXs should, over time, be eliminated altogether through higher fees. The blockchain is a very valuable resource and it should not be treated like a dumpster.

When legitimate and non-trivial / non-spam transactions start to crowd the 1MB limit - let's say ~80-90%, that's the time of action.

I agree, the blockchain can absurb plenty more "real" transactions before there is a crisis. Very good points.

Nonetheless, I support Bitcoin XT and I'm pretty sure a lot of people in our community do. Hell, I'd support them for no reason other than Theymos' blatant censorship of them. I won't derail this thread any further, but suffice it to say that I'm probably not the only one who respects people of action like Gavin and Mike--even if those actions aren't perfect.

[stan.distortion]

Same but the main reason I do is the amount of trolling the whole blocksize debate attracted, way more than any kind of rational disagreement could generate so someone had something to gain by it, pretty much the same as this thread until recently.

[AlexGR]

How can you motivate anyone who just owns 1 or even 10 masternodes to participate, in the current setup/configuration? It's just a formality without any significance whatsoever.

Criticism can go both ways.

Say you have a group of whales that control 30% of the coin.

If you go with 10% as a requirement => you get "but the whales control 30% of the coins" type of criticism
if you go with 50% as a requirement => you get "but the small MN owner will always require whale support to even get their proposal rolling. If the whales don't bother, it's all irrelevant for the small guy"

[toknormal]

I never understood the point of private, in-house, corporate blockchains.

If it's proprietary why bother with a blockchain at all ? If you have to come up with your own hashing power isn't it just a very expensive VPN ? Why not just use regular accounts and databases instead ?

Perplexed.  

[AlexGR]

I never understood the point of private, in-house, corporate blockchains.

If it's proprietary why bother with a blockchain at all ? If you have to come up with your own hashing power isn't it just a very expensive VPN ? Why not just use regular accounts and databases instead ?

Perplexed.  

It's just bullshit really for the media "ohhh bitcoin is not very good, but hey, it may have something useful to it". Kind of discrediting it with a twist. Of course banks have zero use for a blockchain as their centralized systems work better for their intended purposes.

The blockchain (and bitcoin) is needed by the people as a DEcentralized solution, not by those that sit atop the hierarchical control structure of the centralized system.

[stan.distortion]

I never understood the point of private, in-house, corporate blockchains.

If it's proprietary why bother with a blockchain at all ? If you have to come up with your own hashing power isn't it just a very expensive VPN ? Why not just use regular accounts and databases instead ?

Perplexed.  

Maybe one reason for it, I'd guess is its a new buzzword for database providers to latch onto. Corporations are just as bad as consumers for buying shiny gizmo's they don't really need but it could turn into a pissing contest over performance and requirements, might even spawn new platforms.

[ddink7]

How can you motivate anyone who just owns 1 or even 10 masternodes to participate, in the current setup/configuration? It's just a formality without any significance whatsoever.

This is the question people have been asking since the first experiments with democracy in Athens. Nobody has ever solved the problem, so I doubt we're going to either. The best anyone can come up with is: a) civic responsibility, b) sometimes your vote really does matter.

How quickly we forget:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2000

[stan.distortion]

The other option's controversy and that makes it a PR problem

[toknormal]

This is the question people have been asking since the first experiments with democracy in Athens. Nobody has ever solved the problem, so I doubt we're going to either. The best anyone can come up with is: a) civic responsibility, b) sometimes your vote really does matter.

Exactly. People vote when it matters to them which is why it's reasonable that the ones who ARE voting deserve to be heard over those that aren't IMO.

In the Scottish referendum on independence, people came out of the woodwork from all over the place to vote - people who had never even registered to vote before. There was such strength of feeling on both sides that nearly the entire population voted. On the other hand, in European elections - which actually do matter regarding certain areas of policy - you're lucky if 30% turnout.

The thing about Dash's voting system is that - unlike democracy - you can buy yourself votes.

Earlier today, emitkirby made this remark:

Otoh, I respect your right to make investments however the size of your investment in DASH gives you a lot of power. This is something I believe is holding potential investors back.

Although I think this is a reasonable view with regard to democracy, I don't really think it's reasonable with regard to governance of a capital asset. The whole point of commercially traded assets is that you weild more influence over their governance the more you acquire. So the fact that Dash is doing justice to this principle should attract investors, not inhibit them. This principle applies universally in commerce. The fact that Steve Jobs held a huge number of shares in Pixar didn't inhibit people from investing in Pixar. Dash is a private currency - not a public one created by a central bank and backed by public debt.

Clarity is required. I don't see any other way that allowing large holders to wield more influence than small ones. In fact I think it's essential - it just gives them more responsibility thats all because the merits of their decision making (or in Dash's case, the decentralised will of the holders) will determine the propensity for others to invest.

If the governance process (however many participate) makes crap decisions then the asset will go down the tubes. If it is seen to take sensible, well thought out and generally 'safe' decisions then  the asset will grow and attract more users.

In conclusion I don't think it makes a damn bit of difference whether 1 person votes or 1000. It's not the number of votes but the quality of the decision making that's important. If only 20 people care passionately whether Dashwhale gets a blockchain sponsorship and only those 20 people vote, then thats better than 200 people voting where the other 180 don't have a particular view IMO.

However, the fact that many people can "jam their foot in the door" in a crisis over a critical issue if so required is a hugely powerful backstop against corruption.

I like Dash's governance model. Everytime I try to "think my way out of it" I keep coming back to the way it is - an uneasy but ultimately very powerful and well secured blend of capital & popular democracy. It also puts a lot of trust in the holders to make good decisions so it's an open book which makes it "alive" and appealing.

[Solarminer]

Storj is having a 2hr hangout session in 45 minutes to discuss their distributed drive storage.  Here is the link for anyone interested.  Might be helpful to get some info for implementing blockchain storage for Dash.

Need an HTML5 browser - chrome works.

http://storj.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=edba9fc4ce8b9095a31859cba&id=2ac957092e&e=6f3863fef1