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

[MasterMined710]

...and with the evolution release be reversible and currency agnostic.

You mean you will be able to send $USD, Euros, BTC or Mooncoin over the Dash network from one wallet to another ?

I mean it will operate just like the current system does. Can the current "currency agnostic" system send or receive $USD, Euros, BTC or Mooncoin? Most can do USD but i don't think my local grocery store's POS does Euros or anything other than good old USD. Correct?

But yeah i would think eventually with the fiat gateways prop and wall of coins integration why not? Throw in shapeshift functionality and your mooncoins are spendable on the dash network.

[toknormal]

But yeah i would think eventually with the fiat gateways prop and wall of coins integration why not? Throw in shapeshift functionality and your mooncoins are spendable on the dash network.

  Well I suppose philosophically that's a good answer. Lets hope most merchants are keen philosophers.

[MasterMined710]

But yeah i would think eventually with the fiat gateways prop and wall of coins integration why not? Throw in shapeshift functionality and your mooncoins are spendable on the dash network.

  Well I suppose philosophically that's a good answer. Lets hope most merchants are keen philosophers.

With the fiat gateways and wall of coins integration it would seem that already Dash would be better than my local grocery stores POS system in that it could take worldwide currency denominations (for tourist or whatever), or at least the ones we have integrated with through crypto exchanges. Add shapeshift and it could take most all atls too. No?

I'm also not even sure that it would need to be reversible like if the cashier charged me for an extra can of beans. They would just credit my account from the stores account. If it was a larger amount $100-$1000+ she may need to call over her manager who would have access to a multisig store account. And up the chain (non pun intended) of command (3 sigs) it would go if a even larger amount than that was needed to be reversed.
Or maybe that would not scale and it would have to go into masternode purgatory like the current system and all clear later. Either way it can be done with crypto or at least soon with DASH!

[toknormal]

With the fiat gateways and wall of coins integration it would seem that already Dash would be better than my local grocery stores...Either way it can be done with crypto or at least soon with DASH!

I think we'd better just accept that it can't.

Life will be easier if we look upon cryptocurrencies as a highly mobile capital asset rather than a slow and cumbersome payments system. Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses.

[customer73]

2. use of your blockchain as a payments system

Ok, here there is slightly more to work with. A blockchain CAN work as a payments system because it can transfer value from one holder to another. However, what are we competing with ? Legacy payments systems which are already inuse, therefore the blockchain would have to deliver some kind of substantial advantage to be adopted. Lets look at the properties that a payments system needs to be attractive to large scale commercial adopters:

 • agnostic (it should be able handle any currency denomination)
 • fast (typically processing a single trade in 2-3 seconds)
 • easily reversible (if the cashier rang my brussel sprouts through on the other guy's bill by mistake they should be able to credit them and charge me within a few seconds)
 • both locally and globally scaleable (i.e. if my business needs more capacity it should be able to add servers to get it. If the network as a whole needs more capacity it should have recourse to growing infrastructure to gain capacity at least linearly with invested capital)

One doubt about this:
easily reversible (if the cashier rang my brussel sprouts through on the other guy's bill by mistake they should be able to credit them and charge me within a few seconds)

Do we know if Dash evolution, contemplates some mechanism or technology?

Thank you

[Drobek]

Guys,
is there any DASH API that would give me details of the latest transactions?

I can not see it here: https://explorer.dash.org/q - is there any other good API I could use?
Cheers!

https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dash/#
https://explorer.dash.org/chain/Dash
https://www.dashninja.pl/blocks.html

These are the one's i know of.

Cool, thanks again qwizzie!

[IMZ]

Probably a dumb question, but for what purpose do devs set up a predetermined coin limit (18m) ? Wouldn't that just cause people to hoard instead of use it as an actual currency?

Correct, which is why people need to make up their minds whether they're investing in a currency or a store of value.

In a large economy, the only way to keep prices stable as the size of the economy expands is to expand the money supply as well. This can be done in 2 ways:

1. a central bank can issue more currency
2. the market can issue more "currency" by way of derivatives such as credit capital etc (i.e. denominated in the monetary base but backed by new debt instead of blockchain tokens - see example below)

So by virtue of point 2, a fixed supply monetary base could still work as a currency denomination, but then your not using the blockchain as a "payment system".

This is something that has to be broken apart and thought about a whole lot more than it has I think - not just in Dash but right across cryptocurrency. You are right that the main function of cryptos will probably be "hoarding" (otherwise known as investing in a monetary asset for the purposes of preserving/gaining value) because the limited supply kind of guarantees its value against non-limited supply currencies as long as adoption is reasonably stable.

Of course, it's important for money to be mobile, since liquidity is a big factor in its performance as a store of value. So "spending" in that sense is applicable and must be easy to access/use. But I see that as being distinct from a "payment system" which is generally currency agnostic and simply facilitates trades such as POS, eCommerce etc.

Lots of different aspects to decouple from each other and well beyond the scope of one post.

*************************************** P.S. *****************************************
Not a lot of people realise that 2 already happens right now. Exchanges extend the effective money supply by "adding" credit money to the monetary base on the blockchain. That credit money is backed by the exchange's contract with you when you make a deposit, denominated in the blockchain denomination concerned and all subsequent trades are then carried out off-chain at instant speeds.

In my opinion, if cryptos ever see major retail adoption, this will be the model they'll use. Blockchains will not be used as payment systems because a payment system needs to be currency agnostic, massively scaleable, instant, reversible...i.e. all the things that blockchains "aren't"  

This is the best discussion of this subject that I've seen in a loooooooong time. Will read and re-read it. Sent a copy to two of my crypto offsiders.

[We have a long involvement with ('rare') 'crypto commodities' with communities that eschew development/merchant-network development. Guess how they're doing?]

[toknormal]

I've updated my post above just for clarification.

[exscudo]

Speaking about the payent method - I think that we need some time before cryptocurrencies will be accepted in at least 5 major countries. We never know - maybe projects like Dash will soon integrate with some major governments, and the world will become even more 'encrypted' . By the way, any plans concerning this kind of things?

[MasterMined710]

With the fiat gateways and wall of coins integration it would seem that already Dash would be better than my local grocery stores...Either way it can be done with crypto or at least soon with DASH!

I think we'd better just accept that it can't.

Life will be easier if we look upon cryptocurrencies as a highly mobile capital asset rather than a slow and cumbersome payments system. Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses.

Blockchains yes but not 2nd tier layers. In btc that would be something similar to the lightning network (censorship prone 3rd parties, semi centralized, not efficient, more fees) and in Dash that would be the masternode network (censorship resistant - protocol level, decentralized, efficient, less fees).
Masternodes meet your criteria as being fast, mobile, flexible and scalable RPS, but you are right that blockchains don't. Masternodes may not have all that functionality right now but it is coming and coming very very soon.

[toknormal]

Blockchains yes but not 2nd tier layers. In btc that would be something similar to the lightning network (censorship prone 3rd parties, semi centralized, not efficient, more fees) and in Dash that would be the masternode network (censorship resistant - protocol level, decentralized, efficient, less fees).
Masternodes meet your criteria as being fast, mobile, flexible and scalable RPS, but you are right that blockchains don't. Masternodes may not have all that functionality right now but it is coming and coming very very soon.

Ok, you have a point there. Dash's articulated protocol does indeed provide transaction support 1 tier back from the mining protocol, so I'll keep an open mind on how adaptable that may be. The DAPI layer that Evolution introduces a further level of abstraction that will facilitate an even greater diversity of options.

However there are still two aspects of targeting cryptos for merchant adoption that are highly unrealistic in my opinion that I'd like people to keep in mind.

1 the fact that a payments system is primarily a facilitator for a product sale, that's all. The business processes associated with the product sale have a far higher priority than instant clearing and IMO have conflicting priorities with those of a blockchain

2 the whole idea of using bearer instruments to pay for goods and services is positively medieval. It's only needed in a very primitive economy because it basically amounts to a form of barter.

Advanced economies quickly evolve organically beyond using base monetary tokens to a secondary financial "tier" or credit tokens which are far more efficient, flexible and fungible. I keep coming back to the idea of exchanges and some people don't seem to get the point. Why do exchanges not use blockchains to facilitate trades ?

If I asked you right now how many Dash are in circulation (including MN collateral) what would your answer be ? You'd go and look at coimarket.com and tell me there were 7,017,804.

But that's not true. You'd need to add all the Dash-denominated exchange liquidity to that number which would take the total to something approaching 8 million maybe. I know you're going to say that the exchange token simply acts as a proxy for the deposit while you're trading as they are backed "1 to 1" but that's not true either. The exchange token is actually independent of the blockchain token and the two are only connected by a contract of debt between you and the exchange where you are the creditor party. While you're busy trading your Dash denominated exchange token, the exchange can be using your blockchain deposits as it sees fit (as does any bank). They can be invested in masternodes, re-lent out, whatever.

Thats the thin end of the wedge. In this way the "Dash" economy is growing an economic monetary tier on top of the base blockchain token tier and this will typically continue until the "credit" tier dwarfs the base money supply. Thats what happens in a mature economy. The amount of credit money in circulation right now dwarfs the central bank monetary base - it just happens naturally.



P.S. This is why my view is that obscuring blockchain properties in order to "preserve" privacy is a very stupid idea unless you're only intending it to have a role as a payment system. If it's really going to be used as a currency then the economy will quickly mature to the point where most trading is carried out off-chain and where your anonymity is dependent on the particular payment system in use. So, in that regard, the base money supply that backs everything else benefits far more from transparency than it does obscurity because nobody's using it for transactions anyway, however it's of supreme importance that confidence in the base capital asset is supported to the max.

I've been arguing this point with the Monero people lately and they don't like me pointing this out. They say that I am engaging in "inane hand waving" and making a "deluded attempt at economic theory". But it's not economic theory, just plain observable facts. Even 99% of the entire volume of trading in Monero last month took place off-chain, not using their wonderful Ring-Sig system and depending totally on Poloniex's privacy support and not Monero's. Despite that their blockchain still had to sacrifice the open accountability, user symmetry and transparent fungibility that an open blockchain brings.

Not a very good deal.

[poloniexwhale]

Speaking about the payent method - I think that we need some time before cryptocurrencies will be accepted in at least 5 major countries. We never know - maybe projects like Dash will soon integrate with some major governments, and the world will become even more 'encrypted' . By the way, any plans concerning this kind of things?

Dash is long term big whale, I wanna buy cheap but that age is gone. Can't be back to 0.001 btc before the huge pump.

[aigeezer]

I keep coming back to the idea of exchanges

Cherry-picking one item to quibble about from your fascinating post -

I see exchanges as a temporary (evil) necessity because many people can't or won't let go of fiat yet. I hope exchanges evolve soon into decentralized entities, but even decentralized exchanges could perhaps do whatever they wanted with "our" funds once they have the keys. Thus, I'd hope even decentralized exchanges are just an evolutionary step on the way to a peer-to-peer environment.

When and if transparent peer-to-peer transactions are the norm, I imagine most fiat legacy systems will appear odd, possibly including systems to enable credit transactions - I speculate that we will be surprised at which ones survive and which ones disappear. I'm old enough to remember a non-credit based economy, when "everyone knew" that credit was bad. Now "everyone knows" credit-based systems are a big improvement, yet "everyone knows" that somehow all the money flows into a few centralized hands who somehow still manage to generate massive debt for all. I'm wary of such certainties, having noticed that they only seem to last for a generation or two, then get replaced by the next certainty.

For example, you noted upthread that there is no need for a grocery store clerk to reverse a transaction when instead they can generate offsetting transactions to make things right. With that one insight, a classic "crypto is bad because it cannot do X" certainty-argument is demolished forever (until some troll brings it up again).

Another certainty-trap, I submit, is the notion that crypto requires blockchains. You make strong points about the present weaknesses of blockchain technology, but I doubt that crypto will use the technology in its weak form for much longer.

[toknormal]

I see exchanges as a temporary (evil) necessity because many people can't or won't let go of fiat yet

Indeed, that may be the case. I just used exchanges because it was a good example of trade being abstracted away from the blockchain.

But it isn't as much to do with the technology as the dynamics of liquidity in general. This also speaks to your point about "credit" and whether it's good or bad.

Let's say you're in a salaried job (I don't know, you may well be for real). Lets say you get paid monthly. So a couple of days before the end of the month you will have worked a full month's salary which will likely be recorded in your employer's books as an "accrual". i.e. that's a figure that will appear in the liabilities section of their balance sheet along with other accruals such as goods received not yet invoiced etc. Once those goods are invoiced and your salary paid, those liabilities will get transferred to cost and disappear, but new accruals will form so we are always in a state of flux that requires a credit "headroom".

Those accruals will aggregate in the "net assets" bottom line on your employer's balance sheet which will place it in an overall state of debt/credit, regardless of whether they maintain any state of banking indebtedness. (Strictly speaking, positive or negative equity, but since equity is always owed back to the shareholders I've taken a liberty with the terminology and just described it as debt/credit).

The aggregation of all these bottom lines amounts to an aggregate state of credit for the entire economy, some of which will be monetised (because there are always uses for high quality collateral) and some will exist in records which will find their way into the national accounts and that will be monetised instead.

That is the NORMAL state of affairs. i.e. if you take a snapshot of any economy at any given time there will be a huge "headroom" of credit which amounts to the oil in the engine that it can't do without. In fact, as I've pointed out, the credit economy accounts the majority of the money supply not the minority.

The exchange is just a symbol I used for this phenomenon that - handily - happens to fulfil both a metaphorical and real role in cryptocurrencies. Have a look again at that money supply graphic and you can see how the money supply "inflates" like a tyre, well beyond the boundaries of the base collateral supply. Running an economy without credit would be like an engine without oil or a car without tyres -impossible.

I mentioned earlier that the effective liquidity of Dash is well over what the blockchain coin supply reports due to inflation in the credit markets such as exchanges and that we have to "add" the exchange liquidity to the blockchain total arrive at the total economic money supply. (Lets say for talking's sake that in our little "toy" economy, blockchain tokens are "M0" and exchange liquidity is "M1". Then total Dash money supply would equal = M0+M1).

You rightly point out that exchanges might become decentralised and therefore M1 would disappear. What I'm saying that this phenomenon (of credit inflation beyond the base supply) is so natural, so ubiquitous and so necessarily that if adoption continued to grow, M1 would simply find other fertile sectors of expansion - i.e. any offchain liquidity at all that was "denominated" in Dash would qualify.

[aigeezer]

What I'm saying that this phenomenon (of credit inflation beyond the base supply) is so natural, so ubiquitous and so necessarily that if adoption continued to grow, M1 would simply find other fertile sectors of expansion - i.e. any offchain liquidity at all that was "denominated" in Dash would qualify.

OK. I think we're working from differing axiom sets. I see the phenomenon of credit inflation beyond the base supply as a 20th century thing, fueled in part by dramatic population growth in the Americas. I see it as inherently unstable. I see it as a phenomenon that will slow and end over the next few decades, probably sooner rather than later, and with dramatic unintended leverage damage as it unwinds.

Interesting stuff to think about. Oh, I'm 73 so not in the workforce (yea) but I put in my 40 back in the day. Age definitely colours my perspective, which may or may not be a good thing.

We'll place our bets differently perhaps and at least one of us (possibly both) will be wrong. In 100 years it won't matter what we thought.         

[toknormal]

I see the phenomenon of credit inflation beyond the base supply as a 20th century thing, fueled in part by dramatic population growth in the Americas

I think it just depends on what you define as "money" and what you define as "credit". The two are so interchangeable as to be indistinguishable today. Almost all modern money is created by the credit markets.

Maybe we both need to read this.

I'm 73 so not in the workforce (yea) but I put in my 40 back in the day.

Well that makes sense with the Dash thread being one of the few on Bitcointalk that's not populated by adolescent children  A Bretton Woods contemporary ! Congratulations - now I understand your monetary philosophy 

[aigeezer]

I think it just depends on what you define as "money" and what you define as "credit". The two are so interchangeable as to be indistinguishable today. Almost all modern money is created by the credit markets.

Yes, absolutely. Where we seem to differ is on the issue of whether this is permanent or a blip. I'm betting it's a blip, while sadly aware that geezers often tend to think like that. I wasn't always a geezer but I genuinely don't know how much of my opinion is geezer-reflex and how much (if any) is wisdom from experience. Darned newfangled gadgets - if the good lord had meant us to use the metric system he would have given us meters instead of feet. Save your Dixie cups - the South will rise again! Harumph, where was I? Is that spittle?

Anyway, this is the kind of reason I don't attempt to influence the direction of Dash development by voting or lobbying. I have opinions and they tend to serve me well but we always need someone to take the other side of any bet. With Dash, I'm an avid but potentially fickle consumer. With fluffycoin, I'm an onlooker - it's got the gruesome appeal of a freeway crash - I can't take my eyes off it but I want no part of it. We seem to have different reasons that have led us to the same place. To each his own. Choice is good.     

[toknormal]

if the good lord had meant us to use the metric system he would have given us meters instead of feet.

Boeing still use the imperial system as far as I'm aware. Seems to work.

[aigeezer]

if the good lord had meant us to use the metric system he would have given us meters instead of feet.

Boeing still use the imperial system as far as I'm aware. Seem to work.

Heh - I was just being flippant, but I didn't know that about Boeing. Apparently it's controversial: http://metricviews.org.uk/2007/11/boeing787-grounded/

When to accept change and when to dig in - always a challenge. Dash vs. Darkcoin - the trolls had a field day with that one - I remember "sounds like a laundry detergent", as though that were a terrible thing.

Living in Canada, I got used to metric a few decades back (Trudeau the elder) but some people never made the change and probably paid a price in job opportunities, peace of mind, and so forth. They will die off in time and those going through K-12 here will know only metric as normal.

Patterns, patterns, patterns. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Now about that credit market system.         

[toknormal]

Living in Canada, I got used to metric a few decades back (Trudeau the elder) but some people never made the change and probably paid a price in job opportunities

LoL ! I was the other way around.

When I was at primary school the Wilson government committed itself to metrication and we learned everything metric. Then the society was too stubborn and they couldn't get enough shops and companies to stop using pounds, yards and ounces and they rescinded and made it optional. So my generation grew up with a whole load of decimal stuff that was useless in a grocer's shop. We barely knew what an ounce was.

The UK's just getting round to it now.