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

[Terzo2]

Nice 

[Macno]

For the records: I like the Masternode voting system just like it is.
I can't wait until DASH finally reaches the critical mass to start worrying the Bitcoin Devs.
Maybe they will start thinking about users once again. BTC user experience is so annoying compared to DASH. They only have the first mover advantage going for them and they seem to be somewhat too sure of themselves.
I did not expect DASH, my BTC clusterfuck hedge, to do so well, but if BTC keeps clusterfucking, fair enough.
Luckily there is actual competition.

[kointrend]

22 ...again.

[K~Ehleyr]

Hi iCEypants, it's good to see you!!  We must be on the way up again!! 

[harmani21]

Haha you make me laugh about 0.012 ....you arent going to see this rate anymore bcs dash is establishing to 20$ and next stop is 30$..Enjoy the ride!!

[Macno]

The Polo lending market is drying out again...Thanks for the interest payments. No idea what rational actor keeps paying these rates.

[ddink7]

But it's not win-win-win when somebody can propose something that exclusively enriches a certain few people, and those certain few people have enough power to make that proposal effective.  This is an effective kleptocracy, and I don't think that anybody really wants to be associated with that.

I won't comment on the whole post, but you are mistaken about the meaning of the 10% threshold for approving proposals. It is not realistic for Evan & the rest of the Core team to past a self-serving proposal against the wishes of the rest of the community since the formula for approval is YES VOTES - NO VOTES > 10%. In other words, so long as Evan and Core own less than 54.9% of the MNs (since 54.9% - 45.1% = 9.8%) they can't do anything like you describe above.  And no, there is zero evidence that they own even 1000MNs much less than the approx 2400 nodes you would need for that attack.

The current system may indeed have yet undiscovered flaws, but a small group of people with a lot of MNs overriding the wishes of the entire community is not one of them.

Well, that's certainly much better, but the official Dash wiki says "If that proposal is approved by at least 10% of the masternode network, then at the end of the month a series of "superblocks" will be created. At that time, the block rewards that were not paid out (10% of each block) will be used to fund approved proposals. The network thus funds itself by reserving 10% of the block reward for budget projects."  https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=84672534

Assuming that you're right and the wiki is wrong, well, that certainly alleviates most of my concern, although I have to wonder what threshold have to vote for it to be approved.  I.e, what constitutes a quorum of voters -- how many masternodes have to participate in the voting, for a valid vote to be held?  And are votes carried over to the next month if they aren't decided?

For that matter, there should be 3 options for voters -- YES, NO, and ABSTAIN -- where ABSTAIN voluntarily removes that voter from being counted YES or NO, and thereby reduces the number of votes necessary for a quorum (however defined).  In this way, voters can express either a "don't care" opinion (thus voluntarily giving others the power to choose) or a "recusing myself from a conflict of interest" vote.

He is indeed right and the wiki is wrong--or not clearly worded, anyway. I wrote that page, so it's my bad, and I've now edited it for clarity:

*The actual calculation is (YES VOTES - NO VOTES) > (Total Number of Masternodes / 10)

I should also point out that the only money that the development team gets is the "Core Team Salary" amount, which is 1176 DASH per month split between about 18 people. In the past, it was split evenly, such that everybody got about 80 DASH per month. Even at today's near ATH prices, that's still only $1760 per month, or $21,120 per year...hardly enough to enrich anybody, given that it's about a fifth of what a dev would make working in the private sector. I don't know how many votes Evan has, but if we just assume 100 (nice round number), then the ANNUAL payout he receives is about 1% of his holdings. In other words, practically a rounding error. (Recently the pay structure has changed, and depending on time worked and value of contributions, Core Team members are paid between $250 and $2000 per month, irrespective of exchange rate.)

We *do* have an internal policy that Core Team members may not submit budget proposals to pay themselves for their Core work or any "side projects" that they do. If I get paid as part of the Core Team to write/edit, I can't submit a budget proposal to earn money for helping Amanda write the script for her Dash Detailed show, for instance. Finally, you have to remember that privacy is still one of Dash's core features, and thus there is no way to know for certain how many masternodes a person controls (if they are careful when starting masternodes and when voting). Unless they decide to tell us, nobody knows for sure how much voting power the so-called "elites" possess, so there is no way to know how to "penalize" their votes, or which votes to "exclude." You can't really say "Evan can't vote on Core Team proposals" when nobody knows which masternodes are Evan's! He could voluntarily abstain, but nobody can actually police it.

P.S. You are right about the "rinse and repeat" nature of all our previous visits above 0.02. If I had followed that strategy (sell above 0.02, but below 0.012) I'd have a fortune now. If you really believe in the future of Dash, though, you have to assume that one of these days we'll pass 0.02...and never look back. I've always been terrified of missing the train when it left the station, so I've never sold. For what it's worth, this guy has some great points (and he's not wrong very often): https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-entering-long-term-bull-market.13204/

[GBattaglia]

Ok, so, I've been gone for a couple of years.  I'm back and.... well, I like some of what I see, I don't like some of what I see.

I like the rebranding (I had to upgrade to a Dash wallet.... I was on Darkcoin when I left.... a couple hundred DRK in it).  I've been following the price of DRK/DASH on Coinmarketcap, and this time with the pump to over .02, I decided to cash out, since there seems to be a regular "wash, rinse and repeat" cycle going on, and I've regretted not jumping in on past >.02 situations and getting my initial BTC investment back.  As of now, I have divested myself of all but a handful of Dash, and I hope to buy back in at around .012.

I like the major GUI upgrades.  It looks much prettier now.  I like Masternodes.  I like the idea of self-governance and having a budget.  I like the way the development is happening in general.  I don't think that 10% of Masternodes is nearly enough to commit funds --unless all "members of the board" / "employees" / devs / power-brokers recuse themselves from voting in every case where there is any possible conflict of interest.  Otherwise the "vote" is a complete sham.  Why even pretend to be democratic when only 10% of an already-elite group can make all the decisions?  You might as well just be Bitcoin.  If a higher percentage (at least 50% of masternodes) isn't required, then, Evan, et al (not sure who the other higher-ups all are -- but certainly anyone who is paid any kind of a salary out of the proceeds of the "development fund") need to publish their Masternodes and not vote -- let "outsiders" vote according to the merits of the proposals.

I see this as being like the ideological battle between communism and capitalism.  Bitcoin is, in a way, communist; 100% of the rewards go to the laborers (miners) (never mind that owning a decent mining setup nowadays requires a ton of real-world capital).  I like the fact that Dark/Dash has come up with a way for people to also earn rewards for simply owning enough capital.  I also like that the incentives are aligned; Masternode owners have to lock up their funds, so they can't trade in and out -- they've got to be long-term hodlers, and as more Masternodes are brought online, more Dash are locked up and out of the reach of the traders, thereby lowering supply and hopefully driving the price upward -- which rewards Masternode owners, miners, and small-time hodlers alike.  It's win-win-win.

But it's not win-win-win when somebody can propose something that exclusively enriches a certain few people, and those certain few people have enough power to make that proposal effective.  This is an effective kleptocracy, and I don't think that anybody really wants to be associated with that.  Yes, we all want to make money, but a system that basically ensures that the rich get richer is pretty sleazy IMO.  The Masternodes already do enough in that regard.  And Masternode owners are supposedly in this for the long-haul.  At current prices, a Masternode is over $20,000 -- that's a pretty hefty amount.  Masternode owners are keeping that money invested in order to earn a return -- paid in Dash.  Those Dash will be worthless if people decide to abandon the currency due to concerns about propriety among the whales / owners / developers (because they are largely the same people).  Think long-term.  The best possible proposals, for the long-term success of Dash, would be:

A) Change the voting requirement to 50% of MN owners;
B) Change the voting requirement to include some percentage of miners;
C) Dedicate some portion of the "10% funds" to trading accounts on major exchanges which is run exclusively to manipulate the price of Dash upwards.

That's my piece.  I may follow this thread a bit more, but I don't have the kind of time that I used to have for this kind of stuff anymore.  I do appreciate the further development of Dash, but I fear this self-serving "governance" is leading us all down a blind alley.

I agree for the most part, especially the point about the rinse and repeat of the .013>.02 prices.

[toknormal]

But it's not win-win-win when somebody can propose something that exclusively enriches a certain few people

Out of interest, do you have a particular proposal in mind ?

Here's the list. https://www.dashcentral.org/budget/completed

[Cryptorials]

But it's not win-win-win when somebody can propose something that exclusively enriches a certain few people

Out of interest, do you have a particular proposal in mind ?

Here's the list. https://www.dashcentral.org/budget/completed

It doesn't matter whether it is happening now with the current proposals, just the fact that it is theoretically possible makes it a problem.

ts a tough one though, because the higher the threshold is the more likely that voter apathy will become fatal. I think there would need to be a penalty for masternodes who don't vote on some minimum threshold number of proposals.

[baddw]

Thank you all for the replies.  It is reassuring that the voting mechanism actually requires something like 55% of the MNs vote.  That is far, far better than the 10% that the Wiki used to say.  I'm not 100% sure that that's the best method of voting, but it's within the realm of reason, and up for rational debate.  10% would not be.

I would recommend putting a lot of effort into cleaning up misleading statements like that on the Wiki, because naive people like me, who don't want to dig through 6,000 pages of forum posts, will simply read the Wiki and make up their minds.

I still believe that Dash is a good coin, and I love that it is being very actively developed and moved in new directions, rather than sitting stagnant and never changing anything, like the majority of coins out there.  This is what originally drew me to Dark, and it will keep me interested in Dash.

As for the Rinse and Repeat cycle of the prices, well, I've put my money where my mouth is.  I sold a little over 4BTC worth of DASH at .0209.  You can look back over the past two YEARS and see that the price has never topped the BTC ATH of around .026; and usually the top is in around .024.  This time we didn't even reach .023 before retreating back below .02.  That set in my mind that we would not be reaching a new ATH in BTC terms.

Looking at the price of Dash in terms of fiat like USD is silliness.  Ok, so it's $20.  You think if BTC had stayed at $500, that Dash would have risen on its own to $20 (.040 BTC)?  Seriously, it's been rangebound (in BTC terms) this whole time.  I've watched it from the sidelines for 2 years now, held by the same FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that affects some of you.  Each time I think "But what if this is the time when it busts out to .03?"  But it never has.  I'm not saying it never will, but I believe that this isn't that time, and as I said before, I put my money where my mouth is and sold the vast majority of my Dash. Time will tell who is right.

[spatula]

But it's not win-win-win when somebody can propose something that exclusively enriches a certain few people

Out of interest, do you have a particular proposal in mind ?

Here's the list. https://www.dashcentral.org/budget/completed

It doesn't matter whether it is happening now with the current proposals, just the fact that it is theoretically possible makes it a problem.

ts a tough one though, because the higher the threshold is the more likely that voter apathy will become fatal. I think there would need to be a penalty for masternodes who don't vote on some minimum threshold number of proposals.

We have had this discussion about a million times, and the reality is that the way we have it now is probably ideal. You can't punish people for not voting, that's undemocratic. The addition of the abstain option in 12.1 helps some with this, but really, if I don't care one way or another about a proposal I am not gonna open my wallet to vote abstain, when I could just not vote. Even if I think a proposal is the greatest thing ever, if it's obviously going to pass with an overwhelming YES - No ratio, why would I vote? If you are holding on to $20k USD worth of an asset, you better damn well get to decide if you want to vote or not along with how you vote.

I DO vote on things that I feel strongly about and look like the vote may be close. But that's my choice, no one else's.

The problem you are trying to fix doesn't exist. If someone put in this "theoretical proposal" that obviously only benefited themselves, my previous abstention from voting does not remove my ability to vote NO on future proposals. I read all the proposals, and I think other MN do as well for the most part. Just because my vote isn't in the final count of most previous proposal results has no bearing on future vote participation.

[ddink7]

But it's not win-win-win when somebody can propose something that exclusively enriches a certain few people

Out of interest, do you have a particular proposal in mind ?

Here's the list. https://www.dashcentral.org/budget/completed

It doesn't matter whether it is happening now with the current proposals, just the fact that it is theoretically possible makes it a problem.

ts a tough one though, because the higher the threshold is the more likely that voter apathy will become fatal. I think there would need to be a penalty for masternodes who don't vote on some minimum threshold number of proposals.

This potential problem assumes that the vast majority of masternode owners just sit around and do nothing. Let's think about it:

a) Proposals have to be submitted about 96 hours before superblocks are created. It takes 72 hours for a proposal to "mature" and become valid, and then budget finalization happens around 24 hours before superblocks. Votes after budget finalization don't count. Consequently, we can say that masternode owners have a minimum of 72 hours to vote on any proposal.

b) An "attacker" would need to attract 10% net votes, which at the present time is nearly 450. Now, we're reasonably confident that nobody owns more than a couple hundred masternodes (assuming everybody is honest about how many they own). Even Otoh is down to 76 masternodes (again, according to him). So right off the bat, we're assuming that at least two people have to collude, and that's with ZERO masternode owners noticing the "attack" and voting against it.

c) An attacker (individual or, more likely, a group) would need to possess at least 450 masternodes, which is 450,000 DASH ($9.9 million at today's price). The maximum reward they could get from attacking the budget system is the entire budget amount. After the upcoming 7% reduction, that will be a maximum of about 6,920 DASH ($152,240 at today's price).

d) A successful attack on the budget system would likely crash the price of DASH, at least temporarily. Let's say that such an attack reduces the value of DASH by just 10% (in reality, it would probably be far worse than that). The attackers gain AT MOST $152,200 but lose $990,000 (10% of the value of their $9.9 million holdings).

e) In reality, there are generally many proposals that reach greater than 10% support. In fact, we often see the majority of the budget consist of proposals with greater than 18% support. That means the attackers would have to control even more masternodes to be able to seize the entire budget. In reality, only a small percentage of the budget is usually available to a "barely passing" proposal...usually less than 1,000 DASH. The most that an attacking consortium with $9.9 million worth of DASH could hope to seize is...about $22,000 (1,000 DASH * $22 USD per DASH).

Therefore, an attack on the budget system by a rogue group of masternodes is a) unlikely, and b) not economically feasible.

[Macno]

I would recommend putting a lot of effort into cleaning up misleading statements like that on the Wiki, because naive people like me, who don't want to dig through 6,000 pages of forum posts, will simply read the Wiki and make up their minds.

I still believe that Dash is a good coin, and I love that it is being very actively developed and moved in new directions, rather than sitting stagnant and never changing anything, like the majority of coins out there.  This is what originally drew me to Dark, and it will keep me interested in Dash.

As for the Rinse and Repeat cycle of the prices, well, I've put my money where my mouth is.  I sold a little over 4BTC worth of DASH at .0209.  You can look back over the past two YEARS and see that the price has never topped the BTC ATH of around .026; and usually the top is in around .024.  This time we didn't even reach .023 before retreating back below .02.  That set in my mind that we would not be reaching a new ATH in BTC terms.

Looking at the price of Dash in terms of fiat like USD is silliness.  Ok, so it's $20.  You think if BTC had stayed at $500, that Dash would have risen on its own to $20 (.040 BTC)?  Seriously, it's been rangebound (in BTC terms) this whole time.  I've watched it from the sidelines for 2 years now, held by the same FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that affects some of you.  Each time I think "But what if this is the time when it busts out to .03?"  But it never has.  I'm not saying it never will, but I believe that this isn't that time, and as I said before, I put my money where my mouth is and sold the vast majority of my Dash. Time will tell who is right.

I also like the constant development and clear path towards mass adoption. I've been following DRK/DASH since almost 3 years now and it remains the best competitor to Bitcoin in terms of Digital Cash.
My minimum mkt cap target is Litecoin and I really think the only reason DASH is not already there is the instamine meme, which is starting to vanish. Anyway, DASH has to beat Silver first, then go after Gold and I'm pretty optimistic that the next bull run will bring DASH one step closer.

[ddink7]

Thank you all for the replies.  It is reassuring that the voting mechanism actually requires something like 55% of the MNs vote.  That is far, far better than the 10% that the Wiki used to say.  I'm not 100% sure that that's the best method of voting, but it's within the realm of reason, and up for rational debate.  10% would not be.

I would recommend putting a lot of effort into cleaning up misleading statements like that on the Wiki, because naive people like me, who don't want to dig through 6,000 pages of forum posts, will simply read the Wiki and make up their minds.

I still believe that Dash is a good coin, and I love that it is being very actively developed and moved in new directions, rather than sitting stagnant and never changing anything, like the majority of coins out there.  This is what originally drew me to Dark, and it will keep me interested in Dash.

As for the Rinse and Repeat cycle of the prices, well, I've put my money where my mouth is.  I sold a little over 4BTC worth of DASH at .0209.  You can look back over the past two YEARS and see that the price has never topped the BTC ATH of around .026; and usually the top is in around .024.  This time we didn't even reach .023 before retreating back below .02.  That set in my mind that we would not be reaching a new ATH in BTC terms.

Looking at the price of Dash in terms of fiat like USD is silliness.  Ok, so it's $20.  You think if BTC had stayed at $500, that Dash would have risen on its own to $20 (.040 BTC)?  Seriously, it's been rangebound (in BTC terms) this whole time.  I've watched it from the sidelines for 2 years now, held by the same FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that affects some of you.  Each time I think "But what if this is the time when it busts out to .03?"  But it never has.  I'm not saying it never will, but I believe that this isn't that time, and as I said before, I put my money where my mouth is and sold the vast majority of my Dash. Time will tell who is right.

I apologize for the "misleading" statement on the wiki, and I would definitely welcome any assistance you can provide in "cleaning it up." However, when I wrote that particular page, my intention was to give an overview of the budget system to a complete newbie who has no idea how it works. There is a real danger in getting too technical (have you ever wondered about a technical question, searched Wikipedia, and ended up with glazed-over eyes and absolutely no understanding of the subject?)

I mean, if we want to get technical about it, the budget system doesn't allocate block rewards 45%/45%/10% like most people think. The 10% that's withheld for the budget system is actually hardcoded to the minimum block reward. If hash power is low, DGW adjusts the difficulty, and block reward goes up. It's possible for the block reward, for instance, to be 5 DASH. Yet only 0.388 DASH will be allocated to the budget system, for instance. (At least that's my understanding of how things worked before 12.1). Also, fees are split 50/50 between miners and masternodes, not 45/45/10 as one might assume. But for somebody new to Dash (my target audience) I think that's only going to confuse them, and I doubt they really care.

P.S. If you really believe we are ratio-bound and won't exceed 0.02 BTC/DASH, why invest in DASH? Why not just invest in Bitcoin, then?

[GBattaglia]

P.S. If you really believe we are ratio-bound and won't exceed 0.02 BTC/DASH, why invest in DASH? Why not just invest in Bitcoin, then?

Just pointing out that constantly trading it between the boundaries that it tends to rise and fall to is more profitable than holding Bitcoin, so why not?

[ddink7]

P.S. If you really believe we are ratio-bound and won't exceed 0.02 BTC/DASH, why invest in DASH? Why not just invest in Bitcoin, then?

Just pointing out that constantly trading it between the boundaries that it tends to rise and fall to is more profitable than holding Bitcoin, so why not?

Fair enough, but isn't that the case with Bitcoin as well? Trading the bounces between 900 and 1150 the last couple of months could have been very profitable too.

[toknormal]

But it's not win-win-win when somebody can propose something that exclusively enriches a certain few people

Out of interest, do you have a particular proposal in mind ?

Here's the list. https://www.dashcentral.org/budget/completed

It doesn't matter whether it is happening now with the current proposals, just the fact that it is theoretically possible makes it a problem.

How is it "theoretically possible" ?

The only theoretically possible scenario I see is owners setting up proposals to pay themselves for doing work that doesn't have a favourable impact on the coin's future. But there would appear to be at least 3 aspects of the stakeholding that prevent that from happening:

1. There isn't a sufficiently large coherent holding group to dominate the voting in that way. (Even though people put about that Evan / Otoh et al own this & that - the fact is they don't. They can be outvoted at least 4:1 even by the most generous estimates of their holdings. By my observations it's more like 8:1).

2. There's nothing that anyone can do in terms of the protocol - even if they did dominate the voting - that doesn't still require a mining majority. So voting could say "do this", devs say "ok" and it still doesn't get adopted because the miners rejected it

3. Even if there was such a hypothetical way for an interested group to 'enrich itself' as you say then commercial pressures would start to manifest. The group can only pay itself in Dash, not any other currency, that is the catch. The wider community can therefore still mitigate said 'enrichment' because it has control over exchange rates

It's therefore far more profitable for 'interested parties' simply to do something beneficial for the project and get paid in a high value coin. (Which is what they are doing )

[Macrochip]

ignorant drivel

How is it "theoretically possible" ?

The only theoretically possible scenario I see is owners setting up proposals to pay themselves for doing work that doesn't have a favourable impact on the coin's future. But there would appear to be at least 3 aspects of the stakeholding that prevent that from happening:

1. There isn't a sufficiently large coherent holding group to dominate the voting in that way. (Even though people put about that Evan / Otoh et al own this & that - the fact is they don't. They can be outvoted at least 4:1 even by the most generous estimates of their holdings. By my observations it's more like 8:1).

2. There's nothing that anyone can do in terms of the protocol - even if they did dominate the voting - that doesn't still require a mining majority. So voting could say "do this", devs say "ok" and it still doesn't get adopted because the miners rejected it

3. Even if there was such a hypothetical way for an interested group to 'enrich itself' as you say then commercial pressures would start to manifest. The group can only pay itself in Dash, not any other currency, that is the catch. The wider community can therefore still mitigate said 'enrichment' because it has control over exchange rates

It's therefore far more profitable for 'interested parties' simply to do something beneficial for the project and get paid in a high value coin. (Which is what they are doing )

Exactly, tok.

What our perpetually failing detractors perpetually fail to mention out of pure embarrassment in the face of cold hard truth and logic is the fact that any and all attempts of self-enrichment by such a non-existent "elitist group" will be swiftly punished by either a shitstorm of NO-votes by independent Masternode owners and/or a violent market reaction through price dump.

Failing to see these plain, simple and self-evident irrefutabilities is the reason why our trolls are so desperate and pathetic in every single one of their laughable attempts to disparage Dash.

PS: 21 Dollars consolidating. How does that make you feel, hater-faggots? One inch per dollar and no vaseline for you. Spread 'em wide!

[toknormal]

family friendly viewing !?

 

Well some aspects of that was'nt quite what I had in mind but in general...yeah