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

[Artoodeetoo]

Just checked cryptsy after a few days away, looks really stacked and crazy stable on the 1 week chart...

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[oblox]

How many MM are used during mixing?

Each round of mixing happens via one Masternode chosen at random from the total number, with (currently, IIRC)two other participant mixers. You may repeat this process between 2 and 8 times via the setting in the wallet, or as often as you like by taking coins already mixed through 8 rounds and repeating the process.

Thanks for the reply! I'm a noob when it comes to drk but I find it a very interesting coin

So it it using 3 MN's during a mixing process, or 1 like u said?

8 rounds of mixing would mean 8 rounds at the same mixer, or 8 different ones?

Thanks

Each round uses 1 masternode with 3 parties (you, and two other people wanting coins mixed). After the round, another, random masternode is used with two different people to mix your then mixed funds. Rinse and repeat.

[crackfoo]

The latest shift for the Darkcoin multipool paid out over 134 DRK.

This pool could use some more mining support, especially on the SHA256 & Scrypt side. X11 has been seeing more support lately but with the increased average DRK diff and lower block rewards for miners we could use another 4-500+Mh/s to stabilize the profitability. Mining here should net you the around the same amount or better as you would mining elsewhere, with the side effect of putting upward pressure on the price of DRK.

As a comparison this weekend xpool had the highest X11 profitability with BTC MH/DAY @ 0.00023810

Yaamp: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.0001950
CoinKing: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.0001600
NiceHash: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.0001600
Waffle: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.00014925

Bring more, earn more!

Cheers!

[robboman]

How many MM are used during mixing?

Each round of mixing happens via one Masternode chosen at random from the total number, with (currently, IIRC)two other participant mixers. You may repeat this process between 2 and 8 times via the setting in the wallet, or as often as you like by taking coins already mixed through 8 rounds and repeating the process.

Thanks for the reply! I'm a noob when it comes to drk but I find it a very interesting coin

So it it using 3 MN's during a mixing process, or 1 like u said?

8 rounds of mixing would mean 8 rounds at the same mixer, or 8 different ones?

Thanks

Each round uses 1 masternode with 3 parties (you, and two other people wanting coins mixed). After the round, another, random masternode is used with two different people to mix your then mixed funds. Rinse and repeat.

Ah okay I get it thanks!

[thelonecrouton]

As I have a little experience in venture capital, let me provide some perspective.  If Evan was for some reason going to seek venture capital, he would speak to someone (or a group of people) who would be asking a lot of hard questions.  Many of those questions would be about risk and limitations.  If Evan didn't have good answers for what the risks and limitations of DRK were, there's no way in hell he would ever see a dime.  

Smart investors know that there is risk in any investment.  They want to know that those in charge are aware of them and have sound plans to mitigate those risks.  As DRK begins to gain broader exposure and interest, I suggest this community answer the difficult questions with maturity.  Saying something along the lines of, "That's a good question and beyond my technical knowledge, but we'll make sure [member of the dev team] sees it and answers it for you" is perfectly acceptable.

With all that said, it may be time that DRK begins to present itself in a more marketable way.  No, I'm not saying name change, but present its strengths and weaknesses in a manner that will garner greater interest among those with deep pockets.

Risk Management 101 - Why Serious Investors won't touch DRK:


Serious Investor: "I've heard about these decentralised currencies, like Darkcoin, where no one person or group controls the currency, what do you think, pet Security Analyst?"

Security Analyst: /goes away for two minutes and finds this graph - https://chainz.cryptoid.info/drk/#!extraction

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."

Serious Investor: "What do you mean?"

Security Analyst: "Well in theory the security of the network is provided by many thousands of individuals and their mining machines, but in practice only 2 people and 2 machines need to be compromised to own, dictate the policy of, or destroy the coin."

Serious Investor: "But aren't there many thousands of miners?"

Security Analyst: "There are, but 1000000 miners all directing their efforts through 2 pools is from a security POV exactly the same as there being just 2 miners. Control those 2 pools, or the people that run them, and you effectively own the whole currency."

Serious Investor: "Well, I'll be taking my $millions elsewhere then, thanks."

[Salkenex]

The latest shift for the Darkcoin multipool paid out over 134 DRK.

This pool could use some more mining support, especially on the SHA256 & Scrypt side. X11 has been seeing more support lately but with the increased average DRK diff and lower block rewards for miners we could use another 4-500+Mh/s to stabilize the profitability. Mining here should net you the around the same amount or better as you would mining elsewhere, with the side effect of putting upward pressure on the price of DRK.

As a comparison this weekend xpool had the highest X11 profitability with BTC MH/DAY @ 0.00023810

Yaamp: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.0001950
CoinKing: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.0001600
NiceHash: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.0001600
Waffle: BTC MH/DAY @ 0.00014925

Bring more, earn more!

Cheers!

\o/ weeee nice payout on this one.

[Minotaur26]

I sure someone will dig up the percentages and it was incredibly lower than one percent. This is why we commissioned Kristov Atlas.

At this point you do sound more and more like a concern troll.

I can quite imagine I might be coming off that way, but Im not. It is admittedly a rather legitimate and serious concern so I think we can discredit trolling.

ChildHarold is most definitely a concern troll, offering no facts and just trying to create a discussion hoping to include his solution as an alternative when it is not. The easiest way to respond to this is with facts so here we go:

A concerned user could mix his coins using Darksend to a depth of 8 rounds, assuming a network of 1300MN,  a person controlling 100 MN would have a 0.000000093986159131% chance of uncovering a particular transaction.

A person controlling 50% of the network, meaning owning 650MN, would have a chance of 0.382253675331956000% of uncovering a specific transaction. In this case he would have to acquire 650000DRK in the open markets which would sky rocket the price, and do this knowing he has 99.62% probability of not uncovering the transactions he is looking for.

The system is very well designed  an attacker would have to control 90% plus of the network to have a chance of around 40% of uncovering a transaction at which point he would be the only one with Darkcoins and the price would surge to the thousands.

Having said this, a really concerned user could just send his coins through more rounds. Other anon systems are vulnerable to sybil attacks too and use secret keys or cryptography that could one day be uncovered. Darksend is future proof.

Besides this solid anon solution, it supports instantaneous transactions and the ahead of time mixing prevents timing analysis. It is really best balanced all around anon coin in the market and the market recognizes this period.

[Propulsion]

Risk Management 101 - Why Serious Investors won't touch DRK:

Serious Investor: "I've heard about these decentralised currencies, like Darkcoin, where no one person or group controls the currency, what do you think, pet Security Analyst?"

Security Analyst: /goes away for two minutes and finds this graph - https://chainz.cryptoid.info/drk/#!extraction

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."

Currently there is about 2 Gh/s on the DarkcoinTalk pool. If you are mining on one of the top three pools, Mining Pool Hub, SuchPool, or Coinmine.pl please consider diversifying your miners to a different pool. With variance, you receive the same amount of Darkcoin as you would mining on a top three pool and help the network by diversifying the hashrate. (staying on a top three pool hurts the network as a whole)

I'd like to see the DarkcoinTalk pool have at least 5 Gh/s. Currently 600Mh/s are from myself. We really could use some more miners.

Any questions or concerns that you may have: please do not hesitate to ask.

-Propulsion

[dazbarlby]

I sure someone will dig up the percentages and it was incredibly lower than one percent. This is why we commissioned Kristov Atlas.

At this point you do sound more and more like a concern troll.

I can quite imagine I might be coming off that way, but Im not. It is admittedly a rather legitimate and serious concern so I think we can discredit trolling.

ChildHarold is most definitely a concern troll, offering no facts and just trying to create a discussion hoping to include his solution as an alternative when it is not. The easiest way to respond to this is with facts so here we go:

A concerned user could mix his coins using Darksend to a depth of 8 rounds, assuming a network of 1300MN,  a person controlling 100 MN would have a 0.000000093986159131% chance of uncovering a particular transaction.

A person controlling 50% of the network, meaning owning 650MN, would have a chance of 0.382253675331956000% of uncovering a specific transaction. In this case he would have to acquire 650000DRK in the open markets which would sky rocket the price, and do this knowing he has 99.62% probability of not uncovering the transactions he is looking for.

The system is very well designed  an attacker would have to control 90% plus of the network to have a chance of around 40% of uncovering a transaction at which point he would be the only one with Darkcoins and the price would surge to the thousands.

Having said this, a really concerned user could just send his coins through more rounds. Other anon systems are vulnerable to sybil attacks too and use secret keys or cryptography that could one day be uncovered. Darksend is future proof.

Besides this solid anon solution, it supports instantaneous transactions and the ahead of time mixing prevents timing analysis. It is really best balanced all around anon coin in the market and the market recognizes this period.

Also, is there anything stopping Darkcoin from incorporating zero knowledge proof as well as Darksend if another coin implements it with zero drawbacks in the future? This would give Darkcoin Dual anonymity and the other coin will have done most of the work :-)

Edit: Maybe that's what Evan was thinking when talking to the Shadowcoin devs.

[HinnomTX]

Risk Management 101 - Why Serious Investors won't touch DRK:


Serious Investor: "I've heard about these decentralised currencies, like Darkcoin, where no one person or group controls the currency, what do you think, pet Security Analyst?"

Security Analyst: /goes away for two minutes and finds this graph - https://chainz.cryptoid.info/drk/#!extraction

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."

Serious Investor: "What do you mean?"

Security Analyst: "Well in theory the security of the network is provided by many thousands of individuals and their mining machines, but in practice only 2 people and 2 machines need to be compromised to own, dictate the policy of, or destroy the coin."

Serious Investor: "But aren't there many thousands of miners?"

Security Analyst: "There are, but 1000000 miners all directing their efforts through 2 pools is from a security POV exactly the same as there being just 2 miners. Control those 2 pools, or the people that run them, and you effectively own the whole currency."

Serious Investor: "Well, I'll be taking my $millions elsewhere then, thanks."

This is a pessimistic assessment and assumes that the miners will not react in the coin's best interest when a genuine threat to the balance of power emerges. Prior incidents of over-concentrated hashing power with Bitcoin and more recently with Darkcoin (w/r/t suchpool) show that hashing power will move away from threats that could jeopardize the coin's value, and so the miners' interest in the coin security is obtained via coin value.
I know there is a push to make DRK p2pool only but there are less heavy handed methods we can try. For example, masternode operators could elect to donate a percentage of their earnings to p2pools so that p2pool payouts are more attractive than mining pools.      

[child_harold]

I sure someone will dig up the percentages and it was incredibly lower than one percent. This is why we commissioned Kristov Atlas.

At this point you do sound more and more like a concern troll.

I can quite imagine I might be coming off that way, but Im not. It is admittedly a rather legitimate and serious concern so I think we can discredit trolling.

ChildHarold is most definitely a concern troll, offering no facts and just trying to create a discussion hoping to include his solution as an alternative when it is not. The easiest way to respond to this is with facts so here we go:

A concerned user could mix his coins using Darksend to a depth of 8 rounds, assuming a network of 1300MN,  a person controlling 100 MN would have a 0.000000093986159131% chance of uncovering a particular transaction.

A person controlling 50% of the network, meaning owning 650MN, would have a chance of 0.382253675331956000% of uncovering a specific transaction. In this case he would have to acquire 650000DRK in the open markets which would sky rocket the price, and do this knowing he has 99.62% probability of not uncovering the transactions he is looking for.

The system is very well designed  an attacker would have to control 90% plus of the network to have a chance of around 40% of uncovering a transaction at which point he would be the only one with Darkcoins and the price would surge to the thousands.

Having said this, a really concerned user could just send his coins through more rounds. Other anon systems are vulnerable to sybil attacks too and use secret keys or cryptography that could one day be uncovered. Darksend is future proof.

Besides this solid anon solution, it supports instantaneous transactions and the ahead of time mixing prevents timing analysis. It is really best balanced all around anon coin in the market and the market recognizes this period.

I came in here to ask questions. I never claimed to offer facts or solutions.  
I wanted to know if Evan had changed his opinion of ZK since the landscape may have changed in the six months since his remarks. A convo about MN's began and it was good to get clarifications. A few FACTS about MN's have been explained and I am grateful for the responses.

One thing I did suggest is that MN operators might be wary of U.S. providers like Amazon. I cannot deliver facts to substantiate my feeling about this. Im prob just paranoid.

I am not sure it is a fact you'd need to own the darkcoins, just have backdoors into the servers the MN's are running on would seem sufficient (altho maybe not). Agreed this all sounds very unlikely but as long as there is a CHANCE of de-anonymization I'd like to know the odds.

Thanks for doing the maths regarding these odds. I can be sure these numbers are good?

cheers

 

[thelonecrouton]

This is a pessimistic assessment and assumes that the miners will not react in the coin's best interest when a genuine threat to the balance of power emerges. Prior incidents of over-concentrated hashing power with Bitcoin and more recently with Darkcoin (w/r/t suchpool) show that hashing power will move away from threats that could jeopardize the coin's value, and so the miners' interests in the coin security is obtained via coin value.
I know there is a push to make DRK p2pool only but there are less heavy handed methods we can try. For example, masternode operators could elect to donate a percentage of their earnings to p2pools so that p2pool payouts are more attractive than mining pools.      

Why should MN ops subsidize miners who are too apathetic to do the right thing themselves?

Most miners are in it for the money and don't care about the security or best interests of whatever they are mining, they just dump for BTC/fiat as soon as they can. And p2pool is already easier to use and less risky for miners than centralised pools are. Hoping for the best is not a plan.

p2ool has issues too, although greater p2pool use would be good, but there are ways of making solo mining (which is the best way of securing the blockchain) far more attractive to miners and making pooled mining much costlier.   - It just requires enough DRK supporters to acknowledge the problem and desire such a solution to be implemented. Then we would actually have a decentralised currency. At the moment it isn't.

[wozzek23]

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."
Serious Investor: "What do you mean?"
Security Analyst: "Well in theory the security of the network is provided by many thousands of individuals and their mining machines, but in practice only 2 people and 2 machines need to be compromised to own, dictate the policy of, or destroy the coin."
Serious Investor: "But aren't there many thousands of miners?"
Security Analyst: "There are, but 1000000 miners all directing their efforts through 2 pools is from a security POV exactly the same as there being just 2 miners. Control those 2 pools, or the people that run them, and you effectively own the whole currency."
Serious Investor: "Well, I'll be taking my $millions elsewhere then, thanks."

OK - you've been hammering on this issue for some time now. I would argue with your title by stating that if one address:
XnuCAYmAiVHE6Xv3D7Xw685wWzqtcfexLh has 350,964 Darkcoins or $852,842.52 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 or another
XwXtGyj1NZnmHfWFDYjGsyY4qzkJXBLCjV has 153,555 Darkcoins or $373,138.65 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 so these are pretty big investments for a project in its initial phases, by I am not going to.

What your Security Analysts says is true but slightly misleading:
-- there are more than 2 pools controlling majority of MN;
-- there are many countries hosting the MNs i.e. a crude, outright criminal, physical attack on the said services / or the people running would have to deal with different jurisdictions (Jacuzzi will have to cooperate with Mafia etc.) assuming an attack is ever going to happen.

But, I am wondering, if Darkcoin isn't even like Mega i.e. it is not a tool enabling something the authorities deem illegal, but, as cash (or beans or clay toys or dollars or pre-paid mobile-phone minutes as a currency in Africa) can be used, mostly, for legal activities. So, if the danger of this tiny little innovation is so huge for a multi-trillion dollar Financial Crime Cartel industry and their political minions that they would be ready to strangle the toddler in its crib, so be it... but how real this is?

BUT - I agree, your concerns are valid so the question is: how to lessen the concentration of the MN in too few hands?

[superplus]

This is a pessimistic assessment and assumes that the miners will not react in the coin's best interest when a genuine threat to the balance of power emerges. Prior incidents of over-concentrated hashing power with Bitcoin and more recently with Darkcoin (w/r/t suchpool) show that hashing power will move away from threats that could jeopardize the coin's value, and so the miners' interests in the coin security is obtained via coin value.
I know there is a push to make DRK p2pool only but there are less heavy handed methods we can try. For example, masternode operators could elect to donate a percentage of their earnings to p2pools so that p2pool payouts are more attractive than mining pools.      

Why should MN ops subsidize miners who are too apathetic to do the right thing themselves?

Most miners are in it for the money and don't care about the security or best interests of whatever they are mining, they just dump for BTC/fiat as soon as they can. And p2pool is already easier to use and less risky for miners than centralised pools are. Hoping for the best is not a plan.

p2ool has issues too, although greater p2pool use would be good, but there are ways of making solo mining (which is the best way of securing the blockchain) far more attractive to miners and making pooled mining much costlier.   - It just requires enough DRK supporters to acknowledge the problem and desire such a solution to be implemented. Then we would actually have a decentralised currency. At the moment it isn't.

what do you mean, how could solomining be more attractive than pool mining?

[Minotaur26]

I sure someone will dig up the percentages and it was incredibly lower than one percent. This is why we commissioned Kristov Atlas.

At this point you do sound more and more like a concern troll.

I can quite imagine I might be coming off that way, but Im not. It is admittedly a rather legitimate and serious concern so I think we can discredit trolling.

ChildHarold is most definitely a concern troll, offering no facts and just trying to create a discussion hoping to include his solution as an alternative when it is not. The easiest way to respond to this is with facts so here we go:

A concerned user could mix his coins using Darksend to a depth of 8 rounds, assuming a network of 1300MN,  a person controlling 100 MN would have a 0.000000093986159131% chance of uncovering a particular transaction.

A person controlling 50% of the network, meaning owning 650MN, would have a chance of 0.382253675331956000% of uncovering a specific transaction. In this case he would have to acquire 650000DRK in the open markets which would sky rocket the price, and do this knowing he has 99.62% probability of not uncovering the transactions he is looking for.

The system is very well designed  an attacker would have to control 90% plus of the network to have a chance of around 40% of uncovering a transaction at which point he would be the only one with Darkcoins and the price would surge to the thousands.

Having said this, a really concerned user could just send his coins through more rounds. Other anon systems are vulnerable to sybil attacks too and use secret keys or cryptography that could one day be uncovered. Darksend is future proof.

Besides this solid anon solution, it supports instantaneous transactions and the ahead of time mixing prevents timing analysis. It is really best balanced all around anon coin in the market and the market recognizes this period.

Also, is there anything stopping Darkcoin from incorporating zero knowledge proof as well as Darksend if another coin implements it with zero drawbacks in the future? This would give Darkcoin Dual anonymity and the other coin will have done most of the work :-)

Edit: Maybe that's what Evan was thinking when talking to the Shadowcoin devs.

No, that is most definitely not what Evan was thinking when he thought of the merger idea. That was just an idea about acquiring additional manpower and community support by working together with other groups. It was more of a principle thing trying to show openness and collaboration, yet it was met with deceit and lack of professionalism and was discarded.

Plus, the Darksend concept is scalable, just add rounds as needed.

[superplus]

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."
Serious Investor: "What do you mean?"
Security Analyst: "Well in theory the security of the network is provided by many thousands of individuals and their mining machines, but in practice only 2 people and 2 machines need to be compromised to own, dictate the policy of, or destroy the coin."
Serious Investor: "But aren't there many thousands of miners?"
Security Analyst: "There are, but 1000000 miners all directing their efforts through 2 pools is from a security POV exactly the same as there being just 2 miners. Control those 2 pools, or the people that run them, and you effectively own the whole currency."
Serious Investor: "Well, I'll be taking my $millions elsewhere then, thanks."

OK - you've been hammering on this issue for some time now. I would argue with your title by stating that if one address:
XnuCAYmAiVHE6Xv3D7Xw685wWzqtcfexLh has 350,964 Darkcoins or $852,842.52 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 or another
XwXtGyj1NZnmHfWFDYjGsyY4qzkJXBLCjV has 153,555 Darkcoins or $373,138.65 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 so these are pretty big investments for a project in its initial phases, by I am not going to.

What your Security Analysts says is true but slightly misleading:
-- there are more than 2 pools controlling majority of MN;
-- there are many countries hosting the MNs i.e. a crude, outright criminal, physical attack on the said services / or the people running would have to deal with different jurisdictions (Jacuzzi will have to cooperate with Mafia etc.) assuming an attack is ever going to happen.

But, I am wondering, if Darkcoin isn't even like Mega i.e. it is not a tool enabling something the authorities deem illegal, but, as cash (or beans or clay toys or dollars or pre-paid mobile-phone minutes as a currency in Africa) can be used, mostly, for legal activities. So, if the danger of this tiny little innovation is so huge for a multi-trillion dollar Financial Crime Cartel industry and their political minions that they would be ready to strangle the toddler in its crib, so be it... but how real this is?

BUT - I agree, your concerns are valid so the question is: how to lessen the concentration of the MN in too few hands?

i think u misunderstood, the problem is caused by miners not master nodes... (miners responsible for chain, mn responsible for mixing)

[wozzek23]

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."
Serious Investor: "What do you mean?"
Security Analyst: "Well in theory the security of the network is provided by many thousands of individuals and their mining machines, but in practice only 2 people and 2 machines need to be compromised to own, dictate the policy of, or destroy the coin."
Serious Investor: "But aren't there many thousands of miners?"
Security Analyst: "There are, but 1000000 miners all directing their efforts through 2 pools is from a security POV exactly the same as there being just 2 miners. Control those 2 pools, or the people that run them, and you effectively own the whole currency."
Serious Investor: "Well, I'll be taking my $millions elsewhere then, thanks."

OK - you've been hammering on this issue for some time now. I would argue with your title by stating that if one address:
XnuCAYmAiVHE6Xv3D7Xw685wWzqtcfexLh has 350,964 Darkcoins or $852,842.52 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 or another
XwXtGyj1NZnmHfWFDYjGsyY4qzkJXBLCjV has 153,555 Darkcoins or $373,138.65 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 so these are pretty big investments for a project in its initial phases, by I am not going to.

What your Security Analysts says is true but slightly misleading:
-- there are more than 2 pools controlling majority of MN;
-- there are many countries hosting the MNs i.e. a crude, outright criminal, physical attack on the said services / or the people running would have to deal with different jurisdictions (Jacuzzi will have to cooperate with Mafia etc.) assuming an attack is ever going to happen.

But, I am wondering, if Darkcoin isn't even like Mega i.e. it is not a tool enabling something the authorities deem illegal, but, as cash (or beans or clay toys or dollars or pre-paid mobile-phone minutes as a currency in Africa) can be used, mostly, for legal activities. So, if the danger of this tiny little innovation is so huge for a multi-trillion dollar Financial Crime Cartel industry and their political minions that they would be ready to strangle the toddler in its crib, so be it... but how real this is?

BUT - I agree, your concerns are valid so the question is: how to lessen the concentration of the MN in too few hands?

i think u misunderstood, the problem is caused by miners not master nodes... (miners responsible for chain, mn responsible for mixing)

Most likely for I am a n00b but you can understand my confusion. I use Flare services so I own MN that is also mining, no? I mean, that thingy is giving me some extra coins. My own motivation wasn't to get these "few extra coins" because I am buying 100s time more on the open market but to support the coin, the network etc... and I have no clue what the others think and what is their motivation.

Could you tell me please, in layman terms, how is what he explains really dangerous? What is the crux of the problem?

[thelonecrouton]

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."
Serious Investor: "What do you mean?"
Security Analyst: "Well in theory the security of the network is provided by many thousands of individuals and their mining machines, but in practice only 2 people and 2 machines need to be compromised to own, dictate the policy of, or destroy the coin."
Serious Investor: "But aren't there many thousands of miners?"
Security Analyst: "There are, but 1000000 miners all directing their efforts through 2 pools is from a security POV exactly the same as there being just 2 miners. Control those 2 pools, or the people that run them, and you effectively own the whole currency."
Serious Investor: "Well, I'll be taking my $millions elsewhere then, thanks."

OK - you've been hammering on this issue for some time now. I would argue with your title by stating that if one address:
XnuCAYmAiVHE6Xv3D7Xw685wWzqtcfexLh has 350,964 Darkcoins or $852,842.52 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 or another
XwXtGyj1NZnmHfWFDYjGsyY4qzkJXBLCjV has 153,555 Darkcoins or $373,138.65 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 so these are pretty big investments for a project in its initial phases, by I am not going to.

What your Security Analysts says is true but slightly misleading:
-- there are more than 2 pools controlling majority of MN;
-- there are many countries hosting the MNs i.e. a crude, outright criminal, physical attack on the said services / or the people running would have to deal with different jurisdictions (Jacuzzi will have to cooperate with Mafia etc.) assuming an attack is ever going to happen.

But, I am wondering, if Darkcoin isn't even like Mega i.e. it is not a tool enabling something the authorities deem illegal, but, as cash (or beans or clay toys or dollars or pre-paid mobile-phone minutes as a currency in Africa) can be used, mostly, for legal activities. So, if the danger of this tiny little innovation is so huge for a multi-trillion dollar Financial Crime Cartel industry and their political minions that they would be ready to strangle the toddler in its crib, so be it... but how real this is?

BUT - I agree, your concerns are valid so the question is: how to lessen the concentration of the MN in too few hands?

I was talking about mining, not Masternodes, but I'll try to answer your points:

OK - you've been hammering on this issue for some time now. I would argue with your title by stating that if one address:
XnuCAYmAiVHE6Xv3D7Xw685wWzqtcfexLh has 350,964 Darkcoins or $852,842.52 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 or another
XwXtGyj1NZnmHfWFDYjGsyY4qzkJXBLCjV has 153,555 Darkcoins or $373,138.65 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 so these are pretty big investments for a project in its initial phases, by I am not going to.

Yes, a few people have large amounts of DRK, but those amounts were mostly amassed when the price of DRK was much lower than it is now. Even if that were not the case, would it not be better to attract far more Serious Investors by having a far less risky system?

What your Security Analysts says is true but slightly misleading:
-- there are more than 2 pools controlling majority of MN;
-- there are many countries hosting the MNs i.e. a crude, outright criminal, physical attack on the said services / or the people running would have to deal with different jurisdictions (Jacuzzi will have to cooperate with Mafia etc.) assuming an attack is ever going to happen.

Pools do not control Masternodes at all. The MNs running on so few VPS providers is also a concern, but subsetting of MNs per transaction makes MNs inherently orders of magnitude more secure. You need to control far more of them to have even a small chance of any successful attack.

But, I am wondering, if Darkcoin isn't even like Mega i.e. it is not a tool enabling something the authorities deem illegal, but, as cash (or beans or clay toys or dollars or pre-paid mobile-phone minutes as a currency in Africa) can be used, mostly, for legal activities. So, if the danger of this tiny little innovation is so huge for a multi-trillion dollar Financial Crime Cartel industry and their political minions that they would be ready to strangle the toddler in its crib, so be it... but how real this is?

Are you seriously asking if the criminal sociopaths that rule the world would ever do something bad?

BUT - I agree, your concerns are valid so the question is: how to lessen the concentration of the MN in too few hands?

Go buy some DRK and run a Masternode, or get together with some friends, pool your DRK, run a Masternode. Preferably not on Amazon. Pays better than mining.

[superplus]

Security Analyst: "Actually boss they aren't decentralised at all."
Serious Investor: "What do you mean?"
Security Analyst: "Well in theory the security of the network is provided by many thousands of individuals and their mining machines, but in practice only 2 people and 2 machines need to be compromised to own, dictate the policy of, or destroy the coin."
Serious Investor: "But aren't there many thousands of miners?"
Security Analyst: "There are, but 1000000 miners all directing their efforts through 2 pools is from a security POV exactly the same as there being just 2 miners. Control those 2 pools, or the people that run them, and you effectively own the whole currency."
Serious Investor: "Well, I'll be taking my $millions elsewhere then, thanks."

OK - you've been hammering on this issue for some time now. I would argue with your title by stating that if one address:
XnuCAYmAiVHE6Xv3D7Xw685wWzqtcfexLh has 350,964 Darkcoins or $852,842.52 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 or another
XwXtGyj1NZnmHfWFDYjGsyY4qzkJXBLCjV has 153,555 Darkcoins or $373,138.65 per today's Cryptsy DRK/USD price at $2.43 so these are pretty big investments for a project in its initial phases, by I am not going to.

What your Security Analysts says is true but slightly misleading:
-- there are more than 2 pools controlling majority of MN;
-- there are many countries hosting the MNs i.e. a crude, outright criminal, physical attack on the said services / or the people running would have to deal with different jurisdictions (Jacuzzi will have to cooperate with Mafia etc.) assuming an attack is ever going to happen.

But, I am wondering, if Darkcoin isn't even like Mega i.e. it is not a tool enabling something the authorities deem illegal, but, as cash (or beans or clay toys or dollars or pre-paid mobile-phone minutes as a currency in Africa) can be used, mostly, for legal activities. So, if the danger of this tiny little innovation is so huge for a multi-trillion dollar Financial Crime Cartel industry and their political minions that they would be ready to strangle the toddler in its crib, so be it... but how real this is?

BUT - I agree, your concerns are valid so the question is: how to lessen the concentration of the MN in too few hands?

i think u misunderstood, the problem is caused by miners not master nodes... (miners responsible for chain, mn responsible for mixing)

Most likely for I am a n00b but you can understand my confusion. I use Flare services so I own MN that is also mining, no? I mean, that thingy is giving me some extra coins. My own motivation wasn't to get these "few extra coins" because I am buying 100s time more on the open market but to support the coin, the network etc... and I have no clue what the others thing.

Could you tell me please, in layman terms, how is what he explains really dangerous. What is the crux of the problem?

its basically about the problem which occurs in every pow coin, also btc.
the whole network hash rate (which secures the network and is meant to be decentraliced on miners all over the network) is tunneled through the major pools.
if a pool reaches more than 51% of the network hash rate, the pool operators could do attacks like doublespending etc..
its also easy to attack the network by compromising the pool servers of the 3 largest pools (which make up a hash rate greater than 51%)

edit: thelonecrouton, do you know some mathematical analysis, paper or something which shows why pool users gain more block rewards (pool finds more blocks statistically) than solo miners?
My assumption would be there is no difference at inifinite time

[dazbarlby]

I sure someone will dig up the percentages and it was incredibly lower than one percent. This is why we commissioned Kristov Atlas.

At this point you do sound more and more like a concern troll.

I can quite imagine I might be coming off that way, but Im not. It is admittedly a rather legitimate and serious concern so I think we can discredit trolling.

ChildHarold is most definitely a concern troll, offering no facts and just trying to create a discussion hoping to include his solution as an alternative when it is not. The easiest way to respond to this is with facts so here we go:

A concerned user could mix his coins using Darksend to a depth of 8 rounds, assuming a network of 1300MN,  a person controlling 100 MN would have a 0.000000093986159131% chance of uncovering a particular transaction.

A person controlling 50% of the network, meaning owning 650MN, would have a chance of 0.382253675331956000% of uncovering a specific transaction. In this case he would have to acquire 650000DRK in the open markets which would sky rocket the price, and do this knowing he has 99.62% probability of not uncovering the transactions he is looking for.

The system is very well designed  an attacker would have to control 90% plus of the network to have a chance of around 40% of uncovering a transaction at which point he would be the only one with Darkcoins and the price would surge to the thousands.

Having said this, a really concerned user could just send his coins through more rounds. Other anon systems are vulnerable to sybil attacks too and use secret keys or cryptography that could one day be uncovered. Darksend is future proof.

Besides this solid anon solution, it supports instantaneous transactions and the ahead of time mixing prevents timing analysis. It is really best balanced all around anon coin in the market and the market recognizes this period.

Also, is there anything stopping Darkcoin from incorporating zero knowledge proof as well as Darksend if another coin implements it with zero drawbacks in the future? This would give Darkcoin Dual anonymity and the other coin will have done most of the work :-)

Edit: Maybe that's what Evan was thinking when talking to the Shadowcoin devs.

No, that is most definitely not what Evan was thinking when he thought of the merger idea. That was just an idea about acquiring additional manpower and community support by working together with other groups. It was more of a principle thing trying to show openness and collaboration, yet it was met with deceit and lack of professionalism and was discarded.

Plus, the Darksend concept is scalable, just add rounds as needed.

ok, but is there anything to stop zero knowledge proof being implemented as well as Darksend? Just wondering :-)