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

[coins101]

-snip-
Well, if you want to include them in the code you'll have to go through the standard github process. What I'm saying is that the foundation has absolutely no say in that.

Thanks Fernando.

Just to clarify,

* I think the name change was necessary for mass adoption and the branding was eventually a fantastic outcome - genius in fact, provided the cash approach stays.

* Can DASH compete with Bitcoin? 100%. $3 > $500 / DASH is not out of the question.

* Is the current tech approach a good one? 100%. Cash is going out of fashion in the Western World. Mobile payment systems are forcing it out. People like cash, so digital cash is a winning formula - genius in fact.

 > I can now go on the London Underground and tap my bank card to get access to the metro network. No need to buy a ticket, just swipe my card. Sounds great. But, there is one big issue, my bank card is tracked by the London Underground network people. That means, anyone with a warrant can, and probably has, obtained access to me, my personal details, and my complete banking history. Great utility being able to swipe, pay and go. Bollocks implementation - but hey, 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right?' See, bollocks.

> DASH on mobile, with scan and instant pay means all the utility of instant digital cash, none of the bollocks.

* Keep focus on this goal. It's a great one. It's the mass adoption thing that has me concerned. I know it sounds like a contradiction, but its not: Its not what you do, its the way that you do it.

[1714943315]

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[1714943315]

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[toknormal]

Exactly. It is a strawman argument to compare Bitcoin in year 6 to DASH in year 2 when it comes to the development situation......sour grapes or a contrary agenda.

LoL. Or maybe Vertoe just hasn't spent 25 odd years witnessing all the incoherent trainwrecks that are "enforced consensual innovation"  

[coins101]

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113977/peter-todd-foresees-greater-state-interference-in-crypto-stellar-adopts-scp-protocol

Can you have mass adoption without placating the regulators?

[salmion]

Ugh over regulation will kill cryptocurrencies before they are properly "born". Either that or make them as inaccessible to the everyday joe as stocks are.

[ddink7]

A few years ago I used to teach Intro to Western Civ at a local college.

I liked to make things fun instead of just lecturing, so every semester I would take my class outside and do a simulation on ancient Athenian democracy. My question was simple: "Does pure democracy work?"

I would tell my 80 - 90 students that their job was to select four students to "kick out" of the class (just pretend, of course). They had no rules, no governing structure, no guidelines to follow. Since there was no leader or constitution to enforce majority rule on the class, making this decision would presumably require a consensus from almost the entire class.

After an hour of arguing, bickering, deal-making, etc., the question would still be undecided. Every single time I did this simulation -- about six times over three years -- I never once had a class reach a consensus or even a supermajority by themselves. No, what happened every time is that around an hour into the simulation, people would get frustrated and realize nothing was being accomplished. Then a leader, or a group of leaders, would emerge and people would voluntarily give up their say to this leader, or leaders, so that the bickering would stop and a decision would actually get made.

Consensus sounds great in theory, but in the real world its messy and unworkable. Look at bitcoin. How many of their major problems have they solved in the last two years? Have the fixed (or even made progress on) scalability? Have they implemented faster transaction/confirmation times? Have they implemented any sort of anonymity features? Have they worked on building 2FA into their protocol? No--none of these. Because they are a mass of competing interests without a visionary to lead them.

On the other hand, how many problems has Dash solved in the last 16 months of its existence? We've implemented extraordinary anonymity, created an InstantX system that allows irreversible confirmation of payment after only four seconds, created a masternode network that can be built on, and are working on improving anonymity (masternode blinding), solving the scalability issue (per Evan's comments on Let's Talk Bitcoin), and building 2FA into the very core of the protocol.

Meanwhile Bitcoin is still arguing over maximum blocksize.

Which would you rather? A leader, a visionary, who takes the lead on coding but is assisted by a team of talented developers? Or a headless community that argues endlessly and gets nothing done?

Remember, if you ever disagree with anything Evan does, all you have to do is refuse to update your clients. It's that simple. If enough people don't update, then the project can fork out his influence. The decision over what features to adopt and implement is still in the hands of the community, because the community makes the ultimate decision of which version of the protocol to run.

[r3wt]

Buy support is looking scant at cryptsy

[ddink7]

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113977/peter-todd-foresees-greater-state-interference-in-crypto-stellar-adopts-scp-protocol

Can you have mass adoption without placating the regulators?

That's the biggest pile of sour grapes I've ever seen. "We shouldn't change the core protocol at all"..."Confirmation times can't be lowered"..."Gavin's idea to increase block size hasn't been subjected to sufficient academic rigor"..."Ethereum is a joke because it's too unfocused."

I have a LOT less respect for Peter Todd after reading that pile of crap.

[toknormal]

Says it all.

I think I'll retire now that I've read that post by ddlink7.

One of the best encapsulated summaries of this project I've ever seen.

[salmion]

We can debate consensus systems and structures, semantics, hermeneutics, systematics, etc until the cows come home... at the the end of the day my money is on this guy:

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-196-distortions-towards-privacy-or-many-hands-makes-light-work

[TanteStefana2]

I was posting it because it is a very interesting pull request from a technological perspective. I'm surprised to see udjin did a dirty merge of the bitcoin master (which is not 0.10.0 but 0.10.99 btw) and it seems to work out. I've been waiting to see the 0.12 wallet. Will test it.

But I have to disappoint you, I will not return or contribute to darkcoin as long as it is nothing more than a company selling a product. And I dont want to offend anyone when I say I simply have to smile when I see that darkcoin wants to take on bitcoin. Bitcoin is a consensus protocol specification, a team of developers maintaining a reference implementation, miners sustaining the consensus throughout the network and a democratic foundation which does nothing than public relations.

Darkcoin has none of this and should take the time to learn why it's important to support decentralization over corporate-like behaviour, why it's important to achieve a network consensus by miners not developers and why it's important to have democratic fallback infrastructure in place in case there are disputes without consensus. darkcoin is competion for paypal, not bitcoin. corporations can fail. cryptocurrencies cant. mistrust authority, promote decentralization.

I agree with most of what vertoe has said here.  The technology still has the potential that it always has but DRK/Dash is beginning to lose its way imho.  I hope this isn't seen as a bitter post on the basis that I lost all of my DRK.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about this project, the amount of work that volunteers put in and the structure of the foundation (even had a fantastic evening chatting it over with Otoh with a few beers and a burger last week).  From my perspective it isn't clear to me whether 1 Dash will be a share or a coin in the future.

I'm not sure, but I think what vertoe is referring to is the new voting system.  If you own a masternode, you can vote.  This is more like voting with your shares, but excludes the little guy and even miners.  The intention, I believe, was for voting on things like... i don't know, logo designs, directions to take development, stuff like that.  But could it do more harm than good in the future?  I'm not sure even where the idea came from, or what prompted it?

Or perhaps it's just that the foundation seems to be making all the decisions instead of the users?

I think one of the goals for the foundation is to pay developers for their work.  They even have come up with a system to somewhat objectively decide who has contributed enough to be paid a portion of the developer pot each month.

We are on a tight rope, it's true.  The way I see it, unless DASH eventually closes off the core code, makes it completely decentralized and fixed, with all the other services attached from the outside, it'll fail.

In other words, making the wallet pretty should be an outside issue with anyone creating a wallet in the design they like, including making it so the user has no choice but to use darksend and instantX.  The simplicity of the wallet could be extreme.  But the wallet's functional foundation under the hood is the same, just automated for the user, but by some outside developer.  The core of DASH has to be made mature and self sustaining.  It has to be finished.  Once that is done, then all other ideas should be built on top of the network, and when appropriate, pay the network for it's services. 

So something like a simplified wallet would obviously not cost more for people to use, but the developer could charge for downloading it like an application.  But if the network could be tapped into to process other things besides DASH transactions, such as a p2p tor like system, with masternode blinding, or whatever technology that would make it desirable, then there could be a way to tap into it for a fee, freeing any entity to expand on DASH as they wish, provided they pay for the use.

But I agree with Vertoe, if this is what he meant.  It must be decentralized in every way.  I don't see any problem with Masternodes per se, but if they are given more power (voting) than any other user, it starts to get creepy.

[Artoodeetoo]

I was posting it because it is a very interesting pull request from a technological perspective. I'm surprised to see udjin did a dirty merge of the bitcoin master (which is not 0.10.0 but 0.10.99 btw) and it seems to work out. I've been waiting to see the 0.12 wallet. Will test it.

But I have to disappoint you, I will not return or contribute to darkcoin as long as it is nothing more than a company selling a product. And I dont want to offend anyone when I say I simply have to smile when I see that darkcoin wants to take on bitcoin. Bitcoin is a consensus protocol specification, a team of developers maintaining a reference implementation, miners sustaining the consensus throughout the network and a democratic foundation which does nothing than public relations.

Darkcoin has none of this and should take the time to learn why it's important to support decentralization over corporate-like behaviour, why it's important to achieve a network consensus by miners not developers and why it's important to have democratic fallback infrastructure in place in case there are disputes without consensus. darkcoin is competion for paypal, not bitcoin. corporations can fail. cryptocurrencies cant. mistrust authority, promote decentralization.

I agree with most of what vertoe has said here.  The technology still has the potential that it always has but DRK/Dash is beginning to lose its way imho.  I hope this isn't seen as a bitter post on the basis that I lost all of my DRK.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about this project, the amount of work that volunteers put in and the structure of the foundation (even had a fantastic evening chatting it over with Otoh with a few beers and a burger last week).  From my perspective it isn't clear to me whether 1 Dash will be a share or a coin in the future.

I'm not sure, but I think what vertoe is referring to is the new voting system.  If you own a masternode, you can vote.  This is more like voting with your shares, but excludes the little guy and even miners.  The intention, I believe, was for voting on things like... i don't know, logo designs, directions to take development, stuff like that.  But could it do more harm than good in the future?  I'm not sure even where the idea came from, or what prompted it?

Or perhaps it's just that the foundation seems to be making all the decisions instead of the users?

I think one of the goals for the foundation is to pay developers for their work.  They even have come up with a system to somewhat objectively decide who has contributed enough to be paid a portion of the developer pot each month.

We are on a tight rope, it's true.  The way I see it, unless DASH eventually closes off the core code, makes it completely decentralized and fixed, with all the other services attached from the outside, it'll fail.

In other words, making the wallet pretty should be an outside issue with anyone creating a wallet in the design they like, including making it so the user has no choice but to use darksend and instantX.  The simplicity of the wallet could be extreme.  But the wallet's functional foundation under the hood is the same, just automated for the user, but by some outside developer.  The core of DASH has to be made mature and self sustaining.  It has to be finished.  Once that is done, then all other ideas should be built on top of the network, and when appropriate, pay the network for it's services. 

So something like a simplified wallet would obviously not cost more for people to use, but the developer could charge for downloading it like an application.  But if the network could be tapped into to process other things besides DASH transactions, such as a p2p tor like system, with masternode blinding, or whatever technology that would make it desirable, then there could be a way to tap into it for a fee, freeing any entity to expand on DASH as they wish, provided they pay for the use.

But I agree with Vertoe, if this is what he meant.  It must be decentralized in every way.  I don't see any problem with Masternodes per se, but if they are given more power (voting) than any other user, it starts to get creepy.

Interesting comments, but I do find it hard to take stonehedge "that" seriously after what he did with his DRK and although he may well have enjoyed his reflection time, I think its a bit rich to start spouting all that once he is (against what he wanted) left with no coins...

DASH is going the right way, its one year old and lots more things will happen, the way some people talk its as though this all has to be decided by tomorrow...

[TanteStefana2]

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113977/peter-todd-foresees-greater-state-interference-in-crypto-stellar-adopts-scp-protocol

Can you have mass adoption without placating the regulators?

That's the biggest pile of sour grapes I've ever seen. "We shouldn't change the core protocol at all"..."Confirmation times can't be lowered"..."Gavin's idea to increase block size hasn't been subjected to sufficient academic rigor"..."Ethereum is a joke because it's too unfocused."

I have a LOT less respect for Peter Todd after reading that pile of crap.

Any government regulation kills the reason for cryptocurrency in the first place IMO.  Not to sound too radical, but the purpose and goal has always been for a monetary unit outside any government's influence.

going in or out of cryptos with fiat... or maybe more correctly, coming out of crypto to fiat - that is the only place I see the government having a right or influence on.  Sure, they can regulate that, it's in their power.  But behind the crypto to fiat exchange is not their realm, and for excellent, indelible reasons.

[coins101]

We can debate consensus systems and structures, semantics, hermeneutics, systematics, etc until the cows come home... at the the end of the day my money is on this guy:

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-196-distortions-towards-privacy-or-many-hands-makes-light-work

Satoshi invented a way to solve the Byzantine generals problem of getting a message from one place to another without trusting the message would not be read and rewritten in between its source and destination.  That's the consensus point.

Satoshi didn't invent a way for the generals to come up with strategies to win the war. That's not consensus, that's the leadership and experience point.

[TanteStefana2]

Interesting comments, but I do find it hard to take stonehedge "that" seriously after what he did with his DRK and although he may well have enjoyed his reflection time, I think its a bit rich to start spouting all that once he is (against what he wanted) left with no coins...

DASH is going the right way, its one year old and lots more things will happen, the way some people talk its as though this all has to be decided by tomorrow...

Oh, I wouldn't disregard his commitment to DASH.  I believe Stonehedge has at least 1 masternode and is very much still a part of the DASH team.  Just because he sees issues, doesn't mean he's not part of the team.  In fact, we need people to speak up about what isn't sitting right with then, hashing it out until we find the focal point of the issue, and clean it up, or resolve the problem/issue.

For me, I totally missed the discussion on that voting mechanism.  What brought it about?  why only masternodes?  I think I was asleep at the wheel.  I'm sure the idea was for marketing direction consensus, which seems benign, but could this become something more controlling?  Like I said, I didn't follow that conversation, and now it's here??

-or else I totally forgot.  I don't recall-

[TanteStefana2]

We can debate consensus systems and structures, semantics, hermeneutics, systematics, etc until the cows come home... at the the end of the day my money is on this guy:

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-196-distortions-towards-privacy-or-many-hands-makes-light-work

Satoshi invented a way to solve the Byzantine generals problem of getting a message from one place to another without trusting the message would be read and rewritten in between its source and destination.  That's the consensus point.

Satoshi didn't invent a way for the generals to come up with strategies to win the war. That's not consensus, that's the leadership and experience point.

Yes, that's very true.  Maybe I'm wrong in saying the purpose of cryptocurrency is to divorce society from governmental/banker's control of money.  Actually, it could just as easily be used by a government or big banking to make a fully non-private open currency that gives them more control than ever before.  Luckily, it goes both ways

[BrainShutdown]

Interesting comments, but I do find it hard to take stonehedge "that" seriously after what he did with his DRK and although he may well have enjoyed his reflection time, I think its a bit rich to start spouting all that once he is (against what he wanted) left with no coins...

DASH is going the right way, its one year old and lots more things will happen, the way some people talk its as though this all has to be decided by tomorrow...

Oh, I wouldn't disregard his commitment to DASH.  I believe Stonehedge has at least 1 masternode and is very much still a part of the DASH team.  Just because he sees issues, doesn't mean he's not part of the team.  In fact, we need people to speak up about what isn't sitting right with then, hashing it out until we find the focal point of the issue, and clean it up, or resolve the problem/issue.

For me, I totally missed the discussion on that voting mechanism.  What brought it about?  why only masternodes?  I think I was asleep at the wheel.  I'm sure the idea was for marketing direction consensus, which seems benign, but could this become something more controlling?  Like I said, I didn't follow that conversation, and now it's here??

-or else I totally forgot.  I don't recall-

My understanding is that it's just a mechanism for someone who has a stake in Dash to express his/her opinion.
Why only masternodes? Should one who has 0 Dash be able to vote? 10 Dash?
What would be the minimum to avoid that one person voted with 10k (almost) empty wallets?

[ddink7]

Interesting comments, but I do find it hard to take stonehedge "that" seriously after what he did with his DRK and although he may well have enjoyed his reflection time, I think its a bit rich to start spouting all that once he is (against what he wanted) left with no coins...

DASH is going the right way, its one year old and lots more things will happen, the way some people talk its as though this all has to be decided by tomorrow...

Oh, I wouldn't disregard his commitment to DASH.  I believe Stonehedge has at least 1 masternode and is very much still a part of the DASH team.  Just because he sees issues, doesn't mean he's not part of the team.  In fact, we need people to speak up about what isn't sitting right with then, hashing it out until we find the focal point of the issue, and clean it up, or resolve the problem/issue.

For me, I totally missed the discussion on that voting mechanism.  What brought it about?  why only masternodes?  I think I was asleep at the wheel.  I'm sure the idea was for marketing direction consensus, which seems benign, but could this become something more controlling?  Like I said, I didn't follow that conversation, and now it's here??

-or else I totally forgot.  I don't recall-

The masternode voting system isn't binding in any way. AFAIK, it's just a way for the developers to submit questions and get the point-of-view of masternode operators. Things like "should we build Tor on top of masternodes" would be something that devs might be interested in hearing first from the masternode owners.

That's just the point. NOTHING in crypto is binding. If you don't like it, fork it. If enough people agree with you, then you have created a new network.

P.S. Half the holders of DASH are masternode owners. If you want to get an opinion from the community and you want to exclude forum sock puppets, asking for a masternode vote is a good start. Not an end-all-be-all, but a start.

[TanteStefana2]

Interesting comments, but I do find it hard to take stonehedge "that" seriously after what he did with his DRK and although he may well have enjoyed his reflection time, I think its a bit rich to start spouting all that once he is (against what he wanted) left with no coins...

DASH is going the right way, its one year old and lots more things will happen, the way some people talk its as though this all has to be decided by tomorrow...

Oh, I wouldn't disregard his commitment to DASH.  I believe Stonehedge has at least 1 masternode and is very much still a part of the DASH team.  Just because he sees issues, doesn't mean he's not part of the team.  In fact, we need people to speak up about what isn't sitting right with then, hashing it out until we find the focal point of the issue, and clean it up, or resolve the problem/issue.

For me, I totally missed the discussion on that voting mechanism.  What brought it about?  why only masternodes?  I think I was asleep at the wheel.  I'm sure the idea was for marketing direction consensus, which seems benign, but could this become something more controlling?  Like I said, I didn't follow that conversation, and now it's here??

-or else I totally forgot.  I don't recall-

My understanding is that it's just a mechanism for someone who has a stake in Dash to express his/her opinion.
Why only masternodes? Should one who has 0 Dash be able to vote? 10 Dash?
What would be the minimum to avoid that one person voted with 10k (almost) empty wallets?

I understand that, but could it be used, in the future, to disproportionately control DASH somehow?  The idea, like I said, is probably to help make decisions on benign things, but what if it becomes a controlling feature, something never intended?  Maybe that can't happen, but frankly, I see foundation membership as being more interested in doing what is in the best interest of DASH, as they don't have as strong an ulterior motive (making money) and they're actually helping to fund the foundation and pay for development. - supposedly, I mean, that's where the dues are spent.

[ddink7]

snip

My understanding is that it's just a mechanism for someone who has a stake in Dash to express his/her opinion.
Why only masternodes? Should one who has 0 Dash be able to vote? 10 Dash?
What would be the minimum to avoid that one person voted with 10k (almost) empty wallets?

I understand that, but could it be used, in the future, to disproportionately control DASH somehow?  The idea, like I said, is probably to help make decisions on benign things, but what if it becomes a controlling feature, something never intended?  Maybe that can't happen, but frankly, I see foundation membership as being more interested in doing what is in the best interest of DASH, as they don't have as strong an ulterior motive (making money) and they're actually helping to fund the foundation and pay for development. - supposedly, I mean, that's where the dues are spent.

But the miners control the network. They are the ones who create the blockchain, and who can simply refuse an update if they choose. I was actually surprised (and impressed) that the miners accepted the increasing MN reward split--I was seriously expecting a few big miners to balk and possibly fork the network.

[Gi01]

I assume that this node is getting a lot of money cause it's receving donations

http://explorer.dashninja.pl/address/Xggg1iRTpthwya9mNqBaDt7gYmagT2ugGj

Question: to open a "new" MN you have to make a one-time 1K transaction. So they simply move money from this address to another (public) address once they get to 1K?

Thanks

G.