Great work!!
Do we have this interview "as English text"? (I would like to translate and publish it in Russia also...)
I though of you right away
but there is only the english podcast to translate from !
(no transcript)
and that is hard work
Maybe somebody English-speaking could make a transcript? Not only for me - but maybe for other (Spanish? German? ...) translations + SEO + quotation + repost advantages...
Ok, I had a little time on my hands.
Here's the transcript in English
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CCN Podcast
Introduction
On this episode I’ve got an extended interview with Evan Duffield, the inventor of Darkcoin and now the lead developer of DASH, which is the same thing, just rebranded if you missed that.
In it we talk about the block size debate, what really sets the DASH project apart and what the future of crypto currency could look like.
CCN
So I’m on the line with Even Duffield, Hi Even it’s a great pleasure to have you today.
Evan
Hi, it’s great to be here.
CCN
As listeners are probably aware you are the progenitor of Darkcoin, which later became DASH and is one of the leading contenders of the crypto currency scene and I’m kind of interested to know what you did prior to launching Darkcoin.
Evan
Well prior to launching Darkcoin I worked as a software engineer pretty much my whole adult life. I started programming when I was 15 and it’s always been a passion of mine. More recently I’ve been working with companies doing social marketing. I was writing the back end for large web crawlers and basically built the same engine that google uses to rank websites and we were using that to rank fortune 500 and fortune 100 clients. I was using lots of machine learning techniques to have an edge.
I got interested in crypto in mid 2010, started following along and I realised there was an issue with privacy and that’s what lead to the creation of Darkcoin originally.
CCN
Ok, and so Darkcoin, which wasn’t meant to be an nefarious label as far as I’m aware had an existential crises in which you guys said we can’t be Darkcoin anymore and we need a rebrand. I was watching the market at the time and it seemed that the market agreed with you. You didn’t see a mass exodus or a serious tanking of the price. So congratulations on that but how would you say the regular DASH development is going now?
Evan
It’s doing great! We did successfully rebrand the currency, which was a relief. You know Darkcoin was not actually intended to be a nefarious coin. With the name Darkcoin I was originally thinking that the block chain is hidden and that’s all it meant to me but to the Average person it apparently meant crime, which was unfortunate and we had to do something about it and we acted quickly and things are now working out really well with that and so we’re moving on.
The next thing we’ve been really working on behind the scenes is what we’re called the v12 release, which includes the decentralised budgeting and it includes the removal of the reference node which has been a huge issue for DASH and Darkcoin since the very beginning so we’re really excited about both of those projects.
CCN
OK, so tell me about why the reference node needs to go away.
Evan
DASH includes a variety of features which are not included in the Bitcoin project and one of those is anonymity and the anonymity comes from things called masternodes. These masternodes can be run by anyone of the network and they basically run a full node and you can connect to any one of these and you can make transactions that obfuscate the block chain and in return for providing this service and for providing other services to the network like syncing clients and things like that the masternodes are paid part of the block chain reward. To do this originally because it’s really difficult to do it a decentralised way we had one node that co-ordinated who got paid next and that node was called the reference node. We’ve figured out a way to remove that node and still have the same quality of payments.
CCN
I imagine that was a point of contention amongst people to say the reference node could maybe be compromised of something, probably came up a lot.
Evan
Yeah, In the spirit of crypto you don’t want anything centralised and the goal was always to remove it eventually. It was really a temporary solution and we are now at the point where we’re able to remove it, which is great.
CCN
The reason we’re here to talk today is because you have a decentralised governance. Basically a new voting system that enables the masternodes and like you said anyone can become a masternode to vote on important changes in the development process and I guess we may as well not hide it, what we’re talking about here is [a solution to] what bitcoin is facing where it seems like the whole community is paralysed over this question of “can we raise the block limit” and there seems to be equal arguments for and against. DASH now has a simple mechanism to get around that
Evan
There are two aspects to the decentralised governance proposal and one of them is what you alluded to in that masternodes get a yes/no vote on any proposal, so you could create a proposal that DASH should increase the block reward or you could create a proposal to increase the block size… anything really, and you can gage the support of the community in a way that you can’t tamper with and is pretty final.
By utilising this logic we’ve also included what we’re calling the decentralised budgeting. What we’re really trying to solve is the funding mechanism of crypto and there’s been only a couple of ways that it’s been done to this point. One of them is to create a foundation (not for profit). These have been underfunded and in my opinion they’ve done pretty poorly at doing their job.
The masternodes can vote on a proposal and you can think of this as a decentralised Kickstarter and the masternodes are kind of like senators. So there are proposals that come before them and they vote yes or no. These votes are tallied and the proposals with the most support (the most yes votes) will get paid first and the budget will be filled out [with proposals] from the most support to the least support, until it runs out of money and then all of these proposals will be paid directly from the block chain.
CCN
Say I don’t own a masternode but I have a great idea, can I take it to someone with a masternode and they can propose it or can I propose it without a masternode?
Evan
So the whole system is completely decentralised which means it is all done from within the protocol itself so if you have access to a masternode you submit the proposal and the proposal appears on the network and then anyone with a masternode can vote for it [or against it]. We’re going to make available a piece of software [or website] and it’s going to look like a decentralised kickstarter where anyone without a masternode can make an account and submit a proposal. The community can then give feedback and you can see how many votes you have and you can make changes to the proposal based on the feedback until you get enough votes to have it funded.
CCN
You’ve said before that you intend to challenge Bitcoin directly and is this one of the ways you’re doing it by removing the need to have yourself or any directorate and creating a system where the people interested in DASH are able to suggest ideas for the future and the people with the most holdings have to ability to advance DASH?
Evan
The way I see is Bitcoin basically has a monopoly on crypto currently and I don’t think that their strategy of the way they want to run Bitcoin is the only legitimate way to run a crypto and we need more ideas in crypto and I think we need a healthy market of ideas, so I wanted to make DASH and show that there are other ways to do things that work and that work really really well. One of those ways is to leverage the block chain technology and to use this like a decentralised kickstarter and to fund all of these things within the ecosystem to support itself and it’s better than taking grant money to pay developers or getting the money through the foundation and paying developers or anything like that.
CCN
I would say the one thing that the Bitcoin foundation has succeeded at is a centralised place for people to be angry at it. I means in a regulatory sense its been useless, you know it didn’t do anything to stop the bit-licence.
Evan
One of the biggest issues with crypto is that people have a huge incentive to get involved in projects when they’re really young because the crypto itself is very cheap and if you put in some effort you’ll make returns on your investment really easily as we’ve seen with bitcoin and a lot of these other cryptos. The generation after that, the second and third and fourth generation, those peoples only incentive to get aboard is to buy low so they can sell at a higher price but they’re not benefitting themselves by supporting it long term.
CCN
So how is DASH preventing this problem, are you suggesting DASH is going to solve this problem?
Evan
The fact that if you get involved in any crypto, even Bitcoin, currently there’s no financial incentive, like if I was working on the Bitcoin project fulltime, I wouldn’t get paid until I was supported by either grant money or by the foundation, which is almost non-existent right now.
The way that DASH intends to solve this is with the budgeting system. Anyone can get involved at any time within the projects lifecycle and earn money, so if you have an idea for advertising and you had some skill for advertising you can make a proposal, put it towards the community and if they vote yes, suddenly you’re getting paid for the work you’re doing. So it allows anyone to get involved for a lifetime and allows the second and third and fourth and fifth generations to contribute and get something back for their effort.
CNN
There’s a huge debate going on in the bitcoin community which has now got beyond technical now, now it’s really ideological it seems. As somebody with a deep interest in crypto and as a programmer, what do you think is going on and what do you think should happen.
Evan
I see it from both sides and I think the issue is that there’s some merit to both of their arguments. On the one hand if you increase the block size the full nodes suffer because they’re not being incentivised like they are in DASH and that means the people running the full nodes will have to pay for the extra bandwidth and also syncing will take a lot more time and there are other issues of a technical nature. If you don’t increase it and they implement lightening then suddenly you can do most of the transactions off of the chain and you can just commit that as needed later on, which is also another solution and I think I would prefer that solution because it keeps the full nodes happy and it keeps the block chain smaller.
CCN
In the DASH protocol the Masternodes (Full nodes) actually receive part of the mining rewards, is that right?
Evan
Yeah, so in the DASH project if we wanted to increase the block size, the full nodes would actually be compensated for the traffic so we wouldn’t actually lose the full nodes like the Bitcoin project would.
CNN
Suppose somebody was coming to DASH, what would be your biggest advice to them as far as getting involved at this time?
Evan
Anyone can get involved, you just head over to dashtalk.org and check us out or head to the main website dashpay.io and you can help with developing or any of the initiatives, We have about 50 volunteers working on the project at any given time so the more the merrier.
CCN
So what’s next for DASH? You guys continually impress many of us with instant transactions [instantX] and now you have a system that subverts the need for any central authority and a self-funding system… I mean what do you do when you’ve conquered the world
Evan
The next goal would be to use the budgeting system to advertise and show the world what we have created to try and make that a real competitor to the Bitcoin project and give this space some competition.
The last thing I that want to see is the Bitcoin developers to make some tragic mistake and the whole of crypto is not trusted for the next fifteen years. But if there are two projects at least and one of them is ok and the other one fails then we’re not going to have that situation.
CCN
Thank you and have a great day
Evan
Thank you, Thanks for having me
