An insider's view of Dash corruption

[billyjoeallen]

Insider's view of Dash's corruption
I've been a Dash masternode owner for two years and a dashhole for 3. During that time, I've witnessed a corrupt system get even more corrupt to the point now where it's basically all that holds the whole thing together. The public needs to know.

The corruption is centered around, what else, money. Various factions- miners, treasury feeders, and moderators fight for their share of the spoils and they fight dirty. They key is control of the forums on discord and reddit. With crypto, money is information and whoever controls the information flow controls the purse strings. As dash has slipped in market rank, from #3 to currently #20 on coinmarketcap and a loss of >94% of value, the fight for spoils has not abated but in fact intensified at the expense of the hodlers.

I told the other MNOs that if we didn't control treasury spending, eventually the market would force us to, and that's exactly what happened.

Miners also want to protect their 45% of block rewards even if it means giving a big chunk to power companies for marginal extra security. They also post coins as collateral for loans rather than selling to save on taxes and to create artificial scarcity. It's from this extra profit that they pay the toll to the gatekeepers and block any attempts to reduce their allocation.

Dash Core Group is attempting to potentially double the allocation of the treasury from 10% to 20% because they have a declared self-imposed cap of taking 60% of treasury asks and they suspect (and I agree) that 60% won't be enough if de-leveraging continues. Masternode owners are basically held hostage because we have no alternative if we de-fund them. The bullshit rationale that the Dash trust "owns" DCG is just that, because it does no good to own something you can't sell and can't control.

Another way the the controlling looters and pillagers from the inside are insulating themselves from a investor revolt is by establishing the Dash Investment Trust, basically a war chest and rainy day fund to keep them going even if hodlers and regular MNOs can't.

Venezuela is in the process of being cut loose, after the Cabal finally realized what I had been saying all along: it's a money sink and not a profit center. VE and to a lesser extent other emerging markets were merely a way to goose adoption statistics while adding almost no real value.

Dash transaction fees are also crazy low, and that allows the cabal to fake real TX volume for a low cost.

The much-anticipated second layer upgrade Evolution, now renamed Platform is also massively behind schedule, despite assurances that it's right around the corner.

With the trade war, corona virus, supply chain disruptions, and massive debt putting downward pressure on the broader economy, and Dash's pre-occupation for looting crypto- buyers and hodlers, I can't in good conscience recommend buying Dash at this time. If Dash is to be fixed, it won't be by the same people who turned it into what it is today.

The legacy of the insta-mine lives on in the Dash culture and anyone hoping for Moon and Lambos, or even price stability may be sorely disappointed, at least until a de-leveraging of the millions of dash effectively with loans against it one way or another and/or a substantial housecleaning takes place. Please feel free to re-post this expose wherever and as often as you see fit.

I wish I had better news, but the truth is the truth. It is possible central bank money printing or a general crypto bull market will lift Dash along with it, but The blockchain is getting longer, chainlocks for instant send, private send and eventually Platform functions will will increase the cost of operating a masternode while the service rewards go down, so it just doesn't seem like a good investment relative to other opportunities at this time, or at least dangerous for those who have too much exposure.

[billyjoeallen]

I forgot to mention the role of voting delegates, people entrusted with voting keys to vote in the real MasterNode owner's interest, but who often vote in their own. This lack of oversight I believe has been costly.  It only takes a few votes to swing a 49% vote to a 51% vote. (our spending votes are a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea).

[nelson4lov]

Wow. That's quite a lot to take in. Greed is one of the biggest pitfalls and it can turn a growing community into a money hunt. Everyone just there struggling for spoils. I first heard about Dash in 2016. That was when I got involved with cryptocurrencies. It was one of the biggest at the time. I was a fan but stopped after I saw that a lot of big players always trying to influence the network for their own benefits. I think newer blockchains can learn a thing or two from this. Governance is everything especially for a community as this.

[billyjoeallen]

Wow. That's quite a lot to take in. Greed is one of the biggest pitfalls and it can turn a growing community into a money hunt. Everyone just there struggling for spoils. I first heard about Dash in 2016. That was when I got involved with cryptocurrencies. It was one of the biggest at the time. I was a fan but stopped after I saw that a lot of big players always trying to influence the network for their own benefits. I think newer blockchains can learn a thing or two from this. Governance is everything especially for a community as this.

It is a lot to take in, and I'm sorry if I'm being uncharitable to the people who sincerely believe they are doing the right thing for Dash by doing the right thing for themselves, but I believe they are biased at best and dishonest at worst. When I say "cabal" I'm not talking about a conspiracy (at least not that I know of), but about an alignment of interest that amounts to a tragedy of the commons, a resource that is being over-exploited due to individual self-interest and pooled money. 

[billyjoeallen]

I's like to point out that I believe it's us Masternode owners who are primarily responsible for the current state of dash, by lazy delegation of our governance responsibilities to voting delegates, to DCG and media representatives and other employees who often sincerely believe their own hype. Basically it doesn't matter if it was greed or bad judgement that caused the systemic problems because the effect was the same.

It's not about me or any other single person or group of people. It's the incentive structure that needs to change for Dash to live up to it's full potential. The thing that is most preventing that in my view is control of the major forums by people either with poor judgement or selfish intent and the network effects that keep us on those forums.

Network effects are very powerful, and one reason I believe Dash is doing so poorly relative to other altcoins, despite it's many problems because other alts have serious problems too.And obviously NE could be a reason other projects aren't doing as well as Dash. We are older than most of them, after all.

[billyjoeallen]

Thank you to all the people who privately sent me messages of support. It means a lot, because I'm being pilloried as expected and it helps me endure the heat.

[billyjoeallen]

UPDATE: I'm getting significant hostility, but it's coming from the right people: voting delegates, MNOs with many nodes who also request money from the treasury and vote for themselves, and moderators of the major forums. Small investors and single node MNOs have been quietly giving support, which means a lot to me because it's them i feel are least represented.

It's way too soon to see how this will play out, but I feel good that I'm doing the right thing. I think Dash will be hardened by fire, not incinerated by it because I believe it's anti-fragile, but time will tell. The market, as always, gets the last word.

[Mianae]

 I want to start by saying that Dash losing an approximately or >94% of its value is not tied to the corruption going on. Most coins Btc, Eth has lost more than that over the past two years. What's happening in Dash happens everywhere there's tussle for power this is the more reason why some forks happen the tussle for power and who controls more money.

[billyjoeallen]

I want to start by saying that Dash losing an approximately or >94% of its value is not tied to the corruption going on. Most coins Btc, Eth has lost more than that over the past two years. What's happening in Dash happens everywhere there's tussle for power this is the more reason why some forks happen the tussle for power and who controls more money.

I think losing market rank is far more important, because you're right that volatility plagues almost all cryptos. Dash is relatively fork resistant, but that means it's less likely for people to end up with private keys on multiple forks in an effective stock split that increases to total value of their holdings.

You are also right that there is a "tussel for power" wherever resources are pooled, but Dash has a strange problem of extremely active moderators of forums who have been quick to ban people, shadow ban people and censor content in a way that's indicative of promoting rather than impartially discussing our project, the management, governance, funding, etc.  The problem got so great that three discord channels and three subreddits emerged, but the main forums are locked in by network effects and moderated by most of the same people as the original treasury funded ones. The relationships formed by the people getting money and the people most responsible for dispensing pooled funds remained and now it's less transparent than ever.

How is Joel Valenzuela AKA thedesertlynx for example getting paid now with no visible means of support beyond tips? He continues to operate as a media guy, moderator and tech tester, apparently having a normal life with no time for a paid job. You could say it's none of my business, but he pops up and savages other projects, people who challenge the status quo, and critics of favored proposals, threatening people for breaking rules he arguably breaks himself regularly while participating in the discussions, even though he's not even a MNO but a moderator with voting keys (delegate). If he's acting like a hatchet man and seems to have the lifestyle of a hatchet man and no other obvious way to pay the bills, what are the victims of his hatchet supposed to think? I'm not saying there's more than circumstantial evidence, but there's no transparency either, and he's just one example. Another moderator, Agnew Pickens got in the middle of a productive discussion diverting the conversation and when I challenged him on it replied "don't tip me chump change, Boy." These are not isolated incidences. This is a pattern i have observed for a long time, and not just with me.

It doesn't take much for a good cowboy to steer the herd, just a little pressure in the right places. I wouldn't mind but there are indications that they are steering the herd off a cliff (again), as I and others had tried to prevent before, unsuccessfully. I told them if we didn't fix the Pay and Pray funding model, that eventually the market would reduce our spending options involuntarily, which is how it actually played out. Now the percentage of dash backing masternodes is dropping along with our market rank. ANY suggestions by anybody to do something concrete about it are suppressed or diverted. This is especially concerning because of the large amount of dash with loans against it and the danger of a de-leveraging feedback loop that could cause a dramatic crash and loss of value for thee savings of people we MNOs are supposed to protect.

The Dash DAO sunk enormous amounts of money into growing adoption in emerging markets, many of whom are at severe risk of humanitarian crisis if Covid-19 has an outbreak, due to lack of medicine, healthcare infrastructure, high urban population density and corrupt disfunctional political regimes. The DAO also risks retaliation from the US government if it interprets our attempts to help as aiding in evading sanctions. We were not expecting and are not prepared for a prolonged economic downturn in the wider economy, the cryptoverse, or Dash specifically. Coronavirus, the trade war,  recession, a major hack, theft or exit scam from a major coin with high price correlation, any one of these things could be a black swan or combine into a perfect storm and the MNOs don't have the lines of communication to deal with it because we farmed out our responsibilities to mercenaries. WE MNOs as a group are being reckless with the savings entrusted to us and the owners and buyers of dash should be warned. Sure, we might get away with it, but the public deserves to know the risk.