My last couple of important questions for now: 1) will the financial advantages of the MN's be much greater than just staking the same amount (I know it depends on the number of MN's, but generally speaking)?
yes even if 50% of total coins are active at MN and 25% of total coins are active at POS the MN will earn per 10000 DMD better
that 50% of total coins is a very ambitious goal and if less are in MN then the income per MN is even better
we did analyse the seesaw mechanics of pivx and our decision to not use it because the normal competition reward mechanics more then enough make sure there will always be MN and always be people compete to find POS blocks the rewards just crazy increase if not enough people take part that for sure DMD will find there way to where they needed
to keep up the POS part of hybrid security or to keep the MN in a very healthy range of nodes
2) What is the main benefit that MN's give to DMD (network security? funding? ownership incentives?)?
there is 4 main points
first they are 24/7 fullnodes with static IP (or known onion hidden service name) that means they build the backbone of block propagation and make find stable peers super easy
second they provide a peer to peer masternode network that enable to run masternode powered services
mixTX and quickTX are just the basic two more will follow
third they will become the backend part of the next generation of masternode powered light wallets
in that area DMD will try to adapt and launch the very ambitious dash evolution project towards the brand design of DMD
we not aim to compete in dash strong points against them but we utilize their technology adapted to our brand design to power our niche services
and fourth is keep DMD Diamonds scarce and a good storage of wealth solution with a income aspect the relative high requirement to run a DMD MN make people think twice before sell a part of their MN coins and lose access to the MN income stream. this added with POS which also remove coins from exchanges keep DMDs a hard time to gather and fullfil the task gather 10000 to start a masternode will be a real quest for glory. and one of the dash evolution parts we will add and which is powered by masternode network will be a lightwallet savings option which basically means blopckchaintech secured u borrow coins to a shared masternode and get a part of the income (all the dash evolution based mechanics wont be part of initial release in summer)