Welcome!

It is ESSENTIAL to understand, all the numbers and stats provided for 4K / 10K HPMNs are based on MNOwatch blockchain analysis which attempts to identify individuals running multiple MNs. This means, of all the dash humpbacks identified so far, what are the probabilities for HPMNs to either halt the Platform chain or to steal funds from the Platform chain.

From the FAQ:

(a) “The main security concern for Platform is a single entity controlling more than a third of the nodes in a Tenderdash validator set (34+ out of 100).”

(b) “If the solution proposed could lead to a level of centralization such that there would be a chance that just two entities could steal funds locked up in the Platform chain by having more than two thirds of Platform nodes.”

It is also ESSENTIAL to consider this quote from quantumexplorer (source; EVO-DECISION-10K-HPMN):

(c) “We have also started building Trustless Masternode shares in DCG which should come out in v20 of core, or in the worst case in v21. Votes will then be trustless.”

Note: in the following, I will skip over custodian solutions as implied risks should be obvious and remain constant, both now and in the future.

--- Now, let us consider the current situation ---

Humpbacks have flexibility in their voting behavior. If, for example, someone has 4 MNs and they are not entirely sure which way to vote on a proposal, they may choose to cast 3 Yes votes and 1 No votes, or any combination thereof.

Single node MNOs can only achieve this through multisig / masternode shares as stated in point (c) above. In the absence of trustless masternode voting, I consider all MNs are voting black or white, Yes / No / Abstain. (again, discarding custodians)

--- In the new system ---

Will HPMNOs have four separate voting keys? - unknown. But regardless, we do know from point (c) above, masternode shares will give both MNOs and HPMNOs fractional / granular voting options. Assuming an easy interface, it is reasonable to assume, masternode shares will become the preferred choice for _all_ node operators. Not just for multiple parties but for individual whales and humpbacks alike.

***** This means a humpback creates 4 masternode shares for a HPMN and no one knows if it's one person behind it or four persons. *****

From here on, how can any independent blockchain analysis determine the number of whales and humpbacks in the system? - it will become practically impossible. Trustless masternode shares and trustless voting will allow humpbacks to become invisible, hiding in plain sight among the whales.

In one of these arguments, grandmasterdash attacked Dash's Platform proposition by comparing it to SIAcoin and Storj, both ranked very lowly and closely at #166 and #168 respectively. Although I called his argument fud below in general, I wanted to respond to this more in depth in general for the benefit of the MNOs so that we can all come to a conclusion about platform and its potential to both have great ROI as well as cement Dash as the leading cryptocurrency. After all, if that doesn't happen, platform can be considered in some way to have failed.

So, what about SIAcoin and STORJ? How does our most closely related competition fare (I alluded to Google and Facebook being our competition, that's more wishful, long-term thinking)? Just like Dash surpassed BCH, monero, Decred and BTC in the payments realm, being the number one cryptocurrency for payments in several regions for years now (most heavily in Latin America), so too will Dash need to surpass our cryptocurrency competition in SIACoin and STORJ.

I had a look at the ecosystem of these two in response to this argument. Here is my summary investigative results. First, SIACoin.

Here is a comparison of the file storage coins in the cryptocurrency space:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/501433513677946880/1036812268018598008/unknown.png

FileCoin remains the biggest at 873 PBs of storage capacity with 24 PBs of actual storage used.

Siacoin is apparently near dead or in a zombie-state. There has been several major negative events with a slow and steady decline in official activity in that community. Something called 'Skynet' was apparently a large undertaking that failed, costing the leader of the community his position as well as a significant amount of enthusiasm and goodwill in the project towards the community (like if Platform somehow failed in Dash, that same kind of negative sentiment reigns).

There is still apparently some development by "the Foundation", but its slow going and more importantly SIACoin remains low in usage having the lowest capacity and 2nd lowest actual storage used of all 4 cryptocurrency file storage solutions.

STORJ, however, is another matter entirely. But first, second-runner up to fileCoin, scprime.

Here are some important characteristics about ScPrime (I read the white paper so you don't have to, but feel free: https://scpri.me/wp-content/uploads/SCP-WhitePaper-v1.0.pdf) a potential technological competitor to Platform. Sc has an (initial block) premine to incentivize various participants, a proof of work mineable cryptocurrency, infinite inflation, 20% developer fund, self-admitted low value of its high-velocity token (large supply at least 7.6 Billion units), collateral put up for service providers with financial penalty for 'cheating'.

So overall, dodgy tokenomics as we know from the payments realm. This lack of tokenomic value will come back to bite these coins when it comes time to compete with Dash, because Dash's limited and strong tokenomics incentivize holding and value growth over time. Which will give Dash an advantage in paying for and attracting investors that will host the storage on HVMNs. Open-source client. Open protocol, good for third-party developers.

This network also boasts content terms-of-service that provide clear regulations on hosting illegal content (nod to my discussion with Socrates about illegal content). However, it is a proof-of-work mineable coin, and it has slow blocks, with claims little value for faster than 10 minute blocks. Dash is again superior here in being a fast transactional coin that splits the data storage network from the payments blockchain so that each can be optimized separately from the other. Also, like Platform data contracts specify how long data lives and storage proofs guarantee providers store what they say they will, no more and no less, with valid proofs resulting in payment to the host and invalid ones resulting in the payment going to a burn address (different punishments and rewards than Dash).

It also boasts storage of data at cost. Very similar data capabilities to Platform. Data key-pairs. ScPrime has the second most capacity (66.2PBs) but lowest actual data stored amount of all 4 solutions (1.7 PB).

Now to Storj. Storj is doing actually quite well it would seem, though its slow growth rate leaves room for Dash to overtake it with a strong offering. Although SiaCoin has the look of crypto-death and stagnation, storj appears to be actively used in an MVP fashion. They have their product released to market and its being used. 3rd most storage capacity (36 PBs) but second-most actual data stored.

So Its a mixed bag. This post is a response to the argument that Platform won't necessarily be anything special or grow to anything because SiaCoin and Storj, as well as others ostensibly, are low value and in general low in adoption (despite their current usage rates). So why am I confident that Platform will succeed and not only overtake this cryptocurrency competition but also nip at the heels of the big tech companies like Google and Amazon?

Simply because I believe that these other coins are missing some fundamentals that Dash has. The first thing is, Dash isn't doing decentralized file storage. I'm sure something like that can and will be done, but that's not the goal. Platform's goal is decentralized DATA CONTRACTS. This means Platform will allow dapps that use these contracts and will attract attention, one of these apps could be storage but it won't be the only one. These other coins are, imo, too tightly coupled with the "storage" use case while platform is a more generally useful framework. So, it will start with decentralized usernames for payments and those usernames will become more and more useful as other apps are built on Platform.

For example, we already have plenty of customers for the most popular potential DAPP right out of the gate: usernames. The only thing wrong with cryptocurrencies is that they're hard to use for non-technical people. Adoption would be a lot easier if people could use their Dash just like their Venmo, paypal, email, etc. Login with a human-readable username and password, send money to another human-readable username. Bam. Decentralized Venmo.

Decentralized payments between human-readable usernames. That one little thing is what cryptocurrencies are missing that prevents mass adoption, and thus that one thing could spread easily. Its just like these other coins in providing decentralized data storage. But with a purpose and customer base pre-built, people who want to trade and use cryptocurrencies with usernames. Millions of people know about crypto, but most won't mess with it due to the difficulty. Imagine defi contracts being stored on platform. Decentralized trade.

In this sense, the competition that grandmasterdash mentioned are at a disadvantage relative to Dash because their coins don't have widespread adoption throughout the world as payment networks, and their architecture is pretty slow, as well as being more limited in scope and practical usefulness. I suspect its because they have many thousands of nodes which may place bandwidth and other limits on their networks. They also aren't very financially attractive. Running a siacoin node gets you like $3 a month or so. Storj is maybe 2 times better.

Platform is more general in its application than these services in my estimation because it is a second-layer network built on top of a successful payments chain, which means we have a ready user-base with a clear usecase that will give us an advantage over ourr payments competition as well as our storage competition: usernames in decentralized payments. These other storage solutions can't really offer that, so they can't go viral easily and thus seem fated to remain obscure. I don't believe that that fate will happen to Dash because payments is such a large usecase. By combining data storage and payments on two different chains, Dash is offering something unique.

Filecoin, sia and storj are solutions in search of a problem. decentralized filestorage is not very competitive yet. But decentralized usernames for payments? Yes, that's a hot usecase that can't be copied readily. So our competition, both the payments side as well as the data as a service side, are at a disadvantage compared to our network. That is my summary report on the state of the competition in the storage space and response to the criticism that Platform may not amount to much as seen in other decentralized data storage cryptocurrency platforms.

I won't downvote you because you did at least look into what they are doing.

I cited Sia and STORJ as they are just two examples of what happens when you try to compete on price alone. When you compete on price, the big boys come in and they undercut everyone for years until the competition just fails or walks away. As you point out, Dash Platform has a unique offering and not really comparable, though Sam has said he wants to allow binary blobs, which makes no sense to me at all.

When you have a unique offering, which Platform has, you no longer compete on price alone. What is the correct price for using Platform? - NOBODY KNOWS because it is unique. How long for Platform to find a killer app? Again, for the same reason, nobody knows. Price could be too high and no one finds value. Price could be too low and the network sells itself short, less money coming in, squeezing MNO / HPMNO profits.

I say all this because it was Sam that made the assumption that Platform must be cheap. All I'm saying is, at this point, people should not get so hung up on price. First, Dash Platform must find it's niche. You say usernames and DPNS are the killer apps, I disagree. You can't just produce usernames and a DNS alternative and assume success, it takes a lot more than that.

From a user perspective, dash usernames are quite interesting compared to others, though there are issues surrounding name squatting. I'm sure it will add value to dash but how much value? Will exchanges support it? - it's hard enough getting them to accept InstantSend or Chainlocks. Will Dashpay also include a bitcoin wallet and leverage dash usernames for bitcoin transactions? - I doubt it, because DCGs focus doesn't seem to be on payments. But hey DCG, very happy if you do it.

In 1999 Shazam launched the first application to fingerprint and identify music. Initially, it was available to everyone via a phone call and then later an app. It took 17 YEARS for them to turn a profit and the real money was not made from their initial target audience but through royalty collections. Dash Platform is in this same position, a unique product that has yet to find it's niche.

There is also the extra burden of censorship, which Sam wants to postpone to a later date, after HPMNs. This too comes at a cost, either financially to maintain censorship or the cost of implementing it and fine tuning. Censorship is a highly charged and complex topic. Don't even get me started on binary blobs. Without some level of censorship, Sam said he would resign. I think the subject of censorship should of been brought up way before HPMNs came about.

>I cited Sia and STORJ as they are just two examples of what happens when you try to compete on price alone.

I don't think that's accuarte. Siacoin and storj aren't low because they 'compete on price alone'. They are low because their usecase never went viral. They don't have a strong reason for people to use them over the competition. Apparently file storage isn't as in need of disruption as tradFI, at least not yet. Because of this, I believe your example in using them is flawed.

>How long for Platform to find a killer app?

As you know, I believe that Platform will START with a killer app and that DCG is correct in focusing on developing platform for payments. This is the killer app and why I believe that SIA and storj are not relevant here. They can't do this even though they do file storage (just okay, not really superior to a centralized service except on esoteric technical merits like decentralized etc.)

Dashpay on platform will be notably superior than our competition and will allow us to utilize our payments chain as a killer app which will incentivize users to utilize their username for whatever they can. I.e. viral apps should spring from the killer app of usernames with the payment chain.

>Price could be too high and no one finds value.

This possibility being the reason that I concur with DCG and Sam about being against anything but a 4K or 10K HVMN solution.

>Price could be too low and the network sells itself short, less money coming in, squeezing MNO / HPMNO profits.

This possibility is not a realistic reason to do anything. You are just like the monero community. The monero community naturally has NO CONFIDENCE in their coin or their project. So they don't believe that the fee market (i.e. user adoption) will be able to sustain their coin. So, using this lack of confidence as an excuse, they FORCE monero on the market instead by giving it infinite inflation.

So the market won't be able to say, 'We don't like that coin, it should die.' This is the genesis of the monero community's attack against the fee market. They are insecure and lack confidence, just like you here. Your justification for this position is that you don't believe that Platform will succeed so you want to charge as much as possible to recoup ROI.

But grandmasterdash, if you don't believe that Platform is a game-changing and special offering then why are you here? There's plenty of communities with various beliefs on how to scale (none of them accurate or viable, but they exist).

>I say all this because it was Sam that made the assumption that Platform must be cheap.

I don't think this is accurate. I think every architect of Platform wants it to be low fee so it reaches the greatest volume of users. Your offering must be fast, easy to use and CHEAP. Then people will flock to it. This is not a difficult assertion to prove or even think of so I don't understand why you're against it so vehemently. Its NATURAL to want to lower costs as much as possible to attract attention. You make it up on the mass volume (which you apparently don't believe is coming).

>people should not get so hung up on price.

Who's hung up? I think you're the only one who's hung up on it. Everyone else sees the obvious logic in keeping fees as low as possible as a general goal, so aren't you the only one who is 'hung up on price'?

>You say usernames and DPNS are the killer apps, I disagree. You can't just produce usernames and a DNS alternative and assume success, it takes a lot more than that.

I don't think you've thought it through. You do realize this isn't some random tech show, right? We already know we have customers. Dash is the most performant and used blockchain for actual payments. Dash is the blockchain with the largest adoption among retailers in a global atmosphere. We had over 150,000 ACTIVE android wallets in just Venezuela ALONE two years ago.

If you give those people the same speed, security and adoption that Dash already presents, plus the ease of use of transacting with usernames then I think you're wrong here. That IS THE KILLER APP. As we've seen with 'Defi' and other 'crypto web 3.0 solutions', payments really is the biggest use case. Even if its just speculative payments. All the other things that people justify blockchains for really aren't worth it. But usernames for payments is. If you don't believe that this is a killer app then again, why are you here?

> though there are issues surrounding name squatting.

These issues are an edge case and should affect google, facebook and other name services which are offered for free. Dash usernames have a small fixed cost which should limit username related issues, including squatting.

>Will exchanges support it?

Irrelevant. Exchanges haven't been relevant to Dash's story since 2018 when we exploded in Venezuela before really getting on exchanges down there. Exchanges are not a leading indicator for Dash. And the market is deliberately ignoring our superior technology in all but a few cases. Still, we perservere and are the most adopted and largest payment coin, even more than BTC which is a huge accomplishment.

>it's hard enough getting them to accept InstantSend or Chainlocks.

Is it? I rely on instantSend for my daily purchases. I use Dash at least 5 times a week and its always instant and I never have to think about blockchain issues like with other chains. Which shows that even if exchanges don't support it, the network is what matters, exchanges will follow when we're popular regardless of their ideological position. And anyway, this is no good reason to NOT release so the concern is really neither here nor there.

>Dash Platform is in this same position, a unique product that has yet to find it's niche.

Again I disagree and think you're wrong. Dash Platform IS LATE! We already have a use case and tens of thousands of people chomping at the bit to use it. Payments with usernames is a killer app, because payments is a killer app. You see all this *points to billions "invested" in cryptocurrency economy*? Yeah, that's from payments, at this level of ease of use. So if we introduce usernames to this payments equation, then we will be the best by a long shot.

Our UX will be so far superior to other coins that we will LEAVE THE REALM OF CRYPTOCURRENCY and enter the realm of TRUE PAYMENTS like Venmo, Paypal and banks. Most cryptocurrencies are still limited by their architectures (block size, block time, no usernames/ease of use). Dash has solved the first two and now seeks to solve the final barrier to entry, which once solved will open the flood gates.

Anybody can get a little following by taking a strong stand against the banks. You're not going to find much pushback there among the general populace. But can you do so WHILE PROVIDING A DRAMATICALLY SUPERIOR user experience than them and your competition? 24/7/365 decentralized and permissionless availability all over the world with usernames for ease of use is ABSOLUTELY A GAME-CHANGER and I believe you're underselling it massively for some reason.

>There is also the extra burden of censorship, which Sam wants to postpone to a later date, after HPMNs

As I understand it, there won't be any censorship. Giving HVMN the ability to respond to a DCMA request is NOT CENSORSHIP. Nobody considers youtube as 'censorship' for taking down pirated movies, because its not your free speech to upload a pirated movie. It seems you want the network to take a childish and naive position w.r.t. our legal requirements as a hosting service. Providing the ability to remove illegal content is wise and just, I don't understand how you can see it any other way.

>Without some level of censorship, Sam said he would resign.

You're calling it censorship. Sam said he would resign without a way to remove ILLEGAL CONTENT. That is NOT THE SAME THING AS CENSORSHIP. Words have meaning and you're being dishonest and disingenuous by twisting their definition in this way.

> I think the subject of censorship should of been brought up way before HPMNs came about.

Your dishonest usage of the word censorship aside, these are things that couldn'tve been decided on before the network topology became clear. This is a common problem in software design where you can't predict the future topology of a design and have to wait until you're closer to release to define some constraint or other. This is normal in software development.

I can't possibly explain to you here what is a very big subject, whether you call is "illegal content" or censorship.

There is no single authority for "illegal content" because that would depend where you live. Different jurisdictions have different laws, motives and priorities.

Nor do you seem to appreciate the difference between something being illegal and content subject to AI filters, imposing their code-is-law. YT goes way beyond US laws for pirated movies. Any content creator will tell you all the things they can or can't play, say or show. It's just not about law at all. In the same way exchanges over compensate with ridiculous rules because regulators are intentionally fuzzy or silent.

Self-regulation leads to over compensation. It is a slippery slope which goes from "if you can do X, then you can do Y".

As for the rest, we'll just have to agree to disagree. You know my position so we'll just wait and see.

>I can't possibly explain to you here what is a very big subject, whether you call is "illegal content" or censorship.

Its not big and doesn't require much explanation. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with stolen material, other peoples' property, files or data. So being able to remove that content (illegal, stolen material) upon legal request isn't censorship. Nobody calls youtube censorship for taking down stolen content (like movies). Respond to this argument or stop making yours!

>There is no single authority for "illegal content" because that would depend where you live.

Which is perfectly fine. The mechanism won't be reliant on jurisdiction. The HVMN will have the option to remove content when presented with a legal request, regardless of where it comes from (however, they will probably only respond to requests from countries that are actually hosting them, so even less of a hassle than you're making it out to be).

>Different jurisdictions have different laws, motives and priorities.

Irrelevant. The HVMNO will only have to deal with the jurisdiction they are in. One jurisdiction, one set of laws, motives, priorities. A HVMN outside of that jurisdiction won't have to comply with their regulations, which will force a global institution to represent the request, which also is fine.

>Nor do you seem to appreciate the difference between something being illegal and content subject to AI filters, imposing their code-is-law.

Nor do you seem to appreciate the difference between centralized offerings like youtube and decentralized ones like Platform. Again you show that you lack confidence in DCG and platform as a solution superior to current options. Because if you believed it, your 'criticisms' here wouldn't be enough to sway your opinion on the network or platform. You don't seem to realize it, but you have a lot of 'tells' that are giving away your motivations and incentives/hidden ties.

>Any content creator will tell you all the things they can or can't play, say or show.

And Youtube is not Platform. Platform will have the freedom to only comply as much as legally necessary, no further. Since there is no centralized institution telling HVMNOs what to do with their node, leaving it in their hands gives them the ultimate control. Something that other networks don't have. So again you ignore our superiority in order to push FUD.

>It's just not about law at all.

Its ALL ABOUT the law. It makes sense to provide a socially acceptable way to remove stolen content. You have not said anything that negates or even approaches a rebuttal to this point, your deflection by calling it 'censorship' (when you know its not) notwithstanding.

>In the same way exchanges over compensate...

Again this won't likely happen with platform because platform is decentralized and exchanges are not. You again show you are not appreciating the landscape for what it truly is, instead created FEAR UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT from an unrealistic proposition. Platform is DECENTRALIZED, the CoD will be at least 100, which is 100 TIMES more or less more decentralized than current offerings. Have a little faith.

>Self-regulation leads to over compensation. It is a slippery slope which goes from "if you can do X, then you can do Y".

Okay everyone, pack it up! Grandmasterdash said that platform can't work so we have to just go on ahead and quit now!

>As for the rest, we'll just have to agree to disagree. You know my position so we'll just wait and see.

Your position is nonsensical and FUD.

There is no such thing as "illegal content" because we have no global laws.

Something that is legal in a place, it is illegal in another.

So you must say, "legal content in US", or "illegal content in North Corea" etc.

Just saying "illegal content" is nonscense.

>There is no such thing as "illegal content" because we have no global laws.

This is clearly not true. The lack of 'global laws' doesn't prohibit there being illegal content, this is an illogical conclusion to draw.

>Something that is legal in a place, it is illegal in another.

This is not relevant.

>So you must say, "legal content in US", or "illegal content in North Corea" etc.

No, you don't. You don't have a right to police my speech.

>Just saying "illegal content" is nonscense.

No, its not. Speaking in general is accurate and perfectly fine here.

A HPMN should not comply to local censorship laws, it should just migrate to places where no legal censorship occurs.

>A HPMN should not comply to censorship laws

Removing stolen content by legal request is NOT CENSORSHIP.

Well , my argument is that HPMN should not respond to local jurisdictions.

They should just migrate to other places where censorship (or whatever you call it) does not exist.

>Well , my argument is that HPMN should not respond to local jurisdictions.

That argument is tone-deaf and braindead. Having the option to do so is wise, leaving it up to the HVMN themself. If you don't want to comply then don't. Giving options for personal choice is better than forcing one side or the other.

>They should just migrate to other places.

That's just your opinion. You have no right to force that on the rest of us.

>You have no right to force that on the rest of us.

And you, you have no right to enforce censorship (or whatever you call it).

>And you have no right to enforce censorship (or whatever you call it).

Strawman. I'm not the one trying to enforce illegal content removal (which is different from censorship, failing to recognize this indicates you are being dishonest). Since governments DO have the right to request takedowns, having an option to comply with them is wise. You have not responded to this argument.

How many MNs you own, you gonna be able to afford a 10K HPMN node, if not, step to the back of the bus.

One of the points that infamous infiltrator and bad-idea-suggestor GrandMasterDash responded with below is the idea that BTC has "(13?) 17,000 nodes with any treasury reward or masternode reward" thus the implication is that BTC is better than Dash. Aside from that not being a strong criticism (BTC is the first and oldest cryptocurrency, so its first-mover advantage alone should position it as superior to Dash. This is not a failing or mark against Dash), its actually not factually correct. Neither from GrandMasterDash's own analysis, nor from relevant factual analysis which I will present shortly below.

But first, GMD's comparison is flawed, because BTC has 13,000, 17,000, or whatever figure you want to use, nodes and Dash only has 3800 masternodes, but Dash's masternodes have a collateral requirement while BTC's nodes don't. They're free to create (though they still have costs to operate). Which means you can't compare the two. If BTC's nodes had a collateralization requirement like Dash's nodes do, then and only THEN could you compare the two. But in fact, BTC's nodes don't DO ANYTHING. In POW 1.0 coins, if your node isn't a mining node IT DOESN'T BENEFIT THE NETWORK AT ALL!

If you're just running a node to connect to the network, or connect your personal wallet, sorry but you're not doing anything for the network. You are only serving yourself (which in itself is fine, blockchains were created to serve this data). But Dash's nodes are completely different. Not only do they have a collateralization requirement, proving that investors WANT to run these nodes, instead of hobbyists and volunteers, but they also PROVIDE services that are impossible to provide otherwise. NO OTHER COIN has decentralized coinjoin on a bespoke network with redundancy of 3800 servers. BCH is STRUGGLING to get more than a single Cashfusion server (indeed they warn AGAINST multiple servers as it has costs that they don't want to/are unable to pay, which shows the fully paid node route is superior).

No other coin has monthly governance, instant transaction locking, decentralized but fully paid core and dev team, separate fully paid incubator teams etc. Why not? Because THEY CAN'T TRUST THEIR NODES TO DO ANY OF THESE THINGS! Because its trivial to spin up thousands of nodes, that 17,000 node figure for BTC is nothing but a PAPER TIGER.

Secondly and what's more, the real data that BTC's node count is inferior to Dash's and thus GMD's argument is PURE BULLSHIT, POPPYCOCK AND UNADULTERATED RUBBISH is some information that was recently released. It turns out that YOU CAN almost directly compare Dash nodes with BTC holders.

https://crypto.news/bitcoin-whales-going-extinct-addresses-with-at-least-1000-btc-at-3-year-low/

This article provides a chart with the historical and current number of addresses holding '1000 or more BTC". In other words, you can compare directly between the people who believe in BTC so much that they're willing to hold 1000 of them vs the number of people willing to do that for Dash, and guess what? The number of holders of 1000 Dash is GREATER than the number of holders of 1000 BTC! And it always has been (since masternodes were a thing). We used to have almost 5,000 masternodes, but over the path to platform we've whittled that number down to ~3800. How many people are holding 1000 BTC? **ONLY 2063!!** So, despite BTC's massive price advantage and first mover advantage, Dash holders are STILL MORE CONFIDENT (or incentivized) to hold MORE Dash than BTC, the largest cryptocurrency, holders are.

Which means that not only is GMD's fake argument based on bullshit numbers and bad comparisons, BUT THAT HE'S ACTUALLY COMPLETELY WRONG AND ADVOCATED THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THE TRUTH. I've warned the network to watch out for people who argue the complete opposite of the truth several times before. Why? Because the complete opposite of the truth is THE STRONGEST ATTACK YOU CAN MAKE BY LYING. Which means that GMD's posts are not likely to be 'simple misunderstandings' or, 'simple mistaken but fervently-held beliefs'. They are likely to be deliberately constructed as an ATTACK WEAPON against our network to do the maximum damage possible by LYING. Which means that GMD is most likely an enemy, infiltrator and bad actor and nothing he says should be taken seriously at all.

My content analysis tool has classified almost all of GMD's posts as spam, so I stopped reading them.
I hope, that other MNOs will do the same, and read the FAQ instead.

And IMHO instead of voting for 4k, the MNOs should consider 10k. It really seems to be the better solution. (No, I'm not a whale...)

Well that's quite a nifty tool! Thank you for that confirmation. Yes, reading his posts on the Dash forum also where he spreads FUD about Dash, claiming he's "going to sell more of his Dash" if we don't adopt his FUD and fear-mongering of the day, certainly doesn't help his case either.

I agree that upon inspection of the evidence, it does seem that the 10k solution will provide the best benefits overall to the network. My CoD analysis agrees that we can maintain a satisfactory level of decentralization while reaping the most benefits of the HVMN solution. It appears the network is coalescing around the 4K solution for two reason:

1) QuantumExplorer relayed that it was the solution overwhelmingly chosen by DCG and devs

2) It seems to be a safe, middle-of-the-road solution that disrupts as much as necessary, but no more.

But you're right, we should at least consider the 10k solution a bit more, imo.

In this comment I will not go over all these other distractions being made, but let's just quickly dispel these comparisons.

The source being pointed to is talking about ADDRESSES and not wallets / holders. Nor does it say the actual amounts above 1000 bitcoin in said addresses (only that it is 1000 or more). So, in the following you will see and verify the largest single address has approx. 250597 bitcoin. That alone is worth approx. 4.3 BILLION USD. Do tell us, how many masternodes would that buy? - wait, I'll use the calculator... 91871 masternodes.

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo

To be fair, the largest addresses are probably cold custodian wallets which were probably excluded by Glassnode. So let's just look at some of the others. Go to page 21 and look at the 2074th richest ADDRESS which holds exactly 1000 bitcoin valued at 17.3M USD. How many masternodes would that buy? - 366 masternodes. In fact, these stats just go on and on, take a look for yourself.

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses-21.html

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/3Jfy1UwUegtq1vXV9BphfhJuLw1NnpMJNy

So yes, you are being asked to believe...

"Dash holders are STILL MORE CONFIDENT (or incentivized) to hold MORE Dash than BTC, the largest cryptocurrency, holders are."

Disingenuous or outright fake news?

My question is, what tiny percentage of this wealth has bought dash masternodes, being they're incentivized and all that?

Side note. Some of these richest addresses also have unclaimed money from bitcoin forks such BCH and BSV.

>In this comment I will not go over all these other distractions being made

A common troll refrain used as a deflection when explaining why they won't answer the charges against them. Doing so is an implicit admission of retreat however so I welcome your cowardice here.

>The source being pointed to is talking about ADDRESSES and not wallets / holders

Straw man. Holding 1000 Dash takes place in an address and is not about "wallets and holders".


>. Nor does it say the actual amounts above 1000 bitcoin in said addresses (only that it is 1000 or more

It doesn't need to. The point is to give a baseline comparison. And besides what you say about BTC is true about Dash too. It's not like you're limited to only 1 1000 Dash address per holder or something so this too is a non response.

>So, in the following you will see and verify the largest single address has approx. 250597 bitcoin. That alone is worth approx. 4.3 BILLION

Again this is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. You are not limited in the amount of Dash you can hold. But this figure does show that the number of different addresses with 1000 Dash is higher than the number of addresses with 1000 BTC which indicates investor confidence in Dash over BTC. None of your response is a rebuttal to this fact.

>Do tell us, how many masternodes would that buy? - wait, I'll use the calculator... 91871 masternodes

No it wouldn't Einstein. Have you forgotten that Dash has a fixed supply?? With a floating supply of 12 million there can be AT MOST 12000 masternodes, and the price of Dash (and thus the value you're using in your dumb rebuttal) will skyrocket on the attempt as you're literally cornering the market.

That you couldn't see this in your hastily written reply indicates that you definitely are a troll. That my comparison triggered you so also indicates you have emotional ties to another community than Dash and should be kicked out of here.

> In fact, these stats just go on and on, take a look for yourself

None of what you're saying is a rebuttal to the point that there are more addresses with 1000 Dash than those with 1000 BTC and there has never been as many 1000 BTC holding addresses as Dash's ATH. Which means you lose.

>Disingenuous or outright fake news?

Your question you mean? I'd guess both knowing you.

>My question is, what tiny percentage of this wealth has bought dash masternodes, being they're incentivized and all that?

I don't know what this question is supposed to be asking.

The point is you are wrong and your fake node count for BTC is a garbage argument.

I want to say thank you to the Dash Core team for showing the network how a proper decision proposal is made. I say this because the MNOs are not really supposed to vote on parameters, technical specifications nor other network particulars. The 2MB vote was more a political stunt (with real-world benefits, though we still have not needed the extra blockspace, perhaps with platform we'll start to approach that region of transactionality).

Voting to "remove privatesend" for example is DEFINITELY not something that the masternodes were meant to undertake discussing. Decision proposals are serious matters only to be raised when the path forward is unclear to our paid research and technical experts (DCG and staff).

Then, they come to the investors of the network, the Masternode owners, to decide where the stakeholders with the most to lose wish to go after clearly, calmly and dispassionately laying out the options on the table. This is how it works in the real world, professionally and I'm thrilled to see this replicated here.

That said, I wanted to reinforce one thing mentioned in the proposal:

>It is also worth noting that even though this is the most decentralized solution that the HPMN solutions are at a level of decentralization that we believe to be very satisfactory, and at a much higher level of decentralization than almost all other blockchain projects.


The thing about decentralization is, the question becomes "How decentralized are we?" To answer that question we have to know what it means to be decentralized. What is decentralization? Split the word up:

de+ central+ized.

De = "Un, Not, Negative".
Central = "single and important, hub, nexus, core".
Ized = "past participle (adjective form) suffix that verbalizes nouns or adjectives with a meaning of "to make more (adjective, noun)"

So decentralization is the act of removing concept of having a CENTER from something. That means, the further away you get from this concept of "having a core, having a center", the more decentralized you become. You could even quantify this, a coefficient of decentralization if you will. If you have, e.g., a single person running a single node, you can say you have a coefficient of decentralization of 1.

This conception allows us to answer the question of "How decentralized are we?" So that we may be able to solve the question of "Are we centralized by relying on x number of nodes for platform?" The only way to answer that is to know what decentralization is and "how decentralized are we?" The coefficient of decentralization gives us our answer.

For example, if you have 1 person running 1 node, the coefficient of decentralization (CoD henceforth) is 1. Because you have a single server and a single person in charge of running that server between you and your network failing. As we MNOs know, if you don't update your server you get booted from the network, so both the server and the operator serve as a single point of failure, a CENTRALIZING POINT. However, if you have 2 people each running their own servers. Then you would have a CoD of 2. 2 potential points of failure, either the servers or their owners (for a total *decentralization* of 2 (nodes/operators) * 2 (CoD) = 4, where as with 1 server, 1 operator you have 1 (node) * 1 (operator) = decentralization of 1).

Utilizing this, we can derive a simple, crude yet effective comparator between various node architectures. Right now, we have ~3800 active nodes. This gives us a maximum CoD of 3800, assuming 1 operator, 1 node. We know this isn't the case, however, so this is a best case. For example, if you have 1 operator with 100 nodes, then you have a CoD of 2. Because that operator is responsible for all 100 of those nodes, so its possible they all go down if he fails in some way. Which makes him a central point of failure, despite having 100 nodes. But 100 operators with 100 nodes would have a CoD of 100, which is 50 times greater than 2. But 2 is 2 times bigger than 1, so having 1 guy with 100 nodes is better than 1 guy with 1 node (but not much).

Ok all that to say, as long as the HVMN solutions produce a CoD of 100 or greater, they should be perfectly decentralized. Now you can answer the question, "How decentralized is that?" Its 100 times as decentralized as a single node, single operator system. Which is basically what *ALL THE ARCHITECTURES IN THE WORLD currently rely on!*

Facebook, Amazon, etc are basically systems with CoD as low as 2-5 and barely any that're higher than 10. So having this crude metric allows us to put the various solutions into perspective as it relates to how decentralized are they. It could even help us choose between the 10k and 4k solutions (though it seems like the network has already fixated on the 4k).

However, answering this question IS IMPORTANT as its quite possible that Dash whales could centralize their ownership over HVMN and thus lower the CoD of the platform chain, which would obviously be bad for the network as a whole.

The whole analysis for this proposal is based on the individualities that have been discovered in https://mnowatch.org/Types/index.html?1=

Do you trust mnowatch reasearch? If you do trust it, then the simpliest solution will be to allow every discovered individuality of mnowatch to maintain only ONE DashPlatform database.

That way the databases' replication is reduced, and the transaction fee is also reduced. This will result for Dash platform to have approximately 133 DashPlatform databases, a similar number to the 100 databases that the "High performance masternode solution" is planning to have.

But the 100 databases of the "High performance masternode solution" are not similarly decentralized as the 133 databases of the mnowatch individualities . Because if we allow each individuality of mnowatch to maintain one platform node, the decentralization is achieved due the separate individuals that are holding these databases. Decentralization based on proved individuals is a real decentralization, in contrast to the fake decentralization based on collateral masternode addresses.

ALL THE CURRENT EVO PROPOSALS ASSUME THAT THE BIGGEST WHALE IS A 270 WHALE DISCOVERED BY MNOWATCH. AND WHAT IF THERE IS A BIGGER WHALE THAT WE (THE MNOWATCH ADMINS) DIDNT YET SUCCEED TO DISCOVER? We have not yet discover the BIG whale that may or may not exist. But we did discovered the small individualities. So we have better be based on what we have already discovered, rather on what he have not discovered yet.

It's true, you've been saying this for a long time.

DCG should of been working on alternatives to InstantSend, CoinJoin and voting in order to de-collateralize the entire network. Solutions for these already exist. Now, according to Sam, dash is in a pathetic position of pushing for higher collateral in the name of "security" and "decentralization". Truly pathetic and I will not be taking part in it.

I will not apply upgrades that enable this shit and I will no longer refer to dash in "we" terms because in the entire 7+ years I have been with dash, this is the shittiest outcome I could think of. If our users wanted Solana, they would of bought Solana.

If anyone wants to fork dash with a view to de-collateralization then I am listening. DCG should be the one's forking, creating their own brand and starting from scratch building a customer base. But no, they lied by omission (or complete incompetence) and spread fear of security and centralization. They will steal the dash brand and all it's users, and they will make "digital cash" a secondary thought.

Disappointed does not fully express how I feel about this.

As you can see in Rion's superb video https://youtu.be/wqFdR5C15ns , if this proposal passes it will result the reduction of masternodes from 5000 to 2180.

What can an ordinary masternode do in order to prevent this catastrophic senario? The only way to stop the reduction of the number of the masternodes (if this proposal passes) is to change the hardcoded number of the 50% rewards that are allocated by the DCG to the platform (a reward stolen from the masternodes's reward). But how can we change that number?

As always, the way to strike the stupid and the agents is to vote the numbers. And how can we vote the number in the current budget system?

Simple, you have to use the TERNARY or ΤRINARY or BASE3 NUMERAL system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_numeral_system

If you make the assumption that ABSTAIN VOTE=0, NO VOTE=1 and YES VOTE=2 , the you can vote from numbers 0-2.
if you cast TWO proposals (at the cost of 2 dash proposal fee) under the TERNARY system, you can vote numbers from 0-8
if you cast THREE proposals (at the cost of 3 dash proposal fee) under the TERNARY system, you can vote from 0-26.

So if you want to vote from 0% to 100%, you can divide 100/26=3.84 and thus if the average of the voting result of the budget vote is 1 then 3.84% is voted, if the average result of the budget vote is 10 then 38.4 is voted, if the average result of budget vote is 15 then 57.6% is voted e.t.c.

I have no incentives to propose such a system, because I am poor delegate voter holding 1 masternode vote, and also I hold only 6 dash in my wallet.

But if I were a masternode I would definitely ask a governance decision in order for this voting the numbers system to become legitimate.
Then I would cast a triple vote asking about the percentage of the masternode rewards that the platform system is planning to steal.

Finally, you can also vote the numbers by using the BASE4 NUMERAL SYSTEM, if you make the assumption that the people who voted in at least one numeral proposal, declare a 0 vote to all the rest proposals that are associated to it. In that case with just two proposals (at the cost of 2 dash proposal fee), you can have 15-1=14 chunks (because the 00 vote is not a valid vote in that case).

When I say "High performance masternode solution" above, I mean the 10k solution.

I decided to vote no on this decision proposal due to worries about Platform centralization and Platform censorship.

Good discussion going on. I will again put out the friendly reminder that this is literally cutting edge stuff we are tackling right now. It's ALL theory. EVERYBODY is making educated guesses. A thing like Evolution-Platform has _never_ been done before. It is a virtual certainty that we will have to make some adjustments and tweaks once it's live in the real world. To the best of my knowledge, nobody is opposed to that, including or especially QE. His overarching goal is that it work well for customers (which is a fantastic goal in my view) and that it is secure (also a great goal) and that it be really inexpensive transactions so we don't just discard 2 billion poor people like Bitcoin did. (another great goal). That is the primary cause for Bitcoin to abandon the use case of honest money for world. Evolution-Platform is more like Web3 for world, but the same argument applies.

Take home message number 1: Regardless of which option we pick, I predict there will be some growing pains. At that point, it would be an easy jab to say, "SEE??!!?? I told you option 7 would never work right!!!! We should have gone with option 12!!!!"

We should resolve ahead of time that whatever solution the community goes with, we should support that and work with that and _MAKE IT_ work.

Take home message number 2, it is a virtual certainty that if we go with 4k or 10k nodes, there will be a trustless Evolution-Platform share option in the near future. I think it is a bad assumption that some or most "little" 1k Masternodes are going to get locked out from the additional income/power/glory that the Evolution-Platform HP Masternodes are going to get.

I personally have not made a decision yet, and I also am eager to see Rion's explainer video. But once I recognized the (in my view) inevitability of shared HP Evo-Platform nodes, my primary objection to the 10k solution evaporated and it is now a serious contender _for me._ It _is_ more profitable, which is fine by me.

just solarguy

Platform is not an end user product, thus, 2 billion poor people would not be excluded as all application operation fees are likely handed off to the business side of things.

Sam's idea that fees must be cheap is not consistent with his view that Platform is cutting edge, unique and, thus, incomparable to anything else out there. For, if that was so, we could demand higher prices for the benefit of the network. Certainly at startup, there is absolutely no urgency for low fees and no data to back it up because we all agree Platform is in a league of it's own, right?

Rubbish. Facebook. Myspace. Gmail. All of these are services that have grown wildly popular and profitable, for better or for worse, and all on the freemium model. Its free to create accounts with them. For Platform to succeed, it will have to compete with these services, which means it needs to be as cheap and close to "Free" as possible.

We want massive usership, not a small core of diehards. We want virality and widespread usage both to push onchain utilization as well as platform as a decentralized DaaS (data as a service) platform. The lower fees are the more likely that is to happen as the superiority of a true cloud solution (decentralized, encrypted, redundant data) stands out for app makers and users alike.

Yes, but you have mis-understood me and maybe that is my fault.

Platform is not intended for direct use by end users, the app developers working for businesses will have their own business model and so if they want to offer freemium services that is on them. It's no different that fb, google etc all having server costs, payrolls etc. And being Platform is offering something unique to those, the resulting products can not be fairly compared. If you wanted to compete with fb etc, it's obviously not going to be done this way.

>Platform is not intended for direct use by end users,

It doesn't matter. WHOEVER its designed for, we're competing with Google, Facebook, Instagram, and the like which means that we want fees to be as low and as close to free as possible. So any 1K option is out the window.

It doesn't matter who is using it, end users or app developers, their competition will have free as the base model so we must be as close to that as possible to compete with them. Who the end user is is completely irrelevant, so it seems that its you that has misunderstood something here.

>that fb, google etc all having server costs, payrolls etc.

What are you talking about? Google having server costs has NOTHING to do with this. This is about the cost to the end user, not the cost to the node operator. MNOs have server costs as well. The point of comparison is the cost to create an account for an end user (which app devs are likely to want to recoup from users, thus they must be as low as possible), not the cost of the underlying server.

>the resulting products can not be fairly compared.

Doesn't matter, people won't use it if the basics are too expensive. Less than a cent is reasonable to both prevent spam while also incentivizing participation from the masses.

>If you wanted to compete with fb etc, it's obviously not going to be done this way.

Maybe to you. But with 100 or so HVMNs we can provide a large global network as strong or stronger than centralized solutions like facebook and google, all while offering a level of decentralization they could never hope to achieve. So I believe you're wrong. We will definitely be able to compete with Facebook this way, and since there is a direct fee for pariticpation, it will be much more lucrative than Facebook for all parties involved (operators, users and the Dash network as a whole).

I understand your position, you want the income to be as low as possible, got it. But it will not work because this solution does not scale without stealing more money from MNs and miners.

Don't put words in my mouth. I don't want the INCOME to be as low as possible, I want the FEES to be as low as possible to get the LARGEST NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS which will generate much more in fees than a high fee solution will. Paying MNOs to run the servers that perform network tasks is by its nature scalable so you're wrong there too. Its not stealing. The network agrees on the split and can set it to whatever we see fit.

Now you are projecting that Platform will have large participation and simultaneously saying that Platform will achieve less participation with higher fees. You say this without any evidence or like for like comparison. In fact, you can not apply any comparison because we are reminded that Platform is unique. Though you have given a false comparison of fb and google whose servers are owned and controlled by said entities.

Until then, I will make the only logical conclusion that a unique service with a declared potential for large participation can only lead to lost opportunity cost (selling short) when low fees are applied.

>Now you are projecting that Platform will have large participation

Eventually yes.

>and simultaneously saying that Platform will achieve less participation with higher fees.

There is no contradiction here. If the fees are high platform will not be usable. Its not rocket science and your obtuseness in this regard is troubling and indicative of a non-serious response. If a hamburger cost $1,000,000 USD then very few if any people will buy it. This should be self-evident. Questioning obvious, self-evident things is a good way to trick people into acting irrationally ("Maybe the sky really ISN'T blue!?") and as such is a hallmark of being a bad actor.

>You say this without any evidence or like for like comparison. I

What on earth are you talking about? Do you disagree that platform is a valuable, one of a kind and unique offering in the cryptoworld? If yes, that means there should be sufficient demand, as long as that's not stifled by exorbitantly high fees. You pretending to not understand this indicates greatly what your true agenda is (getting the MNOs to make the worst choice possible so we can be blamed for it later, just like you did with lowering the proposal fee), so I thank you for doing that.

>In fact, you can not apply any comparison because we are reminded that Platform is unique.

Being unique doesn't mean there aren't comparable services with comparable rates and costs, you're again being deliberately obtuse and completely preposterous, which indicates that I'm hovering over your true agenda. Thank you for signalling that.

>Though you have given a false comparison of fb and google whose servers are owned and controlled by said entities.

It is not a a false comparison at all. HVMNs are OWNED by the Dash Network, as are all MNs. Which means that a comparison to FB and Google should be fine. You're just bitching to bitch because your agenda is screwed by a logical, dispassionate investigation into cost-benefit scenarios w.r.t. Platform.

>Until then, I will make the only logical conclusion that a unique service with a declared potential for large participation can only lead to lost opportunity cost (selling short) when low fees are applied.

You seem hell-bent on trying to CONvince the MNOs that we should have high fees and high latency/network operation costs, which would be the worst outcome for platform for the network. Trying to trick us into voting for the worst outcome is the behavior of a bad actor and I'm certain won't be tolerated forever.

Let us see how successful, cheap and decentralized hosting is:

SiaCoin, ranked #166
STORJ, ranked #168

Oh but wait, you can make comparisons without evidence yet, let me guess, you will say this is not comparable because Dash Platform is unique. Your contradictions and lack of business acumen continue to astound me lol

Competing on price alone is a race to the bottom, which is why both SiaCoin and STORJ are racked so low. "Ah", but you say, "Platform is unique and better than both of those"... and it might be, which is exactly why you don't need to be cheapest.

While you're busy twisting my statements I will be clear; I am not saying DCG must charge X high or Y low, I am saying the price is unknown, the success or failure of the product is unknown. No one, therefore, actually knows what the correct price is, we might be too expensive or not giving enough back to the network with lost opportunity costs.

Many "unique" products come to market and make no money for YEARS. Given there is barely no bizdev team, where is your EVIDENCE that DCG can actually become profitable? You ask others for evidence so now I hold you to the same account. I do not need to provide much evidence because I am not claiming it must be this way or that way, only that there is greed on one side and lost opportunity cost on the other. Obviously, I do not want the latter.

>decentralized hosting is:

>SiaCoin, ranked #166
STORJ, ranked #168

SIA coin and STORJ are both a PITA to use. As a developer I know there is quite a lot of fervor for a web3 solution that is decentralized and permissionless like platform will soon offer. Good to know you don't believe in the vision though.

>Oh but wait, you can make comparisons without evidence yet, let me guess, you will say this is not comparable because Dash Platform is unique.

Where have I made a comparison without evidence? And neither sia coin nor storj are offering what platform is in an easy to use manner backed by a popular global payments network. All of your arguments sound like jealous musings of people from other coins who don't want to see Dash succeed. Not someone who does.

>Your contradictions

What contradictions? I dare you to name even a single one that I have made.

>Competing on price alone is a race to the bottom

Strawman I never said we would be competing on prove alone. It's a race to the bottom because our competition are already there (free for usernames) so we must be competitive with low prices and fees while making it profitable. You just want us to make a solution that doesn't work so we can't leave your benefactors in the dust...again.

>While you're busy twisting my statements I will be clear;

Again I have never twisted your statements and I dare you to quote me where I have. If you cannot then I command you to SHUT UP!

> I am saying the price is unknown, the success or failure of the product is unknown

And I'm saying no one cares. This is a strawman. We start out with our best foot forward, fees as low as possible, and you from there. You're advocating a high free solution which is preposterous.

> where is your EVIDENCE that DCG can actually become profitable?

DCG is already profitably what the hell are you talking about? They get paid to do a job and have been doing so for years. They are not operating in the red they are running a profitable DAO. Where is YOUR evidence that they're not??

>You ask others for evidence so now I hold you to the same account

Newsflash genius, EVERYONE is held to that standard and I have never shirked the call for evidence so this statement is more grandstanding and dreams quaking by you. And btw you have NO RIGHT to ask me for winged while ignoring my points against you. Only when you answer my calls do you have the right to make a call of your own. So another disingenuous argument from you. You can't ignore calls for evidence of your assertions and they demand evidence yourself. You either argue fairly or you SHUT THE HELL UP!

>I do not need to provide much evidence

Wrong. You always need to provide evidence for your positions in debates. You are clearly advocating a certain position and direction here and are refusing to provide evidence which heavily indicates that you are a troll and a bad actor.

Your recursive self-contradicting comments within your self-contradicting comments. Can you imagine the fun when AI gets this good! lol

I will accept this non-rebuttal as your admission that you have no response to my arguments and are admitting defeat here.

Will this version of dash platform be censorship resistant?

For those wondering : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-nor-any-of-its-subcomponents-can-allow-censorship-of-any-kind.53410/#post-232866

This certainly comes across as a form of censorship for Dash Platform, which can be easily applied by a handfull of whales (5 / 7) in a 10K HPM or 4K HPM solution.

Please define "censorship resistant".

that MNOs, or in this case HP MNOs, or any entity or individual can remove or prevent data from being accessed or stored in platform that otherwise conforms to rules of platform (i.e paid appropriate fees).

Here are your answers for the release of Dash Platform:

*can remove -> Any MNO or HPMNO (if that wins) can not remove data from the global state. They could potentially remove it from their own storage while keeping hashes to the data.
*prevent data from being accessed -> Any MNO or HPMNO could refuse to serve data through queries, but they can't stop other nodes from serving data. This is the same thing for our payment chain.
*prevent data from being stored -> MNO or HPMNOs (if that wins) can not prevent data from being stored that conforms to the rules of platform (paid fees, and respects data contract).

that is great news. I was feeling a lot of distress at the prospect of a bastardized dash platform. Thank you

Well, I'm assuming with a new leadership, they too will declare to rewrite their own rules and leverage HPMNs to that end.

Sam has already said, when morally unacceptable content appears on Platform (and it will), he will resign if there is no way to censor it.

"We will ask the network to vote on the types of content it wants to put in each category, it may well vote that all data must be available in every category. However if that is the case I think many would resign including myself. Once that is done we will have a release for this feature while increasing the size of "blobs" of data in platform."

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/should-platform-run-on-all-nodes-or-should-platform-run-only-on-high-performance-nodes.53374/page-18#post-232783

could they do that without hardforking the code?

This quote from Sam seems to be directly contradictory to his above post.

Sam, care to clarify?

Sure, at release we will be keeping data sizes relatively small. This will stop people's ability to upload digital content to it and avoid any need for extra mechanisms for content removal.

Hence all the statements I made above are true.

The proposal I was talking about on the forum is not trying to limit free speech. Instead it is to protect the project and promote free speech.

I believe our project will enable stronger free speech and expression in the future with many Dapps currently in the works.

But in order to get to that future we can't let the project be a mecca for illicit content. The MNO network hosting this type of content would lead to the project's death. First there is the terrible moral issue that goes with hosting such content but if that doesn't faze you then there are also the following problems. All devs would resign. All legal DFOs would stop. All MNOs would be targets by governments. All big exchanges would delist us.

I don't want that, I want the project to flourish.

I know from a fact that many MNOs do not wish to host illicit content, either for moral reasons and/or because they don't want to be a target. My goal is to create a mechanism to solve this issue in a truly decentralized fashion giving full power to MNOs to regulate the content they are serving without much effort on their part while forcing MNOs to serve content that is not illicit.

General and free speech content -> MNOs must serve.
Gray area content -> MNOs decide if they serve, and take on the responsibility themselves.
Illicit content -> MNOs can not serve and can/should remove content from their storage while keeping hashes.

This will be a very interesting topic to debate in the future, and so far no development has been done in this area. For right now we need to actually start Platform which is what this proposal is aiming to do.

People against the HPMN solution are trying to confuse multiple topics. The HPMN solutions are more safe, meaning that it would be harder for an attacker to take down Platform, and hence if you are worried about content censorship then they are the best solutions for you.

In terms of mechanisms for content removal (or lack of) there are no differences between the various solutions that DCG has presented to be voted on.

I believe there are a lot of faulty assumptions in your response. They are also immaterial to this conversation. The question is whether the data can be censored, not should it be censored.

Can you further explain your proposed censorship mechanism in the works so we can properly evaluate your statement that the mechanism is not related to how platform is structured. That claim seems dubious.

You should be designing the network so it is more difficult to attack MNOs, NOT EASIER! The focus sems to be in the wrong place entirely.

Having the network go offline is currently the most realistic way it can be censored.

So I would say that my focus is in the right place as I don't want it to go offline, which is why we are making the current decision.

"proposed censorship mechanism in the works" -> It is not yet even in the roadmap. I have outlined the gist of it already above.

Content censorship goes hand in hand with payment censorship. Why would it not? You're going to allow content abusers of the highest order to continue making payments with their dash identities? Why would you allow it?

> "This will be a very interesting topic to debate in the future, and so far no development has been done in this area."

So censorship was never part of the design. Your plan was to build a platform without any discussion or development of censorship, and then expected to bolt it on later once you've created sufficient centralization. I understand now.

You will put dash on a very destructive path and I will not allow it.

If you don't see the nuance between making a payment for a coffee and watching/ordering people be murdered (as an example) I'm going to start completely ignoring you and I think others should do the same. We need constructive dialog, not head in the sand antics.

Not the first time you have ignored people's questions and suggestions, don't suppose it will be the last. This is your MO, sometimes it's convenient for you to just ignore these things.

That's why you only posted these three proposals, your original idea without modification and including non of the feedback you had asked for.

Your stubbornness to ignore or compromise with 1K HPMNs and lower collateral basic MNs. Or the suggested public LP solution for HPMNs. And yes, you was prompted several times afterwards, so please no pathetic excuses about not seeing it.

I could submit my own proposals but what's the point when you, representing DCG, have redefined and decided what consensus actually means? If your own interpretation of consensus is so fluid, please explain why Adaptive Proposal Fees was never implemented since 2017. I mean, there were more Yes votes than No. Go see for yourself:

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Adaptive-Proposal-Fees

You talk about "constructive dialog" and "head in the sand antics", so when and where was the discussion about censorship on Platform? Censorship should of been one of the pillars, but now you admit to no discussion and development. I guess your definition of "head n the sand antics" is different to mine.

One things I am sure about. Broadly speaking, there are two types of people in this world. Many of us fall into both camps to some degree:

1. Those that strategize with the intention to mislead or manipulate others. We can say they are selfish and take advantage of those in the second group.

2. Those we might say are innocent. For their first and natural response - and perhaps foolishly - is to trust others at face value.

For me, you are very rapidly falling into the first category. So, what do I care if you ignore me. That's not a question.

I think it would be best if you resign now rather than later. When a proposal asks for your resignation, I will be voting Yes. If the proposal doesn't come, I might just submit it myself. And the best part is, the criteria for consensus will be as fluid as yours!

For what it's worth, I agree with you, GrandMasterDash. Sam seems to be
unable to listen to the community. It's sad, that DCG did not care about
censorship. Their FAQ listing is bullshit, the developers don't have any
knowledge about the real issues, that need to be addressed.

You're right, Sam is selfish and has bad intentions. Thanks for pointing it
out. Hopefully he will resign, leaving room for a new CTO, who cares about
us, the MNOs, much better.

Thank you. I don't rejoice saying it, I just hope we can keep some morality and a straight face when we say dash is decentralized, resistant to state level interference and serving the needs of our users everywhere, not just the US or China etc.

What are the real issues?

as the hours tick by it seems more likely a budget proposal to remove Sam as CTO is necessary. The DCG mandate was to create a permisionless data platform. This is a bait and switch and abuse of the MN network's trust

Why does the poll option for the 1k masternodes say that they MUST run the platform, while the 4k/10k HPMN poll option doesn't imply a mandatory action? Where is the MUST for the 4k/10k?

How can we compare something obligatory to something that it is opt-in? Can we compare apples to apricots?

There is an extensive FAQ that explains why optional 1K solutions all have issues. Since they all had major issues DCG could not propose them.

**Why are collaterals higher than 1K necessary?**

Increasing the collateral for Platform nodes is necessary so that an equilibrium between Platform and Core node yields can be achieved while also creating market incentives for a lower number of Platform nodes without setting a hard cap. It also makes it more difficult for individual entities to gain control of enough nodes to cause harm to the network or significantly centralize block validation.

As Masternodes seeking to run Platform must also provide Core services it makes the most sense to keep rewarding them for doing so. See next questions for more information on why 1k collaterals are not DCG-proposed solutions.

**Would it be possible to reward Platform nodes for Core services and keep collateral at 1K Dash while maintaining ROI parity between Core Masternodes and Platform+Core Masternodes?**

No, it’s not possible to do this while also maintaining parity. Let’s imagine 50% of rewards are sent to Platform in this scenario. In this case, a node running Platform+Core would receive on average twice that of what a node just running Core would.

**Would it be possible to reward Platform nodes for Core services and keep collateral at 1K Dash without maintaining ROI parity between Core Masternodes and Platform+Core Masternodes?**

There have been solutions proposed that give only 20% of rewards to Platform, however this solution is plagued by the same issue where a Masternode running Core would just receive 20% less than a Masternode running Platform + Core. In such a scenario we would be left with an insecure system in the case if few masternodes chose to run Platform. The market equilibrium in this solution happens when close to all nodes run Platform, as they would always receive more revenue by doing so. If we assume this to be the case this solution would require really high user fees to offset high network hardware costs, coupled with a reduction of ROI for Masternode Owners.

**Would it be possible to not reward Platform nodes for Core services and keep collateral at 1K Dash for running Platform?**

Yes, this is possible. However, there are a few major downsides. First, to reach the same level of security on Platform as the 4K HPMN solution against participants shutting down the service, there would need to be approximately 2100 Platform nodes with 1K collateral. Second, there would be significantly fewer nodes participating in Core-servicing quorums. InstantSend performance is optimal when the node count is over 1920; in this scenario, we would only have around 1700.

**Would it be possible to reward Platform nodes for Core services but not directly through Core Masternode payments and keep collateral at 1K Dash for running Platform?**

Yes, this is possible and is most likely the best solution that can keep a 1K collateral. DCG however does not recommend it as there are still major downsides and it would introduce a delay for release of Platform.

The first is that work being done on the Core payment chain would not be rewarded on that Chain. DCG would need to develop a more complicated mechanism in order to prove on the Platform chain that Masternodes are properly servicing the Core chain. Then we would need to implement a different proposer selection mechanism that ignores specific nodes not servicing the Core chain. A quick estimate would be that this extra effort would take 1-2 months.

The second downside is that this system only becomes secure with about 2100 Platform nodes. This would significantly lower the ROI for the network (including for normal MNs). At the same time user fees would be significantly higher than the HPMN solutions.

**Why not just put a ‘hard’ maximum on the number of nodes and leave the collateral at 1k?**

Setting a hard cap on the number of Masternodes running Platform would disallow some MNOs to run a Platform node even if they wanted to. Furthermore such a solution would likely threaten the stability of Platform by introducing a point of unsafe centralization.

Currently, the biggest whale is estimated to own about 270 masternodes. Say we set the hard cap to 1000 total Platform nodes. There would be a 6.35% chance that this owner alone could shut down a validator set each time a new set is chosen by taking their participating nodes offline, therefore halting the chain. There would be a 79.29% chance of them having the opportunity to do so each day with 24 quorums a day.

We would need to set the hard cap to at least 2100 in order to achieve a similar level of security in this regard as the 4k HPMN solution.

"""***Would it be possible to reward Platform nodes for Core services but not directly through Core Masternode payments and keep collateral at 1K Dash for running Platform?***"""
"""Yes, this is possible and is most likely the best solution that can keep a 1K collateral. DCG however does not recommend it as there are still major downsides and it would introduce a delay for release of Platform."""
"""The first is that work being done on the Core payment chain would not be rewarded on that Chain. DCG would need to develop a more complicated mechanism in order to prove on the Platform chain that Masternodes are properly servicing the Core chain. Then we would need to implement a different proposer selection mechanism that ignores specific nodes not servicing the Core chain. A quick estimate would be that this extra effort would take 1-2 months."""

MY ANSWER:-->The platform delayed 7 years. So 1-2 months more delay is not a big deal!!!!!

"""The second downside is that this system only becomes secure with about 2100 Platform nodes. This would significantly lower the ROI for the network (including for normal MNs). At the same time user fees would be significantly higher than the HPMN solutions."""

MY ANSWER:-->If platform is something worthy , 2100 nodes or even more will be found. If it is something useless, nobody will care installing a node. You dont seem to like the free market competition, and you want to rely on already established structures, dont you? Your core idea is similar to the idea of organizations that cannot stand by themselves in the free market but they require to be feeded by a state.

My point is that the masternodes network should hold shares from a (tottaly separated) platform network, and get share benefits in case the platform network becomes profitable. But the core masternode network should not be exposed to any danger that is inherited by the platform, either this danger being a network stability danger or a censorship danger.
Platform should launch alone, in a free market enviroment, while the masternodes should hold some shares from every platform node.

Public pre-discussion of this polling proposal mostly took place here :

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/should-platform-run-on-all-nodes-or-should-platform-run-only-on-high-performance-nodes.53374/#post-232053

Sorry, but I do not read hardly any of the comments here or on the forum because it's all TLDR and I don't like to read.

Please come join the "Afterparty" discussion (every Friday afternoon) to talk about the HPMN proposals and more. Talking is a lot more efficient than writing and reading.

The things that bother me the most with this group of Platform developers / CTO of DCG :

* Considerable U-turn on DCG's own Dash Platform Vision, which was communicated to the Dash Community as recently as Feb 2022 (see : https://imgur.com/2QfvXAN)
(at this point i wonder if most Platform developers actually read DCG's own Dash Platform Vision)
* Disregard by most Platform developers for keeping Dash Platform decentralized
* Abandonment of the 10% treshold / 10% supermajority in Dash Governance and the constant denying of the CTO of DCG that the 10% treshold was ever applied in Governance proposals, even after getting confronted with proof on dash.org/forum that decision proposals in the past did adhere to the 10% treshold.

See : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/should-platform-run-on-all-nodes-or-should-platform-run-only-on-high-performance-nodes.53374/page-22#post-232922

* Disregard for keeping the Platform network free from censorship. The posts from Sam on dash.org/forum on how they plan to deal with Platform content storage in the future, were really revealing with regards to censorship
* Complete dismissal for a independent third party security audit of Dash Platform, because CTO of DCG basically don't want to waste time and money (its about 120K USD, which DCG could have been requested in a multi-month budget proposal ages ago)

The things that bother me the most with the 4K HPM and 10K HPM decision proposals :

* There is just so much incentive for masternode owners with 4.000 dash or 10.000 dash to vote yes on DCG HPM's decision proposals. An incentive not directly aligned to the best interest of the network itself.

Benefits for current Masternode Whales :

* They can now concentrate their masternodes in a few setups over a few servers
* Less maintenance and upkeep required
* Elite status among masternodes, basically they become super masternodes with possible future Platform voting power
* Receiving of Platform rewards, when voting for the DCG HPM decision proposal (attractive incentive for those masternode whales)
* Less hosting fee for their rented VPS servers, depending on either the 4k HPM or 8K HPM (each has their own hardware requirements and therefore each has their own impact on the hosting fees)

Risks to the network

* Much more centralization of the Dash network & Dash Platform
* Less security either through the code itself compromising on security or through getting more vulnerable to possible DDoS attacks, because the masternodes get split in two groups (with the HPM's group being significantly smaller and far more easy to DDoS attack)
* Possible increased sell pressure from masternode owners, that do not want Dash to get so centralized
* Some really vague game theory that somehow would drive normal masternodes to run as Platform nodes (without getting Platform rewards !!) not working at all and causing the exact opposite effect (keeping the HPM group small)
* Direct undermining of our future Dash marketing efforts, where every Dash marketing move could simply be counter moved, by pointing to Dash centralization. Dash already had some centralization accussations in the past with regards to its masternode network, a centralized Dash Platform with just 100-300 Platform nodes will increase those accussations significantly
* Further delay of development and impacting the speed of future releases, due to more changes / coding required than orginally foreseen

Personally i would have no problem setting up a Platform node and actually receive those Platform rewards (at least with the 4K solution), but it would totally violate everything i believe in with regards to decentralization and i also think it will bring a high level of unrest to the Dash community.

C'mon guys, this is the only plan that will increase the payments (ROI) for all masternodes ! If you vote YES on this proposal, you will get a lot more Dash each month !

Please note, the Proposal Owner is declaring these three proposals a "poll". As such, none of these carry weight and they do not in any way represent consent to make substantial changes to the network topology, consensus and tokenomics without first acquiring super majority. You are, therefore, directed to vote No on all three proposals until the Proposal Owner submits a valid proposal.

As written in the FAQ:

The network has clear rules written into code both for funding decisions and protocol upgrades. This is a protocol upgrade hence it follows the rules for protocol upgrades. The +10% supermajority that you might think is the required threshold is only required for funding decisions.

For protocol upgrades at the beginning of Dash we used BIP9 consensus mechanisms, now Dash uses the https://github.com/dashpay/dips/blob/master/dip-0023.md mechanism giving more power to Masternode owners. This is the consensus mechanism we currently use on the network.

DCG will write software that has the best chance of being activated by the network as directed by this poll. We must do this because we need to make a decision. Not making a decision means that we stall the project.

To MNO's : previous major decission proposal from DCG was about extending Dash budget from 10% to 20% (Nov 2020) and was constructed in two phases :

Phase 1 : polling phase of the two polling proposals (MNO-Plan and DCG-Plan) to see which one got the most yes votes
Phase 2 : decision phase of the proposal with most yes votes, with explicit condition that it needed to pass the 10% treshold.

Both decision proposals were put on the network by the Dash Trust Protectors, who submitted these two decision proposals on behalf of DCG (DCG plan) and a group of masternode owners (MNO plan), DTP acted as a neutral third party here.

Phase 1 :

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/decision-vote-improve-proposal-system-dc
https://www.dashcentral.org/p/decision-vote-improve-proposal-system-mn

Phase 2 :

www.dashninja.pl/proposaldetails.html?proposalhash=d41000486d6da24dd1e339e8340b24d52131ea6212f09de81e97f00c4d582318

''In Phase 1 (this phase, this month) you are asked to vote for which option you prefer. Regardless of degree, the option with the most net (yes minus no) votes will proceed to the next phase (next month). DCG will implement the Phase 2 upgrade option if it exceeds the normal 10% net vote criterion in Phase 2. In the unlikely event the higher ranked proposal exceeds the 10% net yes votes during Phase 1, Phase 2 would not be necessary.''

So there is a history of DCG abiding by the 10% supermajority, in order to achieve broad consensus on important topics for MNO's to vote on.

It is strange to see DCG now suddenly abandoning the 10% supermajority, due to this CTO of DCG having a different opinion on how Dash Governance should or should not work.

I think with DCG abandoning the 10% supermajority, it is a signal that these three decision proposals are in fact very poor solutions on how to start Dash Platform. And the fact we only get these three decision proposals from DCG, tells me that Platform developers did not think through on how to start Dash Platform at all. Instead they ignored to deal with the start solutions, to the very last moment.

It is a sad day when MNO's can only vote on DCG decision proposals that either severly centralize and most likely censorship the Dash Platform network or vote on a decision proposal where Platform developers never addressed its safety issues, never disclosed those safety issues to the Dash community, never mentioned them in any previous presentation.

Why should MNO's even care about safety issues, when Platform developers ignored those safety issues for so long ?

That previous proposal was made by a different leadership. None of the current leadership of DCG was a part of it.

The code has rules for protocol upgrades. They went with a different threshold than the rules the code requires. That was their prerogative. I am going to guess that this was because they were less technical than the current leadership or maybe they just wanted a higher bar.

This proposal is going with the rules written in the code. This is not a reinterpretation as you say.

So each time DCG has different leadership, MNO's can expect a different view from DCG on how Dash Governance works ? Well, that is just great.

False. You have submitted a proposal seeking 1 dash funding. To receive funding and commence with the work you propose, you MUST acquire super majority. All successfully funded proposals have met this standard, you do not get special treatment.

There is no Dash gained. If this proposal were to pass, the 1 Dash would just offset the cost of making the proposal.

This proposal clearly states you are requesting one dash. What you choose to do with it is up to you. Proposals are not free. There is no code or entitlement to receive a refund.

If you win by super majority, the DAO will automatically issue the funding you seek for the work you propose.

I vote yes:
Best performance.
Best security.
Best ROI.

And concerning the high barrier to entry for hosting an HPMN: I'm quite sure, that there will be solutions for sharing an HPMN very soon.

are you aware that Sam is a proponent of censorship on dash platform and the high performance node concept will enable such censorship?

How does the HPMN solution enable censorship?

You tell us, you're the one declaring to be the new leadership with your own consensus rules.

is this gas lighting?

You yourself have said the HPMN solution leads to centralization. And you yourself have indicated a desire to censor platform. If there are fewer participants they can collude to censor data. Is that correct? What committment is DCG providing to ensure platform is uncensorable?

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-nor-any-of-its-subcomponents-can-allow-censorship-of-any-kind.53410/#post-232950

+ https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/should-platform-run-on-all-nodes-or-should-platform-run-only-on-high-performance-nodes.53374/page-24#post-233125

+ https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/should-platform-run-on-all-nodes-or-should-platform-run-only-on-high-performance-nodes.53374/page-24#post-233133

Well if 2/3rds of the network were byzantine AND able to coordinate in a spectacular way we would have much bigger problems on our hands.

This would most likely lead to the price of Dash tanking. I think it is highly doubtful that people with that level of investment in this project would screw themselves over so royally.

byzantine = bad actors

Regarding censorship (or anything else), I believe, that any owner of an HPMN or an MN will act in his own best interest.
That means:
- The owner will try to serve the Dash-Network as well as possible, to get best ROI.
- The owner will avoid going into prison, i.e. will not serve illegal content to the public.

I don't see any problem with that...

the owner will be best served not having the option to censor in the first place. If you give the owner a tool then they become more responsible for it.
If dash platform can be practically censored it serves no purpose. It has no value. It does nothing that a centralized solution can't do better, faster, cheaper.

The owner has always the option to censor: he can shut down his node, stop serving the content.

What if a HPMN whale (with hunderds of masternodes) is from China or Russia and he (or his governement) does not want pro-western content stored on Dash Platform and comes in a position to censorship that ?

1.) This worst case scenario can happen with any HPMN or Platform-on-all-nodes solution.
2.) The network would be very disappointed, resulting in lower Dash-price and a big financial loss for the whale.
3.) I guess, that there are enough nodes/whales in countries that allow free speech, so this should not happen.

Another guess: HPMN owners in non-free countries, who risk conflicts with their governments, will very probably move elsewhere.

Crowdnode already said they would run these Platform nodes and they are about to rollout trustless staking too, so it should be easy to participate if people really want to.

Staking and voting are two different things. If I understand correctly, voting will remain trusted in their hands and any breach of that trust - regardless of transparency - will only be known after the fact, when it's too late.

We have also started building Trustless Masternode shares in DCG which should come out in v20 of core, or in the worst case in v21. Votes will then be trustless.

All masternode share options are L2 voting. If you had gone with 1K HPMNs and a lower collateral for regular masternodes - as made known to you on the forum - you would not of needed shares. You did not submit this proposal that you agreed would work.

I am glad you decided to go forward with Trustless Masternode Shares, regardless which Dash Platform start solution passes. I think Trustless Masternode Shares can attract small investors to Dash and are beneficial to the Dash eco system.

Or just lower the collateral and make 1K HPMNs, which Sam said would work.

Regardless of shares, HPMNs is still centralization and elitist.

>Regardless of shares, HPMNs is still centralization and elitist.

It may be "elitist", but that's not a bad thing. MNs are "elitist", i.e. an elite form of cryptocurrency investment that other coins wish they had in their networks, and so that's not a knock.

Furthermore, as I mention in my comment above it is NOT centralized. So long as the CoD is 100 or above it will be roughly ten times more decentralized than facebook, myspace and other global data storage services, while having the same amount of nodes as the Nano network.

While its true that preventing centralization will be important, I think the market forces are going to do this, especially with the 4K solution. Thus, it will be likely that a high CoD will be achieved and thus both platform and the central Dash Masternode network will be decentralized and strong networks.

Achieving a CoD of over 100 should be possible even with a 10k solution, thus we will have a decentralized, high-performance TRUE SECOND-LAYER chain with instant transactions, privacy, and data storage. That's more decentralized than other blockchain projects as the proposal mentions, even with the 10k option.

In this instance, elite also refers to paid nodes being a part of a federated network with upper node count limits that can not be exceeded, whether that is MNs or HPMNs. Thus, even if they reach 650 nodes ready for quorums, it is way too easy for state level coordinated takedowns. This also applies to regular MNs. Such large takedowns are common, regardless of what the alleged crime is. In practice you wouldn't even need to take down all of them, just half and the other half would run off scared.

>Thus, even if they reach 650 nodes ready for quorums, it is way too easy for state level coordinated takedowns.

Not according to how I know this to be. 650 nodes with a CoD of 650 (i.e. 650 different operators of the nodes) is incredibly decentralized and extremely difficult to take down, even for a state-level actor. Regular MNs would be out of the question. At 3800 nodes, with a suspected maximum whale size at around 200-300 nodes indicates a signficantly large CoD, meaning a very hard time attacking for state actors. Its the same reason that BTC is secure.

>Such large takedowns are common, regardless of what the alleged crime is. In practice you wouldn't even need to take down all of them, just half and the other half would run off scared.

Source? I've never seen a decentralized network as large as that be successfully attacked by even state level actors.

Interpol 15 June 2022 ---

Hundreds arrested and millions seized in global INTERPOL operation

International police cooperation targets telecommunication fraud, business mail compromise (BEC) and associated money laundering

LYON, France -- A worldwide crackdown on social engineering fraud has seen scammers identified globally, substantial criminal assets seized and new investigative leads triggered in every continent.

The two-month (8 March – 8 May 2022) Operation, codenamed First Light 2022, saw 76 countries take part in an international clampdown on the organized crime groups behind telecommunications and social engineering scams.

Police in participating countries raided national call centres suspected of telecommunications or scamming fraud, particularly telephone deception, romance scams, e-mail deception, and connected financial crime.

Although results are still coming in, preliminary figures reached so far include:

- 1,770 locations raided worldwide
- Some 3,000 suspects identified
- Some 2,000 operators, fraudsters and money launderers arrested
- Some 4,000 bank accounts frozen
-Some USD 50 million worth of illicit funds intercepted

---

You can read the complete article here:

https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2022/Hundreds-arrested-and-millions-seized-in-global-INTERPOL-operation-against-social-engineering-scams

With the IP address known of every MN and HPMN, do you still think it would not be possible?

FYI, bitcoin has 13000 reachable nodes:

https://bitnodes.io/

FUD and irrelevant. You have to be doing something wrong to get that response there are literally MILLIONS of computer servers running around the world which makes this kind of attack not-feasible. You can't freeze Dash accounts. You can't personally identify a MNO from an IP address. You can't arrest someone for running a node. You can't seize someone's Dash (that's been properly secured and stored). So none of the outcomes of your article could happen, which means your post is FUD and fear-mongering.

>FYI, bitcoin has 13000 reachable nodes:

None of them are PAID NODES which means that they're worthless compared to even 3800 masternodes. It doesn't cost much of anything to spin up a "BTC node". Same with BCH, monero, LTC and other cryptos. So their node counts are completely fake and have no skin in the game behind them, which means relying on them is a bit of a red-herring in this discussion. Using superficial arguments to make a point indicates that you know you don't have one...

You asked, I showed you irrefutable evidence from the horses mouth.

I really don't mind if you choose to live in denial, it's your loss.

MNOs being paid just adds to the possible charges that can be put to them, including money laundering and the proceeds of crime. As a CIA operative, I expect you to know this already.

>irrefutable

That is NOT irrefutable evidence. The circumstances are different and the legal framework doesn't allow for what you're suggesting you happen to cryptocurrencies which means your reply is fud.

>I really don't mind if you choose to live in denial, it's your loss.

Projection. Not accepting your selfish fud based arguments designed to weaken Dash vs our competition is not denial.

>MNOs being paid just adds to the possible charges that can be put to them

Oh isn't this nice? Trying to scare us into submission now.

>As a CIA operative

Wow! Thank you for supporting this out in the open! I never dreamed you would come clean like this so boldly but I appreciate the honesty. Now I definitely don't have to take anything you say seriously. I thought you guys would never admit such a thing publicly? Well tell your bosses to leave us alone we don't need your organization to run our DAO.

>I expect you to know this already

Your expectations are completely irrelevant here. Especially after you just admitted who you work for. Be gone.

>As a CIA operative

*Wow! Thank you for ADMITTING this out in the open!

I think lowering the collateral (for example to 500 dash), normal masternodes will still be out of reach for many small Dash investors. They would be better served with a Trustless Masternodes Shares, which allows them to invest with much lower dash amounts.

It could be lower than 500. The equivalent of these three proposals would be 1000 dash (all nodes), 250 dash (4x smaller) and 100 dash (10x smaller).

The problem with lower collateral (250 dash / 100 dash) is that this leads to the setup of a lot more masternodes, which leads to a much longer MN payment interval, which leads to less MN payments for MNO's in a month. Combined with having higher VPS hosting costs for MNO's and perhaps the Dash network not working optimal anymore (block propagation issues) , due to so many masternodes.

I don't have a link for you but IIRC Ryan Taylor had once said the network could actually grow to 10000 or so. Just wish I had a link to confirm because I could be a little off. Obviously we would need a technical answer but it is my understanding the quorum sizes is the important part.

1. Let's not forget, Horizen (zencash) works with 37000 nodes.

2. There now exists battle tested tech to compliment or replace both InstantSend and CoinJoin: Avalanche and MimbleWimble.

3. By working almost exclusively on Platform, DCG made no attempt to gradually de-collateralize the dash network e.g. using the above mentioned tech. By doing so, they could of reduced our dependence on federated nodes. Now there is to be an even smaller federated network, a new elite stealing from the poor.

4. By working on Platform instead of payments, DCGs focus is now firmly on data and smart contracts... just like every other project out there. Once upon a time, bitcoin, zencash and others were payments coins, now none of these are known for that. Which projects are left for payments now? - it's a very small group. Going forward the main focus will be all about data and censorship. If we lose Dash Direct we will have nothing for people to recognize us as the payments network. Being dependent on one entity, Dash Direct, is a dangerous position to be in.

There is no need to lower the masternode collateral. The purpose of this proposal is to provide economic incentives to participate in second-layer propagation with high grade equipment to handle the data and bandwidth requirements, not increase the total number of masternodes (which will make those parameters worse).

You literally use these inflexion points to advocate and push for the worst outcomes for the network while pretending to be on the side of MNOs.

When the collateral is lowered, at first all the MNOs run twice as many nodes and pay double the hosting costs. However, from then on they have the option to sell one of the nodes to raise cash yet still retain some income and voting power. Perhaps they are a little strapped for cash or they want to diversify by starting a small business. This is not much different than selling equity in your home which happens all the time. In other words, in the long term the network is gradually diversified.

In the meantime, DCG supplement InstantSend and CoinJoin with other established and proven tech such as Avalanche and MimbleWimble. This reduces our dependence on normal masternodes, allowing them to concentrate more resources towards Platform.

This is only one explanation and path that could be taken. There are other options, all of them superior to this fake choice of one idea with several parameters.

This is a proposal about a single technical solution, there is no logical need to involve the not-so-informed and not-so-technical MNOs.

But their intention is clear, to me at least. Sam labels this the one and only solution as a "poll" and then uses it to manufacture consent.

Sam also admits he is free to choose whatever consensus rules he wants. In this instance, he is willing to significantly change the topology, consensus and tokenomics of the dash network without applying the highest of bars.

DCG should not be untouchable or blindly trusted to a different standard. If low life scammers can come on here and nudge the network in certain directions then DCG could also do likewise.

>When the collateral is lowered, at first all the MNOs run twice as many nodes and pay double the hosting costs. However, from then on they have the option to sell one of the nodes to raise cash yet still retain some income and voting power.

This option is available now with the collateral where it is, you're not increasing anything but playing numeric games like financial institutions do when they're insolvent. Increasing the collateral for HVMNs HAS A PURPOSE AND CLEAR GOAL, i.e. incentivizes economic participation at a higher level to SERVICE THE NETWORK with a new class of nodes without forcing the burden on the rest of the network.

You appear to be attempting to use the confusion surrounding a change like this in order to advocate for the WORST POSSIBLE OPTIONS. There is no benefit to the network in lowering the collateral so all your game-theoretics are a waste of time and typing.

>This is not much different than selling equity in your home which happens all the time. In other words, in the long term the network is gradually diversified.

Right, more financialization games like FTX, Bankman-Fried, Alameda, etc. No actual benefit to the network. You appear to want to introduce bankster-style financialization into the network as legitimate incentive so that you can marshall the MNOs into a self-destructive loop of using greed to justify massive changes to the protocol. In short, you're acting like an infiltrator who seeks to destroy Dash.

>In the meantime, DCG supplement InstantSend and CoinJoin with other established and proven tech such as Avalanche and MimbleWimble.

GTFO of here. InstantSend and Coinjoin on the Dash network are THE BEST implementations in crypto and if you refuse to acknowledge that then WhTF are you even here?? You've really showed your hand now. Avalanche sucks btw. Coinjoin is the best form of privacy for blockchains, its the largest anonymity set for the cheapest cost with the best usability. You're wrong and clearly shilling for our competition here and attempting to get us to destroy our advantage over them so they don't look as bad in comparison. You are despicable.

>This is only one explanation and path that could be taken. There are other options, all of them superior to this fake choice of one idea with several parameters.

Every 'option' you offer is lipstick on a shit-pig. You don't want the network to succeed, you don't want platform to launch and blow away your benefactors, so you come here to shill for destructive non-options in the desperate hope that you can earn your sellout pay. Do me a favor, GET LOST!

>But their intention is clear, to me at least. Sam labels this the one and only solution as a "poll" and then uses it to manufacture consent.

This is a solution that the paid experts and researchers the network has hired to make such decisions have come up with. They have spent the last 5 years developing this tech and this is what they've identified as a potential roadblock without being fixed. So I agree with Sam, and disagree with you. You sound like someone with sour-grapes and subtle hatred for Dash does (I've argued with hundreds of those people before, that's how I know).

>Sam also admits he is free to choose whatever consensus rules he wants. In this instance, he is willing to significantly change the topology, consensus and tokenomics of the dash network without applying the highest of bars.

So you're jealous that he has the trust of the network while your FUD is not believed, is that it? The haters of Dash are in an awkward position. Like George Donnelly, Flenst, etc. they have to PRETEND to like Dash in order to curry favor with the network so that they can make their destructive recommendations. However, having such a split in their mentality seeps through eventually and you can see their original, hateful emotions in the things they advocate and recommend. That's how I knew you were a scammer even years ago.

>DCG should not be untouchable or blindly trusted to a different standard. If low life scammers can come on here and nudge the network in certain directions then DCG could also do likewise.

You're projecting. Get your own house in order before trying to fix someone elses.

...or is it bankster gentrification to squeeze out the pleb 1K MNs? You know, raise the collateral because someone allowed security to lapse and impossible to retroactively fix it.

FUD. Tricking us into self destruction is your only viable form of attack which is why you're so emotional about this.

History has shown (7+ years), that economic incentive didn't work. The MN reward was also intended to cover these costs. Please go back to Evan's original vision of all MNs running dedicated hardware. The ONLY reasons this is no longer feasible is, a) the price of dash collapsed by 97%, and b) at this point the issues of centralization are already evident.. that is, Sam is claiming that HPMNs price out the largest actors.

If dash was 1500$ and we had worked to de-collateralize a long time ago, we would not be having this conversation now.

>History has shown (7+ years), that economic incentive didn't work.

What are you talking about? Dash is the strongest, most performant cryptocurrency network, soon to release a true second-layer solution allowing for scalable DSaaS (DataStorage as a Service) very cheaply without spam issues (like NANO). The economic incentives in Dash have been working great, in fact they work the best in all of cryptocurrency.

>Please go back to Evan's original vision of all MNs running dedicated hardware.

We've long left Evan's original vision. It was a brilliant start, but many bumps and detours later, we are no longer reliant on the original plan. Its no longer "Dash Evolution", its "Dash Platform". The scope of the project widened and its featureset changed, you can't compare the two.

The price of Dash is neither here nor there, I don't know why you keep using that as a sticking point. Almost like you're trying to needle the community into submission. Just stick to the topic at hand, Masternodes, like mining, work at ALL PRICE POINTS. Trying to use the lower price as a weapon is dishonest.

>) at this point the issues of centralization are already evident.. that is, Sam is claiming that HPMNs price out the largest actors.

This is not centralization. Read my top-comment. Anything with a CoD (coefficient of decentralization) of 2 or greater is decentralized. It is extremely unlikely that even with the 10k HVMN option that platforms CoD approaches anything as low as even 10. We should be seeing CoD in the low 100s, even with 10k HVMN. Which means your complaint is bogus, it won't be centralizing at all. It will be MORE CENTRALIZED than 1k. But that's not the same thing as being centralized (CoD of ~2000-3800 for 1K HVMN vs a CoD of 100-200 for 4-10k HVMN solution).

>If dash was 1500$ and we had worked to de-collateralize a long time ago, we would not be having this conversation now.

Get out of here with your divisive FUD based propaganda. We're only having this conversation because your job is to FUD and manipulate the narrative and misdirect discussions with falsehoods to trick the MNOs into self-destructive behavior. Lowering the collateral will just artificially double MNs. It won't solve the problem that DCG is trying to solve, which means its a red-herring and you're a con-artist.

I understand, you can not admit that dash is down 97% (45 USD) and therefore difficult to impossible to justify higher hosting costs paid in USD / EUR. If dash were back at 1500+ USD we wouldn't be here looking to steal rewards from masternode owners.

Perhaps more to the point, bitcoin got to 17000 without any masternode incentives and no monthly treasury tax, despite the Lightning Network stealing fees from miners.

And NO, I am not remotely a bitcoin maxi, quite the opposite. Just giving you the facts to dwell on.

>I understand, you can not admit that dash is down 97% (45 USD)

What on earth are you talking about?? I have NO PROBLEM admitting Dash has lost nominal fiat value. Its COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO ME (aside from making it easier to buy cheap Dash, Woohoo!!)

>If dash were back at 1500+ USD we wouldn't be here looking to steal rewards from masternode owners.

They're trying to make the system economically viable within the framework that has successfully left Dash as the most powerful, most performant and feature-rich cryptocurrency experience in existence. They are making breaking changes for the benefit of the network while its still running live. That is quite commendable and you have NO ROOM to impede that process with your selfish and stupid bullshit.

>Perhaps more to the point, bitcoin got to 17000 without any masternode incentives and no monthly treasury tax, despite the Lightning Network stealing fees from miners.

That is COMPLETELY *BESIDES* the point and thank you for exposing your true leanings (referring to the treasury as a 'tax' which is common monero-community-speak for things they don't like but can't duplicate).

BTC's NODES DON'T COST ANYTHING TO SET UP (now its 17,000? You said 13,000 in the other comment). THE BTC NETWORK CANNOT RELY ON THOSE VOLUNTEER NODES FOR ANYTHING, THAT'S WHY THEY DON'T BUILD ANY SECOND-LAYER SERVICES ON THEM YOU BLITHERING IDIOT. It would help if you at least knew the basics of the bullshit you were shilling for before you shilled for it. Then you wouldn't look so obviously like the troll that you really are.

>And NO, I am not remotely a bitcoin maxi, quite the opposite. Just giving you the facts to dwell on.

You are definitely an ANTI-DASH-Maxi. You have no faith in the Dash network, its architecture nor its superiority over other coins including BTC even though that superiority is PLAINLY EVIDENT FOR ALL TO SEE for YEARS now. BTC doesn't have decentralized coinjoin, relies on volunteer nodes instead of fully-paid service nodes, has no decentralized governance nor self-funding.

You appear to be trying to lull us into FORGETTING our massive advantages over other coins so that you can destroy that advantage for their benefit. You should be shunned and excommunicated from the network for engaging in this behavior. Just like MNOs have the ability to not host certain content, people like you should not be allowed to participate in our network. You are a bad actor.

I view Trustless Masternode Shares as something completely separate from the start options of Dash Platform, where we are voting on right now.

Sharing may remove your choice of where the servers are physically located. This could be a significant issue regarding censorship resistance.