How exactly, does the masternode network enable private transactions on Dash digital ledger? From fund denomination, to session IDs, to return of collateral, Amanda B. Johnson explains the full process in her classic whiteboard style.
SHOW LINKS:
PrivateSend info: http://dash.org/darksend
Dash Evolution: http://dash.org/evolution
Dash Evolution preview video: https://youtu.be/7J4m04Tkfb4
Dash was added to trading platforms Whaleclub and Coincheck this week.
Whaleclub is a trading platform that allows users to trade cryptocurrency against more traditional investments, such as oil, gold, stocks, etc. Daniel Diaz, Dash’s Vice President of Business Development, sees this integration as opening new doors for Dash:
“Whaleclub is a one-of-a-kind service. It offers access to trade traditional financial markets using Dash, opening up a completely new universe of options for our users and another great use case for Dash’s worldwide versatility. Not only will this allow current Dash investors to trade traditional markets like, stocks, metals, forex and bonds, it may also attract new investors that want to trade traditional markets but maybe find regulatory hurdles and minimum trading requirements on those markets too big of a challenge to overcome.”
Dash was also added by Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck, which also added support for both Litecoin and NEM.
Recent surge of integrations continues to add up
These latest additions to Dash-supporting platforms continues a recent trend of business, wallet, and exchange integrations. Earlier this month, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken added Dash, both Bitcoin and fiat trading pairs, as well as InstantSend functionality, allowing for near-instant withdrawals. European exchange BitPanda also recently added Dash.
This week, multi-coin multi-platform wallet Jaxx re-added Dash to its iPhone wallet. Previously, Apple had banned Dash wallets from the App Store entirely, leaving iPhone users with no mobile Dash option at all. The re-addition into Jaxx changes that, making Dash available to use for all mobile users.
Dash can “cheat the system” with integrations
What sets Dash apart from other cryptocurrencies as far as claiming business integrations is the ability to leverage the treasury to offset costs. Dash’s treasury allows for a portion of the new coin supply to be allocated for community projects, and this in some cases includes incentivizing businesses to accept Dash by assisting with development workload and costs. Notable recent examples of this approach include Wall of Coins and Kraken, both of which included InstantSend functionality for transactions, and as such took Dash’s help for the extra work involved.
This approach allows Dash to jump ahead of other coins, gaining integrations sooner than cryptocurrencies without a similar treasury system. This means Dash is “punching out of its weight class,” competing on even ground with cryptocurrencies that boast a longer history and larger market cap.
One of the primary sub-debates occurring in the Great Bitcoin Scaling Debate is the role of “governance” in a cryptocurrency. Recently this one flared up again, with Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, declaring:
@iang_fc @el33th4xor @drwasho governance is anathema to Bitcoin as digital gold, you dont govern gold atoms, neither bitcoin.
— Adam Back (@adam3us) March 30, 2017
What Back says here isn’t exactly novel: many Bitcoin advocates would agree, and the comparison to gold is a common one. In fact, that has always been one of the main selling points of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general: like gold, it isn’t controlled by any entity or person. For average, libertarian-leaning Bitcoin fans, this is music to their anti-government years.
Further, if you look at the history of Bitcoin, you’ll see it was created in response to the failed planned economies of our world. After the economic disasters of 2008 in which the world’s planned economies took a beating, Bitcoin was a breath of fresh air: here was a currency that was free of government control. In fact, Satoshi embedded a message in Bitcoin’s genesis block in case anyone was unsure of his intention, a headline from The Times: “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
Because of this foundation, many of Bitcoin’s top advocates, such as Mr. Back, insist that the cryptocurrency has no “governance,” and no need for it. But this exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of what governance is. Governance is not equivalent to state government. Governance is simply how choices are made. Every group, every project, and even every person practices governance of some form or another. For example, a person self-governs. She decides how she lives and what to do each day. (In fact, one of the great crimes of humanity is slavery, for it takes away the ability of an individual to self-govern.) A family practices governance as well – how decisions are made each day, how kids are raised, etc. Some form of governance is identifiable in every group, no matter its size. The local Elks club has a method of governance, as does a church or a multinational corporation. And of course communities – be they villages, towns, states, or nations – have ways of governing themselves. Even an anarchist advocates for governance – he just wants each individual to govern himself or herself without any input from others in the community.
The comparison of Bitcoin to gold might lead some to believe that Bitcoin doesn’t need governance, however. After all, gold isn’t governed. And this is true – gold is an inanimate object that has no need of governance. But Bitcoin – like other cryptocurrencies – is not an inanimate object. It is, at its core, a software project. Yes, it is much more than this; it is also a system of money and a social experiment. But fundamentally cryptocurrencies always start as – and remain – software projects. They have developers who make decisions about the project: Should we change this code or leave it alone? And as such, they must be governed.
Currently, Bitcoin is governed by the consensus of a number of entities of different levels of influence. Miners exert probably the most influence, followed closely by the core development team. Merchants also exert some influence on the project. Even regular users exert some influence, whether by their choice of node software or by expressing their opinions in online communities. However, Bitcoin governance is decided primarily by miners and the core development team.
Of course, the ongoing rancorous debate about the direction of Bitcoin – with each side unable to implement its preferred solution – lead some to suggest that Bitcoin’s model of governance is flawed. It has also led other projects to consider other forms of cryptocurrency governance. Dash is one of the prime innovators in this arena.
If you look at the origin of Dash, you’ll see why governance plays such a large role in the project. After all, Dash founder Evan Duffield originally created the cryptocurrency after becoming frustrated trying to introduce innovations to Bitcoin. He was unable to sway the small group of influencers in the Bitcoin world in order to implement the improvements he envisioned. Eventually he decided to just fork the code and begin a new cryptocurrency. His experience led him to incorporate a blockchain-based, decentralized governance system for Dash so that anyone could propose changes to the project. In this system, the owners of the 2nd-tier of the network (i.e., the Masternodes) are able to vote via the blockchain on proposals to improve or change Dash. The core developers still make the majority of decisions affecting the code (as is true with Bitcoin). The key difference is that there is a built-in mechanism to “fire” the core development team and replace it with another if the Masternode owners desire.
If, for example, a split formed in the Dash community such as exists currently in Bitcoin, with two competing development teams vying for control of the protocol, a resolution could be found rather quickly and easily. Each competing development team could put in a proposal for funding their team, and whichever one was funded would be the official “core” team. This is efficient, decentralized governance.
And, as with Bitcoin, there always exists the “nuclear option” – forking the code. After all, Dash itself exists as a fork of Bitcoin, and if a group of people were to disagree with the direction of the Masternode-funded Dash core team, they could fork Dash’s code and implement their own way of proceeding.
Soon after Mr. Back’s tweet about governance, he followed up with another:
@EricRSammons The few people who demand "governance" in bitcoin mostly seem to mean formal voting process they can control. Like BU president & membrship.
— Adam Back (@adam3us) April 4, 2017
Mr. Back is wrong here as well. The truth is that *everyone* demands governance, they just have different models for governance.
Dash has embraced the need for governance and has decentralized it and baked it directly into the blockchain itself. After all, isn’t a decentralized, blockchain-based world what cryptocurrencies are all about?
To celebrate the launch of the website we are running a special Dash Force News video competition.
The competition is to create and upload a 3-5 minute video on YouTube explaining why you believe DASH is the best cryptocurrency.
The Dash Force News team will be reviewing the video entries, selecting the winners and will announce them on website and via social media.
We are looking for informative quality comments and creativity. Please do not attack other crypto-currencies that is not the purpose of the contest. Dash Force News wants to know why you like DASH and your reasoning.
If you decide not to participate in contest please can you kindly show your support to those that do. If we get good response and feedback we may potentially run future community competitions like this on a regular basis.
There are 3 prizes to be won.
1st Prize – 1 DASH
2nd Prize – 0.75 DASH
3rd Prize – 0.5 DASH
IMPORTANT – Here are the competition rules:
Part 1 (VIDEO) – Create a YouTube video with the video title “Why I believe DASH is the best cryptocurrency”
In the YouTube video description please put a link to Dash Force News website.
Part 2 (SHARE) – After the video is uploaded please share on Twitter using the tags @dashforcenews and #dashforce
Also post your video entry to our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/dashforcenews and make sure you give our page a like as well.
This will help us find and locate your video entries.
Also feel free to post the links to your videos in Disqus comment section below as well.
**Competition entry deadline is Friday 28th April**
The Dash Force News team will review and announce the winners on Monday 1st May. We will post the winners on the website and via social media so make you like and follow us:
https://www.facebook.com/dashforcenews
https://twitter.com/dashforcenews
We look forward to watching your videos. Now go get creative and good luck!
Some people imagine that a freelancer is her “own boss.” That she is beholden to no one but herself and that, somehow, money just rolls in.
Having worked as a waitress, an SEO blogger, a children’s party entertainer, a valet driver, a Hollywood movie extra, and over a dozen other jobs, I can testify that there is no such thing as “being your own boss.” If you’re getting paid to do something, guess what? You have a boss. The question is, just how many bosses do you have?
If you work a more traditional job, you have just one. If you are considered a “freelancer,” you have upwards of a dozen or more bosses (you probably call them “clients”). And if you work for a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) like the Dash DAO? Welcome to the land of a thousand (or more) bosses.
Every number of months – or even every month, in due time – I make an employment proposal to the Dash DAO on behalf of myself (and anyone who works under me) to produce the YouTube series DASH: Detailed. My proposal includes a precise description of the work my team will perform, as well as how much payment we seek in compensation. We may calculate our costs in US dollars or any other currency, but our request is ultimately denominated (and paid) in Dash.
Hundreds or even thousands of people around the world – it’s impossible to know quite how many – then vote “yes” or “no” on the proposal, and if 10% more “yes” votes than “no” are achieved, the payment automatically shows up in my Dash “account” within the month. So does the payment of everyone else who submits a passing proposal in that cycle. You could call it the pay day of the future.
The voters are people who lock 1000 Dash into a “masternode” (i.e. are invested) and make their masternode available to perform tasks needed to make Dash work as advertised (i.e. provide service). Each masternode then gets one vote. A person can own more than one masternode if he has made correspondingly additional investment and provides the same service on each node.
The masternode owners, then, are my bosses. Their incentives are unique in that, in a sense, they’re paying me in “shares” of their organization (digital currency is unique in that its tokens are intended as money, but also act as shares in the underlying money transfer service itself). As with the creation of any new share (or currency unit, for that matter), any newly-created tokens dilute the value of all existing tokens proportionately. In other words, creating new Dash with which to pay me is a form of inflation. Masternode owners, then, must consider whether the value my team and I will create is worth the inflation that it takes to pay us.
Thus far, masternode owners have decided that the value DASH: Detailed brings is worth the creation of new Dash for the last 10 months straight. We hope this trend continues, but as Dash grows more popular, we realize we’ll have more competition for the limited funds available each month.
That is why we’ve reached out to Pro-Creative Video Production, with studio space in both Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix, Arizona, to shoot a pilot episode of a more professional, network news-style DASH: Detailed. The pilot episode will be revealed in a pre-proposal I make in the coming weeks. Pro-Creative’s work is of a considerably higher caliber than what my (very) small team and I have been able to produce on our own, and their price tag reflects this (though I might add that their bid came in much lower than their competition, whom I also contacted).
So it will be up to the masternodes to decide. Will they like the pilot enough to pay for Pro-Creative to take DASH: Detailed to the next level? Or do they more prefer the price tag and quality level I’ve churned out so far?
We’ll watch as the comments begin to roll in on the pre-proposal. If they’re favorable enough, I’ll make the real employment proposal. And then the voting-of-a-thousand-bosses will begin.