Debunking Custodial Myths in Cryptocurrency Adoption

Self-custody, on-chain payments can be for everyone! The whole world. 🌎

It’s common right now in crypto for projects to focus on layer-two scaling, or make excuses for why custodians are needed for everyday use cases like payments.

This is absolutely not true!

The three common arguments for why custodial or trusted solutions are needed to facilitate payments are:

-Network decentralization
-Technical scaling limits
-User experience

Let’s tackle all of these, and show why, at least at Dash, we don’t have to make these compromises.

1: DECENTRALIZATION

Probably the most common argument against making the base layer accessible to anyone is that it would require decentralization sacrifices in order to handle that scale. A few points.

First, decentralization doesn’t mean everyone and their cousin needs to run critical infra. It means that enough separate parties are responsible for running and securing the network that it’s difficult to take down by making a couple of phone calls.

Dash fixes this by having a self-funded, diverse network of masternodes, EvoNodes, and miners. All are paid by Dash in Dash to secure and run the network. There’s nearly 4,000 of these collateralized nodes in total, some with collateral owned by many different individuals, in addition to miners. You need both to run, or attack, the network. Very well-decentralized!

Second, decentralization doesn’t matter if people are using centralized solutions! Dash’s approach of everyone affording the base layer means that its decentralization benefits are conferred to everyone, for practically all use cases!

2: SCALING LIMITS

There’s a great myth that “blockchains can’t scale.” This is absolutely not true and isn’t reflected in the technical reality of modern blockchains. Whether it’s mass scaling by Solana (when it doesn’t break 😅) or sharded chains, we’ve seen capability to process immense amounts of transactions and data.

At Dash,
@blockchainASU
did some basic scaling simulations to prove that Dash can easily scale to handle volumes similar to legacy payment networks. You can read about it here:
https://blockchain.asu.edu/block-propagation-applied-to-nakamoto-networks/…

The tech is only getting better, and especially for a simple payments chain, there’s no need to trust centralized or custodial solutions.

3: USER EXPERIENCE

Typically, using crypto is a mess. You have to copy and paste a long ugly address, set transaction details, make sure your wallets are compatible, pay inconsistent and sometimes high fees, and worst of all, wait for confirmations.

Some projects solve these by simply hiding the underlying network and tech from the end user, taking full custody of their funds, facilitating payments on their own internal ledgers, managing accounts, etc. Basically, becoming a bank.

We don’t believe in this. At all. Every Dash payment is instantly and deterministically settled, for a fraction of a cent, with no limitations on amount, who you can send to, etc. It just works, without compromising on any of our core principles of financial sovereignty.

Even so, this isn’t good enough.

We’re working on a new project called Evolution that will essentially fix the last bit required for average people to adopt crypto. Human-readable usernames and contact lists, invoices, and all kinds of decentralized applications necessary to make money just work.

All decentralized. No custodians or middlemen!

It’s been a long road so far, and we still have a long road ahead. But very soon, the world will be able to start using this amazing new technology.

We hope this leads to a freer world.

We’re betting on it.

Just say no to custodians, anon.🫡