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A Vision for Dash (by DashMoney - Better late than never!)

DashMoney

DashMoney

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What does the Dash Evolution look like post the launch of Platform? Is it still the vision from 2017 or is it something different now?

I have only arrived at this vision for Dash very recently, and I believe it’s ramifications are not widely known or understood. But first I will cover what Dash Platform is to me and what I thought was a flaw in its implementation, but now I see how the free market can provide an even better solution and make Dash Platform even better than I thought it was.

Dash Platform utilizing Data Contracts is a user-network creation and user-network operating machine. The user networks that it can create allow every user to have full control over their account in that network. (The ‘full control’ over their account will be expounded upon shortly.)

DashMoney dapps try to capture and show how users can come together and interact using Dash as its medium. And I am utilizing DashMoney dapps, because I can see their shortcomings but the solution that I am offering will give you a new perspective of how Dash Platform Dapps can work and be improved upon.

In the past there was one flaw in Dash Platform from my perspective, and I was unsure of how to overcome it. But this flaw may actually be an incredible opportunity.
The one flaw is how do the users connect to the Dash Platform dapps? Or how does the user get the user friendly frontend to be able to use the Dash Platform?

All the DashMoney dapps/websites can be brought down very quickly. Websites blocked, servers shut off, repositories deleted. Dapps having only one means of access is very centralized. Even though the backend is* very decentralized and secure. If you can’t get to it, it doesn’t matter.

So how can we decentralize the dapp’s frontend? Can we use this decentralizing to create opportunities for marketers, developers and really create the Dash economy starting with how dapps get to the users. And I am very happy to say, I believe the answer is yes, and it is through utilizing the free market. Let me explain.

These are excerpts from posts on the 5th and 6th of October 2023 on Dash Discord. It began by answering a question about how the DashMoney dapps could be monetized, but it shifted into something much more.

Published 05 Oct. 2023 on DashDiscord
So to the question of are the necessary features required, already built into Platform, to monetize the dapps? Yes, the way I see monetization work is with the identity credit transfers, which could be utilized once the user is logged in, but I think when the user writes data to platform would be most appropriate time. Now, to the question of how to monetize? This is really interesting, because the 'Naive approach' would be to just tack on a fee to every document submission but that would just discourage usage...
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Published 06 Oct. 2023 on DashDiscord
...When I was thinking about monetization and fees, I thought I had good ideas. I thought the naive approach to add a fee to every Platform document submission* was foolish. But it seems that I was the short sighted one, because I was focused on the wrong problem.

Imagine this. What if every DashMoney dapp adds a fee, say 1/10 of a TopUp to every document submission.
And not only that, but I will continue to raise the fee. 1/5 of a TopUp, ¼ of a Top up, ½ of a Top Up…

You are looking at it wrong, just like I was. THE QUESTION IS NOT: HOW HIGH WILL THE FEE GO BEFORE EVERYONE STOPS USING IT?? BUT..

THE QUESTION SHOULD BE: HOW HIGH will the fee go UNTIL SOMEONE ELSE RUNS A SEPARATE INSTANCE OF THE DAPP WITH A LOWER FEE?

You have probably heard of the ‘Nakamoto Consensus’ mechanism, well this is the ‘DashMoney Competition’ mechanism.
You see what I am trying to achieve is the Decentralization of Dash Platform frontends...
Click to expand...
.... This could change everything. You want developers to come to Dash, let them own their own sites. You want people to market and sell Dash, let them earn by commission.
Economics is human action. If you want people to act a certain way then get the economics right.
Click to expand...

The way I see Dash Platform dapps working is through many individuals/entrepreneurs getting domains (i.e. www.DashNamesHere.com – This is just a domain name I made up) and then hosting the dapp on a server(possibly for free) and earning a commission/fee when a user uses the Dash Platform. So when a user purchases a name on the entrepreneur’s version of DashGetNames or when the users create a post on the entrepreneur’s version of DashShoutOut or DashMoney.io. (Everything that the entrepreneurs need to get these sites to run is in Github) and they (the entrepreneur) will be earning Dash!

PROPOSAL OFFER (for the very near future): I will be adding a fee (through the identity credit transfer) to all the DashMoney dapps (in the code on Github) so when the user does a document submission/update/delete. To make it easy to use for the new entrepreneur, I will be adding 2 lines to the code where the entrepreneur can paste in their Dash Identity to receive the commission/fee and the other line to determine the cost of the commission/fee.
I will then create a instructional guide on the Dash Forum site and then anyone that wants to promote Dash and earn money can operate Dash Platform frontends. (DashMoney will not be earning any money from the site that an entrepreneur sets up and operates.) Also the way I will present will be using Vercel, so that you can get the site hosted for free. The only cost will be purchasing a domain name and the time it takes to set up. (Though Vercel is probably not the best for decentralization going into the future but it’s a good starting point.)

Further objections:

First, let’s discuss the mnemonic/wallet login. For many this is an immediate turn off, I understand that. I utilized the wallet login to offer the easiest and fastest way to access Dash dapps, so we could start finding use cases for Dash Platform. But there is much more to it now that decentralizing frontends has opened up. Remember how I spoke earlier about ‘full control’ over your account, this is what I mean.

Don’t think of the 12 words/wallet you connect to dapps with as you would your off-line cold storage wallet. Think of the 12 words that you use to log in, (which should be a different 12 or 24 words from your off line cold storage wallet) as the “account of the dapp”. Think about it just like you would if you had your funds on an exchange. You obviously have to trust the exchange to use them right and you know to get your funds off the exchange as quickly as possible. Well just think of the 12 words that you use to log into dapps as the account of an exchange, but instead of an exchange account, this is the account to a Dash Platform dapp. Remember with Dash Platform you have full control of the account.

I can still see people will have apprehension because they think that the dapps must be centralized and secure but I, DashMoney will not be doing it. If you wish to offer a free site, that is fine, but will you be able to out-compete someone who is getting paid. And why would someone trust you if you remain anonymous. I believe people would rather pay a small amount to a known entity than use a free and possibly questionable dapp. But we can let the free market decide that as well.

Secondly, why do people have to pay a fee at all. The answer is that they don’t have to. If you desire you may host, promote and provide this service freely to the community. But the economics of donating time and effort freely do not usually generate the best outcome.

But fees will become lowered through competition on the free market, maybe it will settle at 1/25 of a topup or 1/100 of a topup? I don’t know for sure. This solution also goes much further than just decentralizing the frontends and providing a way for marketers to earn money to spread Dash.

Once people see they can earn money with dapps, they will make their own dapps. The first may just be customized versions of DashMoney dapps but that is okay. They are learning the code. Then some may be translated versions like Spanish or Italian. Others may create ones with better desktop friendly versions. (DashMoney dapps are mobile focused.) Others may even build iOS and Android app versions to make money, earn Dash. Or a dapp that combines multiple use cases into one.

Thirdly why should it have a fee, why can’t the DAO just fund an fee less version? The Dash treasury should not be choosing winners and losers. Choosing what is the best product requires all the people in the market deciding through the profit mechanism.

Fourthly, how can we trust people who are operating the frontends? That is for the market to figure out. These are some things I will be doing.

1) Only trust open source sites.
2) Ensure that the site you are on has the source-map available to view. It should be the same as the open source site.
3) The fee they are charging should be easy to see and they should be charging the amount that they say they are.
4) Read reviews about the owner on other review sites like DashGetReviews or on Discord or anywhere really.
5) Only use a wallet (12 words) with an amount you are willing to lose. Also a dapp should not be saving your 12 words/wallet anyway.

This is why it is a lot of work if you want to be an entrepreneur to get people to know about and then trust your site.

But all this will still not protect the users if the owners figure out some sort of back door like ledger and therefore loses the trust of the market. Or like any of the exchanges in the past that stole its clients funds. That is why there must be a market to expose the bad actors.

Lastly, you can also always just run the dapp locally with no fee by getting the code from Github.
 
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This idea is still very new, and I would appreciate any feedback or comments. I hope I have not overlooked any glaring issues. Thank you for your time.
 
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So how can we decentralize the dapp’s frontend? Can we use this decentralizing to create opportunities for marketers, developers and really create the Dash economy starting with how dapps get to the users. And I am very happy to say, I believe the answer is yes, and it is through utilizing the free market.
Click to expand...

At some point dapps can be run entirely on Platform itself instead of just having meta data output of dapps stored on Drive. Developers will not have to rely on centralized websites then anymore with regards to setting up Dash dapps. I think that is planned for Dash Platform v3.0, where on-chain computation (AKA Ethereum) will be utilized on the Dash Platform Chain.

Knipsel.JPG


Although this does seem to apply more to the backend then the frontend of dapps, so i am not sure this is all that usefull for this topic.
Does Ethereum have a problem with frontend centralization by the way ? Or is that solved through on-chain computation ? I do seem to recall reading about Ethereum dapps sometimes vulnerable to attack, as some of them run on centralized servers instead of the network.

I imagine with Platform v3.0, Dash dapps operating on the Platform Chain will be similar in nature (thanks to on-chain computation) to Ethereum dapps operating on the Ethereum network, but with better Platform scalability and lower Platform fees.

Ultimately it will be up to the dapps developers to promote their dapps to the Dash users, fees will play a role in there i am sure.
Make the fees too high and that dapp may become unattractive to the Dash users and fail to gain traction.
Make the fees too low and perhaps not many dapps developers will want to develop dapps for Dash in the first place.

There are fees that DCG is balancing for Dash Platform in general and there are perhaps fees that developers can influence by charging more per state transition (i am not sure if they can though, i got the feeling DCG is pretty much in control of the Platform fees .. including state transition fees).

In the end i think there needs to be a balance, with regards to fees. Perhaps the fees balance will come some time after Platform launches on Mainnet and DCG collected some data to analyze. I suspect some fine-tuning of the Platform fees, after release of Platform.
 
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Thanks for the response. Maybe some clarifications are in order. So when you say the Dapps can run entirely on Dash Platform, then what is the user using to see the dapp? Is it in the browser like an extension or a website? Is it a mobile app from the android or iOS app store? See there is always a frontend to get from the user's device to Dash Platform. Unless someone has better information and knows how a different way to connect to the internet with your mobile device then there will always be a frontend. I suppose there could be a dash desktop client that uses dapps but that is pretty limited in my opinion.

But I am in agreement with the statement the dapp developers/ dapp entrepreneurs are ultimately responsible for promoting their dapp. See then someone else is running the code on their own site, the dapp is no longer DashMoney's dapp. It is theirs now. And competition and the market will determine what users will pay for using the dapps.

Lastly, so the fees charged by platform are separate from the fees that I envision will be used for the dapps. So an 'identity credit transfer' is essentially just any user sending credits to another user. I just envision using the 'identity credit transfer' as the 'fee' deliver mechanism. And the identity credit transfer amount can be completely decided upon by the dapp entrepreneur.
 
Platform orginal vision had the frontend of dapps running mainly through browsers if i remember correctly, currently the focus from DCG seems to be more on utilization through smartphone apps (Android and iOS). I think DCG also include browser support for dapps, but i think users are getting a bit hesistant these days to installing browser extensions (elevated risk of introducing malware onto people's system).

It would be nice to have a GUI software solution developed for desktop Dash users, to deal with the frontend of dapps once Dash Platform launches. I think Pshenmic (Dash Incubator developer) also had some ideas about that, with his Dash UI Kit concept : https://www.dash.org/forum/index.php?threads/proposal-dash-ui-kit.54006/#post-235916

This seems to be more of a framework for future frontend developers (to lay the foundation).
Maybe you two can brainstorm a bit about this ?

It would form an alternative (or addition) to utilizing the free market (by introducing app-specific fees).

Phase 1 : Develop an Unified UI for frontend developers
Phase 2 : have those frontend developers develop a GUI for Dash desktop users, by using the Unified UI (could be a seperate Incubator project).

End-users can then interact with the frontend of dapps through smartphone apps, browsers and desktop GUI software.

The frontend of this all will still be centralized, but on the other hand introducing app-specific fees does not really prevent the centralization issue with frontend solutions anyways (Github will still form a centralized frontend solution, other frontend solutions the same). I don't think its truly solvable at the frontend. Basically they are all trusted centralized frontend solutions, not trustless decentralized frontend solutions.
 
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Yes, DCG does have browser support in the form of the JavaScript SDK for Dash Platform. That is how I am able to get all the current Dapps to operate on Testnet.

I just want to make sure that I am getting this point across. There is always some kind of frontend. Now that frontend can be delivered to the user through various means, but there is always a frontend. Also, you will have to trust someone to deliver the front end to you. (Unless you have the code for the frontend and run it locally) The vision I am presenting is how Dash Platform frontends can be delivered to the user through the free market. Which I think will delivery the best service and opportunities to assist in growing the Dash economy.
 
Unfortunetely i don't think introducing app-specific fees and letting the free market decide the fate of dapps will effectively address the frontend issues (centralization and having to place trust). All i can see this do, is give dapp developers an additional revenue stream from their dapps.

Which i am not against (if its reasonable), but i just don't see this address the centralization issue with the frontend solutions. And i also don't see this (and your fourth point) address the 'trusted' nature of the frontend solutions. Frankly i don't think those issues can be solved at the frontend.

I remember in the early years of Platform development there was talk about developing a rating system for dapps to be used by its end-users, but even that is open for exploit (and never got developed).
 
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DashMoney said:
Don’t think of the 12 words/wallet you connect to dapps with as you would your off-line cold storage wallet. Think of the 12 words that you use to log in, (which should be a different 12 or 24 words from your off line cold storage wallet) as the “account of the dapp”. Think about it just like you would if you had your funds on an exchange. You obviously have to trust the exchange to use them right and you know to get your funds off the exchange as quickly as possible. Well just think of the 12 words that you use to log into dapps as the account of an exchange, but instead of an exchange account, this is the account to a Dash Platform dapp. Remember with Dash Platform you have full control of the account.
Click to expand...

I don't think this is the way it should work. If I understand you correctly, you are saying it's like a hot wallet and the exchange knows your seed. No, this seems very amateur. The server should be doing a challenge-response with the user's public key and only commence if the response is correct.
 
@DashMoney

I think the problems are bigger than you think. Infiltration is easy:

1. Provide a service that is free / cheaper than operating costs. Build your audience, and it really doesn't matter if you do this via the web or an extension etc. When you hit critical mass you will have something called a captive market.

2. Now you have corned the market you just need to disintermediate your users. For example, remove a critical feature and replace it with a third-party add-on.

Perhaps, for example, you provide direct trezor integration but then later remove it and demand a metamask or rainbow extension which can be easily surveilled. Sure, users could modify code or seek alternatives but in reality they won't.

I think the solution is to have a client side dapp engine that can be built into any wallet that wants it, just like a HTML engine. I suppose disintermediation could still occur but it might help to minimize it.
 
@GrandMasterDash

So I do believe that trying to explain this new idea of how a 12 word wallet works probably needs to be clearer. So when I describe the 12 word wallet as the dapp account login (so just like where there is always a frontend) so too you must use the 12 word wallet (dapp account login) and trust something that is writing to platform with the 12 word wallet (dapp account login). Maybe you don't want to put the 12 word wallet (dapp account login) in a website directly but use an extension to the website, but you have to put it in something if you are going to write to platform.

I am against a 'captive audience' bait and switch. That is just tacky and poor business.

But I will try again with the 12 word wallet (dapp account login), I don't mind the wording that this 12 word wallet (dapp account login) should be treated like a 'hot wallet'. And that is because you have to trust someone's frontend even if it is your own. But what I am offering is removing all the middle men. No extensions, no special wallet linking. Just you and the person offering the frontend. If they, the frontend entrepreneur, do any thing unsavory. Simple stop using them and use a different front end service.

Also the way that DashMoney Dapps work is that they do not save your seed/ 12 word wallet (dapp account login). I think that is important but nothing but the free market sifting out bad actors will prevent, someone offering a Dash Platform frontend from doing anything nefarious.

Lets say a frontend service did the worst thing and saved your 12 word wallet. First never use them again and warn others. Next you may have to burn that wallet. Remove all the Dash and credits and use the "break" identity which is a special Dash feature that allows you to essentially make an identity unusable if it becomes compromised.
 
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Thank you for everyone that read this vision for Dash! I ultimately think this is the correct direction for Dash Platform Frontends. But I also can see that being too early, can be just as incorrect as being wrong. As platform hasn't launched on mainnet yet, I don't want to add more confusion to Dash Platform's launch. I will come up with a *better plan* that hopefully makes sense to all. Thanks again!

Edit: a *better plan* that implements this course of action but in a better and bit slower way. I am just glad to have the idea out there and known for now.
 
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GrandMasterDash said:
As an aside, 12 words is quite insecure, but I suppose as a hot wallet it might be an acceptable compromise with ease of use.
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12 words isn't insecure at all, it's 128 bits which is what's used for most applications (128 bit AES encryption)
 
DashMoney said:
Yes, DCG does have browser support in the form of the JavaScript SDK for Dash Platform. That is how I am able to get all the current Dapps to operate on Testnet.

I just want to make sure that I am getting this point across. There is always some kind of frontend. Now that frontend can be delivered to the user through various means, but there is always a frontend. Also, you will have to trust someone to deliver the front end to you. (Unless you have the code for the frontend and run it locally) The vision I am presenting is how Dash Platform frontends can be delivered to the user through the free market. Which I think will delivery the best service and opportunities to assist in growing the Dash economy.
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Two points must be ensured:

1.The platform must ensure that even if the front end is malicious, it cannot harm the users themselves. In short, regardless of the situation, the "gate" must be fixed and reliable.

2.This platform should be attractive enough, with a substantial user base.

If the first point is not met, no one is worthy of trust, as they could potentially be deceived.
[Only by meeting the first point can people trust (use) others without any reservations.]

Without the second point, lack of a substantial user base, everything is meaningless. All things (benefits) stem from a vast user base.
[The user base is derived from benefits. Benefits are directly proportional to the scale]
 
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Monotoko said:
12 words isn't insecure at all, it's 128 bits which is what's used for most applications (128 bit AES encryption)
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Some clarification. Secure where none of the words are known, but readily cracked where the words are known but the order is not e.g. a key logger. 24 words defeats key loggers.
 
Greetings again! I have been thinking about the better plan for Decentralized Frontends and I am now actively building it. The idea is simple. I am going to combine all the dapps that have been made so far.

DashGetNames, DashShoutOut, DashGetMoney, DashGetPaid, DashMoney.io, DashGetReviews, ProofOfDash(This one is almost finished) and then I will add the identity credit transfer to this. I am also going to add DashGetTogether if I have time. It is really just state management processes that need to be smoothed out for all this to work.

This combined dapp will be placed on DashMoney.io.
 
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