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Ask a Question about Dash Thread

TanteStefana

Well-known member
Foundation Member
I'm creating this thread to sort of be a Q&A for newbs. Sometimes it's hard to find the answer in the wiki, and sometimes people want it explained another way. With trolls constantly crying "Scam" "Centralized" "insecure" etc... I invite anyone who wants to learn to come here for one on one help :)

Welcome!
 
First Is Dash a scam?

Scam definition:
noun
informal
  1. 1.
    a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
    "an insurance scam"
    synonyms: fraud, swindle, fraudulent scheme, racket, trick; More
verb
  1. 1.
    swindle.
    "a guy that scams the elderly out of their savings"
    synonyms: swindle, cheat, deceive, trick, dupe, hoodwink, double-cross, gull;
    informalrip off, con,fleece, shaft, hose, sting, bilk, diddle, rook, gyp, finagle, bamboozle, flimflam, put one over on, pull a fast one on, sucker, stiff, shake down, hornswoggle
    "he was trying to scam residents with phony insurance policies"

So with that in mind, one would have to first ask who is being swindled, cheated, etc... Anyone that spent their time mining Dash in the beginning or who bought in the beginning of Dash at the time of highest risk, if they held on to those Xcoins-Darkcoins-Dash, would have made tons of money - as in fiat, real guv money. Anyone who has bought Dash, as in after the name change, and is down a bit (because it's gone up to $15 or so, now only at $9) knew, or should have known: 1. the history of the beginnings of this coin - as it's written right there on the Dash forum pinned to the top. 2. If such a person bought Dash in the last year, they would have also been given the vision that Dash is still pursuing, that is Evolution.

Everything about Dash has been open and honest. If no one was mislead or forced to make bad financial decisions, then Dash is not a scam. Even with mistakes made at the beginning, they were exposed and the community decided to carry on, there was no harm done to people due to that. Sure, it changed the originally intended parameters of the launch, but If someone cries because they "missed out", well, you snooze you lose, sorry baby. There were at least 25 people who were actually mining, probably more, but I counted 25 posters at the beginning. So even the developer, Evan, only could have gotten about 1/25 of the "spillage" those first 24/48 hours. And as it turned out, those "easy coins" inspired a lot of people to give them away for promotions, etc... Especially Evan Duffield, the developer.

If you read his account, and heck, if you just see him in videos talking to people, you can see, he is like a boy with a toy. Dash gets him so excited that he can't stop thinking of all the things it is possible to do, and he isn't guarded or prudent with what he talks about. Sometimes his ideas don't work out exactly as he thought they would or he is talking, on camera, as new ideas are popping into his head! What kind of CEO does that? No, that's just not done! LOL He is brilliant, but he is also a person that just dives in and takes off running. He's not particularly careful, and thank God for that, because when you're too careful, you don't DO anything. I was struck, those first days, how ADHD Evan seemed. How excited and gung-ho and restless. THAT is exactly why I immediately fell in love with this young man. I knew he was above all else, a doer! And he had to be pretty smart as he was rebuilding Bitcoin his way with different parameters with no help from one of those "build your own coin" shops. So when he says it was a mistake, I believe him. If he did it on purpose, I still ask, who did it hurt?

And if this project excited him so, and he had such a passion for it, why would he have done this on purpose? why would he purposely sabotage it like that? Instead of working like a workaholic on Dash these past two Three! years, if he were a scammer, he would have sold the Dash he collected and moved on. Also, why would he put his name and face out there for you all to see?

Calling Dash a scam is the most illogical conclusion anyone could possibly come up with and is merely troll blabber.

So anyone want to join in and ask the second question I listed, so I'm not talking to myself? LOL.
 
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Dash's electorate is unknown. The masternodes are voting into the budget, but all those masternodes that cast their vote may be conducted by just one person, or maybe by 4223 persons (4223 is the current number of masternodes).

The question is:
How many real persons own at least one (or more) masternodes? It is very critical for me to know that number, because the less this number is, the more Dash is a scam. And the greater this number is, the less Dash is a scam.

And my second question is:
It is very critical the Dash protocol to reveal somehow the above mentioned number, to reveal how many persons belong to the electorate . Are you planning to implement such a protocol that will allow that, or you insist of hiding or ignoring this very critical scam indicator?

Thank you for your answers.
 
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Dash's electorate is unknown. The masternodes are voting into the budget, but all those masternodes that cast their vote may be conducted by just one person, or maybe by 4223 persons (4223 is the current number of masternodes).

The question is:
How many real persons own at least one (or more) masternodes? It is very critical for me to know that number, because the less this number is, the more Dash is a scam. And the greater this number is, the less Dash is a scam.

And my second question is:
It is very critical the Dash protocol to reveal somehow the above mentioned number, to reveal how many persons belong to the electorate . Are you planning to implement such a protocol that will allow that, or you insist of hiding or ignoring this very critical scam indicator?

Thank you for your answers.
Evan previously stated that the core team own under 10% of total supply.

The whole unfair launch thing doesn't concern me. Think about the ico model. How much do the creators retain under that model? Think of zCash, I think the founders took 20%.

In any case, because MNs only get 45% of new coins, their percentage share of supply is constantly falling.

Furthermore, someone previously speculated that Evan had reduced his holding by observing recent voting patterns. Which is not unexpected, a prudent strategy would be to take some chips off the table.
 
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Good question. I've been here since the beginning. I was such a newb, and trying to learn how to mine those first two days, that I was too shy to post. But somewhere around the 3rd day I started posting. Anyway, this is "the best of my knowledge" I can only tell you how I saw it unfold. Then I can suggest some logic, but ultimately, you need to be the judge.

First off, the first miners that knew what they were doing, they probably each got up to 100,000 coins. 1.9 or so million coins "spilled" out those first few days. Many of those early miners quit Dash and sold all they had (we had some pretty spectacular dumps! and rage quits) I grabbed this visual a long time ago, and I've forgotten where it comes from?? So it's outdated:
XI1eRO.jpg


And here it is a little longer time span. Still, it's at least a year old, maybe 2, LOL

BKtY9a.jpg


Basically, you can see how the funds were moving from initial miners to whomever. Coins have been traded over and over for the most part.

So anyway, I still don't see how anyone could possibly have gotten more than our member, @Otoh. otoh was having fun buying up tons of Dash. I say that because he was giving out hints, and letting us see what he was doing before we knew who he was. Eventually he outed himself. This was still the first year of Darkcoin. Anyway, he had bought over 600,000 coins at one point, I believe, if memory serves me correctly. He has since evangelized for Dash and sold most of his fortune to other people directly. He still does. He mostly buys on an exchange then sells otc, I think, helping new Dashers get their coins without the fuss, I guess. (otoh made his first fortune on Bitcoin BTW) I don't know how much he still has, but I'm guessing less than 300,000 because of what I've read him say.

Even if he owned his 600,000 coins still, he could only have 600 masternodes. 600/4200 = ~ 14.3% of all masternodes. This is enough to vote in a proposal, but not if a lot of people disagree with him. He's stated publicly that he does NOT vote on anything, so that's a mute point. Of course you'd have to take his word on it.

So what happens over time? I believe Evan once said he bought a new house, so he's spent some of his stash. otoh, like I said, sold a lot of his stash. How many held on to every Dash they could? Even I have had to sell off my incoming from my nodes because I have bills to pay and no income otherwise. But I cling to my 2 masternodes like life or death, LOL, but if I weren't so afraid for my future, and had plenty of security, I would probably sell off my excess so I could buy some nice things for myself or family. In other words, no matter if Dash were pure deflationary (it's actually inflationary) people would have to sell them to get anything real out of this. So over time, the largest sellers will undoubtedly sell off large percentages of their holdings, I don't doubt this, and feel the chart shows how that works. By the way, the chart is showing stuff that happened way before people commonly used DarkSend. So that's real funds moving.

Ultimately, IMO, there are so many of us online that have 2, 5 and 10 masternodes, that makes up for a huge proportion of existing masternodes, and I just feel like there can't be anyone out there with more than what otoh once had, or probably still has - as I think he might still be the largest holder. Certainly nobody would have much more.

There probably will never be any way to know for certain who owns a masternode or how many. I tell you I own 2, but you have to trust what I say. My daughters have one together and my son has one on his own. I manage all 4 and their votes go where I say they go, LOL. Mostly because they're not interested (something about having a life, I don't understand???)

So what if someone has > 10% of all masternodes? If they vote for something bad, others will vote against it, and I do think if something were egregiously bad, there would be an uproar and campaign to shut it down. I think the risk is minimal for the DDAO (Dash DAO, LOL)
 
Thank you for this, most helpful idea!

So, I've looked and looked, and have tried myself, but have come up empty: Is there an example of dash-cli darksend somewhere? When I attempt to use it, I encounter any number of errors:

error: {"code":-1,"message":"value is type str, expected real"}
error: {"code":-5,"message":"Invalid Dash address"}

Primarily my issue stems from the help text for this, rather important function, seems rather sub-optimal, or possibly misleading even:
$ ./dash-cli help darksend
darksend <dashaddress> <amount>
darksend <dashaddress> <amount> sure makes it seem pretty straight-forward and simple, yet when one attempts that syntax, it does not work :(
The error from the darksend call itself further muddies the water:
error: {"code":-1,"message":"darksend <dashaddress> <amount>\ndashaddress, reset, or auto (AutoDenominate)<amount> is a real and will be rounded to the next 0.1"}

Is there any clear documentation of this function anywhere, with working examples? I am unable to find any. Thanks for any help!!
 
Good question! I hardly ever use the dashd command line wallet, except to run a masternode, which is very limited. This is what I get:

Code:
~/Dash Wallet$ ./dash-cli help darksend
darksend <dashaddress> <amount>
dashaddress, reset, or auto (AutoDenominate)<amount> is a real and will be rounded to the next 0.1
Requires wallet passphrase to be set with walletpassphrase call.

What does it mean "is a real"? Ugh, no, this definitely needs cleaning up! (It probably means this is a real number, as in math, LOL) In the new wallet which is in testing, you get:

Code:
$ dash-cli help privatesend
privatesend "command"

Arguments:
1. "command"        (string or set of strings, required) The command to execute

Available commands:
  start       - Start mixing
  stop        - Stop mixing
  reset       - Reset mixing

Which is a little better.

Before you attempt to do any of these things, you need to unlock your wallet. Remember, only unlock your wallet "for denomination only" which doesn't allow funds to be withdrawn from the wallet:
Code:
beehive@beehive-server:~/Dash Wallet$ ./dash-cli help walletpassphrase
walletpassphrase "passphrase" timeout ( anonymizeonly )

Stores the wallet decryption key in memory for 'timeout' seconds.
This is needed prior to performing transactions related to private keys such as sending dashs

Arguments:
1. "passphrase"     (string, required) The wallet passphrase
2. timeout            (numeric, required) The time to keep the decryption key in seconds.
3. anonymizeonly      (boolean, optional, default=flase) If is true sending functions are disabled.
Note:
Issuing the walletpassphrase command while the wallet is already unlocked will set a new unlock
time that overrides the old one.

Examples:

Unlock the wallet for 60 seconds
> dash-cli walletpassphrase "my pass phrase" 60

Unlock the wallet for 60 seconds but allow Darksend mixing only
> dash-cli walletpassphrase "my pass phrase" 60 true

Lock the wallet again (before 60 seconds)
> dash-cli walletlock

As json rpc call
> curl --user myusername --data-binary '{"jsonrpc": "1.0", "id":"curltest", "method": "walletpassphrase", "params": ["my pass phrase", 60] }' -H 'content-type: text/plain;' http://127.0.0.1:9998/
so to unlock for denomination only you would do:
Code:
dash-cli walletpassphrase <passphrase> true
don't put a time in there because you don't want your wallet opened up for anything else but mixing, right?

So I believe, to mix your funds in our current version of dashd, you would do this command:
Code:
dash-cli darksend auto 2000
(2000 is current limit, you can put any amount you want to denominate and mix here - if it's more than you have, it's ok, it'll mix up to this amount)

if you want to send mixed funds, you would do it so:
Code:
dash-cli darksend <address to send to> <amount>

and you would not use the <>

OK, final thing I want to say is that you REALLY should go on testnet and try all these things out to see if they act the way you expect them to! I've never tested these dashd commands out, and would feel uncomfortable messing around with real Dash like this for the first time :)

Finally, er, 2: I don't know why you're not getting the right output when you try the help, but make sure you download the latest wallet ONLY from Dash.org and check the signatures!

As for the wiki, there is a lot of defunct and missing info there. I think more attention is given to the GUI wallet for certain, but still this should be cleaned up :) Unfortunately, I don't have the time ATM :p
 
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Oh, and 3rd finally:

I think you're trying to darksend funds but don't have any mixed funds to send, and so you're getting the weird "not real" message : meaning there is no "real" number in the darksend space. So, you simply have to mix your funds first (this takes a while) and have a balance of mixed funds before you can send any :) HOpe that helped?
 
@asabove.sobelow As tante suggests, it is a really good idea for anyone to make use of testnet... there you can play around at will with the many available commands and become familiar with assorted features of your wallet.
 
Oh, and 3rd finally:

I think you're trying to darksend funds but don't have any mixed funds to send, and so you're getting the weird "not real" message : meaning there is no "real" number in the darksend space. So, you simply have to mix your funds first (this takes a while) and have a balance of mixed funds before you can send any :) HOpe that helped?

Indeed! Thank you thank you - this is most helpful, and is the most thorough walkthrough I'm aware of - kudos!

However, when I issue the following command (to mix coins), it gives me an error:
$ ./dash-cli darksend auto 10

DoAutomaticDenominating failed: Darksend is idle.​
 
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@asabove.sobelow As tante suggests, it is a really good idea for anyone to make use of testnet... there you can play around at will with the many available commands and become familiar with assorted features of your wallet.
Yes thank you, this seems like sage advice - yet my questions still remain, as this function's documentation seems rather lacking (until this thread, that is...) :)
 
haha, you're not wrong there... I'm curious, where did you find description for command 'dash-cli darksend auto 10' ?

I simply followed the instructions above, from post #7:
So I believe, to mix your funds in our current version of dashd, you would do this command:
Code:
dash-cli darksend auto 2000
(2000 is current limit, you can put any amount you want to denominate and mix here - if it's more than you have, it's ok, it'll mix up to this amount)

I sub'd 10 instead of 2000, and that was the error message dash-cli output: "DoAutomaticDenominating failed: Darksend is idle."
 
I simply followed the instructions above, from post #7:


I sub'd 10 instead of 2000, and that was the error message dash-cli output: "DoAutomaticDenominating failed: Darksend is idle."
Congratulations! You found a bug! :)
Looks like cli command for DS doesn't really work and we never found this before because no one was actually using cli to mix or send mixed funds...
We should have this fixed in 12.1 (testnet only for now).
 
#DashForce
OK, I'm going to ask another question here to myself, LOL. Should Masternodes be able to hide their location so that no government or adversary can shut it down?

I'm hearing a lot about Masternodes needing to be hidden, and I guess that's because people are worried that governments can shut them down. Well, there is no way to have a network node of any usefulness unless that node can be found. We use IP addresses to find each other. If we use anything else, it wouldn't matter, because you HAVE to be found or you're worthless to the network. So what would happen if my Amazon hosted MN is shut down by the US government? It would take me all of 3-5 minutes to switch it back on in any corner of the world that has servers for rent. The bastards could make me lose up to 7-8 days of standing in line for a payment, but they can't keep my node down, never and no way.

What about the government trying to put blame on Masternode Owners for illegal activities committed by Dash users?

Sure, at some point the government will probably sue the MNs over something or other, trying to make them responsible for some illegal thing someone did-just like they're overstepping their boundaries with Coinbase right now, but just like with Coinbase (and you'll see, it will be so) when it goes to the supreme court, it will be rejected. It's easy to get a lower court to side with you. They can see things as "reasonable" any way they want, but the higher courts are held to the constitution, and have to take ultimate responsibility for the decisions it makes and their consequences.

And there are consequences. Lots of consequences. What about all the illegal activities performed with the use of cash? Heck, I'm sure lawyers can make all kinds of similar correlations between crypto-currencies and tons of other services and technologies that we simply can't live without. Service providers have already been cleared of responsibilities for many misuses of their technology, such as Google and porn etc.... These are all now long established case law.

But all that's besides the point.

All I want to say is, don't be afraid of the fight! There is no need to hide, and hiding would only weaken this thing called the "Crypto-Currency Revolution" Standing up for what we believe to be a good and righteous solution to the corruption that exists today with the current system is the only way to make lasting change. If I thought for a second that running a masternode were in any way wrong, for my country or my people, I wouldn't do it. Sure, there will have to be adjustments made, but there are many ways the government can still collect it's taxes, it'll just have to be done differently than today. This is called progress and growing pains come with progress. But the last thing we should do is hide!
 
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Ahh, I missed that... now I'm curious where @TanteStefana found that command. Sorry I can't help...
Oh, I found it by opening a dashd wallet and doing dash-cli help darksend which is weird to me, because usually in linux (admittedly I'm only familiar with Ubuntu) you would do something more like dashd-cli darksend -help - but that doesn't work here :p

And to be totally honest, I only knew to do dash-cli help darksend because @asabove.sobelow gave the hint in his question, LOL. BTW asabove.sobelow, what's handle on Dash Nation slack, you deserve a tip for finding a bug!!!
 
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