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More power to the rich?

@Kim Koldtoft
It is only a poor analogy insofar as he could try to do it in secret and the blockchain is transparent. People will instantly know if there is water in the beer and how much. I stand by it.
 
lynx said:
@Kim Koldtoft
It is only a poor analogy insofar as he could try to do it in secret and the blockchain is transparent. People will instantly know if there is water in the beer and how much. I stand by it.
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Or in so far, that you do it to such a small degree, that it harms each customer only very little but benefits you allot. Like you add 1 drop of water to each bear, and because you have 1000 restaurant, you save a fortune and the customers don't really care about 1 drop. It is exactly like inflation, which would be my primary concern.
 
Kim Koldtoft said:
They care if they lose all their money, or even any money, but that is not correlated to the overall health off the Dash community.
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Don't agree. Value Dash up, everybody wins. Value Dash down, everybody loses. Please provide an example for above statement, it's not realistic.
Kim Koldtoft said:
Can you not imagine a change that would benefit the masternodes economically, while damaging the overall community?
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No. I don't see the difference between what is good for somebody holding 5 Dash or 500 Dash.
 
Super simplified example:
I am a Masternode and I Vote to create 1000 dash and give them to me. 5 minutes after I get my 1000 dash, I sell all my (now 2000) dash at full current value.
A few weeks later, the value of Dash will go down a little due to inflation, but I don't care, because I am out.

In fact, I don't even have to be out. I can just sell the 1000 dash I gave myself, so even if my remaining 1000 dash, lose some of their value, it is still a net gain for me.
 
There are a couple of issues here. First of all, the fixed number of 1000 dash is not only a problem to "the poor", it's also a problem from the other side; that deep pockets might be buying up whole masternodes. But then again, dash is not claiming to be a non-profit. Dash has both centralised and decentralised components. All cryptos are effectively distributed businesses with varying degrees of centralisation-dencentralised. And thus the end users ultimately decides which ones have the winning formula. The overall outcome is not a single crypto ("business"), there will be multiple winners, all with their own unique take on things. Computer programming languages would make a good analogy; there's a handful that have stood the test of time, though their position in the league tables change. More diversified cryptos are coming, such as those issued by governments.

Regarding governance, I think it would be wise for dash to look at how decred uses PoS-PoW to manage it's protocol; everyone gets the chance to buy voting tickets and earn some rewards in the process.... but decred is a long way from being grandma-friendly.

Generally speaking, you're not alone with your concerns. But having said that, there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes.
 
As a relatively fresh masternode owner that invested a big chunk of life savings into it, I can tell you that I definitely won't vote for anything that hurts Dash as a whole.
No governance mechanism is perfect, but I think that Dash masternode system is one of the better ones and that's why I got into Dash in the first place.
Also, I fully expect to have to invest into the hardware of the masternode down the line, so I can support the network as it grows and starts putting more demands on masternodes.

As someone already said, cryptocurrency market is extremely competitive and people will very quickly shift to some other currency if masternodes start making bad decisions.
 
This is how it works in the real world:
- I create proposal to give myself 1000 Dash.
- Every other MNO is like *grin* and votes it down like a mofo.
Please come up with something realistic.
 
Vedran Yoweri said:
This is how it works in the real world:
- I create proposal to give myself 1000 Dash.
- Every other MNO is like *grin* and votes it down like a mofo.
Please come up with something realistic.
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The example is simple, to avoid a debate about practicalities and variables, of which there are an infinite amount.

So another example I just made up... There are plans for a system where people can make interest on Dash if they "lock" them in a savings account (or at least so I have herd, I don't know the details). Sounds like a brilliant idea to me... So should a bigger saving yield a higher % interest, like it is in a bank? How is a decision like that, not affected by the amount of Dash you have?

I have 10 Dash, I think everyone should get the same % of interest on their savings
I have 1000 Dash, I think more Dash should yield a higher % of interest, exactly like it is in a bank.

And even if this is a non issue, for this example I just came up with, it seems naive to assume that no decision like that, will ever come up, and that the people who are in the "non voting class" won't view that as a negative.

And as I wrote in my original post, I think this is mostly a perception issue.
 
The % of interest should be the same, regardless of the amount (I'm pretty sure that's how it works in banks also, at least in my country). But there must be some additional income for masternodes because they also have hardware costs involved and they have to pay monthly for hosting.

Also, if any masternode tries or even succeeds in pushing a harmful decision for the Dash ecosystem, the rest of the masternodes will quickly vote to plug that hole in the future, so it can't happen again.
 
Kim Koldtoft said:
I have 10 Dash, I think everyone should get the same % of interest on their savings
I have 1000 Dash, I think more Dash should yield a higher % of interest, exactly like it is in a bank.
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MNO would choose the best option for the value of the Dash, like in every vote.
Some choices will be hard, but that's not an argument.
 
@Dandy it's pretty common that you get a higher interest if you deposit more, at least in Europe. I would be surprised if this was different in other places, but I don't know.

However, this was back before the interest went to negative. Now having money in the bank, costs interest....
 
@Vedran Yoweri
The argument is not that choices will be hard. The argument is that some choices will give MNO's a direct financial incentive to vote in a way, that might harm the overall Dash economy.

To stay with the interest on locked funds example..

Let's assume some users will be displeased and chose another Crypto, if they feel the that it's unfair that they earn 2% on their 10 Dash, while others earn 4% on their 1000 Dash. And that extra 2% extra benefits me directly as a masternode, and does not harm the total Dash economy enough, to have the rest of my Dash lose 2% of their value.

So clearly my financial incentives are not aligned with the health and growth of the Dash economy.

And this is just one pretend example I just made up. In the real world, every decision have many variables, and I dont think it's resonable to assume, that they will always be aligned
 
It's not in the interest of masternode to do anything that will hurt the Dash value, just the contrary.
A few percent bonus is worth much less then if the base price of the Dash coin raises. Remember that any raise in the Dash value is multiplied by that 1000 Dash that the masternode holds. So logically masternode will always do the thing that is the best for the long-term interest of the whole network.
 
I don't think it will actually pay interest, I think the idea is "interest-like". MNOs must be paid more to uphold the original intention; incentive to support the network.

The thing no one has mentioned yet is that the reward to end-users must start very low because otherwise there's a real danger a lot of MNOs will sell their MNs and simply dump some of the capital gains into the newfangled wallet! If the newfangled wallet was paying the same as an MN (or anything close to it), then why the hell would they sit on all that capital?
 
@GrandMasterDash
I think those are two different things. Dash paying interest is as far as I have understood, an upcoming feature of Dash evolution, and a completely separate thing from what Masternodes are being paid for..

But it's a very good and valid point that the interest payment of locked funds should not be higher than the reward for Masternodes. Which makes this example kind of mute. But it was just an example I made up..
 
Kim Koldtoft said:
I am new to Dash and at this early stage, very excited about the project. So excited even, that I exchanged half of my bitcoin to Dash. To a great extend, thanks to the great work of Amanda and her DASH: Detailed videos. Very informative.

However
I am curious as to what the community's thoughts are on the mechanism, that allows master nodes to vote on changes to the protocol, as well as allocation of funds. (If I have understood this correctly).

My concern is 70% in the perception this could give and 30% the practical challenges it could cause.

If Dash picks up, it's very likely, that the funds required to run a master node, could be (and would have to be) out of reach for the typical (non early investor, non tech geek) consumer, who I believe is the target consumer.

So I suspect, the question that everyone will be asking, is...
What prevents this rich minority, to vote in changes that is to their own advantage, at the cost of the average consumer, exactly like the so called 1% does now, by using their resources and influence to affect the law makes

In these early phases, this is not a problem, as the master nodes are economically motivated, to have Dash becomes a commercial success, but once that has been achieved, won't this become a widely spread concern, among regular users?


Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated

Kind regards,
Kim Koldtoft
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Masternodes are just smart people that risked and risk they're money everyday for a project that may or may not work out.

You do with your money what you like, I do with my money what I like.
 
Vedran Yoweri said:
Could someone explain this to me: "But I specifically mentioned that once Dash becomes main-stream, those values might no longer align."
How or why would these values no longer align?
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He makes an argument that, once Dash becomes too expensive say each Dash goes in the thousands or tens of thousands (hopefully) then each masternode is basically part of the 1% of society, and thus will overtime fail to understand the needs of the 99%.
 
Kim Koldtoft said:
Let me try to explain the logic that I am advocating a little better then. Imagine a future where 1000 people own 1000 dash each, which is valued at 1 billion USD in today's money. The average user use Dash as their main currency. They get paid their salary, pay their bills ect. and obviously they will never come anyway near 1000 dash. But if they all pool together, they might outnumber the 1000 masternodes.

The interest of the 1000 billionaires are clearly not perfectly aligned with the interest of the common users. So what is to prevent them from adding fee's that goes to the Masternotes, or some other measure of that sort, that benefits them, but harms the users.

I understand that the users could then change to another Crypto, but that Masternodes don't care, because it's not in their interest to keep Dash alive. It's in their interest to maximize their own income. So it makes sense to have a system in place that keeps the Masternodes in check or in some way makes sure that the Masternodes incentives are always aligned with the majority of the Dash community (users).




I apparently did not make myself clear enough. Sorry about that. I was not trying to communicate that Masternodes was not tech-geeks. I get that they are.
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It's called capitalism and it's called competition.

Cryptocurrencies are now competing with the Federal Reserve, bout damn time.

If the desires of the MNOs at some point do not align with the 99% then eventually a competing cryptocurrency will take over. Just like you are seeing now that the market share of Bitcoin is going down in relation to the market share of Dash. We are competing with Bitcoin because we do not agree with the things Bitcoin Devs are doing.
 
lynx said:
Yeah, @Vedran Yoweri , that's because it makes no sense.

It's like a restaurant owner that managed to please his costumers so well he became a billionaire owner of a chain of restaurants. All of a sudden, he will buy a top hat and monocle and stop caring about the quality of his food. Then he can just add water to the beer and serve rotten food, as long as he doesn't overdo it.
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McDonald's?
 
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