demo
Well-known member
yes they are!
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Proposal: Legal (Sept)
- Thread starter Ryan Taylor
- Start date
yes they are!
camosoul
Well-known member
Such as developing a layer of protection for MNOs so that they don't have to navigate this mess. Failure to do so will result in this legal fishing expedition doing nothing more than coming up with a long list of reasons to shut down masternodes and implement these same features into a 1-tier system... IX and DS can be done without MNs... Protect MNOs before it comes to that.
demo
Well-known member
Then why dont you add a proposal to the budget, about anonymizing MN and hide their IPs?
Dworf
Active member
Copy from my statement on dashcentral.org:
I just want to emphasize what I wrote before - this proposal is a complete waste of money and its dangerous on top. No lawyer is able to predict court decisions in an unknown field time ahead. On top the rules will change.
In a worst case this proposal can turn into disaster if eg. the answer for this question:
"Liability of exchanges that support Dash transactions ..."
would be:
"Everybody participating in potentially anonymous cryptocurrency may be held responsible for participating into crimes financed with it"
This would just be a snapshot in time opinion of a single lawyer who maybe has no experience with cryptocurrencies and needs to train himself. Anyways - the consequence would be a ban in many market places and a drop of the DASH price.
I just want to emphasize what I wrote before - this proposal is a complete waste of money and its dangerous on top. No lawyer is able to predict court decisions in an unknown field time ahead. On top the rules will change.
In a worst case this proposal can turn into disaster if eg. the answer for this question:
"Liability of exchanges that support Dash transactions ..."
would be:
"Everybody participating in potentially anonymous cryptocurrency may be held responsible for participating into crimes financed with it"
This would just be a snapshot in time opinion of a single lawyer who maybe has no experience with cryptocurrencies and needs to train himself. Anyways - the consequence would be a ban in many market places and a drop of the DASH price.
I think some people are thinking that we are just asking these lawyers for their advise and hoping for the best. What you may not realize is that a "legal opinion letter" is actually a formal document and is heavily relied on in business transactions. See: http://businesslaw.calbar.ca.gov/Pu...usinessTransactions/DefinitionandPurpose.aspx
A legal opinion letter shows investors, regulators, and courts that you did your due diligence. This can be a powerful mitigating factor in any future legal case, because you can demonstrate that you did your best to answer these questions of law and comply with them. Organizations often seek similar letters from reputable accounting firms. If the IRS later finds the organization to have used improper accounting, a formal opinion will go a long way in mitigating any penalties. The tax will still be owed, but the IRS and the court will see that there was no wilful tax avoidance (the kind that can land you in prison).
This is not some ambulance chasing attorney; this is a widely recognized law firm specializing in cryptocurrency/blockchain technology. Seeking a formal opinion from them will carry a great deal of weight in the event of future dealings with courts or regulators. In turn, this will help satisfy exchanges, major investors, and business partners.
With respect to Apple's recent demand that Jaxx remove Dash from their wallet...how do you think Apple might respond if we could forward them a legal opinion letter from a highly respected and reputable legal firm? Firms that don't understand Dash may not wish to take any chances with respect to the legality of PrivateSend, etc., and a formal legal opinion can help significantly in that regard.
tl;dr No, a legal opinion letter is not a guarantee of how a court or regulator might rule, but it is an important formal document that carries a great deal of weight. The law is a highly specialized field, and providing all the relevant case law in a formal document can go a long way toward informing and persuading a judge.
A legal opinion letter shows investors, regulators, and courts that you did your due diligence. This can be a powerful mitigating factor in any future legal case, because you can demonstrate that you did your best to answer these questions of law and comply with them. Organizations often seek similar letters from reputable accounting firms. If the IRS later finds the organization to have used improper accounting, a formal opinion will go a long way in mitigating any penalties. The tax will still be owed, but the IRS and the court will see that there was no wilful tax avoidance (the kind that can land you in prison).
This is not some ambulance chasing attorney; this is a widely recognized law firm specializing in cryptocurrency/blockchain technology. Seeking a formal opinion from them will carry a great deal of weight in the event of future dealings with courts or regulators. In turn, this will help satisfy exchanges, major investors, and business partners.
With respect to Apple's recent demand that Jaxx remove Dash from their wallet...how do you think Apple might respond if we could forward them a legal opinion letter from a highly respected and reputable legal firm? Firms that don't understand Dash may not wish to take any chances with respect to the legality of PrivateSend, etc., and a formal legal opinion can help significantly in that regard.
tl;dr No, a legal opinion letter is not a guarantee of how a court or regulator might rule, but it is an important formal document that carries a great deal of weight. The law is a highly specialized field, and providing all the relevant case law in a formal document can go a long way toward informing and persuading a judge.
What happens if the overall legal response is not very healthy / positive? We will adapt, right? How will we adapt? - we will comply or we will rebel? And so this is the problem; MNOs have been voting for projects but we've never been asked about the overall strategic goals.. do we want a compliant system that works with government, or will we accept to break rules so that we can re-imagine money? The answer to that question would help us enormously in deciding for this proposal and the other related proposals e.g. ATM Master Compliance Program etc. We are potentially sleepwalking into danger by doing this one proposal at a time.
On a related note, I am concerned that a small number of MNOs are effectively pooling their votes to push these things through. If that is true (or can be imagined as true in the future), then I think we need to move to a MNO registration scheme and reject any nodes not registered against a MNO. I wouldn't want that but how else can we stop a select few from controlling a significant share of the votes?
On a related note, I am concerned that a small number of MNOs are effectively pooling their votes to push these things through. If that is true (or can be imagined as true in the future), then I think we need to move to a MNO registration scheme and reject any nodes not registered against a MNO. I wouldn't want that but how else can we stop a select few from controlling a significant share of the votes?
The system is designed so that 1 masternode = 1 vote. It's not intended to be democratic (1 person = 1 vote). That's the way Proof of Work consensus functions as well, in that 1 hash essentially equates to 1 vote.
Let me give you an example: let's say that that budget system was somehow changed to be 1 person = 1 vote. Those who operate large numbers of masternodes could simply refuse to upgrade to that new version of dashd, which would prevent such a change from going into effect.
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demo
Well-known member
Yes of course, the system is designed like that. But the design can change, if the masternodes decide about it.
You have to set the maximum number of votes a unique person should have, to avoid sybil attacks. This of course requires also a web of trust, or any other individuality check scheme.
What is the solution to this? Vote with numbers of course, what else? Currently you have set the maximum votes a unique person is allowed to have to the total number of masternodes. This is a hardcoded magic number, and hardcoded magic numbers should always be voted. So you need a vote asking about the maximum number of votes someone should be allowed to have. Everybody should cast a number vote inbetween 1 and the number of all masternodes (the number of masternodes varies of course, so you may vote from 0 to 1 and all the inbetween numbers, where 0 corresponds to 1 vote and 1 corresponds to the number of all masternodes). And then calculate the result as an average.
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Sorry, I probably didn't explain well enough. I wasn't thinking one person one vote... I was thinking more of a sliding scale, that a person with 100% of nodes would have zero votes and a person with one node would have one equal vote. Thus, MNOs would be forced to choose between profits or politics (provided we could determine unique humans).
I say this because the last I looked (a very long time ago), Evan had well over 300 nodes and, in theory, a compounding of nodes (profits generating new nodes), would eventually lead to domination.
FungibilityMan
Member
Thats not a half bad idea.... seems to me yes/no votes create alot of confusion about general direction of Dash and simplifies it too much, IMO.
... and collusion among MNO's is still going to be a concern, just like mining.
True, the masternodes can decide to change the system. But why would they vote to take power away from themselves? Sybil attacks are avoided by requiring ownership of 1000 DASH per vote...even a person like Otoh with $4.5 million in DASH only has about 10% of the total votes.
The number of maximum votes is not hardcoded; it's simply TOTAL DASH IN EXISTENCE / 1000. The 1000 DASH per MN number is hardcoded and arbitrary, but not the maximum number of votes. Remember, the DASH DAO is being modeled after what has already been proven to work in the real world (corporations with shareholder votes, in which one share = one vote). Why reinvent the wheel? Further, shouldn't voting power be proportional to money at stake? If I have $1,000,000 invested in DASH, shouldn't I have proportionally more votes than somebody with $15,000 invested?
About a year ago, Elbereth said that Evan had 270 nodes. He's been very generous in using his own funds for various things (such as paying 1176 of his own DASH to Core Team last December when the budgets didn't finalize, and also covering about half the costs of his early conference trips that were not fully covered by the budget system). The person with the most votes is Otoh, who has reduced his nodes from 450 to about 400 in the last year. He also abstains from voting on most proposals in order to keep from having undue influence.
demo
Well-known member
Please read carrefully what I have said. I am not talking about the number of maximum votes in dash. I am talking about the number of maximum votes a unique person or organization should be allowed to have!
The number of maximum votes is of course TOTAL DASH IN EXISTENCE / 1000 (1000 is also a hardcoded number, but lets discuss this later). But the maximum votes a unique person or organization should be allowed to have is currently set to the number of maximum votes, and this is hardcoded.
Proposals pass when 10% is reached (10% is also a hardcoded number, but lets discuss this later). Is it correct for a unique person (or centralized organization) to be allowed to have 10% of the votes thus be able to pass whatever proposal he wishes? Especially if he cast his votes the last minute this is very probable.....
What if the United States decides to buy 51% of dash votes. They have the money to buy whatever they want, they print dollars the way you printed dash, for free. Are you going to allow this? You will sell dash if decentralization is NOT one of your core values, but you will not allow this to happen if decentralizaion is one of your core values. So let those who believe in decentralization, and those who dont care about it, to vote about the maximum votes someone should be allowed to have, and let them vote using numbers.
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The 1000 Dash (and the 10% threshold) are both hardcoded arbitrary numbers, I agree.
Technically 10% net votes is simply the minimum threshold to pass, which works fine if the budget isn't full. If the budget is full, then the actual threshold is NET VOTES OF LEAST SUPPORTED PASSING PROPOSAL + 1. Right now, by voting at the last possible second before budget finalization, a person with 10% of the vote could give himself exactly 50 DASH. To vote himself a payment of 275 DASH would require just over 13% of net votes (666 votes). Seizing the entire budget would require 45% of the votes (1792).
Hypothetically, let's say we have a person with 1792 votes, which is at least 1,792,000 DASH. He could, at most, steal 7,450 DASH in one month which would increase his DASH holdings by 0.4%. It would also probably crash the value of DASH, so if you're economically motivated, it's a loss.
If a state actor or other entity attempted to by 51% of the DASH in existence, the value of DASH would soar so high that we could all cash out as very rich individuals. We could then launch an exact duplicate of the DASH network, a fork, and continue about our business without any government ownership of our coins...unless they wanted to buy up that entire supply as well. Then it's rinse, repeat.
In any event, how would you limit the number of votes a person can cast? The only way to do that would be to require registration by social security number, which nobody would do. No other method would work...VPNs get around IP restrictions, email addresses are easy to Sybil...
It's the same problem Ethereum had when it came to their crowdsale. They very much wanted to keep any one person from buying "too much" ether, but couldn't figure out a way to do that.
demo
Well-known member
Of course there is a method that works. You can organize cryptoparty assemblies, where people appear physicaly and give their digital credentials without revealing their identity or give any social security number.
You can organize an assembly (once every 2 years for example), where all masternode owners should appear physically and ask their number of votes, as long as they can prove to the others how many masternodes they own. Those masternode owners do not need to present any social security number, and in case the meeting is a closed door meeting, they can also be disguised. The physical presence is what matters, so masternode owners only need to give a nickname of their choice to be accosiated with the number of votes they claim.
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That's good to hear, thank you. Unfortunately, we can't guarantee future stakeholders will have such morals. To be fair, we could ever guarantee that.. but I do wonder if a sliding scale between votes and profits might be a better option in the long run.
I don't think you're going to get many masternode owners to agree to such a system (I'm certainly not traveling somewhere with my private keys to receive "permission" to vote!). Still worse, however, is the fact that a government or a competing organization could simply kill/arrest/kidnap/steal from anybody who showed up!
This is very true--you can't count on the altruism of people for something this important. On the other hand, short of making everybody submit social security numbers or present themselves in one physical location to welcome violence against themselves, I don't see how you can implement such a system.
In time, as the price of DASH increases, some of these large holders will sell (or spend) their DASH and the problem should decrease. In the long run, I think our bigger problem is low voter participation. Even our least controversial, longest running proposal (Core Team payments) has only received votes from under half of all masternode owners!
Of all the proposals submitted this month, the most "popular" has been voted on by only 28% of the network. How do we solve that? Mandatory voting has a lot of risks, because when people have to do something, they just go in and start voting "yes" to everything (or "no" to everything) in order to get the chore over with...
demo
Well-known member
You will not travel with your private keys!
You will travel with a public key of your choice, printed in QR code. In the assembly, you put this printed public key into a physical ballot box. Everyone who attends the assembly do the same. Then the printed public keys are counted and expected to be equal to the number of people that attend the meeting. Everyone leaves the assembly having the list of all public keys. Those keys are considered now as a proof of individuality, that can be used for now on in the internet in order to prove that you are a real person. Many similar assemblies can be organized in several towns, as long as those assemblies are absolutely concurrent, and a web of trust among those assemblies is established. Having this proof of individuality in your hands, you can now claim in the internet your masternode votes, by signing the public keys of the masternodes with the private key of the printed public key you put into the physical ballot box.
So there is no fear for someone to steal you in the assembly. If you are afraid that someone may kill/arrest/kidnap you in the assembly, then you can give the printed public key that is about to be put in the ballot box to a lawyer, and send him to attend the assembly on your behalf!
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You will not travel with your private keys!
You will travel with a public key of your choice, printed in QR code. In the assembly, you put this printed public key into a physical ballot box.
...
So there is no fear for someone to steal you in the assembly. If you are afraid that someone may kill/arrest/kidnap you in the assembly, then you can give the printed public key that is about to be put in the ballot box to a lawyer, and send him to attend the assembly on your behalf!
Then why couldn't I hire 100 lawyers (or better yet, just 100 regular actors) to go present my public keys in my stead?