Self-sustainable Decentralized Governance by Blockchain

[Solarminer]

- There is no tax. All the funds belong initially to the network and it distributes them depending on what it needs. A lot of what I have read in this thread revolves around this fundamental difference. Whatever portion of funds are allocated to development belong to this separate category and would go to the development of the ecosystem. Is just a different model.

This point keeps coming up and I would like to address it. Is the 15% donation a tax?

• If the 15% Donation amount is taken from miners or masternodes and is not able to be returned to miners/MN by a veto vote or no projects vote in, then this is a tax.
• If the 15% Donation can be returned to miners/MNs by a veto vote or no projects voted in, then it is a donation or a loan if returned.

Who loses, when these funds are taken from the 'network' assuming the 40% mining/45% MN/15% Donation split?

• This 15% is taken from miners(if implement now)
  
• The 15% is taken from masternodes(if implemented after 3/2016 when the expected MN block rewards are expected to be maxed out at 60% and mining rewards reduce to 40%).
• The 15% is also a tax on the network too. It will either lower the mining hashrate(less coin security) or lower masternode count(less transaction/darksend speed and less investment).

If this was a brand new coin, and the 15% was taken at the start of the coin, sure, I would say this is a network owned block reward %. Since 100% of the block rewards are getting distributed now with DASH, taking 15% out of the ecosystem isn't a network owned asset anymore.

 

[thelonecrouton]

- There is no tax. All the funds belong initially to the network and it distributes them depending on what it needs. A lot of what I have read in this thread revolves around this fundamental difference. Whatever portion of funds are allocated to development belong to this separate category and would go to the development of the ecosystem.

The proposed model is very plainly a tax.

Forced development of the 'ecosystem' is doomed. Any ecosystem needs to be independently viable without continuous enforced-charity cash injections from the infrastructure providers. Core money funding core development is fine if that's what people want, but core money funding 3rd party enterprises is not.

 

[alex-ru]

If this was a brand new coin, and the 15% was taken at the start of the coin, sure, I would say this is a network owned block reward %. Since 100% of the block rewards are getting distributed now with DASH, taking 15% out of the ecosystem isn't a network owned asset anymore.

1. Tax - is when system takes away something that you own. New model won't take away any coins people already own.
2. Or hidden tax - is when additional money is issuing (tax through inflation). New model won't issue any additional inflationary coins.

So it is not about taxation - it is all only about distribution of new (planned) coins (amount exactly was planned to be issued anyway). It is just a changing distribution model.

Previously DASH distribution model was already changed 1 time (miners started to receive less than 100%, not because of "MN taxation" - but because system changed distribution model for more efficient and viable model.) First time - this change was dictated by developers.

Now it is time to change distribution model in second time. Now - this change isn't dictated by developers. Now System (but not you, I, Evan, ...) will vote if it is needed a change to new distribution model. So it is much more democratic and I hope more effective.

MN (but not miners or all users) will vote for this just because they are more stable and most interested in Dash's success - to make right decision. It doesn't mean that they (or miners, or ...) "own all future issuing coins, so new model is a taxation".

Only System itself own all new coins and can decide how to distribute them more effectively - for the whole System to survive. IMHO.

Bitcoin has fixed distribution model "forward 100% - to protection".
DASH can be more clever, flexible and development oriented - this is a base for our long-term excellence.

 

[Solarminer]

1. Tax - is when system takes away something that you own. New model won't take away any coins people already own.
2. Or hidden tax - is when additional money is issuing (tax through inflation). New model won't issue any additional inflationary coins.
So it is not about taxation.

Incorrect. There is a 'contract' in place to pay miners 55% of the block rewards now. See page 1 of the ANN DASH thread for details. Take away %15 and that is a tax.

By your assesment, paying an income tax is not a tax because it only takes away from future income.

 

[raganius]

- There is no tax. All the funds belong initially to the network and it distributes them depending on what it needs. A lot of what I have read in this thread revolves around this fundamental difference. Whatever portion of funds are allocated to development belong to this separate category and would go to the development of the ecosystem. Is just a different model.
(...)

Minotaur, I am aware of the importance of the solutions that our community needs. Your great post "Dash: Filling the gaps..." is enough to show how fragile DASH can be without a proper and solid paying for its core developers. As you have said there: "Masternode voted funding could be a great way to ensure the long term viability of the project, pay core developers, etc.". And no one can deny it is really an important issue.

What worries most, as I see it, is not if the proposed solution is or isn't a tax (I, for example, could agree to pay a tax if it is considered necessary). The focus is: How safe it is, in the long run, to create a Pork Barrel (as it's been named here)? How will it be controlled? Who will be taking care of it? What if these accumulated funds become a target for thugs, governments and the like?

We are here today, we TRUST you, we TRUST each other... but others will arrive... If we build a fragile system, these others might find the opportunity to take advantage from it. Will our solution be based on TRUST?

Directing money to development, research, marketing, legal issues, foundation, etc, I agree, are indeed important. But do we really have to create a fund/escrow/budgeting/savings account/etc... accumulated money, instead of block rewards?

Miners receive block rewards from their work, and only while they work. If a miner is not serving the network there's no accumulation, no "miners pork barrel". The same with Masternodes, they receive block rewards from their work, and only while they work. If a Masternode is not serving the network there's no accumulation, no "MN pork barrel". Why can't we simply direct block rewards to this "third category" as they work and only while they work? Why not pay a developer directly in his address from newly mined blocks during the period he's serving the community according to a voted proposal, without the need to a previous accumulation of money?

There will be a sensible solution. I believe we are nearly there, after all, we already have the necessary tools.

 

[deusstultus]

Solarminer Some snippets:

I was not really endorsing long term use of donation metrric, more a "don't shift radically to solve something that could be similarly implemented with less breakage." This methodology could be implemented without the hardfork inherent in the 15% add. Same for the foundation really, assuming a level of community trust in the foundation allows go ahead on community voted objectives before the masternode voting model could be reasonably backed in qualified code, allowing for quicker rollout of a voting method with pillars of community being relied upon to enact decisions with reasonable confidence. Not by any means a long term solution and certainly not without risk. That said, a living legal entity charged with enforcing such decisions is a boon given the current sociopolitical societal state, much of the reason the Bitcoin Foundation and comparable entities exist.

As for my implementation notes, a lot of this was thoughts I'd been tooling with regarding a "Kickstarter" type engine before seeing this post so I ran off some ideas, some of which I'd surely scrub tomorrow in looking at again as this was a fresh venture on my part. I do feel my "opt-out" case to be viable, if not necessary, however. I thought of this after pushing out the earlier ideas and tagged it in post rather than detailing as I probably should have. If the goal here is to support the network, each masternode could reasonably be expected to contribute a level of service, but need not commit to projects they do not see merit in despite differing opinions in the community. With a voting system, we're very black/white on fund/not. My thoughts allow blockchain driven prioritization of activities as well. If only 10 masternodes out of 2500 opt to fund a project consistently, it would be inherently lower in priority than one funded by 1000 / 2500 masternodes, even if the votes stood at 2000/2500 saying "should implement" for both.

Not to mention the fact that this permits anyone to fund any campaigns anonymously from darksend funds, furthering the reaching project goals, while promoting the coin directly. I'll stew on some more thoughts over the next day or two, take the time to actually read this thread in full and bounce back a more thought out implementation on this track in the week. Again, I'm more for network stability and limiting hard forks which adding template elements encourages. This coin has historically been willing to adapt to these forks and was a decent part in its inception, but it's not something that should continue to happen long term. We need a fair amount of thought and QA effort on mainnet put in before such elements become live and I'm simply trying to seed ideas for alternative paths to make this work smoothly as I don't have much opportunity to code it out myself at present.

 

[alex-ru]

Directing money to development, research, marketing, legal issues, foundation, etc, I agree, are indeed important. But do we really have to create a fund/escrow/budgeting/savings account/etc... accumulated money, instead of block rewards?

Miners receive block rewards from their work, and only while they work. If a miner is not serving the network there's no accumulation, no "miners pork barrel". The same with Masternodes, they receive block rewards from their work, and only while they work. If a Masternode is not serving the network there's no accumulation, no "MN pork barrel". Why can't we simply direct block rewards to this "third category" as they work and only while they work? Why not pay a developer directly in his address from newly mined blocks during the period he's serving the community according to a voted proposal, without the need to a previous accumulation of money?

There will be a sensible solution. I believe we are nearly there, after all, we already have the necessary tools.

I believe that for Research, Developing and Marketing (RDM) DASH needs exactly! "accumulated funds", because of "offline"-nature of this part of System.
With "digital world" you can easily switching on and off, scale the level, necessary part of "source" and so on...
Scaling works with Mining, MNoding, but it wouldn't work for offline-work like RDM.

We can't switch on and off additional developers several times a day, we can't pay for promotion videos on "pay-per-click, pay-per-view models". We have to "pay-per-create", pay a whole amount at once (sometime even in advance), and then use result "for free" for a long period. This is not bad, this is a feature.

Imagine you need to create a new house, and you are ready to pay for this task let's say "1.000$ per month". We have no banking-mortgage in crypto so best idea is not start build from day one, but first accumulate at least 10.000-50.000$ for this task.
Another example - I have small source of water, but I want to swim in a swimming pool - I have to wait until necessary amount will have accumulated...
Same with RDM and many other non-digital projects.

We need to be less "theoretical", but more "practical" with RDM.
One good thing - we can change (same way - by MN voting) way of spending RDM-funds (or even distribution model) it a future to make it even more effective (or correct errors). So there is no need to argue about it now, "theoretically" - we can go more practical and then to correct actual practical results).

Sorry - it's hard to me to explain it in English clear - sorry.

 

[Solarminer]

Solarminer With a voting system, we're very black/white on fund/not. My thoughts allow blockchain driven prioritization of activities as well. If only 10 masternodes out of 2500 opt to fund a project consistently, it would be inherently lower in priority than one funded by 1000 / 2500 masternodes, even if the votes stood at 2000/2500 saying "should implement" for both.

We want a voting system so that projects can be prioritized and funded sufficiently. Your suggesting a voluntary donation model - no minimum masternode agreement %, and a floating funding amount. There is no need for a voting system with this model, just a donation address.

The voting model allows a majority of masternodes(51% yes vote) to decide what projects have value. Those projects get funded from all the masternodes(no masternodes get a free ride). The % will vary by project could be 10% or .1%(any %) depending on project. The total funding % will be determined by the projects that are voted in. The projects with the highest yes votes(above the 51%) will go first. We have been talking about a 15% maximum for all projects, but this could start at 5% or something, although I don't see this as necessary.

 

[Solarminer]

I believe that for Research, Developing and Marketing (RDM) DASH needs exactly! "accumulated funds", because of "offline"-nature of this part of System.
With "digital world" you can easily switching on and off, scale the level, necessary part of "source" and so on...
Scaling works with Mining, MNoding, but it wouldn't work for offline-work like RDM.

We can't switch on and off additional developers several times a day, we can't pay for promotion videos on "pay-per-click, pay-per-view models". We have to "pay-per-create", pay a whole amount at once (sometime even in advance), and then use result "for free" for a long period. This is not bad, this is a feature.

There are a few ways to make what you are talking about work.

$1000 project for video.

• We can negotiate and say that we only pay when the video is complete.(ideal) Project owner collects block rewards and pays when video is complete.
  
• We can work with a project owner who is trustworthy and have them fund the project, in return for the block rewards over 3 months. Maybe they get a fee to front the funds upfront.
• The project owner collects the block rewards until there are enough funds to pay for the project.

Alternatively, if you are thinking that a slush fund for all projects will be faster, we would still have to wait until enough funds have accumulated to pay for a project. A combined project fund is only more complicated to manage priorities and access to the account.

I do see that a project for certain RDM funds could work. Maybe used for several smaller items, but this would need to be clearly defined so it wasn't just an open checkbook project.

 

[raganius]

So, the problem "justifying" a "pork barrel" would be, according to this reasoning:

(...) We have no banking-mortgage in crypto so best idea is not start build from day one, but first accumulate (...)

I should propose: instead of creating an "accumulation" which could eventually reveal itself to be a "weakness", we should better create a parallel system of "cooperative P2P loans" specific for approved DASH projects.

On such system (perhaps built on top of the Masternode network), voted-approved DASH projects which demand the dreaded "payments in advance" would be funded by lenders which will later receive their invested monies plus interest directly from future block rewards. So, in this case, the DASH network would act as a "borrower" when approved projects demand so.
This would avoid the problem of TRUST as we would no longer have a "pork barrel".

It's an example from the many possible solutions: in this case, a trustless independent parallel system, not endangering DASH directly. No bag of money to be targeted. Anyone could be a "lender/investor", even anonymously through Darksend. The interest rates could be adjusted by network consensus (voting, or better yet, by "market forces").

In the more "practical" world, not always the easiest solutions are the best, long term wise :wink:

 

[deusstultus]

I should propose: instead of creating an "accumulation" which could eventually reveal itself to be a "weakness", we should better create a parallel system of "cooperative P2P loans" specific for approved DASH projects.

This was exactly my thought with the mention of considering use of transaction locks held by masternodes who receive the coinbase tx. With proper implementation, these become held to a function and burned if not appropriated according to masternode voting, or with some tweaks to darksend allow these coins to circulate constantly while preserving UTXO locks on their outputs preventing their use except in mixing. This does create more meta-traffic, but otherwise seems theoretically viable. I am wary of using long-term multisig across the network as masternodes need not have expectation of lasting forever, and pooling to some owned fund is unacceptable.

I'd still rather not see forcing 3 outputs (miner, masternode, fund) in the coinbase if we can restrict this to 2 (miner,masternode) and worry about the routing of some percentage of masternode earnings by locking the masternode coinbase transaction, forcing it to go through darkmix, where as long as some percentage of the darkmix output goes back to the masternode address, the transaction is approved and his share of payment is securely in a personal wallet secured by darkmix tracing. The UTXOs at the masternode then again held in lock for some period for funding. If the protocol breaks or something, these coins have no risk of being burned as the transaction lock can be removed.

 

[stan.distortion]

Oops, not been keeping up and nearly missed this. Hats off, yet another "OMFG" inducing moment 30 pages to catch up on and this has probably been suggested already, building from or integrating with Liquid Feedback could maybe save some work:
http://liquidfeedback.org/

 

[Solarminer]

I would like to keep the voting/project funding discussion separate from the P2P lending. Lending is risky, and that risk should not be forced on Masternodes or the network. There would likely be an interest charge for lending which would be determined by the lender/borrower. All this is not directly related DASH and already exists. Check out:
Bitcoin P2P
www.btcjam.com
www.bitbond.com
$ P2P
www.prosper.com
www.lendingclub.com

Lending for certain projects that need upfront funding can be managed by the project owner. Most of the projects will be based on man hours anyway and block reward payouts would be ideal.

Storing coins in the blockchain with certain limitations on release and mingling with darksend coins sounds complicated. I would rather focus on the system of authorizing and distributing the funds directly to a project owner with some responsiblity than a complicated way of storing and lending funds.

 

[stan.distortion]

Only about 10 pages through so far and its hard going, not because the discussion isn't interesting, it is, but because I've been going over something remarkably similar (yet entirely different) for the last couple of years and so far only a few posts have come anywhere close to the bigger picture.

We're not the only ones looking at this kind of thing, democracy as a whole is about to get a much needed kick in the arse, many much needed kicks in the arse from many different directions and Dash has a huge advantage over most of them. Identity is the missing link for the most part and its not relevant here, a masternode is a masternode is a masternode and there's no room for gaming the system, its put up the coin or gtfo. That has the potential to add an extra layer that most other cases don't even know they're missing, folks like the Pirate Party are having incredible success with systems like Liquid Feedback and that's getting huge amounts of discrete attention but the identity hump, speaking for anyone and everyone equally and fairly has to be got over before they can even consider anything like transparent and democratic accounting and Dash has the potential to be there ready and waiting when they do.

So, imho... integration or cross-compatibility with similar systems that are shaking things up elsewhere would be a killer feature, verifiable shared masternode funding would allow way more participation and getting a test platform up and running asap (maybe an existing platform and signed messages initially) would allow much more efficient discussion (ie, for now I can assign whatever voting power I have to TaoOfSatoshi and get back to hitting things with hammers). Things like assigning percentages and proposing projects could be resolved far more effectively than via pages and pages of random and undirected discussion. Not that I don't like the discussion, as discussions go this forums loaded with good'ns but none of them have a hard and fast percentage of agreement.

 

[Solarminer]

Only about 10 pages through so far and its hard going, not because the discussion isn't interesting, it is, but because I've been going over something remarkably similar (yet entirely different) for the last couple of years and so far only a few posts have come anywhere close to the bigger picture.

We're not the only ones looking at this kind of thing, democracy as a whole is about to get a much needed kick in the arse, many much needed kicks in the arse from many different directions and Dash has a huge advantage over most of them. Identity is the missing link for the most part and its not relevant here, a masternode is a masternode is a masternode and there's no room for gaming the system, its put up the coin or gtfo. That has the potential to add an extra layer that most other cases don't even know they're missing, folks like the Pirate Party are having incredible success with systems like Liquid Feedback and that's getting huge amounts of discrete attention but the identity hump, speaking for anyone and everyone equally and fairly has to be got over before they can even consider anything like transparent and democratic accounting and Dash has the potential to be there ready and waiting when they do.

So, imho... integration or cross-compatibility with similar systems that are shaking things up elsewhere would be a killer feature, verifiable shared masternode funding would allow way more participation and getting a test platform up and running asap (maybe an existing platform and signed messages initially) would allow much more efficient discussion (ie, for now I can assign whatever voting power I have to TaoOfSatoshi and get back to hitting things with hammers). Things like assigning percentages and proposing projects could be resolved far more effectively than via pages and pages of random and undirected discussion. Not that I don't like the discussion, as discussions go this forums loaded with good'ns but none of them have a hard and fast percentage of agreement.

stan.distortion, check out the bottom of page 19. Good summary of all the ideas.

 

[Nexus9]

This project should seek to accomplish at least 4 things in my view. 1. Establish a democratic reputation system where the community determines the rating criteria that should constitute a user's voting privileges. 2. Incorporate a universal infrastructure and mining reward tax that would pool financial resources into a community fund. 3. Build a programmable and fully decentralized virtual accounting system that could distribute those funds and carry out other essential operations in accord with the consensus of its constituents. 4. Engage in a deliberative assembly where the effective discussions and aggregate voting power of the members are used to release the funds needed for projects.

1. is required because there is no solution to the one-person-one-vote problem. Giving the masternodes all the voting power is a mistake as those with the greatest share of computational and financial resources will also have disproportionate control over the network. Why should those with more capital be in an arbitrarily privileged position to enforce their interests within the system? What is the democratic merit in doing this? The alternative is to allow the community to decide what should count.

Dash requires significant unrecognized work to develop its platform. Why not make these socially necessary contributions the standard of democratic control? For instance, if it takes an average of x time + expertise to start and maintain a masternode then that is the service rewarded with voting privileges. Now, of course, in addition to that you might all want to provide some other financial incentive given the costs of electricity and computing power. However, this should be a separate equation altogether to the one that affords political influence, e.g. transaction fees. Similarly, engaging in constructive discussion, software development, and community building are all valuable activities. Participating in the growth of the network should therefore be recognized as a political action with no less force than any other acitivity. Like Reddit and StackExchange, users could acquire karma / reputation by engaging in behavior the community deems valuable. In return, users would be granted more or less decision-making weight. If these mechanics were properly designed, you wouldn't be able to obtain more influence by creating more than one account as the voting power would be bound to the community's value judgments of the activities, and not the contingent private capital invested. Having 100 accounts with 300 reputation points worth of votes is no more effective than a single account with the very same number.

This unfortunately shifts the risk to a user's ability to make value judgments. There is nothing to prevent people from making multiple accounts to game the rating system. I believe Synereo has put forward one plausible solution to this issue. Essentially, trust is built-up over time through the density of vetted social network connections. If Alice trusts Bob and Bob trusts Peter they can mutually recognize each other to form a small-world network. As they continue trusting and mistrusting new users and as those new users continue trusting and mistrusting still more new users their associations will grow into a large-world network. Similar to how the formation of synapses work in the brain, it is the strength between these connections that constitutes their trusted status and therefore their privileges to make value judgments. In this arrangement, it would be extremely difficult for someone to start an army of sockpuppet accounts since each of those accounts would need to acheive an active trust with a diversity of other users in the larger network. In this way bots would be pruned out of the functional economy of decision-making and would have no true power to influence the community.

2. is the financial condition for the development of necessary projects. A certain amount of resources must be collected to serve the ends of the community. However, the precise rate of taxation along with the mode of distributing funds and the nature of the ends those funds should serve cannot be determined in advance. Parameters such as these have yet to be democratically negotiated. They should therefore remain open-ended while also reflecting the continual evolution and shifting consensus of the community. Deciding at the outset that x% of funds should go to the masternode operators and an unspecified promotion budget is more or less arbitrary. Dash should be using a democratically-controllable blockchain design similar to what Ethereum and Eris are capable of. As more discussions are carried out and more experiments are conducted a stable point of equilibrium will eventually be reached. That would encourage a far more legitimate outcome than simply dictating the terms at the outset in favor of a narrow and largely concealed set of developers and network operators. The contributions and most immediate needs of network users must be taken into account. All of these interests combined is what a community fund should represent.

3-4. is what ensures the security of the network against corruption. The prospect for collusion and misappropriation of funds should remain outside the reach of an arbitrarily privileged minority of individuals. This could be achieved by designing an autonomous program with executive control over the network's financial operations. The only way those operations could be activated is through the democratic processes set-up by the community. This follows the basic ideas already discussed in this thread. Motions are proposed, topics discussed, adjustments made, solutions voted on, and a summary decision rendered. You might consider modeling this in a way similar to how action potentials are known to function in the brain. That is, an authorized decision is only passed when the number of participants and their combined reputation scores are sufficient to overcome the accounting system's activation threshold. This would incentivize people to acquire as much reputation as possible and thus encourage only the very best ideas to flourish. It would also prevent centralized decision-makers from abusing their power because they would be accountable to the collective value judgments and decision-making processes of the community.

I realize these are complicated ambitions to carry out in practice. However, the very real possibility to do this is standing right in front of us. We have the technology. We have the expertise. And I also believe, we have the will. Something of this nature will be created eventually. If not in the Dash community, then elsewhere. Of course, the sooner the better.

 

[Solarminer]

This project should seek to accomplish at least 4 things in my view. 1. Establish a democratic reputation system where the community determines the rating criteria that should constitute a user's voting privileges. 2. Incorporate a universal infrastructure and mining reward tax that would pool financial resources into a community fund. 3. Build a programmable and fully decentralized virtual accounting system that could distribute those funds and carry out other essential operations in accord with the consensus of its constituents. 4. Engage in a deliberative assembly where the effective discussions and aggregate voting power of the members are used to release the funds needed for projects.

1. is required because there is no solution to the one-person-one-vote problem. Giving the masternodes all the voting power is a mistake as those with the greatest share of computational and financial resources will also have disproportionate control over the network. Why should those with more capital be in an arbitrarily privileged position to enforce their interests within the system? What is the democratic merit in doing this? The alternative is to allow the community to decide what should count.

Dash requires significant unrecognized work to develop its platform. Why not make these socially necessary contributions the standard of democratic control? For instance, if it takes an average of x time + expertise to start and maintain a masternode then that is the service rewarded with voting privileges. Now, of course, in addition to that you might all want to provide some other financial incentive given the costs of electricity and computing power. However, this should be a separate equation altogether to the one that affords political influence, e.g. transaction fees. Similarly, engaging in constructive discussion, software development, and community building are all valuable activities. Participating in the growth of the network should therefore be recognized as a political action with no less force than any other acitivity. Like Reddit and StackExchange, users could acquire karma / reputation by engaging in behavior the community deems valuable. In return, users would be granted more or less decision-making weight. If these mechanics were properly designed, you wouldn't be able to obtain more influence by creating more than one account as the voting power would be bound to the community's value judgments of the activities, and not the contingent private capital invested. Having 100 accounts with 300 reputation points worth of votes is no more effective than a single account with the very same number.

This unfortunately shifts the risk to a user's ability to make value judgments. There is nothing to prevent people from making multiple accounts to game the rating system. I believe Synereo has put forward one plausible solution to this issue. Essentially, trust is built-up over time through the density of vetted social network connections. If Alice trusts Bob and Bob trusts Peter they can mutually recognize each other to form a small-world network. As they continue trusting and mistrusting new users and as those new users continue trusting and mistrusting still more new users their associations will grow into a large-world network. Similar to how the formation of synapses work in the brain, it is the strength between these connections that constitutes their trusted status and therefore their privileges to make value judgments. In this arrangement, it would be extremely difficult for someone to start an army of sockpuppet accounts since each of those accounts would need to acheive an active trust with a diversity of other users in the larger network. In this way bots would be pruned out of the functional economy of decision-making and would have no true power to influence the community.

2. is the financial condition for the development of necessary projects. A certain amount of resources must be collected to serve the ends of the community. However, the precise rate of taxation along with the mode of distributing funds and the nature of the ends those funds should serve cannot be determined in advance. Parameters such as these have yet to be democratically negotiated. They should therefore remain open-ended while also reflecting the continual evolution and shifting consensus of the community. Deciding at the outset that x% of funds should go to the masternode operators and an unspecified promotion budget is more or less arbitrary. Dash should be using a democratically-controllable blockchain design similar to what Ethereum and Eris are capable of. As more discussions are carried out and more experiments are conducted a stable point of equilibrium will eventually be reached. That would encourage a far more legitimate outcome than simply dictating the terms at the outset in favor of a narrow and largely concealed set of developers and network operators. The contributions and most immediate needs of network users must be taken into account. All of these interests combined is what a community fund should represent.

3-4. is what ensures the security of the network against corruption. The prospect for collusion and misappropriation of funds should remain outside the reach of an arbitrarily privileged minority of individuals. This could be achieved by designing an autonomous program with executive control over the network's financial operations. The only way those operations could be activated is through the democratic processes set-up by the community. This follows the basic ideas already discussed in this thread. Motions are proposed, topics discussed, adjustments made, solutions voted on, and a summary decision rendered. You might consider modeling this in a way similar to how action potentials are known to function in the brain. That is, an authorized decision is only passed when the number of participants and their combined reputation scores are sufficient to overcome the accounting system's activation threshold. This would incentivize people to acquire as much reputation as possible and thus encourage only the very best ideas to flourish. It would also prevent centralized decision-makers from abusing their power because they would be accountable to the collective value judgments and decision-making processes of the community.

I realize these are complicated ambitions to carry out in practice. However, the very real possibility to do this is standing right in front of us. We have the technology. We have the expertise. And I also believe, we have the will. Something of this nature will be created eventually. If not in the Dash community, then elsewhere. Of course, the sooner the better.

I think the recent revised proposal that we are voting on addresses some of your points.
https://dashtalk.org/threads/vote-s...tralized-governance-by-blockchain.4825/page-4

I will also comment on 1 above. The segment of the market with most to gain and most to loose are the masternode owners that have invested 1000 DASH. They are also the most knowledgeable about how wallets and the blockchain work for DASH. There is no other segment that should be determining the long term strategy of the coin. If you want to vote, participate in a masternode. There are services when you can own a share in a masternode if you can't afford a full node. If you want to support the network, point a miner at a DASH pool or start a P2P Node.

Just because you may get 800 likes or post 200 posts in a DASH thread, isn't going to make you understand the principles or want DASH to succeed as strongly as someone that has a big investment on the line.

As for the comment about DASH needing significant work to finish it. Great, figure out what is needed, create a project and get paid. Maybe even use your earnings to buy a masternode and vote.

 

[camosoul]

Bottom line is simpler than all this.

The blockchain is getting raped. In the ass. No condom.

You get to vote on whether or not the rapist's brother will wear matching socks 4 days ago. Oh, wait, you can't change the past, even with a vote, so sorry! Fuck you!

 

[Jeztah]

Bottom line is simpler than all this.

The blockchain is getting raped. In the ass. No condom.

You get to vote on whether or not the rapist's brother will wear matching socks 4 days ago. Oh, wait, you can't change the past, even with a vote, so sorry! Fuck you!

Camo, I've spent considerably more time than I would have liked to trying to understand your point. Are you for or against voting, and what do you mean about the blockchain? Thanks.

 

[oaxaca]

"it is the strength between these connections that constitutes their trusted status and therefore their privileges to make value judgments."

The number of "likes" you can collect has no correlation to your ability to make business decisions.