What does it mean to be centralized?

[GrandMasterDash]

Keeping systems up to date is a truism of system security. But there are times when updates break user trust.

In a robust decentralized system, there are no forced updates. New versions may break on older system but the old systems do not stop completely. Old systems may be exploited more readily yet immune to the latest bugs or sabotage. Old systems and new systems coexist with a full spectrum of states, providing users with the ultimate freedom of choice.

So I was looking at this page showing the distribution of bitcoin nodes by version. v22 nodes do not stop working just because there is a v24.

In contrast, dash masternodes face de-monetization, the upshot is that the majority of nodes run the latest paying version within a matter of weeks. Synergy is good, part of the game theory, but equally brings into question the robustness of decentralization as outlined above.

Is dash too dependent on the influence and trust of DCG? Are the protocol incentives as defined by DCG too strong? Every hardfork accepted or faces de-monetization. Are masternode owners being bribed or exploited into submission? What safeguards are there against exploitation?

 

[xkcd]

The OP is making reference to the ongoing v19 hard fork which changes consensus to accommodate EvoNodes which is a new type of Masternode collateralised with 4000 Dash. The background of this change is that DCG presented an issue with the way Platform was initially supposed to run on every masternode (3800 approx) the issues can be summarised as it being too expensive to the network to host all that data and the fee market on Platform would be too high and likely stifle adoption. DCG came forward with the HPMN plan and it was discussed in the community. After the discussions were had it went to a public vote of all the stake holders and the winning plan is the one that became the basis of the hard fork which we are currently in the middle of. There is no break in the user trust, we were informed of the issues, given options, voted on those options and now we are implementing the outcome of that voting, it's all completely fair and above board.

The OP then goes on to compare Dash's hard forks with Bitcoin's soft system, once again showing his ignorance. Firstly, a word on hard forks and soft forks.

A hard fork is a constriction in consensus or a change to it. This is the rules change or something which was possible to do before will no longer be considered valid, it requires every node to upgrade, nodes that fail to upgrade will become forked off from the original network. In contrast a soft fork is the broadening of the consensus, thus allowing more things to be done, running fewer validations and a lot of sneaky changes. Nodes running older versions of the protocol still work because all their rules check out, they can do NOTHING to STOP the upgrade, since they do not even see the network upgrade Soft forks are thus coercive, you do not have a choice in the matter, the network upgrades whether you wish it or not, this is the mess in Bitcoin with Tapp root and ordinals, inscriptions and BCR-20 is forced upon all the nodes even those that never upgraded as the OP points out. At least in a hard fork, you have to agree to the change, if you don't, you are out and welcome to continue the chain using the old consensus rules by way of a fork.

TL;DR, hard fork is explicit, action required to show your agreement with it. Soft fork is implicit, no action required to activate, no choice either, it will be forced on to you.

The OP then goes on to question the network's faith in DCG, this should always be questioned and indeed there is nothing stopping another group of devs forking the code and presenting an alternative upgrade path for Dash, they can even request funding through the DAO. Also, one need look no further than https://masternodes.online/ to see how successful Evan's invention of the masternode has been, there are several forks of Dash for precisely the reasons the OP states! For example, PIVX privacy and POS, SYScoin Ether interop, FIRO privacy and countless other, all these coins started from a common source, Dash and then deviated from it and did there own thing and no doubt there will be other future forks of Dash yet to come as other groups take the source code in a different direction.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

The OP is fully aware of the difference between a hardfork and a softfork.

The OP is pissed that all hardforks originate from a company called Dash Core Group and that masternode owners accept the bribes issued in a token called dash and dash credits.

The fact that DCG could be replaced is neither here or there. The pure fact that can not be contested in any shape or form is that DCG has never been replaced.

The OP suggests that some countries have presidents receiving 80% or 90% successful votes, yet we can say those countries are run by dictators, friendly or otherwise.

The OP is not suggesting that decentralization is a choice of favorite crypto project. The OP is asking what checks and balances are there to ensure dash is decentralized and not simply bribing people with rewards or cutting them off if they don't toe the line?

The OP suggests that relying on data from mnowatch alone is not good enough. More so, that even if the data is complete enough, the consolidation of 4 x 1K nodes held in different locations into one 4K node in one location is, in fact, adding to network centralization. As a multi node owner, the OP has all his nodes in separate physical locations, preferring not to optimize on cost alone.

Responses to the above argument will likely suggest that most MNOs holding 4 or more masternodes are likely centralized already, thereby making the OP's case that the network isn't so decentralized and that no efforts have been made to break up and disrupt the network.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Note how all those in disagreement of this post, once upon a time, defended Proof of Work and called out Proof of Stake projects as shitcoins. Funny how they changed their tune.

 

[xkcd]

It just sounds like you are not happy with this current change so you are trying to attack the process in anyway you can, but it is feeble IMO. Watch the latest sprint review and increase your education rather than just flying into a rage every time you don't get your own way.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

It is true I don't like the evolution solution but this was the trigger for what I've been concerned about for a very long time. You of all people know I have aired my concerns about centralization for a very long time, whether it was crowdnode or other. So to say I am flying into a rage for not getting my own way is a false assessment. Such is my concern, I have previously made donations to mnowatch

This evolution thing is meant to be the largest shake up in dash and allegedly "ground breaking". Do you honestly expect me to stay quiet on such an important change to infrastructure? Why should I be passive or shrugging my shoulders to such a change?

Not sure what else to say if people here don't want to discuss the issues of centralization. Or the ability of DCG to direct "conversations" to their own self-prescribed outcome. For example, the issues of censorship were only really brought to the fore and discussed as part of HCMNs. There's a lot of assumptions about content censorship; "MNOs are too opposed to content censorship", yet they were shepherded in HCMNs. Rejection for removing coinjoin is not enough to determine future events, this kind of resistance must take place at the protocol level and, yes, centralization plays a vital role.

So feel free to take the conversation of centralization in any direction YOU choose, you don't have to follow my rage, you just need to let it be an actual conversation instead of closing eyes and hoping it will all go away.

 

[xkcd]

It is true I don't like the evolution solution but this was the trigger for what I've been concerned about for a very long time. You of all people know I have aired my concerns about centralization for a very long time, whether it was crowdnode or other. So to say I am flying into a rage for not getting my own way is a false assessment. Such is my concern, I have previously made donations to mnowatch

This evolution thing is meant to be the largest shake up in dash and allegedly "ground breaking". Do you honestly expect me to stay quiet on such an important change to infrastructure? Why should I be passive or shrugging my shoulders to such a change?

Not sure what else to say if people here don't want to discuss the issues of centralization. Or the ability of DCG to direct "conversations" to their own self-prescribed outcome. For example, the issues of censorship were only really brought to the fore and discussed as part of HCMNs. There's a lot of assumptions about content censorship; "MNOs are too opposed to content censorship", yet they were shepherded in HCMNs. Rejection for removing coinjoin is not enough to determine future events, this kind of resistance must take place at the protocol level and, yes, centralization plays a vital role.

So feel free to take the conversation of centralization in any direction YOU choose, you don't have to follow my rage, you just need to let it be an actual conversation instead of closing eyes and hoping it will all go away.

I thank you for your previous donation to MNOwatch, the work we do there is to learn more about this network and your donation helps in that regard. Your concerns over centralisation are however unfounded and the alternative ( I presume you are a proponent of every node runs evo? ) is unworkable due to the high cost of running Evo. The solution put forward by DCG was the best one where we are able to keep it on a subset of the network WITHOUT risking anyone entity from being able to take it over. If you think about it for more than a split second, you too will see that there was no other way.

At this stage I implore you to do your research on POS and dPOS systems, you will surely find that a set 100 active nodes chosen from a larger pool is standard way of doing things, in fact the more I research into the features DCG are delivering, the more I find that they are just implementing the same stuff as other networks are already doing with a few minor tweaks here and there to make it their own.

Finally and a bit more abruptly, decentralisation is only a means to an end and that end is censorship resistance, permissionless, etc. Recently we found that Ethereum failed this test, despite being touted as one of the most decentralised Cryptocurrencies! The failure was in the rapid ability to censor the torn.cash mixer at every level to the average Etherhead. The test for Dash Platform aka Evo is to see if censorship is able to crawl into the network, if it can, then it would have failed IMO. We can't know ahead of time what level decentralisation is needed to prevent censorship.