I didn't see you mention me but now that you have, just ask me what you want to know.
Other than run nodes, I don't actually do anything for dash anyway, so my pov is negligible, you accept it or not.
For me, dash as it is now is just another coin with expensive web3 aspirations. I don't understand how anything about dash is useful these days, except for spending pocket money on bitrefill. No ai, no dex, no marketplace of it's own. No app of it's own that is actually useful, really. The idea that one coin is going to be "digital cash" has long gone it's sell-by-date. What people want and have in other coins is actual usable application, whether that is prediction markets, chatbots and so on. Relatively speaking, barely anyone here is trying to build an app that is actually useful and putting it front and center, instead of this dated idea that payments must be front facing on startup. Sorry if that hurts but that's truth. At least with decred you actually get a usable dex, to which dash is broken and not native, and you get private access to compute and a marketplace in it's infancy. With beam you get access to a private stablecoin and bridged ethereum. What did you say dash does that isn't introspective?
You could say this is off-topic but I disagree. We are having this conversation literally because there is desperation to climb from the bottom of the barrel. That dash has all but abandoned PoW, now governance is literally just a case of buying masternode shares without significant price increase, because who but a few hands actually wants to keep dash long term?
If anyone here wants to fix dash it must first fix governance and take it from the hands of whoever is using it now.. because clear as day it has proven itself to be almost useless. DCG and specifically Samuel Westrich have made it clear they have no intention of being profitable, which means they will continue to live off entitlement. Please spare me the sob story of how much they have achieved on a small budget.. fact is - and by all means ask him directly - he has no intention of making DCG a profitable enterprise, which ultimately means he has no incentives to actually give people what they want and will pay for, like in a fully functioning market.
Sorry, what was your question?
When I open the Dash wallet, I usually check my balance and, except on rare occasions when I send Dash to someone I know, I spend it about 90 % of the time via Bitefill, incurring commission fees.
All of this, after a decade of operation, is shameful for a project that set out to be digital money. Moreover, anyone holding Dash today does so to stake and hope for rewards or wait for the price to rise, so they can sell their stake at a profit—a prospect that currently looks very difficult.
Some projects have managed to integrate a DEX; others offer decentralized DeFi across multiple currencies; decentralized AIs funded directly with their own tokens are beginning to emerge… These are all potential use cases, after all.
Many will say that smart contracts are needed; others will insist Dash wasn’t designed for that; some will believe that, despite lacking all this, Dash will somehow grow its market share…
Let’s be realistic: nobody uses Dash because it doesn’t hold its value, there aren’t enough places that accept it without hefty fees, it’s barely promoted in the market, and—most importantly—there is no clear reason to use it.
Can we do anything about it?
Of course we can.
We could build a decentralized exchange like Maya Protocol, but without the exorbitant fees. Sometime ago someone in the community promoted that DEX, but failed to mention how outrageous the fees are. Why not develop an app where Dash can be swapped for BTC or USDT? We don’t need more than three or four high-liquidity currencies, and it would be perfect for both those entering Dash and those looking to exit.
We also don’t have a native staking app; we depend on third parties like CrowdNode, when the Dash network itself could directly benefit from those fees and pass them on to the masternodes.
Use cases, folks! I’ve been hearing about Evolution and Platform for so long that I’m starting to smell the stench of a corpse that died years ago.
If nothing game-changing appears on the table in the next six months, Dash will die, and all those evo-nodes and masternodes will become the sad memory of the worst investment of their lives.
It hurts to hear hard truths—but it’s better to prepare for the blow than to take it unawares.
Best regards and health.