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Masternode shares and voting rights

cibrigue

New member
I've first heard about masternode shares in an interview with Evan Duffield on Dash:Detailed.

My impression was that what Evan said is the planned behavior, it's still in the workings so things might have changed already since last November when the interview was.

So, if I understand it correctly when people put some money into their savings account in Evolution, they are going to take part in a masternode sharing. They are essentially put their money together to meet the financial requirement of 1000 Dash to become a masternode.

Someone else on the network can signal if he has the technical requirements of a masternode, like a fixed IP address, good uptime, fast, non-capped internet connection, so he can collect Dash from the people above to run a fully functional masternode, and share the profits with the others, right? (Similarly to a bitcoin mining pool.)

My question: will this new masternode take part in the budget proposal voting process? If yes, will someone with let's say 100 Dash in his savings have a 1/10th of that vote, or he simply delegates his voting right to the masternode's owner?
 
Someone else on the network can signal if he has the technical requirements of a masternode, like a fixed IP address, good uptime, fast, non-capped internet connection, so he can collect Dash from the people above to run a fully functional masternode, and share the profits with the others, right? (Similarly to a bitcoin mining pool.)

No. "collect dash from the people" what are you thinking?
It will all be done automatically, by the masternode network, behind the scenes. Shared voting will come later, if at all.
 
Sorry, that was an improper use of words. Probably a "collection of proof of the holdings" would have been better. I didn't think anyone actually would need/should to give access to his own Dash in any way.

Alright, but still, will in this case the masternode have a say in the voting (like a regular masternode), even if he doesn't have 1000 Dash?
 
The shared voting is technically possible, but would need a lot of coding. probably will come, but after the savings accounts are solid and in use. - i think -
 
Sorry for still hanging on this, but reading http://dashmasternode.org/masternode-shares/ I have the impression, that you actually have to send your Dash to a service provider, the masternode owner. If that's true, then I suppose that service provider will be a fully functional masternode, which means that he will be able to have as many votes as many masternodes he can start. Is my understanding correct? Do you see that as a treat to the fair voting system?
 
I think you're correct on this. Don't see a great threat because the people who provide these services are well known trusted people. You trust them with your coins and the vote.
 
I tend to disagree. On one hand you need to trust them with your Dash, which is not optimal at all, but someone could accept the risk of not getting it back in exchange for the profits.
My bigger concern is that it is a more serious transfer of power when you let them increase their voting with your cooperation without letting you control that vote.
What if the masternode sharing service provider needs to vote for something in his personal interest?

In an extreme case he could propose a funding for his own service, allowing x% of the treasury to his own service, by using all it's users voting rights.
 
His personal interest is the value of Dash.
He would be pretty simple to destroy his own wealth and the trust he had by trying something like that. How would he convince 3500+ MNO's to agree to transfer coins to his service?
Do you think nobody would notice? You think MNO are stupid?
 
I don't think at all that the MNOs are stupid :), and obviously their interest is to keep the network running and Dash prices high.
I only wanted to say that it is my understanding, that right now, it is technically possible to start a website, rent a VPS, ask for Dash from different people to put together 1000 Dash to reach the limit, be a legit masternode owner, and have a say in the voting without originally owning the 1000 Dash requirement for it, and potentially voting in a different way than the original owners of the Dash would have voted.
In my hypothetical example the users who are already masternode owners would not transfer their Dash anywhere, it was more like about the users who don't have enough to run a masternode, but would like to enjoy its benefits.

Anyway, I think it got too complicated (because of me), and I can see now that my scenario is not likely at all, so thank you for your insights and patience, it was an informative discussion!
 
Part of the reason I don't offer votes for shares, apart from the complexity involved in doing it properly, is the ratio of shared to full nodes is democratically insignificant.

Shared masternodes currently comprise less than 1% of the network.

I'm hoping to design something on-chain and auditable, but there may be large data sets that make that impractical.
(For instance, 300 nodes with 40 users each voting on 17 proposals is 204,000 data points to manage.)
There are techniques to minimize the on-chain storage requirements, but there's still a lot of data to keep intact and available for auditing. Less of an issue as evolution's data paths mature, but an open question in the interim.

It's a complicated problem.
 
What do you think, will this 1% increase as Evolution introduces the savings accounts? My understanding is probably wrong, but I thought that savings accounts will work somehow like shared masternodes.

Is there a way now (or in Evolution) to prevent the shared node operator to take a vote (since theoretically its not his/her 1000 Dash what he is using to run a masternode)?

It's not an urgent problem of course, and I understand it gets very complicated quickly, so I'm just curious how are things implemented now (or in the next version).

Thank you!
 
What do you think, will this 1% increase as Evolution introduces the savings accounts? My understanding is probably wrong, but I thought that savings accounts will work somehow like shared masternodes.

Well, the earnings will come from coinbase disbursed to network resources, so you've got the right idea.

The specifics may end up different, but I think people will provision and install a simple bootstrap agent (I'm thinking something like https://get.docker.com/) which will initialize, verify, and declare the type and classification of the available resource to the network. The network then selecting from the available pool according to some undetermined criteria.

Is there a way now (or in Evolution) to prevent the shared node operator to take a vote (since theoretically its not his/her 1000 Dash what he is using to run a masternode)?

Not without significant consideration and code changes.

But, I don't think this potential abuse vector is realistic today. If a share operator can't be trusted to not vote using someone else's funds, how can they be entrusted with the possession of the funds in the first place? It's trivial for anyone to determine if, when, and how any masternode has last voted. So, any abuse of that voting privilege by a provider would be short lived; they wouldn't be a provider for long.

In terms of evolution? I don't think it's practical to offer any form of voting to savings accounts.
 
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