I admit I'm a bit out of my technological depth here so this may be an obvious question but does a master node maintain anonymity?

A follow-up question if the answer is 'no': Could there be grounds for the prosecution of a master node operator for money laundering?

The next stage of DarkSend

The design of Darkcoin is all about economic incentives, I've tried to bake as much of that in as possible. I've been thinking about the reliance on master nodes in our new design for securing the network and I see some room for improvement.

With the current design we will require 1000DRK to operate a master node. That requires you putting 1000DRK in a hotwallet (dangerous) only to collect the collateral fees which won't amount to much.

So what do we want?

- We want as many master nodes as possible (the more nodes the more secure the network)
- We want them to be profitable to run
- We want it to be very expensive investment to operate a master node

So I propose the following solution, each block the last master node will receive 10% of the mining reward (in addition to the reward given to the miner). So for example, if the mining reward was 19DRK the last master node will automatically receive 1.9DRK.

This also has some really great side effects:

- It creates a completely new type of investor that buys DRK and holds it (where as miners create dark coin and sell it for the most part)
- It adds a ton of full nodes to the network
- It creates demand and scarcity, which should provide a nice return for our investors

Also, these payments are completely secure. New blocks with the dividend payment made out to the incorrect master node will be rejected (the whole network knows who won the election).

At the present moment we have a chicken and egg problem. We need master nodes to support darksend and we don't want to go live with 1 or 2 master nodes. To solve this we will implement the election code into the main client, along with the payments to master nodes while DarkSend is still beta.

What type of return will you see?

- If there’s 1 capable master node, you’ll receive all payments 576*(AverageReward/10) per day

Capable Nodes, Daily Reward
1, 1094DRK
2, 547DKR
5, 218DRK
10, 109DRK
20, 54DRK
50, 21DRK
100, 11DRK

As you can see, we’ll quickly reach equilibrium with the price and at the same time this will create buying pressure raising the price more and causing the network to become increasingly secure.

Also, we can build our master node network now in the immediate. Users can buy the darkcoin needed to run one and they will just run the beta client. We'll open source the election code and hard fork to add the payments to master nodes in and our network will be secure by the time we're ready to do a full launch.

I really love the idea, thoughts?

The next stage of DarkSend

The design of Darkcoin is all about economic incentives, I've tried to bake as much of that in as possible. I've been thinking about the reliance on master nodes in our new design for securing the network and I see some room for improvement.

With the current design we will require 1000DRK to operate a master node. That requires you putting 1000DRK in a hotwallet (dangerous) only to collect the collateral fees which won't amount to much.

So what do we want?

- We want as many master nodes as possible (the more nodes the more secure the network)
- We want them to be profitable to run
- We want it to be very expensive investment to operate a master node

So I propose the following solution, each block the last master node will receive 10% of the mining reward (in addition to the reward given to the miner). So for example, if the mining reward was 19DRK the last master node will automatically receive 1.9DRK.

This also has some really great side effects:

- It creates a completely new type of investor that buys DRK and holds it (where as miners create dark coin and sell it for the most part)
- It adds a ton of full nodes to the network
- It creates demand and scarcity, which should provide a nice return for our investors

Also, these payments are completely secure. New blocks with the dividend payment made out to the incorrect master node will be rejected (the whole network knows who won the election).

At the present moment we have a chicken and egg problem. We need master nodes to support darksend and we don't want to go live with 1 or 2 master nodes. To solve this we will implement the election code into the main client, along with the payments to master nodes while DarkSend is still beta.

What type of return will you see?

- If there’s 1 capable master node, you’ll receive all payments 576*(AverageReward/10) per day

Capable Nodes, Daily Reward
1, 1094DRK
2, 547DKR
5, 218DRK
10, 109DRK
20, 54DRK
50, 21DRK
100, 11DRK

As you can see, we’ll quickly reach equilibrium with the price and at the same time this will create buying pressure raising the price more and causing the network to become increasingly secure.

Also, we can build our master node network now in the immediate. Users can buy the darkcoin needed to run one and they will just run the beta client. We'll open source the election code and hard fork to add the payments to master nodes in and our network will be secure by the time we're ready to do a full launch.

I really love the idea, thoughts?

As I'm thinking more of it, perhaps the greatest weakness of the system is the requirement to have hundreds of thousands of DRKs online: If a network exploit is found at some point that allows the hacking of the master nodes, then every single node can be emptied of their money and a hacker will end up with something like half a million DRK... wallets and stuff are relatively safe due to the encryption, offline protection etc, but networks have a much weaker reputation: Exchanges, pools, even dice games -as reported above- are getting hacked.

Cryptoland and online money seem to be the hacker's paradise and the DRK master node network will be a multimillion dollar bounty for someone who finds a good exploit for the node daemons.

That's great, but I still need to write the election code and hard folk the mainnet to enable it. Soon 

Transaction-wise I'm clueless to comment on the problems as I do not really have a deep understanding of coinjoin and darksend. You, Evan and perhaps 2-3 more on the thread are like ten levels above the "mortals" when discussing these.

I'm trying to see problems that may arise from things that my reasoning can grasp, whether it is related to market operation, network operation, hacking incentives etc and mainly on a general or peripheral basis since my "under-the-hood" understanding is minimal.

With that out of the way, what I meant is related to the requirement of a DarkSend node to have a proposed 1000 DRK wallet to operate and its online exposure 24/7, in parallel with all the wallets of all other DarkSend nodes. Could this be a massive security risk for the network to hackers if a daemon exploit is found?


Unless I have a wrong understanding, the collateral is a transaction related fee, not the 1000 DRKs for running a node... correct? If so, I'm talking about the 1000, not the tx related fees.

So running a dark send node, with an online wallet attached containing 1000 DRKs, is 100% secure? The risk for exposing these 1000 DRKs is zero?

As I'm thinking more of it, perhaps the greatest weakness of the system is the requirement to have hundreds of thousands of DRKs online: If a network exploit is found at some point that allows the hacking of the master nodes, then every single node can be emptied of their money and a hacker will end up with something like half a million DRK... wallets and stuff are relatively safe due to the encryption, offline protection etc, but networks have a much weaker reputation: Exchanges, pools, even dice games -as reported above- are getting hacked.

Cryptoland and online money seem to be the hacker's paradise and the DRK master node network will be a multimillion dollar bounty for someone who finds a good exploit for the node daemons.