This is great news. It never ceases to amaze me about how active the whole DASH community is. How many other crypto out there have this sort of far reaching appeal with mechanisms in place to engage its investors and users?

Yep, it is indeed the "blue" tick : https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/421615.msg54514091#msg54514091



I find Messari very useful, as it has numerous metrics, filters, provides live data and you can select which cryptocurrencies to monitor.

5 Branches of Austrian Chain Drugstores.at now accept BTC/Dash payments
tx Salamantex
https://twitter.com/dashembassydach/status/1267897773371916288?s=21

Do you have any links for any of these websites you refer to? Can you post some links here please so we can see them?

Excellent news. If this format continues it is clear DASh will become more and mainstream.

As a preference it would be great if the major cryptos were all accepted at all retail outlets regardless of the type of business but seeing DASH making inroads such as these means a lot. DASH really is going places.

These are the hosting services i know of, but only a few of them provide shared hosting (most seem to require the full 1000 Dash)

https://docs.dash.org/en/stable/masternodes/hosting.html

I also found another site that seems more focused on shared masternode services : https://www.cryptomorrow.com/2019/06/01/sharedmasternode-services/
I don't know how accurate up to date this site is or how reliable the stated shared services are. Some of them do match on our own Dash hosting services listing.

The shared services are not trustless of nature, meaning they require a level of trust to be placed into these services and into the people behind these services.
They are 'trusted' services.

Some exchanges are also implementing (or are about to implement) staking on their platforms, this is different then shared hosting but interesting nonetheless.
Link : https://www.kraken.com/en-us/features/staking-coins
  
With regards to Pumuckel21 question, i think it depends on the profitability that is being offered by these shared services. Meanwhile Dash Core Group is trying to improve its
trustless full masternodes offering by proposing a change to the blockreward allocation : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/consensus-mechanisms.49135/page-3#post-221975

This could make Dash full masternodes more attractive to investors and in time more competitive to centralized (shared) services like the ones mentioned above.

I fully support increasing MN allocation!

As do i. To be fair though, it is not just the case of trying to improve Dash trustless full masternodes by re-allocating more of the blockrewards to masternodes (from 45% to 54%).
There is also the case of trying to flatten Dash circulating supply during the next five years and trying to get a grip on the sell pressure (which seems to mostly come from miners
immediately selling all their mined Dash, regardless of the price).

I have masternodes myself and i have stopped selling my masternode payments months ago. I wonder how many miners are in a situation that they can afford to do the same,
or even care all that much about Dash longterm.

The way i see it, if this proposal passes Dash will be more or less returning to its original masternode payment schedule, while still being able to get funding for its decentralized budget.

Original Masternode Payment Schedule in 2014 (note : there was no decentralized budget then, just rewards for masternodes and miners and it was the main reason that made me
invest longterm in Dash) :  

if(nHeight > 158000) ret += blockValue 20;/25.0% - 2014-10-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*1)) ret += blockValue 20;/30.0% - 2014-11-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*2)) ret += blockValue 20;/35.0% - 2014-12-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*3)) ret += blockValue 40;/37.5% - 2015-01-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*4)) ret += blockValue 40;/40.0% - 2015-02-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*5)) ret += blockValue 40;/42.5% - 2015-03-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*6)) ret += blockValue 40;/45.0% - 2015-04-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*7)) ret += blockValue 40;/47.5% - 2015-05-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*9)) ret += blockValue 40;/50.0% - 2015-07-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*11)) ret += blockValue 40;/52.5% - 2015-09-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*13)) ret += blockValue 40;/55.0% - 2015-11-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*15)) ret += blockValue 40;/57.5% - 2016-01-23
if(nHeight > 158000+((576*30)*17)) ret += blockValue 40;/60.0% - 2016-03-23
 
We changed above Masternode Payment Schedule in 2015, when Evan Duffield introduced Dash decentralized budget.
So instead of reaching 60% for masternodes, and 40% for miners at some point in 2016, the schedule settled on 45% masternodes, 45% miners, 10% decentralized budget.
(current situation)

The Masternode Payment Schedule change being proposed by Dash Core Group recently (2020) will return us pretty close to that once planned 60% for masternodes 40% miners
(namely 54% masternodes, 36% miners, 10% budget), but at a much slower rate (spread over 5 1/2 years).

I can live with that, as i believe this will improve Dash economics in the longterm.

Looking back, the original masternode payment schedule had an incredibly high rate of change, a masternode reward increase & miners reward decrease of every 1 or 2 months.
That will not be the case here, it will be spread out over a long period of time.