Dash Masternode Zeus (DMZ) is a bit difficult to locate on the dash forums, may i suggest creating a separate thread with install instructions for it in here : https://www.dash.org/forum/topic/masternode-guides.66/
(instead of just relying on a reference inside 'System wide Masternode Setup with Systemd auto (re)start RFC'). Feedback specific to Dash Masternode Zeus can then more easily be collected.

I can tell that a lot of work went into DMZ, good job.

This is the problem that all the #pumpIsComing people don't realise.

They think that because it's a thinly traded market that the rush will be for sell liquidity. But in fact what we have with Dash is a heterogeneous profitability sector so you have 2 distinct sets of network operators effectively competing with each other for BUY liquidity, one of which is at a massive advantage in being able to stay at a profit while gobbling up those bids almost all the way down to zero.

This coin is effectively eating its own capital in order to pay for masternode margins that do nothing. Meanwhile the rest are all capitalising their chains from external markets by drawing in mining liquidity.

Proxying for bitcoin gains. The ratio is dire.

A greeting.

The selling wouldn't be any different, it's the capital flows that would be = what the blockchain reward was spent on.


I'm quite happy to be "called out" on my assertions as they are easily justified and accounted for. Your accusations however are not.

In Bitcoin, Litecoin et al, 100% of the blockchain reward is "spent" on maintaining the difficulty level across all blocks. (The clue is in the word reward. It's not a gift, it's a receipt for the miner's contribution to increasing the value/opening price of the next block by making it more scarce).

In Dash, only 50% is spent on maintaining the difficulty level and the other 50% is "spent" on masternode rewards (as you will know, being a recipient). That capital does not go back into the chain as it would do with mining rewards. (i.e. it does not get spent on raising the difficulty). Instead it leaves the chain completely and these coins emerge with an opening price of zero. (i.e. they arrive in the hands of the holders at a price of zero).

So the coin flow "out" in a 100% mined coin is:

from blockchain --> miner --> market

and this is balanced by an equal and opposite capital flow in dollars that goes:

from market --> miner --> blockchain....in the form of a difficulty contribution which establishes the opening price of new mined blocks.

Remember, mined crypto is a synthetic asset and this is the mechanism by which capital is stored in the chain in such a synthetic asset. (The other way of doing it is as a bond. But that's not the archetype on which Dash is based).

*****************************
However in Dash, the coin/capital flow is split:
*****************************

from blockchain --> miner --> market (these coins have a costbase which equals the mining cost)
from blockchain --> masternode --> market (these coins have a zero costbase)

and this is balanced by 2 equal and opposite capital flows in dollars that go:

from market --> miner --> blockchain....in the form of a difficulty contribution
from market --> masternode --> END....and exits the network here as this is used to fund pure profits which do not benefit the network.

Note that none of this depends on anecdotal appraisals of "who sells how much" or even whether coins are sold or not. The fully mined blockchains charge for ALL their blocks whether the initial holder sells into the secondary market or not. If the miner doesn't sell then the miner IS the market and has effectively sold to themselves. Either way the chain gets its investment in the form of a difficulty contribution.

This is the only fundamental systemic distinction we have with 100% mined competitors and goes a long way to explaining why we suffer a chronic and continuous decline in ranking year after year by comparison, even though we may have far more interesting end user features.

There is a huge cost borne in paying those idle masternode rewards across 5000 nodes. (Currently running at half a million dollars per week). The cost is felt in loss of marketcap from the chain.

These are aggregate principles. That the Dash protocol is as described above as academic. The theory above predicts that we should fall behind on marketcap over the years and we have.

I'd say it more behoves anyone who predicts otherwise to present their case because the only one that's been presented so far is that we haven't "gamed our supply growth" well enough. That to me is a paultry case when we have a great big elephant in the room staring us in the face like how to fund a $27 million per year bill for masternode margins which doesn't get invested back in the chain. That's 27$ million per year that our competitors spend directly on securing ALL their blocks opening prices at high difficulty levels.

Remember also, that bill grows with price because masternodes have fixed costs, mining costs are variable. So as Litecoin etc prices rise, so does their mining budget. Nearly ALL the fiat they draw from markets goes towards raising the difficulty level across all blocks in the chain and keeping the new block price in sync with the rising market price.

However with Dash, as the market price rises, the opening price of HALF its blocks stays at zero. Worse than that, any of these blocks that DO hit the market don't draw any fiat into the chain in the form of difficulty contributions. The fiat raised bypasses the Dash ecosystem completely.

You may argue that they have a positive marketing effect by creating demand for masternodes. But I would argue that the market simply prices in the capital loss on the collateral required against the reward and in the long run concludes that it cancels it. Moreover, as I've stated before, we need to consider the equilibrium condition anyway. You can't base the viability of the coin on masternode growth because it's limited and we're probably at saturation right now.

The way out of this problem IMO is to set margins at parity because that way we get competitive again with the other mined assets like Litecoin, Monero, et al and we can sustain price rises. It means swinging right around and making a massive restoration to the mining reward but still make masternodes profitable to run which gives us a big competitive distinction over bitcoin. Masternodes can then restore their rewards in dollar value and sustain growth. (Remember there are plenty multi-milllion dollar mining operations that run on a 10% profit margin over cost and they keep getting bigger).

Indeed.

And if one side of a shopping street charges $5 for soap powder while the other side charges $2 for exactly the same brand, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the reason why the former side is losing business. But to ignore it would be stupid all the same. So I cannot give you "anecdotal evidence" other than to say that if we keep doing what we're doing, we're likely to keep going where we're going which is now a 3-year near-permanent trajectory to the bottom of the mined marketcap rankings in terms of our early contemporaries.

While I don't dismiss your basis for asking for "evidence" you must realise that we're dealing with aggregate principles here so evidence doesn't turn up in nice neat anecdotal packages where a specific traders say they didn't invest in Dash because they wanted to invest in coin, not masternode profits.

The theory is that Dash has only half the mining budget that our competitors do and therefore can store far less capital in its chain. The empirical evidence for that is that we've lost our lead and competitiveness in marketcap.

The "supply gaming" theories that have been presented to support increasing the masternode reward even further do not adequately account for this since we've always had a reward split. The idea that the competitive deficit was for want of an additional 10% is ludicrous IMO - not least for the reasons that I presented previously that the market simply sets the reward ratio in dollar terms anyway.

****************
A question for you:
****************

The masternode network costs around $100,000 per month to run. So why are we paying $2.1million per month for it ? The wasted $2 million could be spent on attracting competition for the primary supply which would support its price directly and put us back on a near-level playing field with our mined competitors in this respect. Then our "feature advantages" might actually start to matter.

Not only that, it would work EVEN when the masternode count reaches equilibrium whereas the "supply gaming" tactic depends on a growing masternode count.

LoL.

It's not a shame at all. We're not a church and I think I've presented my points in good faith and with plenty of technical background to support them. It's no different from the case I've always made for Dash going back years. I've also not been personal in any posts or "anti-community" or troll-like. Meanwhile I'm not aware that you've made any contributions to this exchange other than complain that I'm off-message and toxic and throw the word "evidence" around in an arbitrary manner.

I put a specific question to you in the previous post. Perhaps you could start by addressing that.

And now you're the one making blind assumptions with no evidence. In fact the evidence is to the contrary.

Bitcoin has over 10,000 nodes and not one of them gets a satoshi from the block reward. You quote an ROI in Dash which you must know is meaningless because it doesn't account for the capital gain or loss on the collateral.

If the network can sustain 5000 nodes with a net negative ROI in dollars then we can easily have 5000 nodes with a net positive one even if it means a revision of the block reward back in miner's favour. There are always takers for nodes at any price as long as they're the least bit profitable, same as mining. The difference is that miners invest more into the network as price rises (they have to) while masternodes drain more from it as price rises (proportionally). Their costs are fixed.

If reward ratio was shifted back, nodes would still be profitable. Sure there may be a shakeup but there's always takers for a profitable operation. You may ditch your node because you wouldn't be happy with the new high-mining protocol but someone would come along and buy it from you that was and they would be a far leaner and more efficient operator for the network.


Even a masternode reward ratio of 20% and Dash at HALF these prices, they would still be profitable. It would represent around $104 per month and would not be consumed in hosting fees which are around $20 per month. More to the point it would allow the currently wasted reward to be redirected into mining and start to address the issue of stabilising the capital value.

The risks you cite have already been taken - we've had the 3 year selloff, way beyond LTC, XMR et al. They hit rockbottom and bounced, even in satoshi price. We hit rockbottom and are still digging because we have this enormous deadweight to support in non-performing masternode margins, paid out of the part of the supply which our competitors have made available for mining budget. That's why they beat us on store-of-value even though we may beat them on "features".