I dismiss you premise in its entirety.
Well you occasionally pop your head up to do that. But more in a sense of faux outrage than technical debate. (Not to mention the fact that you're highly conflicted anyway).
This isn't my "premise" and it isn't dismissible. It belongs to the Dash community. We're not in 2014 anymore where a bitcointalk fan-narrative is enough to sustain a coin. We're now in an era of genuine institutional investment where every last aspect of a coin's store-of-value mechanics will be scrutinised.
If and when Dash gets to $1000, half the blockchain supply will be issued to network operators who at that point will be receiving a reward of $5460 per month for a service which costs them $20 to provide. Questions will therefore be asked as to why fixed-cost network operators need to have a 99.7% profit margin supported when the other half of reward recipients operates at a commercially competitive margin. Questions will also be asked as to how that excessive margin benefits new investors and protects their capital.
Satisfactory answers to those questions will not be forthcoming because there aren't any.
Mining protects the capital value of new blocks because most of the mining reward attracts fiat revenue which contributes to increased network difficulty. That is the mechanics by which fiat gets transmuted into cryptocurrency mined value. Masternodes on the other hand drain it in a reverse process because most of that block reward has to support pure profit that contributes to masternode holiday cruises. Those margins are therefore a toxic timebomb the bigger they get. (And the higher the price goes, the bigger they get).
Dash has a huge advantage - owing to its innovative decoupled protocol - in that it only takes a tiny amount of the blockchain reward to make us unassailably competitive in service features. But we're not availing ourselves of that advantage. We're paying masternodes a massive margin anyway straight out of the blockchain reward that should be allocated to mining. That's why the markets are crucifying us.
b.t.w. regarding this point:
I've polled dozens of investors, large and small, not 1 single crypto investor gave their main consideration investing in crypto to masternodes, second lay or mining rewards as an important part of their investment decision, not 1.
Anecdotal opinion polls are not a substitute for a viable economic model. Your polled investors don't need to be "aware of masternodes" for them to lose their shirts on an investment. Miner's and masternode's interests are miss-aligned by the protocol. They need to be aligned for the coin to be successful. Masternodes can drive down the price at a profit in terms of their rewards. Miners can only drive down the price at a loss.
When you have half the coin-holding community sitting at a permanent profit-taking position while the rest are all at speculative margins, the outcome is inevitable. It's what we've seen during the last 3 years and why we're the only one of the top 10 mineables now below support in satoshi price. In fact we've given up all satoshi gains since 2 months after the birth of this coin despite being the most feature-rich.
A fundamental rethink is required for us to become aggressively competitive again. The answer is staring us in the face. We have the dry powder available and the protocol control to direct it where it matters - making the primary supply more expensive and thereby attracting mining competition away from our competitors. We won't even lose any of our "feature" advantages in doing so. It just needs a few turkeys to vote for an "alternative" christmas that will benefit them far more sustainably then the current one
margins insane
are not capital gain
you think the explain
means even more pain
but margins well spent
are capital kent
internals may vent
but investors relent