May I post a suggestion here?
Since some DRK features are implemented, and some could be improved upon, the original concept for the Darkcoin masternodes (RC2/RC3 releases) involved a protocol-level enforcement of the masternode payments. The problem with these releases was that there was some kind of bug that triggered sporadic network forking by misbehaving nodes or mining clients. The consensus wasn't working as it should.
In a sense, Darkcoin tried to use a dual consensus for every block: One for the transactions / mining, and one for the masternode payout. This didn't work as planned (there were sporadic forks of the network) and DarkSend development was lagging - so a workaround system was created instead that was "safer" and relieved some of the price speculation (it was the period of the great pump - and all eyes were on DRK news and how something would succeed or fail).
In that payment system (an evolution of which, is the current system of MN payments) the pools decided whether to pay or not in a semi-voluntary scheme. If a pool wanted to cheat payment, they could. The strategy was to shame the pools that "cheated" and it worked to compliance levels of 80-90%. The added threat of "enforcement" where Evan would "flip the switch" to fork off the non-compliant pools was also added as an extra measure. However, in my view, this is not the ideal solution to the problem. Rather, it should be done like it initially was conceived so that misbehaving clients are simply forked by themselves out of the network. No centralization / enforcement switch, no need for asking pools to play nice etc etc.
Perhaps the dev wants to give it a look* and see if he can come up with a system that works and which is free of forking bugs. It could also be implemented by DRK if successful, and it would also give added credibility to SPR itself for improving something in a significant way. The good thing with SPR is that, unlike DRK which is more mature, it can risk multiple hard forks to try things out.
* Perhaps the RC2/RC3 bugged solutions of DRK where there was a voting system in place to decide the MN payments are not the ideal concept for this implementation and another idea can be used altogether.
It pleases me to no end to see you here making suggestions AlexGR. Mr. Spread, AlexGR was in pretty early with DRK as well. He is one of the Darkcoin investors whose insights I have always valued a great deal. My suggestion would be to look into what he has to say because it is always well-thought.
