Topic: [ANN][DASH] Dash (dash.org) | First Self-Funding Self-Governing Crypto Currency - page 1136. (Read 9723748 times)

I think they probably can. It's just that we've been convinced they can't by people like Adam Back who have a kind of religious belief that bitcoin was a "one-off event'.

I think you'd find that if technologists really wanted to create a unified, scaleable, instant monetary medium based around a single blockchain then they probably could if they weren't all ego maniacs that thought they were saving the world from financial oblivion rather than just solving another day to day technical problem.

The difference between holding something in your hand and holding a promissory note that says you have it "in your hand" is something that the general public understands very well and if that is the basis for bitcoin's so called "scaleability" then it will only open up markets for electronic assets for which it isn't. Thats all I'm saying.

Well, there are tradeoffs involved and you have to pick which monetary properties you'll keep.

If the pace of onchain scaling growth exceeds the pace where users can catch up in terms of hardware and connectivity, at that point you are leaving behind the property of decentralization and increasingly become centralized.

But we are not here to make paypal #2, are we? We already have a centralized paypal. The question is how to make a decentralized one. And if users want many tx/s, if they want microtxs, if they want instant txs, if they want decentralization, if they want lower costs, etc etc, all these can't be achieved with onchain scaling right now.

It will be possible in the future though because tx needs are finite. As a species we only conduct so many txs per day. With a client/server model that has no redundant/p2p inefficiencies, it's pretty easy to cover them. When technology evolves, it will eventually be easy to cover them even with a blockchain p2p approach instead of using workarounds like payment channels. We'll see how it goes although it might take decades.

Imagine you're a programmer on an accounting system - like Sage or Dynamics or something like that.

You agonise for years over the perfect security systems, audit trails, corporate transparency and compliance support logic.

Then the end user just bins today's datafile and restores yesterday's blowing all your beautiful logic to smithereens in a an otherwise obvious action that simply did not belong to the domain of said 'security logic'.

The ability to do that or not do it is the difference between a bearer token and promissory note for such.

Any honest apologist for bitcoin would admit what the real priority is here - which is leave the protocol untouched, and not to improve its monetary properties natively.

If you know that the promise can't be broken because the funds will get transferred when the channel closes, then there is no problem.

The problem is when you have no idea if the promise will be kept. That's not the case here.

Banking = promise where you have no idea if the agreement will be honored.
Payment channel = you know for a fact that the channel can be closed, settling the fund transfer

One is trusted / wishful thinking, the other is trustless and assured algorithmically.

...except they are not exchanging bitcoin.

They are exchanging promissory notes for bitcoin on a platform that has nothing to do with the bitcoin blockchain except that it occasionally attempts to reconcile its position with the asset that backs it.

Monetarily, it's no different from a gold ETF that can get levered up to kingdom come if the powers that happen to be running it see fit to do so.

As I already said - thats what makes the difference between a "bearer token" and a "promissory note".

10,000 year old society already knows all about the Lightning Network. Has already seen it and has already traded it.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lightning_Network

"No third-party trust: the two peers in a channel pay each other directly using regular Bitcoin transactions (of which only one is broadcast) so at no point does any third party control their funds."

It most certainly can.

Thats why, throughout history, all economies have made a distinction between a "bearer token" and a "promissory note" for such.

It's also why bitcoin was invented.

If we are doing offchain txs through an exchange, the exchange can run away with toknormal's and alex's money. The payment channel can't. So it'd serve us better to do it in a payment channel.

It depends if you are trying to define a new cash medium or simply support an old one and make it faster.

Payment channels do not redefine bitcoin and that fact is going to stick with it far more malignantly than Dash's instamine did with its fortunes.

There's no monetary medium you can't scale with payment channels and therein lies the problem - it's no better than an exchange in that respect.

Consider the alternative: Offchain transactions with cryptsy-like payment IDs on third-party platforms.

Compared to that, payment channels are a decentralized paradise. It does help scaling if it aggregates payments into less bloat. And it will also allow small micropayments that at some point may be infeasible as ordinary txs.

The creation of payment channels will be a function supported by the protocol. As such theoretically anyone with the knowhow could make such channels. I recently read there are 4 implementations in the works by different parties. So there is nothing inherently corporate or privately-controlled to that. For example the DASH masternodes could be used, say, for providing payment channels for bitcoin.

Soon bitconicore will launch the Lightning Network.

It is a legacy concept drawn from the fiat world where not all monetary properties originate in the same monetary tier due to some deficiencies in the indigenous monetary token that render it less than perfect.

That will be a very significant milestone because it will finally demonstrate that instant transactions (for example) and erasability of history are in fact a priority and have been all along.

Only, Lightning is not a property of the bitcoin blockchain.

It does not enhance (in terms of monetary properties), nor scale, the bitcoin blockchain. Furthermore, its arrival puts into stark contrast the monetary properties of a natively scaleable, natively fungible, publicly transparent blockchain vs a paralysed one that is none of those things and requires a proprietary, corporately owned and run external infrastructure that trades trusted-party promissory notes in place of bearer tokens.

That is the real "wow'. Not the number of masternodes.

(P.S. Just like Bitconi, Gold was too slow to confirm also. So it had a 'lightning network' of its own created known as an 'ETF' where people could just trade promissory notes instead of actual gold bars. The 'bearer token' stayed in the vaults except there was simply less and less of it around and more and more of the paper. At least the paper was fast ).

Motion fails.  Liquidity providers rekt.

It might help if the budgeting system was stable instead of a confusing, never-ending work in progress.

Asking voters to participate in an undefined/unstable schema is like trying to score despite moving goalposts.

And that is why professionals don't just crap whatever harebrained ideas come to mind directly into a production system, but rather use the tried-and-true methodology of whitepaper-->peer review-->proof-of-concept-->alpha/beta prototype-->production system.

Let's recognize Dash's dependency on third parties for liquidity cripples its mixing system, both from an economic and security perspective.

It's just bad design; Dash needs to stop using shortcuts and go back to Evan's original idea for on-chain mixing with ring signatures, because it can't compete with Bitcoin's Lightning nor Monero's Cryptonote protocol.

Wow, just WOW! 

Very kind of you.  At least those that voted yes give some moral support

I voted for this with all available firepower at my disposal.

It would be nice if voters could vote the backpay for Liquidity providers in, as there is more than enough in the budget for it.  Of course, it might be too late, if the budget has been finalized.  Anyway, if you can still vote it in, it would be a nice thank you for your service.  Liquidity providers have to keep a minimum 100 coins (but they're all pretty much larger than that) in a running wallet on a server/computer running 24/7.

Show them appreciation by approving unpaid backpay   https://www.dashwhale.org/p/LP-reimbursment

That depends on the overall trend as well. Just too many factors for making such an assumption.

First general quantum computer:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/how-ibms-new-five-qubit-universal-quantum-computer-works/

It's only 5 qubits, but if IBM can do that, imagine how far ahead NSA is...

No one really knows what is going to happen in the future. Just evaluate your personal finances and make sure you are comfortable investing no matter what happens short term, or split up your investment before and after the halving if you feel unsure about its impact in the market.

So it's not a good time to invest in dash right now?