Some comparisons of DASH vs Bitcoin metrics for those interested. Thanks to Sub-Ether for the TAO ratios. Note that the two most meaningful numbers here are the blockchain growth and TAO as these affect usability and bandwidth.
I would bet the TAO ratio is more dependent on internet speed. The blockchain download speed of 1MB/S is about 8Mbps. That approaches the entry level 8Mbps or 10Mbps speed offered by ISPs and could be the limiting factor in updating.
DASH Metrics DASH Bitcoin
Average Transaction Size 1 0.85 KB
Average Transactions per Day 1500 110000 Transactions/Day
Blockchain Size 1.4 47 GB
Blockchain Growth 1.5 93.5 MB/Day
Blockchain Update Speed/hr blocktime(TAO) 0.15 4.14 Sec/Hr
Blockchain Download Speed 0.417 0.941 MB/Sec
I agree there is a cut off point 'entry level' for ISP speed, the bitcoin one is much higher than Dash of course, but instantX negates a high bandwidth requirement altogether, as proved by me doing instantX transactions on an android phone that has a bandwidth of a dial up network equivalent (not a full client of course, but at ~1.2 gigabyte, it is still possible on a mobile)
Actually whether you are using a solid state drive or magnetic makes quite a difference for bitcoin (not much for lightweight Dash, btw) as there is a hell a lot of data to be processed with big blocks and 47 gig total, and my HDD reference machine is down atm unfortunately to cross reference it (worn it out, mining, going to try some new capacitors on mobo, lol).
For updating, I barely use 5% of a 100 meg bandwidth connection even for bitcoin, what is more likely the network and the seed nodes are too slow to keep up with the client, this is the reaction time and quality factor that I was trying to model with Tao.
The usability and Tao ratio upto the maximum of 1 megabyte full blocks could be something like this,
doesn't matter if its a 8 megabyte block either, as a full block always means a flat line, no more transactions can be sent!
y = tanh(x)
My ratio gets more impressive by the day...
