Well, he asked, so I told 'im:
https://dashtalk.org/threads/what-do-bitcoin-professionals-think-about-darkcoin.5668/
victorbx asked:And I wrote:
That's a pretty old thread (8 months ago = decades in crypto :tongue:)
But as usual, the second guy who posted an answer doesn't know what he is talking about. First of all, coinjoin is not an algorithm, and second, DarkSend was never Coinjoin. By the time it was called DarkSend, it had already implemented mixing exact denominations of coins, and soon after, it was implemented to be used prior to need/use. So the mixing is done while the wallet is idle, and not when funds are spent. Therefore there is no need to wait for transactions to complete while other funds are found and mixed. Sounds obvious, but it wasn't until it occurred to Evan. (E=mc2 sounds obvious now as well)
DASH is also instant. You can buy your gas at the pump with DASH and leave in as little as 4 seconds. Same with groceries.
DASH's dual network provides thousands of full nodes that service the network on high quality servers because they get paid for doing so. Consequently, syncing to the network with your wallet takes only minutes, whereas Bitcoin takes days. True, Bitcoin's blockchain is much larger than DASH's but the rate of download is also much, much faster in DASH.
Also, the mobile wallets will soon be "syncing" to the masternode distributed network, instead of one or two servers serving up what is hoped to be a true blockchain. Thus everything in DASH is distributed, with no centralization save people using services at their own risk. Aside from exchanging fiat into DASH at an exchange, there is no reason for 3rd party infrastructure with DASH if it's unwanted.
Finally, and certainly not least, v12 which should be coming out soon, is quite stable right now, and what it brings to the table is nothing short of a game changer. Distributed payments via blockchain. Actually, that doesn't even cover it. Soon, anyone with the skill will soon be able to propose a product, add-on, marketing, etc... for DASH and get paid for the work if it is agreed to. If a proposal to make or do something for DASH that is deemed important and desirable by the dash community and masternode owners, it will be voted on. The votes are cast by masternode owners, but the community at large will be very much involved in honing and developing proposals. If the proposer modifies the proposal to the majority's satisfaction, and receives enough yes votes, it will be included in the block payout. The whole system is pretty complex to explain here, but it's working out excellently. There is never an actual account that holds funds to be paid out, but rather "super blocks" are used to pay the wages. This is done by withholding 10% of the block rewards, not paying them to either miners nor masternodes, but rather paying them directly into the accounts of the service providers with the additional "safety stop" that if the provider doesn't hold up their end of the bargain, Masternodes can vote to stop payments. When proposals are created, the schedule of progress and payments will need to be clearly defined, and payment made only if goals are met.
FYI, this system will most likely only be paying out to the core developers and marketing fund at first, mostly to get the system going. I think we all want to reward the developers for their hard work (Evan pays them out of pocket at the moment) and getting marketing going will benefit everyone. But there is much to do before the system can gain steam. Although v12 will have the functionality required, there is still much infrastructure to build, such as project forums, and other infrastructure to help manage the projects so that masternode owners can see clearly what is up. We need to make this user friendly, and easy to monitor or we won't get the participation we need. This will take some time, and I doubt other projects will be approved until this infrastructure in completed.
What does this mean? It means, DASH will ALWAYS have the funds to pay their developers, to pay for advertisement and marketing and to pay for infrastructure expansion. It is the first coin to do so once again. The DASH team has burned new trails since it's conception. Sure, people have thought of the possibilities of such things happening but only DASH has made them happen.
(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW_wYvZ1eZg )
The DASH team, lead by Evan, has solved all the issues involved and has successfully, and will continue to successfully blaze new trails.
If ever there was a horse to bet on, this is it! See you in the future! (yah yah, look at my picture... I'm a cheerleader, LOL)
That's a great reply you made on that forum Tante. Thanks for taking the time and for reposting here. I think the one area that we here in the Dash community just take for granted is the anonymity and privacy Dash offers. For us that have been around for a long time, we all know the story and know what it means/what's important about it, but for anyone new to the scene, this is still the fundamental differentiator of Dash.
The first guy (Joseph Wang) that posted in that thread wrote a very good overview of how tiresome it is to have our spending constantly monitored:
I think that we live in a sad world in which if you don't want big corporations to know what you are spending your money on, you get classified as a drug dealer.
In fact, I have good reasons for not wanting people to know what I'm spending money on. I've found that every time I get a bunch of money transferred into my bank account, I get a call from the bank asking if I want a loan. When I shop at a store with a credit card, I end up getting a ton of flyers from that store. I'm finding that when I send out an e-mail talking about wanting something, google very "helpfully" gives me a ton of ads about what I was talking about.
It gets creepy and annoying after a while. There are times when I want to go into a store, I buy stuff, they give me stuff, and that's the end of the deal. I buy bananas, I give you money to buy bananas. I don't want you to have some record that says I like to eat bananas. I don't want to be tracked and given a ton of ads telling me about bananas. I give you money. You give me stuff, and we pretend we never know each other.
And somehow getting annoyed at this makes me an evil drug dealer.
OK. Let's say I'm a conspiracy theorist. My conspiracy theory is that newspapers and magazines are horrified at the thought that people will be able to routinely pay for and by newspapers and magazines in a way that they will be unable to track people and deliver eyeballs to advertisers. So they try to paint anyone that wants to live in this sort of world as a drug dealer or bad person. They can't imagine a world in which someone can buy a magazine anonymously so they react against it out of fear.
Written 9 Jan • 1,841 views
Upvote52
Regular citizens have yet to comprehend what's happening to them courtesy of Facebook, Google, Apple and the rest of the big corporations that now own phenomenal amounts of data on us for their commercial advantage. I spend a little bit of time on Facebook (mostly running some pages for some not-for-profit groups) and it's patently clear that most people have zero knowledge that their spending habits, their desires to purchase/acquire goods and services and the capacity to make those purchases represents a resource and value within an economy that's inherently theirs (i.e. you own that information about you and it's yours to leverage from) so they blindly leave multiple open doors for these commercial entities to make money from. And, if you start having a lot of money, using these services you also leave open doors for thieves and villains to come and take from you (and I'm not talking about the hooded variety....there are thousands of 'legitimate' thieves in governments and banks all over the world just waiting to arrest your wealth).
So anonymity and privacy is completely misunderstood and currently if you demand your privacy you are characterised as being bad in some way and likely up to no good as the poster above has articulated. The fundamental offering I see of Dash is a) this ability to maintain anonymity and privacy, aspects that regular people will start to become aware of more and more over the next decade and b) the inherent fungability of the currency which people will also become more aware of as also being critical as Bitcoin becomes subject to more and more blockchain analysis and potentially evolves a disastrous 'white' and 'black' categorisation of bitcoins with different pricing structures (I actually think if it gets to that it will implode).
InstantX adds a level of speed and velocity (other key aspects of money as our expert Tok constantly reminds us of) to Dash that makes it even more powerful as a form of currency.
And the new 'Self-sustainable Decentralized Governance by Blockchain' system is an innovation that addresses the problem of ongoing development being almost impossible to sustain, as can be seen in Bitcoin's case.
I think these three things...
Privacy/anonymity and consequent maintenance of fungability (via Darksend)
Rapid transactions (via InstantX)
Self funding (via Decentralized Governance by Blockchain)
...are the major innovations (and that this has been achieved without making the blockchain invisible is key too).
Still to be detailed and clarified is how Evan will address scaling to facilitate large per-second transaction volume; I'm sure that will be ground-breaking as well.