Rather than dismissing your limitations, embrace them and improve. Masternodes requiring 1000% drk in exchange for 10% of future mining fees appeals to those of you who only seek profit. To the hackers/ adversaries/ tax departments/ NSA/ even just the suspicious, this solution is a joke.
What should you do? Make it better! Adopt ring signatures. Stay ahead of the curve or you will be left behind.
I probably shouldn't bother as your mind is obviously made up that DarkSend is "a joke", but here goes...
1. If you have truly been following the thread you would know that ring signatures have been discussed for DarkSend V2.
2. Why not do it now? Well because you can't leave DarkSend in beta ad infinitum while Evan is continually trying to catch up to the "cutting edge". At some point it has to be open sourced and released - and when it is... it will the best open source, fully released anonymous cryptocoin solution
at the time. If you know of any other anonymous coins that are not in alpha, beta, testing, brainstorming, or some other preliminary phase then point them out. AFAIK, there are none.
3. The 1000DRK held in stasis while you function as a masternode (and get 10% of mining reward) is a better solution than having the masternodes being able to be set up at no cost. Proof of stake while actually providing a service i.e. Proof of Service. DRK will be one of the first coins with this feature.
4. Stop with the naivety in thinking that just because the NSA has "infinite" money that they can click their heels three times and buy up all the DRK and own all the masternodes. To buy, you need people to sell - if the NSA tried this the coin price would go through the roof.
5. The NSA doesn't even care about DRK now and DarkSend would have to be a smash hit before they do. By that time there will likely be a few thousand masternodes forcing them to add all the more value to the coin to accumulate enough masternodes.
6. How much is "enough" anyway? Several rounds of DarkSend will be used by those really looking for anonymity. The NSA would need what -- 65%?, 80%? of all the masternodes to get information reliably. You only need to
go through ONE clean node before you are anonymous. To get all the DRK for that, just how much money would they need to dump into the coin? That in turn would just make DRK more widely known - what are the effects of that?
I could continue, but I won't. You are drastically oversimplify things by saying "the NSA has a lot of money so therefore your solution of requiring 1000 DRK for masternodes is a joke". This is a very good solution for the time being, i.e. DarkSend V1. How it evolves after that point?
Well that is unknown, but the main reason I invested in this coin is not because DarkSend per say, but because Evan is dedicated to improving the anonymous solution that will be used with Darkcoin now and in the future -- whether that takes us to ring signatures or something else entirely.
Nice writeup. As an investor in cryptocurrency (and previously many startup companies) the bolded portion is the area the vast majority of people do not understand. History is littered with countless good ideas that didn't have the team to properly implement them. I invest in the team, first and foremost. In that regard, I am EXTREMELY comfortable with my Darkcoin investment.