As I've presented before, I believe trustless shared masternodes would go a long way to alleviate the concerns toknormal continues to bring up. So not sure why it has been dismissed out of hand.
This could very well push the masternode count to 7000, forcing non-shared masternode owners to consider the risk of having such a large number of coins tied up for only 4% too much and moving out as they are replaced by shared masternodes. A slow, controlled way to increase masternodes while increasing community involvement.
Another thing to seriously consider is lowering the collateral required to run a masternode. I may be wrong, but I thought Evan Duffield once said that once DASH is $100, the collateral should be reduced to 500. This simple change could go a long way in spreading out the masternode rewards to more people as well...
Trustless masternodes doesn't address the discussed issue as long as the split for MNs remain the same.
There is also no technical need for more masternodes and there would be no (service) benefit to end users.
More masternodes, more people are invested. 5000 masternodes was a great milestone to reach but it was essentially reached last bull run...
If one masternode costs $25/mth to run, two masternodes would cost $50/mth to run. If collateral requirements were lowered/trustless shared masternodes introduced, perhaps 20000 masternodes could be reached.
At that number the masternode costs would 4x, the return in DASH would be 1/4th of what it is now.
DASH should strive for greater decentralization.
More masternodes means less reward per masternode as well as more total cost to run all the masternodes throughout the network.
That's only the reward "share" you're alluding to. The actual reward at an aggregate level is a constant and independent of the number of nodes. It's essentially the proportion of the chain mined at "zero difficulty". Thats the bottom line and you can slice it up any way you like within that overall constraint obviously. The actual number of nodes is not the problem, it's rather profitability dynamics between the two groups and their increasing asymmetry as price rises. It's simply an unstable model for all the reasons I outlined in previous posts.
But costs do increase if by decreasing collateral, more masternodes result. The reward in DASH also decreases per masternode owner to a more reasonable compensation (or at least it moves it in the right direction). Once 20000 is reached perhaps a further adjustment would be needed.
Your thesis is entirely based on equating a masternode to a 0% difficulty miner which conveniently ignores the $25/mth hosting cost.
Anyways, I guess one point I was trying to make was that if you were to reduce the percentage of rewards going to masternodes, you'd need to also reduce the collateral required.
I don't see how this follows. The collateral is arbitrary as it is. If running a masternode is more profitable than not running one then the network will get populated. As previously mentioned masternodes churn so lots of them have ALREADY been sold. It's in fact possible for the entire compliment of 5000 nodes to be sold and for the network to still be populated at a steady count of 5000 because they simply change hands at different times.
The problem is measuring returns in Dash. It looks profitable when in fact is isn't because the return needs to be measured in dollars taking into account the capital gain/loss of the entire holding. ROI in Dash would only be meaningful if we were a stablecoin.
There's a reason it's plateauing around 5000. Think risk/reward.
Who's measuring ROI in DASH? The Dash network can only pay in DASH to both masternodes and miners.
Please answer this question that you continue to side step. Why, if someone is willing to spend so much money (and time) to mine, wouldn't they spend the same or even less money to just purchase the coin and sell it at a profit later?
Because mining is a business. It's income oriented whereas speculative trading is capital gain oriented. They compliment each other. Mining is a competitive thing so if nobody else is doing it there's enormous profit to be made for you. As more join in it reaches an equilibrium point of diminishing returns and that's your prevailing network hashrate level.
Most jurisdictions view trading as a business too... if you're buying and holding long term, then maybe it's capital gains.
Your (and other's) claim is that by reducing the proportion of the supply that's mined we become more competitive and improve our store of value.
This has never been my claim. The abstract notion of what or what is not a store of value is not something I care to proclaim.
What I did say, and you well know, is that the implementation that's to change the reward split from 50/50 to 60/40 over the next 5 years is negligible. Anything you're arguing now would have to be just as true for DASH back in 2015 because this change substantially changed nothing.