On the 42 zen needed to run a secure node, has there been any thought on changing this number, and specifically why 42 was chosen in the first place?
It has been discussed before, but 42 is a very famous number... but beyond the cheekiness of it, 42 zen makes it reasonable for many people to setup a secure node. If you raise the number, then the costs become prohibitive as in the case of Dash nodes. If you lower it, then you dilute the pool of secure nodes making them less attractive. It's a little bit game-theory, and a little bit to promote decentralization.
Reason being is that with the recent price jump, you now need about 1k in usd worth of zen to run a secure node, while before when zen was priced lower, you could get enough zen through about 300 usd worth of zen.
Valid point, but the number 42 for secure nodes has been published since Zencash went live. It's not fair to punish early adopters in my opinion.
I suppose this rewards early movers who had zen before it was cool, but just wondering if the current plan is to keep the requirement at 42 zen, regardless of price movement. Assuming the price continues to trend upwards, it could be a barrier to more people running secure nodes (should you need more people to do so).
I don't think so. If it's profitable for people to stand up a secure node, then people will do so.
Oh right 42 like the answer to life 42, gotcha.
Not so much about punishing early adopters, but about getting the right balance to run 'enough' secure nodes. I know that there would be a bit of economics, supply/demand/reward type decision making going on (just like with a decision to buy a gpu to mine or not), but I can envisage the balance potentially being a bit out, and perhaps having too few secure nodes, and with the issue possibly being resolved if the entry point was lower.
I still think 42 zen should stay as the fixed number - you wouldn't want people not buying 42 because they are waiting on a lower zen number entry to run a node.
Perhaps there has been analysis done on the number of secure nodes expected when 42 zen is the entry point and the rewards are 3.5 per cent of the block reward? So for example, the developers are expecting 1000 secure nodes on launch, is this just based on the numbers on the testnet or also some other kind of assessment? Just interested
