Rise of the Machines: Blockchain-Based Governance

I am generally skeptical of "digital democracy schemes" (and even digital democracy for that matter), but I must say that this system seems to be working!

I can see that some heated debates have erupted from time to time (Terpin etc.), but on the other hand, lots of innovations are being proposed, debated, and sometimes implemented. What a great way to incentivize development, without too many accusations of scamming/premining/etc. Furthermore, this process INCREASES THE VALUE OF THE CURRENCY, offering labor as collateral.
 
ericsammons, Nice informative work. However it has left me with some thoughts and questions.
I am completely clueless when it comes to tech and economics, which I guess is the audience you are trying to reach, so I thought I'd share my thoughts with you, in the hope you will have some answers that you could maybe slip into your article. Beware, I might sound like a total tool.
I'v been trying to get my head around how this model works and where it's heading in terms of how the economics and ethics will play out in the long run.

Protocol changes, how does this work?
is there something in the programming that does not allow a protocol change unless the master Nodes have voted it up.
Or in theory could the Devs implement a change regardless. Does one person have a special key, I don't have a clue and guess most other noobs wont either.

What are your thoughts on the future regarding rise in value and Master Node entry?
If the price rises excessively, which is likely since only 2'600'000 dash are available for sale with the other 58% locked in master Nodes.
This participation would only be possible for the very rich. Who on the bright side, since they invested so much would be voting in favor of any proposals made by the commons that would help usability and adoption, increasing purchasing power.

Just a thought whilst I'm rattling on. Part shares/savings in MNs, clients would receive interest and have part vote. This could keep things decentralized
in the future. Im thinking in terms of when the payment infrastructure is up to scratch, adoption is high and federal Governance has collapsed, we will be fully responsible for ourselves, no more finger pointing. So what I would like to see is the budget system being used to pay for other types of infrastructure, health care and seed funding for decentralized social enterprise to replace public services, who will be voting for proposals like this, it should be the commons in my opinion. Also what would be nice, is a app that allows you to voluntarily donate to proposals of your choice, either manually or automatically each time you make a transaction.

My fear is, with 58% of the money supply being owned by a guess 1000 individuals who decide on the direction and I have no idea who they are.
this to me is looking dangerously like the makings of another Plutocracy. unless in some way MN owners are willing in the future to sell off their MNs as a type of savings/voting account, but then we'll be trusting multi billionaires to give away their power.
I'm not an Economist and in no way can I see a fuller picture without the help of this community.

I would really like us to succeed in freeing ourselves, after this chain of thought I really need to read an article with some positive vision and theory of the end game.

Thanx
 
AnarchoFrigidity said:
My fear is, with 58% of the money supply being owned by a guess 1000 individuals who decide on the direction and I have no idea who they are.
this to me is looking dangerously like the makings of another Plutocracy.
Click to expand...

Since using Dash is voluntary and there are plenty of alternative currencies to choose, it isn't in the interest of the "plutocracy" to make any decision that would make people stop using it. It would devalue the very collateral that makes them wealthy in the first place. That is not the case, for example, in Bitcoin. One could have considerable influence in how it runs, but no holdings in Bitcoin itself.

Also, I think 1000 anonymous people is decentralized enough so that no government could exert enough pressure to force a decision that would undermine the currency.
 
AnarchoFrigidity said:
Protocol changes, how does this work?
is there something in the programming that does not allow a protocol change unless the master Nodes have voted it up.
Or in theory could the Devs implement a change regardless. Does one person have a special key, I don't have a clue and guess most other noobs wont either.
Click to expand...

There is nothing technical that prevents the core devs from making any change they want to the protocol. Evan's choice to bring the 2MB blocksize increase to a MN vote was voluntary, and he could have just pushed the change through.

However, along with the Budget System, Dash also has the same mechanisms for decision-making of any open-source cryptocurrency project. The main two being miners and the possibility of hard forks. If Evan made a change to the Dash protocol that was rejected by most miners, they could simply not upgrade to that version of the protocol, which would make it not effective. Further, another team of programmers could hard fork the codebase, and if the miners and MNs followed that hard fork, it would become the "New Dash." We see an attempt to do exactly that with Bitcoin Classic.

These two mechanisms are important, but I would argue that they are not sufficient. As we see in Bitcoin, mining has become very centralized, and thus a small number of people basically control the entire project now. With the Dash Budget System, you have spread out the decision-making to other incentivized (and therefore invested) parties.

AnarchoFrigidity said:
What are your thoughts on the future regarding rise in value and Master Node entry?
If the price rises excessively, which is likely since only 2'600'000 dash are available for sale with the other 58% locked in master Nodes.
This participation would only be possible for the very rich. Who on the bright side, since they invested so much would be voting in favor of any proposals made by the commons that would help usability and adoption, increasing purchasing power.
Click to expand...

First, it is important to note that 1,000 Dash collateral requirement can be adjusted in the future. If each Dash were worth $400, for example, it could be that only 100 Dash are required to set up a MN. Existing MN owners would have to vote that through, of course, but their own # of MNs would increase ten-fold, so they wouldn't necessary be opposed.

Also note that the money supply of Dash is increasing every day, so there will be more than 2,600,000 Dash available in the future.

But to answer your main question, I have no problem with a high barrier to entry to run a MN. It ensures that a person is truly invested in the project before they have a voice, which avoids making decisions based on who is loudest on Reddit. And the more a Dash is worth, the more invested a person is in the project, and so they will vote only for what they believe is best for the project.

AnarchoFrigidity said:
Just a thought whilst I'm rattling on. Part shares/savings in MNs, clients would receive interest and have part vote. This could keep things decentralized
in the future. Im thinking in terms of when the payment infrastructure is up to scratch, adoption is high and federal Governance has collapsed, we will be fully responsible for ourselves, no more finger pointing. So what I would like to see is the budget system being used to pay for other types of infrastructure, health care and seed funding for decentralized social enterprise to replace public services, who will be voting for proposals like this, it should be the commons in my opinion. Also what would be nice, is a app that allows you to voluntarily donate to proposals of your choice, either manually or automatically each time you make a transaction.
Click to expand...

Interesting ideas. Note that there is nothing today preventing people from pooling together now on a MN. They would have to determine how they would vote that 1 MN, but multiple people can invest in 1 MN now.

AnarchoFrigidity said:
My fear is, with 58% of the money supply being owned by a guess 1000 individuals who decide on the direction and I have no idea who they are.
this to me is looking dangerously like the makings of another Plutocracy. unless in some way MN owners are willing in the future to sell off their MNs as a type of savings/voting account, but then we'll be trusting multi billionaires to give away their power.
Click to expand...

Remember, in that scenario they may be worth billions, but they can't access that money as long as their MNs are running. So if the value of Dash skyrockets, I would imagine that you will see a lot of MN owners cashing out at least some of their MNs, which would then broaden the pool of MN owners.
 
ericsammons said:
Interesting ideas. Note that there is nothing today preventing people from pooling together now on a MN. They would have to determine how they would vote that 1 MN, but multiple people can invest in 1 MN now.
Click to expand...
Interesting
something I was thinking about before I discovered Dash was how a community of Anarchistic minded individuals would replace tax and Government budgets.
so I was thinking about the idea of not for profit mining pools, where the block rewards after paying for overheads could fund anything from Humanitarian projects to seed funding for social enterprise, and anyone invested in the mining pool would be able to vote on proposed or ongoing projects.

These are the ideas that excite me most about the crypto revolution, we really have a chance with this to sort ourselves out.
It just concerns me a little that nothing like this has been implemented, well until Dash of course.
I believe that if the Dash community was to reach out to the World this way, it would make for some serious main stream news and a big statement that Crypto is here for the people and not just some dodgy Ponzi scam for criminals.
Unfortunately I'm in no position in my life right now and have none of the necessary experience to make any kind of moves on these ideas, plus I'm completely technically clueless.
So I guess all I can do for now is shout about it.

Exciting times to be alive.....


ericsammons said:
Remember, in that scenario they may be worth billions, but they can't access that money as long as their MNs are running. So if the value of Dash skyrockets, I would imagine that you will see a lot of MN owners cashing out at least some of their MNs, which would then broaden the pool of MN owners.
Click to expand...

Yep, and probably by this point there would be no real threat of dumping on the market since said Dash would be a lot more tangible and probably still appreciating in value.
 
ericsammons what you said isn't 100% accurate in that masternodes have an ability to reject blocks once the "spork" is turned on. So when we have, whatever it is... 90%? of Masternodes running a newer version of the wallet/node then the spork turns on and any miner not using the latest is rejected. So actually miners in Dash do not have the power.

I guess what the vote tells you in such a situation (just a yae/nay vote) is that you will most likely get consensus if you build it.

As far as how much the collateral is, Evan is more interested in making decisions based on what Dash needs rather than how many people want to participate. I'm hoping that smart contracts will enable people to combine funds into a wallet in a trustless way and run a masternode this way, maybe via a service provider like Node40. I can see it, how it can work, but not being a programmer, I don't know how to make it happen. I also don't know how sophisticated smart contracts can be in Dash (if at all yet?) I can only see how the concept can work??

My sister is a great programmer, but has lost interest in it, it's her work and she's looking forward to retiring. I can't convince her to help me make this happen. She has no energy for such a project which is so sad to me :(
 
TanteStefana said:
ericsammons what you said isn't 100% accurate in that masternodes have an ability to reject blocks once the "spork" is turned on. So when we have, whatever it is... 90%? of Masternodes running a newer version of the wallet/node then the spork turns on and any miner not using the latest is rejected. So actually miners in Dash do not have the power.
Click to expand...

I don't think I realized that the spork could be forced on miners like that - thanks for letting me know.

It would be interesting if there were a contentious spork where the incentives of masternodes and miners were not aligned. Although masternodes could force the code on the miners, if a large majority of the miners refused to accept it, it would dramatically drop the hash rate, which could have significant consequences. Hopefully that'll never happen! :)
 
lynx said:
Since using Dash is voluntary and there are plenty of alternative currencies to choose, it isn't in the interest of the "plutocracy" to make any decision that would make people stop using it.
Click to expand...

I'd like to add that I don't think the term "governance" really applies to CURRENCY and/or a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE. We're not building roads and bridges here, we're just changing the concept of money to be more democratic and dynamic. Surely this is a radical shift in how we think about wealth and commerce, but we're not changing the regulatory structure of society. The biggest risk is that the currency fails, and everyone gets zeroed out - for example if someone were able to take control of the entire DASH supply, or a devastating bug was found. In this case, you pack up your toys and go home. The largest potential benefit is we build a community that can exchange goods and services without taxes, unnnecessary interventions, and devaluations.

Many people stated that when Bitcoin came along, it caused us to examine how our monetary systems works (or don't). For example, in the USA, suddenly people studying bitcoin learned that USD are created electronically with no backing, by a central authority that works in secret, is largely unaccountable to the public, and likely doesn't even act in the public's best interest. Obviously an electronic currency that is untaxed, whose evolution is determined by voting of significant stakeholders, that is built on the "sweat equity" of contributors, and has a preset monetary base and inflation rate, is a radical departure from the Fed system. If the system is anonymous and doesn't require trust, all the better.

Perhaps people have internalized the concept of money so much that they feel that cryptocurrencies are more earth-shattering than they really are. On the other hand, if you're a fan of people like Stefan Molyneux:

),

Perhaps crypto's impact on the world WILL be earth-shattering...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top