Calculations were already given to us by virgile and QE, but you can imagine how it would work if you have a network of say 1000 1k nodes and one whale with say 100 nodes and everyone else is much smaller, if then you wish to create a new pool of evo nodes also at 1k Dash and that pool size will be 500 nodes (estimated) because 50% of the block reward is reserved just for them, then the 100 node whale can make up as much as 20% of the pool size. If however, we increase the collateral requirement to 4k Dash and still allocate 50% of the reward there, then the pool size should be about 125 nodes and our whale could only make 25 of such nodes which is also 20%, but the evo pool will get more fees from evo and have reduced costs in hosting, so will attract more nodes than 125, which would dilute the whale's stake in the pool. So it all comes down to fine tuning the amount of reward allocated to the evo pool and the size of the collateral, which Virgile and QE can speak to.
You do realize that the impulse to limit whales here is anti-capitalistic in nature, right?
Making educated guesses in attempt to identify MNO clusters and whales is all fine and good, but we should not be making any direction-changing decisions based on the data. Don't get me wrong, that mnowatch feature is cool and I appreciate it, but it first and foremost should serve as a reminder to multi-MN owners to protect their privacy better and randomize votes and other behavior.
This desire to limit so-called whales rubs me the wrong way, as it does not sound like a property of uncensorable, equal-opportunity and fungible money. Sounds more like socialistic central planning. If you have a proper race condition with good incentives, then the market will figure it out.
For a long time, I've seen the trend for people in the Dash community to talk about "MNOs" and this is actually wrong in my opinion. From the network's perspective, we don't have masternode owners, we have 1000Dash masternodes. One masternode is one vote, and that's it. The network does not and should not care how many human operators are controlling which number of nodes.
That's not to say this limiting impulse is completely without merit. One thing that might matter about this "whale danger" is a lack of diversity in server hardware and physical jurisdictions. I'm sure there are other pratical considerations. But again, the free market should balance itself out eventually.
One could say Bitcoin mining is somewhat "centralized" over time as a result of a completely free and open PoW consensus, as those with more ability and resources will garner more of the reward for a while. But it's still a meritocracy that is self-balancing as it adapts to the ever-evolving conditions of market price, power costs, ASIC development, rents, etc., and in my opinion it is still not a dangerous level of centralization given the conditions and incentives surrounding mining hardware investments.
I'd also like to point out that there's really no such thing as a "100-node whale" individual. Unless you're doing KYC on actual addresses and proving ownership with private keys, you can't prove how many individual humans own what--and actually we really shouldn't care. In this thread Quantum keeps mentioning that "one entity" shouldn't have too much power or too many nodes. While I understand this desire to encourage a more distributed network, we should understand that it is absolutely not "capitalistic" to try to prevent individuals (or corporations) from amassing power. Money is a representation of merit and like it or not, even corporations like Binance are entitled to whatever power they wield with their investment. Just because the 200+ nodes might come from one corporation, does not mean those 200+ votes are any less valid or might have opinions that are "wrong" for the network. On the contrary, investing in a Dash MN means you get to dictate what is right for it.
Unfortunately, I think the only way to build a truly fair decentralized system is to allow this potential for "one entity" to gain a large amount of power. Trying to absolutely prevent this outcome is the pathway to all the things we don't like about the fiat system and legacy central banking systems that have led to the creation of Bitcoin in the first place. The opportunity to become a powerful whale absolutely must exist in the system, otherwise it won't be "fair." I know it sounds backwards but I think that's the only way you can truly prevent centralization -- is to allow for its potential so that everyone has an equal chance.
As Solarguy recently pointed out, large investment is sorely needed ATM and we should be building things that entice and encourage more potential whales, not dissuade them.
