Worried...

[camosoul]

I guess I should have rephrased that. You don't need or want the payment system itself to be reversible. If you have a transaction you want to escrow then use a service that specializes in it and don't expect to be anonymous or free.

More and more it seems that Dash is focusing on features that sound cool (office space, bank accounts with interest, usernames, reversible transactions, coinfirm, marketplace, etc.) vs features that are actually useful for users (iphone wallets, stealth addresses, ix detection, merchant instant dash to fiat conversion, variable blocksize). Maybe the intent is just to bring in investors to increase the price with no long term goal to actually be useful.

It's pretty simple. Vendors want the power to decide if the customer's demand is absurd or not. Plenty of people get cash refunds... Treating Vendors like the enemy is the root mentality I see. Why would you consider the needs of the enemy? And we look around and see exactly that.

The vendors are considered the enemy.
The vendors' needs/perspective are not even a thought.

The inherent liabilities of sticking DASH into places it simply doesn't belong have not been considered.

I see two different problems feeding each other.

A community that is anti-vendor.
Developers who chase their nerd visions without thinking about it.

Both are hammering on adoption with the presumption of fixing the wrong problem and it has driven the project to self-defeating scope creep.

If the car won't run, and the gas tank is full, adding more gas anywhere you can fit it is not going to make the car run! The problem is elsewhere! I'm pointing right at it! Stop squirting gas on everything!

And they wonder why I come unhinged?

 

[TanteStefana]

The major cryptocurrency carrot is that the Vendor themselves becomes this party. Just like Cash in the Cash Register Drawer; the "gimmie free shit" Snowflakes have no way to leverage the money away and grant themselves free stuff. This is a major concern with the most recent generation. Vendors need protection from this form of fraud, and Banks sure as hell don't care. Hell, they help out! It definitely doesn't get reported as Fraud, or added to any form of Fraud statistics. The entire existing payment infrastructure simply doesn't care because it doesn't hurt them. Fuck the Vendor. Hell, Visa even tacks on a charge back fee, so you not only get to give away free stuff, but Visa incentivises themselves right out of your bank account for doing it!

From very direction, Vendors are being robbed of control of their own money. Cryptocurrency offered the only salvation from this. And you're going to throw away the primary selling point??

Aren't you calling it Digital Cash? So why are you converting it back into a Credit Card? No doubt, snowflakes like to yank their money back and keep the stuff. Or get you to provide free services by stealing the money back and slandering the Vendor. Does Visa care? Fuck no! They actually get paid extra because they invented the Charge Back Fee for themselves!

It's not Digital Cash anymore, if you do this.

And, while I appreciate that @Minotaur is entertaining the idea of making this optional, you don't think everyone is going to demand it if it's there?

It won't hurt Vendors at all. They'll just continue to not use DASH. They already have a system like that. What they want is something better. If DASH cuts it's own balls off in the delusional belief that the turd still isn't shiny enough; continuing to go down this path of catering to the wrong party's interests, all it will do is introduce a stalemate of demands that Vendors have no incentive to meet. Why bother with the DASH platform at all?

@Minotaur is right. The market will decide. And the choice is obvious; we'll just keep using Visa because DASH is no better and has too many risks and barriers to entry that we can just as easily ignore for the same trouble or less... The Problem that @Minotaur isn't recognizing, because he and the rest of the team have their heads in an echo chamber, is that the marketplace is not just crypto. Continuing to pointlessly appeal to the narcissism of Cryptotard Snowflakes is going to hurt DASH's already slim sales pitch, and kill off the only strong point that it offers. They're already to the point of grasping at out-of-scope tangents in an effort to polish the already-shiny turd. They're mentally locked into a path and they need to break this defective way of thinking or DASH will never go anywhere.

It's 100% true that this is a feature that will appeal to the Snowflakes. And they won't step off of it. They're entitled brats. "My way or forget it." It's that very arrogance which will result in there being no reason to bother with DASH if this feature is provided. Catering to this is not going to result in adoption. Yes, it's a shiny new feature. But it removes the feature that gave DASH, nay, all cryptos, any advantage in the first place. We already have that system, and we don't have to convert people to anything new to use it. They already have cards in their wallets and they already know how to use them. Why bother going to all the extra trouble just to end up with the same thing we already have?

And this ignores the fact that an arbitration system makes the entire DASH network complicit in a transaction. Any arbitration process would have to know the identities of bother parties, the product and/or service involved, and the locations and jurisdictions of all of the above. Approval of the transaction will automatically make the entire network complicit. And what of bias? Lets ignore the law for a moment. I want to sell a gun to Job Blow. As long as it's not a federally prohibited gun, and does not cross state lines, it's perfectly legal for me to sell it to Job Blow whoever just because I feel like it in pretty much everywhere in the USA. Will the arbiter know this? Many times the entire purpose of such a transaction is because it's private. Gun buyers don't like being spied on, harassed, targeted by corrupt government officials operating outside of the law to press their personal agendas, intimidation, etc... It happens all the damned time and is the very reason why privacy is important. Will the arbiter be an anti-gun snowflake? We've already seen the extreme left-fringe slant of the MNOs. They'll do anything they can to cause trouble for people they hate. What about contraband items that you'd never realize are contraband? There are all kinds of books and movies that are illegal in China. That we kinda of expect. But did you know similar things exist in Cambodia and Thailand? Forget prostitution. In Laos, it's illegal for a foreigner to have sex with a Lao Citizen, period. Even if they just feel like it and it's not a business transaction. And what about places where Prostitution is perfectly legal? How will you know the parties involved aren't simply lying and end up approving something that occurred in a different jurisdiction? Simply forbid these uses? Really? And lets not even think about all the drugs that people buy and sell. Do you really want DASH to be in a position of arbitrating that? How will DASH even know?

Further, evidence. Not criminality, but of the material facts of the dispute. When moderating a dispute, evidence is submitted by both sides. How will this be done? Are you going to store high-resolution Pictures and Video on the Blockchain every time some petty dickhead wants a free lunch? We're talking YouTube-scale datastorage that even DashDrive cannot expect of it's MasterNodes if shard resilience is to be maintained...

It's as if none of this has even been considered just because some nerds had a cool idea... I'm all for exploring cool ideas that technology can give us, but this is obviously not well considered.

I like that idea of a nearly punitive fee for the moderation service so that it is only used when truly needed, but this still doesn't clear the liability issues that could bring a hammer down on ever MNO without even knowing it. This is a bad idea and "the axe" needs to be a consideration, not a "Keep on pushing because it's soooo coool!"

This is a textbook example of feature-creep being driven by a failure to recognize the actual problem. If the car doesn't run, and you filled the gas tank, and it still doesn't run... filling the passenger compartment with gas isn't going to fix it. The problem is elsewhere, and they're not looking. They're just adding more and more gas thinking that this will eventually fix the engine...

I disagree here. I am certain that most snowflakes would prefer to deal in cash like transactions because they would be cheaper. However, when dealing in a big sale, when there is a lot of risk, I can see either party wanting to protect themselves with such a feature. I don't see how making features possible ruins Dash. We will always have plain simple / non Evolution Dash for those who want to keep out of that system. I doubt even .1% of users would ever use it though, and those that do, would be using it simply for cold storage if anything.

I don't know why you all think it's all or nothing. I see the future being something like a service provider that does arbitrage when needed for a minimum fee. That minimum fee would naturally exclude small price items. Today, if we buy a bottle of milk at the grocery store, go home, open it and it's sour, we go back to the store, even at our convenience, and ask for a replacement. The store takes care of us, not because we can forcefully take our money back but because they want to keep their customers happy. That's how it normally goes with cash purchases, which a lot of people still do, even if it's with their debit cards.

This idea and all the ideas the team and others are coming up with are not black and white. There are many ways to skin a cat, and to shut the door on the idea because you're afraid of unknown consequences is not the way to go through life. Think about this quote from an article yesterday. It's really Dash's vision, it's been where we've been headed for over a year now. After reading it, think about what it means. Yes, that's how far the team is reaching. Yes, it seems crazy, but no, it's not impossible. Not at all.

"Up until now, the industry has seen innovation centered on blockchain technology. With the development of Evolution, we’re going to see innovation centered on Dash"

 

[Solarminer]

I disagree here. I am certain that most snowflakes would prefer to deal in cash like transactions because they would be cheaper. However, when dealing in a big sale, when there is a lot of risk, I can see either party wanting to protect themselves with such a feature. I don't see how making features possible ruins Dash. We will always have plain simple / non Evolution Dash for those who want to keep out of that system. I doubt even .1% of users would ever use it though, and those that do, would be using it simply for cold storage if anything.

I don't know why you all think it's all or nothing. I see the future being something like a service provider that does arbitrage when needed for a minimum fee. That minimum fee would naturally exclude small price items. Today, if we buy a bottle of milk at the grocery store, go home, open it and it's sour, we go back to the store, even at our convenience, and ask for a replacement. The store takes care of us, not because we can forcefully take our money back but because they want to keep their customers happy. That's how it normally goes with cash purchases, which a lot of people still do, even if it's with their debit cards.

This idea and all the ideas the team and others are coming up with are not black and white. There are many ways to skin a cat, and to shut the door on the idea because you're afraid of unknown consequences is not the way to go through life. Think about this quote from an article yesterday. It's really Dash's vision, it's been where we've been headed for over a year now. After reading it, think about what it means. Yes, that's how far the team is reaching. Yes, it seems crazy, but no, it's not impossible. Not at all.

"Up until now, the industry has seen innovation centered on blockchain technology. With the development of Evolution, we’re going to see innovation centered on Dash"

Ok, so even if the big sale item had a need for an escrow service. How is it going to be managed? Is Dash going to hire a customer service team? Are they now going to be storing funds? - which we all know is a big problem with managing and keeping safe. Sure you can say - we will just program reversible transactions in the code. But you realize if it was easy to reverse a transaction because the code automatically approved it - why would you ever NOT do it. You need a person to make the call if it is a reasonable thing to do. So now that you have people involved - how are they paid? What country are they in? Who is managing the payroll?

Oh, and with escrowing funds, you are now a money transmitter. Oh crap - that needs a license too. I guess you could just try and see what happens - How did that work for Charlie Schrem who was charged with "aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business". Since all the masternodes would be aiding this that pretty much kills Dash in the US. But hey, maybe if you don't live in the US you will be ok.

Dash keeps saying they want to compete with paypal. Because why? To lower fees? Because they treat merchants like crap? If Dash tries this reversible transaction thing, they will be just like Paypal. High fees and beating up merchants.

So you want to know why it is all or nothing? If Dash does this wrong, Dash is toast. Poof.

 

[demo]

Any arbitration process would have to know the identities of bother parties, the product and/or service involved, and the locations and jurisdictions of all of the above.

Oh, really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commitment_scheme

 

[Walter]

Snowflake countometer = 27 ATH!

 

[TanteStefana]

Ok, so even if the big sale item had a need for an escrow service. How is it going to be managed? Is Dash going to hire a customer service team? Are they now going to be storing funds? - which we all know is a big problem with managing and keeping safe. Sure you can say - we will just program reversible transactions in the code. But you realize if it was easy to reverse a transaction because the code automatically approved it - why would you ever NOT do it. You need a person to make the call if it is a reasonable thing to do. So now that you have people involved - how are they paid? What country are they in? Who is managing the payroll?

Oh, and with escrowing funds, you are now a money transmitter. Oh crap - that needs a license too. I guess you could just try and see what happens - How did that work for Charlie Schrem who was charged with "aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business". Since all the masternodes would be aiding this that pretty much kills Dash in the US. But hey, maybe if you don't live in the US you will be ok.

Dash keeps saying they want to compete with paypal. Because why? To lower fees? Because they treat merchants like crap? If Dash tries this reversible transaction thing, they will be just like Paypal. High fees and beating up merchants.

So you want to know why it is all or nothing? If Dash does this wrong, Dash is toast. Poof.

I see it as one of those services that are added via api on top of the dash network by other companies, not by Dash itself. That's how I see it.

I think that's also how the masternode service will work as well. People should have a choice. I'm sure some services will be on top of things better than others, gaining people a better roi. I would want a choice in that. Competition needs to be maintained. The way Evan described it, was a bit loose and ill defined. But that's the great thing about Evan, he shares his brilliant thoughts, even if they're not fully flushed out. And in return, the feedback he gets helps these great ideas get fleshed out.

 

[demo]

Sure you can say - we will just program reversible transactions in the code. But you realize if it was easy to reverse a transaction because the code automatically approved it - why would you ever NOT do it. You need a person to make the call if it is a reasonable thing to do.

You dont necessarily need a person to make the call.
You may alternatively need a group of persons, a majority, to make the call.

 

[Solarminer]

You dont necessarily need a person to make the call.
You may alternatively need a group of persons, a majority, to make the call.

You are absolutely right. Alternatively, instead of one person going to jail a group of persons would go to jail.

 

[Gi01]

Tend to agree: i don't like a lot this feature. Too much power to dishonest buyers, and there are a lot that will try to exploit such a rule.

Also, might become VERY resource intensive (or subject to personal preferences of the "referee")

 

[camosoul]

I see it as one of those services that are added via api on top of the dash network by other companies, not by Dash itself. That's how I see it.

I think that's also how the masternode service will work as well. People should have a choice. I'm sure some services will be on top of things better than others, gaining people a better roi. I would want a choice in that. Competition needs to be maintained. The way Evan described it, was a bit loose and ill defined. But that's the great thing about Evan, he shares his brilliant thoughts, even if they're not fully flushed out. And in return, the feedback he gets helps these great ideas get fleshed out.

Once you become the referee, you become complicit in the transaction, and equally liable if the transaction is criminal in nature. The inherent reality of DASH's global usability makes liability insulation impossible. The extreme use restrictions you'd have to put on it would be extreme tot he point that there would be next to nothing that you could actually use it for. Even worse, such a use policy would still be irrelevant because the moderation occurs after the fact as a totally different action. Since you could never be sure if the disputing parties were actually telling yo the truth about the material facts of the transaction, you could still be on the hook as complicit in an illegal act without even knowing it.

Same applies if/when feedback from customers regarding their pot purchases start showing up... If reversible transactions exist AT ALL, you can no longer claim that you have no control over what's going on. You're offering moderation and you can turn it around to prohibit illegal activity, and failed to do so. The simple act of some pothead asshole leaving feedback could put every MNO in prison, even if they were not the moderating party, because they facilitated the TX. Even if it's not IX.

Turning DASH into a marketplace instead of just money carries all the liabilities of a marketplace. Again, we see scope creep. DASH is still failing to address the reason it can't penetrate a real pre-existing marketplace, so it's trying to invent it's own microcosm... Without thinking about the liabilities that come from doing so.

Yeah, it's loose and ill-defined. Because it's being thought of purely from the perspective of a software feature, completely ignoring the real-world implications. This attitude has lead to the continued Vendor Hostile environment that exists in DASH, in spite of it having the killer feature; IX. IX still runs backwards, and can simply be ignored, or pretended an accident that it was left off... If one modifies the client, double-spends can be built-in... If IX were recipient-triggered, then the game changes to Vendor Friendly. The sender's client could try to play any silly games they wanted, and they would be automatically nullified by the rest of the network. But, that Vendor Hostile defect has been left hanging in the breeze for nearly 2 years... They're fully aware of it. But, nothing has been done...

The legal realities of money trying to be and do things that money has no business trying to be and do, are monumental...

You can't sue a $20 bill. You can't throw a $20 bill in prison. You can sue and imprison people who insert themselves, needlessly, into the transaction.

The risk associated with the continued refusal to protect the identities of MNOs was already bad enough. Add this onto it, holy fuck, this is dumb. Exactly what did we spend all the money on "legal research" proposals for? This shit is common sense... You don't need to spend $50,000 to figure out that shit is a fucking BAD idea...

Just to put that money in perspective... In the State of Florida (and most States in the USA) $100,000 is the value of asset you have to prove in order to be licensed as a Money Transmitter. The MNOs were convinced to waste HALF of the money needed to set up a DASH-specific retail-support exchange on something that virtually any 7 year old child could tell you...

Worse, there's already standing legal precedent that DarkSend/PrivateSend is considered money laundering in most jurisdictions for the specific point that it is a post-transaction obfuscation, and not inherent to the transaction itself.

We already have the answers. There was no reason to waste all that money finding out what we already know as a matter of public record!

This single pork project alone accounts for 50% of what SHOULD be DASH's highest priority...

PS/DS has been neglected for a while, and features presented for future development which would completely undermine it... Multi-session mixing has been in the code for a long damn time... It's not "new" for 12.1. It's just "official" for 12.1. Could it be that the real reason for this "legal research" proposal was just an official-looking front for the already-planned elimination of PS/DS? Pocketing a shitload of money it is just a bonus. I mean, if it were free, would you beleive it? May as well charge a bunch of money for something we already know and already plan to change... [/tinfoil hat]

Even if you run the moderation/dispute resolution/referee as a 3rd party service on top of DAPI; the mechanism still exists in the DASH network itself, and puts MNOs on the hook for a 3rd party's decision because they fundamentally facilitate the function. To say it another way: The 3rd party pushed the button, but the MNOs actually did it. It's no different from Jane telling Joe to kill Bob. If Joe kills Bob, Joe is still guilty of Murder, and Jane, in certain jurisdictions, is held equally accountable. If DASH Disputes, Inc. Decides in favor of the Jerome, the Buyer, and refuses to reverse a transaction for which Jerome said the Weed was really Oregano and didn't get him high... Jerome is now a known party to a criminal activity, and so is Dispute Resolution, Inc. But, worse, since the DASH protocol chose to agree with it on DASH Disputes, Inc.'s request, they are also involved. Which means every MNO, the identities of which are also known... By running an MN, you are a willing participant, and equally culpable.

This has gone a long way to exposing just how clueless some of the "leaders" of this project really are... That's not meant as an insult. It's a statement of fact. They might be the masters of code, but that's about it. The real world is still a foreign concept in this echo chamber.

 

[camosoul]

So you want to know why it is all or nothing? If Dash does this wrong, Dash is toast. Poof.

The Snowflakes will make it all or nothing. They always do...

 

[camosoul]

More and more it seems that Dash is focusing on features that sound cool (office space, bank accounts with interest, usernames, reversible transactions, coinfirm, marketplace, etc.) vs features that are actually useful for users (iphone wallets, stealth addresses, ix detection, merchant instant dash to fiat conversion, variable blocksize). Maybe the intent is just to bring in investors to increase the price with no long term goal to actually be useful.

SO MUCH OF THIS!

I didn't mind the useless fluff when it was just useless fluff.

It's a sign of cowardice when there's an elephant in the room that needs doing, but everyone faffs about doing busywork that seems useful, but really doesn't help with the obvious bigass problem that everyone can plainly see. Still afraid to make the move...

Now the desperation to look busy without actually doing anything has reached a point of putting real features on the chopping block in order to make room for more fluff... That's a problem. The turd is already shiny enough. Stop looking for ways to look busy.

There's only one thing left to do; Fix IX so we can run with it.

 

[camosoul]

"Up until now, the industry has seen innovation centered on blockchain technology. With the development of Evolution, we’re going to see innovation centered on Dash"

The fact that you took this absurdly naive commentary to heart shows just how effective the echo chamber's hype really is...

This sort of thing might work in the cryptosphere, but it doesn't work in the real world. It's precisely this narcissism that prevents DASH from penetrating grown-up land.

Running up to girls as you whip out your junk and explain that it's the greatest junk ever made by God and man, even if it's the 2100% truth, is not going to get the results you're looking for. You could gold-plate it. You could add Christmas Lights. No amount of extra features are going to help. You could even get crazy enough to tie it in a knot, or promise that it has the ability to make girls unpregnant 4 months later, or make those embarrassing videos retroactively disappear from the Internet... Still not going to get you the results you're looking for... You could promise that it'll make her boobs 2 sizes bigger while becoming gravity-resistant, and maybe a few of the dumbest girls will try it, but it won't take long before they realize that was a lie and tell all their friends what a jerk you are... You might even get one who would be happy to do it just cuz she likes it, but she needed a good enough "He tricked me!" excuse so that she can claim it wasn't really her fault and save face... You could even say that it'll cure cancer, and maybe then a few very desperate people on their death beds will try it, but, again, it'll be proven out as a lie and now you're a giant asshole that everyone hates...

You're going to get nowhere with this approach, and only further drive away all of those who see the problem.

This is what Crypto has been doing for almost a decade, and DASH is continuing the trend when it could actually be getting laid instead by simply not doing this...

Vendors are like Smart Girls with Standards. They're not going to fall for this. You have to give them value. You have to turn them on with stuff they care about. DASH just barely has the ability to do this. Killing off those aspects in order to do even more of the above, is a bad, bad move!

DASH has become obsessed with drawing a small crowd of dumb hos, and seems to forget that this is not the majority, and not the path to healthy, useful, adult (business) relationships... People are watching, DASH. They can see what you're doing, and the Smart Girls with Standards steer clear...

 

[demo]

You are absolutely right. Alternatively, instead of one person going to jail a group of persons would go to jail.

The biggest the group of persons is, they hardest is to find a big prison to put them all inside.

If we are too many, I think they cannot find such a big prison, to put so many people inside.

Do you got the point now?

 

[GrandMasterDash]

I'm thinking - being dash now has a legal department - perhaps Core would be kind enough to setup a free Worldwide MN Legal Insurance Programme. As an MNO, I want to know I can depend on Core to pay my legal fees if I am pulled in by the authorities (money laundering etc). We can start with US$1M legal insurance.

 

[xdashguy]

Honestly, Dash would not be legally targeted for the mixing. Dash privacy is so bad that authorities would prefer to keep alive as a honey pot rather than try to destroy it. It's way too useful for them!