Dash Lead Developer Believes Users Will Have to Seek a Bitcoin Alternative

04.03.2016

Mastermind and lead developer of Dash, Evan Duffield, was among the participants of Satoshi Rountable discussing current problems bitcoin industry faces. Following the event, Evan stated that Dash, as opposed to Bitcoin, has no scalability problem.

“Bitcoin simply can’t keep up with user adoption from this point forward and that leaves users two choices: either leave the decentralized ecosystem and use fiat, or start working with alternative projects like Dash,” he said.

Another important issue highlighted by Duffield is the evident problem of mining centralization in Bitcoin ecosystem. According to Duffield, Satoshi Nakamoto couldn’t possibly foresee such an active centralization of mining capacities which had brought about miners to dominate the industry. Eventually, he believes, there is a small group of individuals actually controlling the consensus, and their short-term interests contradict with interests of other participants and the industry as a whole. Finally, it contradicts with interests of Bitcoin’s regular users.

“We definitely do not want our ecosystem to follow the same failed course and we definitely would have under the pooled ASIC mining paradigm. This is mainly because there are differences in efficiency that a miner can gain depending on where they live, which can give a huge advantage when their higher investment returns are compounded. Efficiencies such as cheaper labor, cheap or free electricity and even withholding newer advanced ASICs for their own mining operations, then selling them after they become less effective. After many iterations of these phenomenon in BTC we have come to a situation where the ones who have access to these advantages effectively control Bitcoin,” Duffield stated.

“After many iterations of these phenomenon in BTC we have come to a situation where the ones who have access to these advantages effectively control Bitcoin,” he added.

Satoshi Roundtable

Speaking about his participation in Satoshi Roundtable alongside with his Dash partner Daniel Diaz, Evan admitted the experience was momentous, and that it would help him to make further decisions.

“The roundtable was not a typical conference in which we’re trying to sell ourselves to the general public, but rather a conference among the leaders of the cryptocurrency space. It was clear throughout the event that the main underlying issue of the blocksize debate is an issue of governance. The discussions provided us with insights about the conflicting interests that an effective governance mechanism will need to manage. Based on the discussions that unfolded, we have a high degree of confidence that our solution is an effective one. While our governance capabilities may need to be enhanced as we grow to a much larger size, we clearly won’t have the scalability and governance issues that Bitcoin has currently, and possess a clear mechanism to make changes to our governance model if required,” Duffield said.

According to Duffield, the Dash team managed to solve the problem of ‘unfair’ influence accumulation with miners that disrupts the decentralization principle in jurisdictions controlling the manufacturing and application of ASIC equipment.

“After hours of discussions, we believe we have found the solution to the unfair mining advantages that produce centralization around certain jurisdictions that control the production of ASICS. We will be releasing much more information about this soon, but are feverishly working on this project for v12.1. We’re going to be releasing much more information about this in the coming weeks; it’s going to be a giant advantage for the Dash project,” he stated.

Another important implication of the meeting, Duffield believes, is realization of importance and necessity of creating fiat gateways for Dash. Availability of specific gateways will facilitate usage of the cryptocurrency for people, he supposes.

Budgetary Proposals for March

The core team is currently heavily focused on v12.1 and current projects, so there are no new requests from us at this point. However, Evan reminded the time for voting on budgetary proposals for the current month has already come, and the handouts are scheduled for March 6 (the moment of creation of the next Dash super-block).

Duffield also noted the Dash community’s activity has significantly grown. He called for all the participants to actively take their part in discussing and voting for important issues. He pointed out that people of different professions and experience may offer their capabilities to the network in the form of independent proposals.

“There are various threads dedicated to discussing these proposals (here on the Dash forum and on Dashwhale) and we encourage you to engage in debates and cast your votes,” Duffield added.

Duffield stressed that any of those issues may impact further development of Dash, so discussing them is of utmost importance.

This January marked two years of Dash existence. The date was chosen to hold a voting on increasing the cryptocurrency’s block size from 1 to 2 MB, which was supported by 99% of the network’s participants.

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Tags: altcoins, cryptocurrencies, Darkcoin, Dash, Evan Duffield