Everything is Falling Apart
A few days ago, I would have been completely on board with investing in Dash. Now I’m not so sure…
Centralized
Do you remember the selling point of the blockchain? The fact that everything on a blockchain is completely decentralized allows for safer transactions between buyers and sellers, as well as creating a digital ledger that records all of those transactions. This was the major selling point of not only the blockchain, but for Bitcoin as well. Now that a few ALT coins have started gaining ground, it looked like Dash may have been promising.
But any investment would mean throwing away money.
Formerly known as “Darkcoin,” Dash had made promises it couldn’t keep. According to this post by @thedashguy back in February, he explained that Dash and the people behind it were heading in the wrong direction. For one, it looks like the Dash ecosystem is completely centralized, in that everything is controlled by Dash’s creator, Evan Duffield. @thedashguy explains that he was actually able to hop on board and join the Dash team in it’s early stages.
The only problem was that he began asking too many questions. He explained that he was eventually “sidelined” on many Dash projects because everyone else in the community had something to hide. Furthermore, it looks like Dash could have been an empire, but due to mismanagement, Dash’s chances of becoming the next Skynet are growing slimmer.
The author also explains that the direction Dash is going is one of self support, in that they are
controlling the governance mechanism to ring as much money out of the project before it collapses on itself
This means that any benefits that would go out to the investors and traders of Dash are instead going directly to the top of the food chain, because under Dash’s governance system, only the top dogs control the nodes used to run the Dash infrastructure.
Marketing Over Progress
So far, it looks like the only real benefit that Dash has going for it is that it has an “Instant Send” and “Instant Confirm” feature that allows for quicker transactions on the blockchain. While this may be true, there is absolutely nothing stopping any of the other ALT coins from completing the same tasks, or even outpacing them at their own game. Even the big dogs in the game, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, could all easily implement better versions of anything Dash has to offer.
The problem with Dash is that it’s oversold and underperforms.
Dash is basically a huge echo chamber supporting its own weight due to the Masternode system, it's nowhere close to being "digital cash' as it's marketed.
Under it’s self sustaining infrastructure, Dash is able to grow within itself, but doesn’t look like it’ll become the actual “digital cash” as promised.
Dash Community
As of writing this article, Dash sits at the number 7 spot for highest cryptocurrency market cap, and with good reason. There is a lot of support in the Dash ecosystem. But it’s that same community that perpetuates the false truths that are being fed to them.
I've had repeated conversations with the core team in the past and various community members who blindly support them and I've asked them which they would prefer, digital cash or Paypal 2.0, and to my surprise the only ones who actually support the whole Paypal idea are the people in charge (core team) and their blind followers, because who wouldn't want to be the next billion dollar company? I mean I get it, but what happened to changing the world and doing it the right way?
Even though it looks like the Dash ecosystem has a healthy home on the internet, it is doomed to be quickly outpaced by its competitors. There is nothing preventing any mainstream or alt coin from becoming the next Darkcoin, picking up where it left off, (because it was doing a fairly good job in its initial stages,) and using Dash’s mistakes to become a better coin.
Ultimately, I’m rooting for whatever coin proves the most practical functionality within the marketplace. If you want to invest, look deeper into what each coin has to offer BEFORE you make your move. It just looks like right now, Dash might not be the way to go.
Alternatives
Although I mentioned in a previous post details about why Dash is better than Bitcoin, there is still an opportunity for Bitcoin to stay ahead. Right now, there are talks between developers about how to solve a few of Bitcoin’s problems, such as the speed of the transaction times, either looking to increase the block size cap or SegWit.
When the devs solve these problems, there’s no stopping them if they want to improve upon Dash’s design.
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This post was inspired by @fabio. I hope you liked it.
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