Dash.org Dashpay Masternodes InstantX Governance
I am not going to lie: Trading Dash made me substantial profits. But this isn't the story of me as a trader and it certainly isn't the main reason I am a Dash enthusiast so consider this first paragraph an early "Full disclosure" piece.
I retired the stressful lifestyle as a daytrader quite a while ago and decided to become fully engaged with the Dash community instead: I translated large portions of the whitepaper to German. I promoted the project on countless social media channels, forums, comment sections etc. I've been a long time moderator in the subreddit r/dashpay (formerly r/DRKcoin) where I explained the merits of Dash to hundreds of newbies, wrote pages upon pages about Dash in general and helped out where ever I could over the course of 1.5 years. And yes: I've slain dozens of trolls, too :)
The reason for all this commitment is the remarkable body of innovation Evan Duffield and his growing team of developers have created in the last 2 years and the amazing promise Dash holds for the future.
It would be moot to go into explicit historic detail for every feature, though. Suffice it to say: I know of no other cryptocurrency project that delivers so consistently on every feature promise it makes. The professionalism of the team in every aspect -be it development, deployment, marketing, promotion or just interviews- is simply mind blowing. Take a look at the official announcements on the forum. The monthly reports keep the project's progress fully transparent. Dash is like a company run by a finance veteran who understands economics (something Bitcoin Core developers unfortunately know nothing about) and a computer science pro both in one person: Evan Duffield. But it still is a fully opensource project anyone can join anytime.
And this is just the framework I am describing here; let's get into the actual features and keep in mind that literally none of these existed before Dash came along:
Masternodes
(Incentivized, collateralized, 2nd tier full nodes)
Evan Duffield came up with the idea to create a second tier on top of the mining network. Why should we only reward the miners with newly created coins when the full nodes are a) equally important to the health of the network and b) once properly incentivized can be tasked with additional services? So he invented Masternodes. Each Masternode must provide a "Proof of Investment" or as I like to call it "Proof of Commitment" to the network in the amount of exactly 1,000 DASH per node which is used as a collateral to ensure benevolent behaviour. Masternodes receive 45% of the block reward (another 45% goes to the miners). In real world numbers this currently results in a weekly payout of 1.9-2.0 DASH per Masternode. The interval as well as the payout amount are subject to change, because the Masternode count is constantly increasing.
Source of this graphic, courtesy of Dash Core developer crowning
Information on how to run your own Masternode can be found here.
Please note that your 1,000 DASH collateral is never "locked" or tied to the node you are running. You can move the coins anytime you want. Doing so will only stop the node from working.
Of course you can still run a traditional full node without collateral, it simply won't be paid and won't provide any additional services.
General information on the Dash network can be found here.
DarkSend/PrivateSend
(Private, unlinkable transactions)
CoinJoin as described by Greg Maxwell is a flawed concept prone to just-in-time attacks. Evan Duffield improved upon the concept with the DarkSend method. Coins are mixed in identical denominations with other parties over up to 8 rounds yielding a virtually impossible to trace source of funds. The mixing takes place before the funds are supposed to be spent, resulting in two balances in your Dash wallet. The DarkSend balance is the amount of coins ready to be anonymously and instantly spent. Mixing takes places trustlessly and in a decentralized manner through the Masternode network unlike Bitcoin mixing services, which have to rely on a trusted 3rd party which is able to steal your funds.
DarkSend is about to be rebranded to PrivateSend to clear up any confusions behind the term.
InstantX/InstantSend
(Instantly confirmed double-spend-proof transactions)
Bitcoin is not able to handle 0-confirmation transactions in such a way that double spend attacks are effectively prevented.
During development of Dash Evan Duffield had something he described as a "Eureka"-moment: He realized that the 2nd tier network of Masternodes can be further utilized to prevent double-spending. An InstantX transaction works by randomly selecting 5 Masternodes which lock the transaction against any further spending attempts. Conflicting transactions will be dropped by the network as long as the lock is in place. This means as soon as you click the send button, your transaction will show 5 confirmations. The 6th confirmation is the first "real" confirmation by the mining network, meaning your transaction made it into a block and is ready to be spent again.
InstantX will be rebranded to InstantSend.
DGbB
(Decentralized Governance by Blockchain)
You've probably been wondering what happened to the remaining 10% of the block reward, right? Well before DGbB was released the split was 50/50 between miners and Masternodes. Today each month a so called "superblock" is generated containing the accumulation of 10% block rewards. Every Masternode operator gets one vote per node to decide on budget proposals. Anyone with 5 DASH (a fee to prevent abuse) can make a budget proposal and ask the electorate of Masternodes for a certain amount of DASH. It can be a one time payment or stretched over several months. Masternode operators, who hold significant stakes in DASH, are compelled to vote on proposals which are in their best interest, which simply is the prosperity and benefit of the DASH project as a whole.
The Dash developers and several currency-related projects are funded directly from the Dash Blockchain, which means no altruism, no donations and no venture capital are required to keep Dash alive. It is a self-funding entity.
All past and current budget proposals with accompanying discussions can be viewed here.
DASH Evolution
Just when we thought Dash couldn't become any better, Evan Duffield surprised the community with an incredible announcement in October 2015:
Dash Evolution aims to be the WhatsApp of money, a decentralized PayPal if you will. It aims to remove the complexity from cryptocurrency to make it as easily usable as humanly possible. I won't post all the details into this article as it became quite lengthy already, but if you are interested in how the future of cryptocurrency will look like, I strongly encourage you to learn more about DASH Evolution.
Thank you for your patience and your interest! I am happy to answer any questions!