Darkcoin introduces Proof of Service and rewards users for running special servers called “Masternodes”

[crypto_coiner]

Annoucement: https://www.darkcoin.io/about/what-is-darkcoin/masternodes-and-proof-of-service/
White paper: https://www.darkcoin.io/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/InstantTX.pdf

This enables they claim, instant transaction.

"In addition to traditional Proof of Work rewards for mining Darkcoin,
users are also rewarded for running and maintaining special servers
called “Masternodes”.

In return for providing this service, one Masternode is randomly
selected by the network to receive 20% of the payout from each block
mined.
In order to run a Masternode, a user must put up 1000 DRK as
something akin to collateral, though unlike traditional collateral, the
DRK never leaves the user’s possession. It can be moved or spent at any
time by the user – doing so simply removes the Masternode from service
and makes it ineligible to receive rewards."

Question: How can Nu support instant transactions?

[creon]

Darkcoin is using their masternode subnetwork for a long time and its also their way to make transaction anonymous. I am personally not very much in favor of privileged subnetworks, because it is not well tested yet (compared to normal blockchains) and many attacks are possible. And the masternode network of darkcoin forked quite often since it came to existence.

Regarding the instant transactions the paper summarizes many attack vectors sufficiently. But with 10 masternodes (=10,000 DRK, ~ 31,500 USD at the time of writing) you are already able to create confusion (as described in “Multiple Consensus Messages”).

The Darkcoin developers are very smart people and following their work is always worth it, but I am not sure if this particular concept would be applicable or even recommendable for a system like Nu.

[desrever]

I love DRK and they technical innovation. However since Instant X release (3 days ago) they have been subject to all new sorts of attacks and hard forked twice to protect. They are now running in a very very centralized fashion

[Vyazhan]

I double-checked this now and I cannot find reason why exactly it is now very very centralized? Can you elaborate? The official forum doesn’t yield other answers than the ones I found to be true as well

[desrever]

for one, there is one lead developer - Evan - taking decisions about hard forking, daily, and setting arbitrary measures to prevent possible attacks, setting features on and off at will, etc . Quote from yesterday’s update :

After the entire network updates (Pools, Exchanges, Masternodes, etc), we’ll activate enforcement again.

As of today, it seems like an hybrid a PoW mixed with Proof of Developer (PoD) coin.

[Vyazhan]

I don’t know to be honest. If you don’t like his development, just don’t update your client or don’t support the coin. I don’t see how having elected custodians or developers being any different? Just vote with your voice is the only thing you can do.

If you don’t like the centralized approach of 1 lead dev (which, by the way, doesn’t seem to be true looking at the dozens of developers with DRK), just fork it and then continue from there on.

So far, I personally liked everything I saw with this developer so I see no reason to mistrust him or anyone in the network, especially since they are not hard-forking per say but sporking, from what I have read anyways, so unless the majority of the masternodes agree with a certain change, nothing happens at all

Just my 2bits…