DASH spokesperson Amanda B. Johnson to Bitnewstoday: it pays to be nimble
The cryptocurrency DASH is currently one of the most known altcoins on the market, and Bitnewstoday has contacted the representative of its development team. Naturally, Bitnewstoday wanted to find out why DASH is better than other privacy-focused cryptocoins, more on the history of the coin name change over the years and, of course, get the opinion on the market. You can check out the answers provided by Amanda B. Johnson below. Note that this is not the first time Bitnewstoday asks this expert: previously, she told us about the evolution of mining.
1. Why are DASH anonymization tools better than Monero's?
The primary purpose of a blockchain is to provide certainty of coinsupply. Satoshi makes this quite clear in his whitepaper -- that so long as all coin transfers are "announced" publicly, there can be certainty about the money supply, and hence a level of trust in the system. Attempts to keep coin transfers hidden rather than public -- like in Monero -- necessarily come at the cost of breaking a blockchain's primary purpose: to provide certainty of coin supply. In short, if you can't see something for yourself, you can never be sure that it is what others say it is.
DASH provides both certainty of coin supply AND a level of privacy by creating multiple and equally-plausible points of origin for payments. In privacy mode, the Dash Core wallet can create up to 6500 equally-plausible histories for any amount of DASH down to 0.01. In this way, even private payments are still publicly announced, but since there are 6500 possibilities as to where a given input really came from, it's resource-prohibitive to find out which point of origin is the real point of origin. For an explainer on exactly how DASH does this, see this short video I made.
That is not to say that a coin which obscures its blockchain has no purpose at all. For example, if you want to send value to someone and it's of utmost importance that no one (except the recipient) is even aware that a payment took place, it might make sense for you to use an obscured cryptocurrency for that payment. We see these kinds of things happen in the non-crypto world already -- for example, some people use Tide detergent to transfer value because it's more practical than money for their purpose in a particular scenario. But Monero's privacy was discovered to have been seriously compromised in the past, so anyone desiring to make an absolutely private payment should carefully study the crypotcurrency they choose for it first. Just believing the generic marketing terms around a given crypto won't cut it.
2. Why did the cryptocurrency change its name twice? Did this naming process help to increase its popularity?
In a highly-competitive and nascent industry like cryptocurrency, it pays to be nimble. That means trying to new things and quickly adapting to perceived changes in consumer demand. Even if that means acknowledging that the nerdy name you chose in the beginning probably doesn't have the best consumer appeal. Think of a nerdy software term like "ogg vorbis" versus the much more consumer-friendly term "MP3," and you begin to get the picture.
The coin went from Xcoin to Darkcoin to DASH between January 2014 and January 2015. Since then -- that is, since these past three years -- it's been solidly DASH and I don't see another rebranding ever taking place.
3. Please explain the most prospective DASH blockchain advancement in development
That's twofold: firstly, the forthcoming release of what will be the world's first decentralized API, or DAPI. This will allow any merchant to accept Dash payments by merely pasting a snippet of code on their checkout page. No need for them to run a full node, nor for a middleman payment processor. The second thing is the elimination of cryptographic addresses in favor of re-usable usernames. DASH's blockchain will be able to store a username as it relates to a hierarchical deterministic (HD) seed, meaning that all a user will need to know to receive payments is his username. Because all incoming payments will each land in a different address, he doesn't have to worry about "address hygiene" -- meaning, he doesn't need to manually generate a new address for every single person who wants to send him a payment. And get this -- the DASH blockchain will even be able to store other peoples' usernames in his "friends" list, meaning he knows precisely who sent him what payment and when.
It will look like Venmo. It will feel like Venmo. But it will be pure crypto.
4. How long before the difficulty of DASH mining becomes equal to the current Bitcoin mining difficulty?
DASH's hash function (x11) and Bitcoin's hash function (SHA-256) can't be compared like apples to apples. For example, x11 got its name because it's actually 11 different functions all strung together, whereas SHA-256 is just one.
That major difference aside, the more important consideration for a potential miner is simply cost -- meaning, how much money do I need to spend on acquiring hashpower in order to be competitive? DASH and Bitcoin are both mined with ASICs, so simple CPU and GPU mining won't cut it. The cost calculations -- A) how much competition is on each network right now?, and B) how much hashpower would I need in order to be competitive? -- rely on factors that change day to day, minute to minute.
5. What would you like to say to investors who unsuccessfully traded DASH? What is your opinion on the current market fall and assets differentiation? What should investors do?
Anyone who unsuccessfully trades anything is quite likely the norm rather than the exception. Which is to say, trying to time the market is very risky. Investors who don't want to take those risks don't do much trading at all -- they mostly buy and hold, only selling occasionally and when they've seen serious gains. And when they do sell, it's for local currency, not for yet another speculative crypto. This is what's called a long-term investor. He doesn't sweat the day-to-day moves, because he holds a coin for months and years, not days.
The current market fall was simply inevitable after the fever and mania we've seen in the crypto space over the last couple of months. A parabolic rise is necessarily going to be followed by at least some length of parabolic fall. Peoples' fevers need time to cool down, so to speak.
But the market is already bouncing back, following the pattern it's been following for years: two steps forward, one step back. It's tough to say how long this will continue before we begin to see real winners and real losers in the space. Because right now, pretty much every coin is a winner and has been since the day it was launched. Of the nearly 1500 cryptocurrencies in existence, only a few hundred have actually fallen to a zero value. That's an extreme success rate -- not one that's going to continue forever.
Not every crypto is going to "disrupt" and "go to the moon" and "cause a revolution" like they all claim they will. So an investor's job is to determine: whose claims of greatness are most likely to actually happen?