There is a flaw in idea of Masternodes and Witnesses.
Crytpocurrencies are computers + politics so the scope for mayhem is wide.
The trouble with Steem Witnesses and Masternodes is its against the interests of the players to let others into the game. As such the key network effect is broken.
You cant blame the top 20 Steem oligarchs for not wanting to share their booty and supporting a 93% share to them and 7% share to the community. History is full of Aristocrats and Oligarchs fighting to the death of their peasants so they could keep the whole pie to themselves.
Proof of stake is feudal.
Feudalism is Proof of Stake.
The Lords own the land stake and the peasants get enslaved to the Lords.
$1 dollar one vote! That is not a political system I want to live under. Do you?
But moving right along Masternodes be they Dash or Steem witnesses don’t benefit by more participants as their returns are diluted by them.
It will be interesting to see this work itself out over time. Maybe the Crypto-future is digital feudalism. There are indications of things going that way with the likes of Google sucking the life out of much old and new media by its monopoly and amazon nuking town and city centres by bankrupting physical stores.
Meanwhile its coming on to 3 weeks and my Steem Witness hasn’t even appeared on the bottom of the devils staircase of the Top 200.
It probably never will.
So I have been playing with Masternodes.
I have the following:
DAS DAS
Articcoin ARC
Eternity ENT
Coinonatix XCXT
After about 5 days this is the score:
DAS "balance": 1007.60000000,
Clem ARC "balance": 1015.75000000,
Clem ENT "balance": 1003.60003478
Clem XCXT "balance": 5007.90940536
DAS, ARC and ENT stake with 1000 coins, XCXT with 5000 and the coins have started to dribble in.
So coins are appearing, the promise is real, or at least more real than STEEM $0.
Cost (about):
Das $168
ENT $234
ARC $60
XCXT $160
It will be interesting to see what happens next because its a 'patchy' process.
These are all tiny coins when compared to DASH. However DASH masternode costs $280,000, down from $350,000 before the current crash.
Now the setup is not for the faint hearted and the coins are fragile, so this is bleeding edge stuff and really you should only do this for fun and education.
The dream is one coin explodes in value and the masternode's value goes massively.
It could happen, but the fragility of the coins themselves and the market means that it is a WAB (wild arsed bet)
The server needs are minimal so hosting costs are not an issue if you already have a linux server. So lets see how this pans out.
I’ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile back with the Oligarchs this is the running breakdown of the shares on Steem witnesses.
