Dash

Dash is a proof-of-work payment network whose coin, DASH, pays fees and transfers value. The January 18, 2014 release was branded XCoin and used a Litecoin 0.8 code base descended from Bitcoin. It became Darkcoin in February 2014, switched its Core line to Bitcoin 0.9 in 2015, and adopted the Dash name on March 25, 2015. The chain continued through those names; holders did not swap into a new asset.

Its defining change was a second service tier. A regular masternode proves control of 1,000 DASH; an Evolution masternode, or evonode, uses 4,000 DASH and also serves Dash Platform. Deterministic subsets form long-living masternode quorums. Those quorums sign InstantSend transaction locks and ChainLocks for observed blocks, while X11 miners still produce the blocks. Holding DASH without registering and operating or delegating a masternode does not create a governance vote.

Dash tried to shorten the gap between broadcasting a payment and treating it as final, while also funding software and adoption without a founder company collecting a protocol fee. InstantSend locks transaction inputs before mining; ChainLocks lets a quorum select the block clients should treat as final. The treasury withholds part of new issuance and creates it in monthly superblocks only for approved proposals.

Those mechanisms exchange one form of concentration for another. Hash power does not act alone, yet quorum membership and one proposal vote require substantial collateral. Dash Core Group can write and release software, but it cannot compel every node to adopt it; masternode and miner signaling activate consensus changes. Masternode votes can fund or defund DCG, but a vote does not itself edit code or operate the Delaware corporation.

Every eligible transaction is automatically considered for InstantSend. An LLMQ threshold-signs an input lock; if the quorum fails to produce a lock, the transaction falls back to ordinary mining. For ChainLocks, a larger quorum signs the first valid block it observes, and compliant clients reject competing blocks at that height. This makes reorganizations before a valid ChainLock impractical under the protocol's quorum assumptions; it is not a guarantee that every broadcast transaction receives a lock or that masternodes cannot fail.

Dash's subsidy falls by one fourteenth, about 7.14%, every 210,240 blocks. Current documentation projects final supply between 17.74 million and 18.92 million because unused monthly budget capacity is never created. Since the December 2023 v20 activation, 20% of subsidy goes to miners, 60% to the masternode tier and up to 20% to governance. Within the masternode portion, current docs assign 62.5% to Core-chain node payments and 37.5% to the Platform credit pool for evonodes.

Each regular masternode gets one yes/no/abstain vote per proposal; an evonode has four votes because voting weight follows collateral in 1,000-DASH units. In the reviewed Core code, net yes votes must meet or exceed the larger of the protocol minimum quorum and one tenth of the total voting weight of valid masternodes, rounded down. The denominator is eligible voting weight, not votes cast; passing proposals still compete for monthly capacity. DCG remains a contractor and software steward. The Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust was documented in 2018 as owning DCG shares for masternode beneficiaries, with elected protectors able to act on network instructions; that legal structure is not share ownership conferred on every DASH holder.