Dash is the altcoin credited with starting the craze for masternodes. Back when the coin was trading for under a dollar, the Proof of Work coin introduced a masternode system that called for staking 1,000 Dash.
The scheme proved hugely successful, both as a means of governing the network, and as an earner for individuals running a node, who were being handsomely compensated by the time the crypto market mooned in 2017. At its peak, it would have cost $1.5 million to purchase enough Dash to set up a masternode. The success of the scheme, which made early adopters of Dash’s masternode system very rich, was soon copied by countless other coins.
Masternode concept is surely one of the major propellers that pushed Dash in the crypto mainstream but as the protracted bear market persists, more and more “whistleblowers” from within altcoin communities come out and bring all the project’s skeletons out of the closet.
Reddit user u/tellmesay shared a post detailing the negatives that the crypto payment solution DASH faced during the year behind us. The post was originally posted on a Dash-friendly subreddit r/Dashpay but was scrubbed from there for reasons unclear.
Overall, the post titled “Dash In 2018: Disappointments, Boondoggles, Scandals, Disasters, & Catastrophes” spared no punches as it revealed every single negative thing the project experienced in 2018. Such points as not getting listed on Coinbase due to “Dash’s notorious Instamine, centralized development, and murky Howey Test/SEC Action status”, over not being included in the OpenBazaar project (while Monero and several other alts were), to not getting support from Wirex or any other debit card provider stand out among the promises that Dash failed to deliver on. Further down, the post mentions Dash’s FanDuel fiasco, CoPay fiasco, KuvaCash fiasco, Alt36 train-wreck-in-progress, and the fact that they organized a crypto meetup in a Miami-based striptease joint.
A special place in this analysis is given to their Venezuela dealings, where Dash attempted to implement an aggressive strategy of selling cheap Krypt mobile phones that came with DASH currency and software required to use said currency. News and promotional poured in suggesting that DASH adoption in Venezuela is growing; however this was squashed by several sources, culminating in KFC Venezuela (which Dash touted as a surefire merchant to start using their cryptocurrency) denying the news and lamenting Dash higher-ups for spreading fake news.
The mentioned post goes into much more detail, exposing further failure by Dash to deliver on their promises and even reminding us of some important security issues with the currency that were never properly addressed. You can check out the complete post here.
Fake volume on exchanges
As if that was not enough, another user accused Dash of excessive wash trading and volume faking on exchanges. To be honest, the whole market is completely dominated by fake volumes and wash trading led by either altcoin teams or exchanges themselves. But according to this thread, Dash is a front-runner in this discipline.
It is worth noting that Dash is despised and often called a scam among the most prominent crypto leaders. Here is one tweet from Litecoin’s Charlie Lee that illustrates the sentiment of the majority of the so called Original Gangsters of bitcoin:
