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CrowdNode, the Dash Masternode pooling company that also recently enabled proportional voting for share holders of Dash Masternodes, recently released the results from their aggregate voting on Dash Investment Foundation Supervisors and it reflects the network-wide results.

While the order did not match up perfectly, the top four supervisors elected to the DIF role by the entire Masternode network (right) matches that of the top four supervisors elected by those that voted in CrowdNode’s proportional voting. The votes were aggregated over 22 Masternodes and their userbase is over 500 members. Thus, the CrowdNode votes comprised 3.98% of the total votes cast and 0.45% of all eligible Dash Masternodes at the time of the election. However, the further down the vote list one goes, there becomes more dissimilarities between the voting preferences.

Possible explanations for vote alignment

CrowdNode was created to be a way for individuals lacking the full deposit for a full Dash Masternode (1,000 Dash) to still be able to invest in a Masternode and gain proportional rewards, minus a service fee, and work their way towards a full Masternode. The alignment does signal that those that have partial Masternodes and are the ‘small fish’/small Dash holders share similar viewpoints and preferences to the ‘whales’/large Dash holders. This is an indication that the Dash Masternodes are moving the Dash network in the right direction that the rest of the Dash community support. This is also a personification of the Law of Large Numbers that many Masternodes will hold similar preferences as the rest of the Dash community, which enables the Dash network to be decentralized while also being able to offers enhanced services like InstantSend, PrivateSend and ChainLocks.

However, the alternative possibility is that current Dash Masternodes are using CrowdNode as a way to save for their next whole Masternode, and thus, the voting would align with each other if the the parties held enough Dash across both environments. Of course, there is always the possibility, and likelihood, that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Support for Dash’s decentralization

One criticism of Dash is that major decisions are made by Masternodes, which excludes those that cannot afford the financial investment of 1,000 Dash. However, Masternode sharing companies like CrowdNode and Neptune Dash narrow that gap by making Dash Masternodes more accessible to anyone, and in the case of CrowdNode, anyone that has over 1 Dash. Then CrowdNode’s implementation of proportional voting further decentralizes voting since anyone with over 1 Dash can now participate in the voting process.

Hey @DZack23 it looks like AWDY? needs an update, specifically on $Dash: 1) data hasn't been updated in 4 months, and 2) Dash now needs ~60%+ of masternodes as well to control the network with ChainLocks (# of entities should now be thousands). When can we get an update? — Joel Valenzuela (@TheDesertLynx) July 7, 2019

Additionally, the argument that Dash is not decentralized because of Masternodes also ignores the fact that many other coins have only a handful of mining pools or farms that control over 50% of the hashpower, and thus, the potential to control the network if they wish. These powerful hashrates then exclude individuals that cannot afford the expensive ASIC mining hardware. Additionally, Dash recently implemented Chainlocks which requires around 60% of Masternodes in addition to hashing power to control the network, which places the number of entities that have to be controlled in the thousands, which becomes exponentially more expensive as buying all that Dash would bid up the price.