Debora its the same as Bitcoin's fullnodes. Masternodes are just people's wallets running with masternode=1 in the config. Plus you need 1000 coins in there to make it work so a lot easier to attack fullnodes than masternodes. Plus taking over masternode network you couldn't actually make any $, takover BTC nodes and you can. There is zero merit to all this crap about masternodes being 'easy to compromise' or being 'centralized', it only works if you have 20 butthurt XMR drones who try to make it true by posting it 2000 times - it's just a lie.
I'm sorry blockafett but I can't agree with you.
If you compromise a Bitcoin node what good does it do you? You don't get paid so you can't steal money, and every node receives the same blocks and the same transactions. That is what makes Bitcoin special, that every node is the same and
in consensus. MasterNodes are not in consensus, each of them processes small pieces of a puzzle that other MasterNodes know nothing about. In other words, if there are only 2,000 Bitcoin nodes and you have secret access to 1,950 of them you can't see anything more than you would by just running a node of your own, except for the educated guesses you can make for the originating IP address of transactions. If you have secret access to 1,950 of the 2,000 MasterNodes the entire system is no longer fungible or safe.
Hi. But same for Dash - what does taking over a masternode get you? You can't get any DRK, and to deanonimize transactions you need 95.00% of all masternodes just for a ~1.65% chance--these numbers are disputable.
Then to obtain 1,950 maternodes (which have an incentive to attack each other to 1000) today will cost >$9m buying over 40 days (if you believe everything I type as gospel) if you were 100% of the volume so not that easy (or if you are attacking they are spread over 30 countries (3 holding over 70%) with different companies / security systems / home users to get through first).
About BTC - one incentive for taking over BTC full nodes is surveillance, like the current 5% of nodes that are performing a sybil attack on behalf of
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2yvy6b/a_regulatory_compliance_service_is_sybil/It seems pretty resiliant to me. And masternode operators take security a lot more seriously than most,(I believe but cannot prove which is why cryptocurrencies shouldn't depend on humans for security, because many do not use best practices and it's dumb to assume most people are--even when it's in their best interest--hence why systems that depend on more on protocols than humans are inherently stronger than those that do not).
This idiocy of insisting that people use best practices (because it is in their interest--lol; they have time to manage and time is money and doing things right takes time, but whatever...where was I...) fails to acknowledge game theory or reality. Monero is changing the minimum mix-in because too many people were using low mix-ins and lowering the anonymity of the network--they found this themselves and found a solution, Evan should do the same with masternodes.