I have to interject here. Something touting itself as an anonymous crypto currency cannot be fit for purpose if it has not been proven mathematically sound. I believe in this situation the onus is reversed. It is up to DASH to prove the cryptographic functions, mathematics and logic behind its anonymity and privacy are sound and not the other way around.
but everything that makes it a cryptocurrency
is proven - it's a fork of bitcoin core.
the additional services provided by masternodes are just that; additional services....like what you can get with BTC from trusted third parties, but instead native to the coin and trustless.
Additional services at the very core of DASH, at the very core of its marketing and its purpose in life. I look at them as core services and not additional services. All central to the DASH architectural model.