Why does the network have so much new capacity with this release ?
IX capacity has always been better than PoW capacity, as you're not having to wait for the whole lumbering Proof-of-Waste farce, you're getting consensus from a much smaller group of nodes.
Without PoW consensus I feel like this is becoming dangerous territory: If the subset of elected IX-nodes is small enough, wouldn't someone like Otoh with over 600 MNs have a good chance that a TX is entirely in his domain? What would stop an attacker from reversing an IX-tx before it hits the miners, when all consensus nodes are controlled by one person?
You have it exactly backwards, MN subsetting is tens of thousands of times more secure than PoW.
If there are 600 compromised nodes out of 3000, and you need 10 of those 3000 to beat the system, the chances that all of the 10 needed nodes for any one IX will be among the 600 compromised nodes are miniscule.
Roughly, (600/3000)^10 = 0.000000102
Evil-Otoh will be waiting a long time to bugger up a single IX.
There's a reason hierarchical structures arise in nature and society - efficiency. Societal hierarchies are easy targets for compromise because they are essentially static, they provide fixed targets. Pooled mining is a good example of an this, it's a vulnerability, not an asset.
Overlay networks like Masternodes are a
fluid hierarchy and vastly more resilient to attack.
I realize that there has been a bit of concern from some re the number of MN under one person's control so by happy synchronicity I am copying part of an email that I sent today to one of my the MN management services:
I'm in advanced discussions to sell a bunch of my DASH, this should be good as it gives better distribution of coins, one person is thinking about it over the weekend while making preparations for it and if he decides to go ahead then that would be early next week, even Monday, if so I will need to take down approx 102 masternodes to fund this, he will be putting them back up straight away. I'll announce this beforehand on the BCT forum so as not to surprise people especially when they're watching the total get so near 3,000 MN atm.
I've also just being put into contact with another buyer who apparently is after approx 25,000 DASH so if that goes through it will mean sacrificing another 25 or so minions more.
I'll try to give you as much notice as possible, it does seem that the large one is quite likely to go ahead as he says he's 99% OK with it and just needs to make sure everything is set up correctly and that he hasn't overlooked any details, he's always been a very reliable person to do biz with in the past and has been considering this move for a good while now.
It's certainly encouraging to see such large amounts of new money going into backing the project and I hope that they both do very well.