I have a modest Dash holding from when Dash was a lot cheaper than it is now with the current price spike. I hold other coins too. What I'd like to ask is this -
Is Dash immune from blockchain bloat and, if it isn't, whether this will be an issue at some point in the future?
The issue with Bitcoin isn't bloat, per se. The problem is that Bitcoin doesn't incentivize people to run full nodes, meaning that once the blockchain grows to a certain size, it becomes more difficult and/or expensive to run a full node. It also becomes more time consuming to start a full node, due to the very long syncing process. Dash mitigates that with the masternode network. Masternodes are full nodes with a full copy of the blockchain. Since they are incentivized from the block reward, there is no problem getting people to run them.
Thanks for your explanation. Trying to get my head around Master nodes running full blockchains that sidechains (?) can run on. I read somewhere that that isn't a solution to blockchain bloat. Would appreciate enlightenment if I am getting this wrong.
To put things into a nutshell, I'm trying to work out whether to keep Dash, or sell while the price is high.
Not sure I understand the reference to side chains? Dash doesn't use sidechains, and it's highly unlikely Bitcoin will ever get around to implementing them either (since they can't even solve scalability).
My perception is that sidechains are a bad idea anyway, better to use alts than bitcoin side chains which would be very constraining. Dash incentivised nodes seems like the best way forward than I'm aware of.
You can compare number of full nodes on popular cryptos, Dash with much smaller market cap already has similar number of nodes to bitcoin. Contrast with Monero which only has a few hundred nodes. Not sure about eth I don't see any innovation there in terms of scaling blockchain in fact it will bloat worse than bitcoin.
Having said all that at the moment Dash has had a great run, maybe it can run to new highs versus bitcoin but its at a similar level now where previous runs have ended so realistically the option of selling while high should be considered. This isn't trading advice, personally I'm holding at the moment.