I can't really do any better than toknormals excellent post above about primay market. So trying to be devils advocate and arguing firstly from Ryan Taylors point of view. (as I understand it)
- Miners (or mining pools) are seen as contractors who are paid in dash for services to the network, mainly for creating blocks of transactions. They are paid (by the network) 45% of the block rewards for this service.
- Masternode operators are contractors too who provide services to the network, namely providing a reliable, fast network of nodes which are utilized to provide coin mixing, and instantsend/chainlocks, soon the dash platform aswell. They are paid 45% of the block rewards.
- The treasury provides funding for development (and leadership?), and other things which 'hopefully' benefit the network. They are paid 10% of the block rewards.
Technically the miners mint the whole 100% of the block reward. It is a competition to receive that block reward, those with the best hash power take most the earnings. As a miner you have to constantly find ways to increase your hash power to achieve some earnings. This also means you have to pay more in energy terms in your electricity bills if you are mining. This causes 'difficulty' adjustments to increase, (it also causes miners to become more cost effective in areas of cheap electricity). If miners leave the network the difficulty drops and it becomes slightly easier for miners to achieve earnings with less hash rate.
High or increasing hash rate generally means the network is considered much more secure than low or dropping hashrate. The energy cost to rewrite the block chain or reverse transactions or do any other malicious thing on the network is all that much more 'expensive' to achieve. It is a sign that miners are willing to pay more (in terms of increasing their hardware capability and their increased electricity bills and their time) in order to earn more dash rewards. This may be because they are in profit, or a speculative bet that they think dash will go up in value. One can only guess the motives of any investor category.
(I think) Ryan Taylor sees it this way... If you decrease the miner share, and miners leave the network. Then the hashrate will drop. But that wouldn't matter because chainlocks secure the network after 1 block anyway. He thinks that chainlocks has made hashrate less important for dash than other PoW coins. Regardless of the hashrate the supply is designed to stay constant. With that portion of the block reward that came from the miners share you can distribute that to ordinary users who will be 'stakers' rewards for holding dash. So Ryan Taylor thinks that decreasing miner share won't have a negative impact on security. And then there will be increased demand from stakers who may want to try and earn dash by holding it. He is trying to influence the supply versus demand dynamics of the market to increase demand without affecting supply.
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I think where I start to disagree is viewing miners as contractors. To me it seems they do the 'work', meaning work in the sense of physics and thermodynamics, using time and energy. Masternode owners do not do any comparable work in that physical sense. Who pays the miners? No-one? The network? They earned the dash with real time and energy. But who pays the masternode owners and the treasury? Is it the network that paid them? Or it is the miners that paid them isn't it? Maybe this is just some question of semantics and does or doesn't matter, but to me seems an important distinction. I see miners as the ones who really create and maintain the blockchain. The masternodes and treasury as more like contractors providing services to the network. The masternodes are paid very lucratively really. With no 'work' they receive a very large share of the spoils.
I also do not think dropping hashrate will definitely not be seen as unimportant by the wider market even with chainlocks. Hashrate is synonymous with network security. Hashrate is often viewed as a leading indicator of price. Maybe I am underestimating the impact of chainlocks I don't know. I did expect a bit of a positive reaction in the market when it was released. So far that didn't seem to occur. You can move to a complete proof of stake model and get rid of hashrate completely. There are many coins that have tried that or similar. I dont see many of them in the top 10, unlike bitcoin, bicoin cash, litecoin and bitcoin sv. The proof of work is all. Just like it takes work to dig up gold. The mining metaphor is very accurate. These things are valuable because of the work that went into it.
Markets are all about supply and demand but it is far too easy to dream up reasons for who is behind the supply and who is going to be in demand and then think you know the reality. Will staking increase demand? Maybe it will attract a category of investor ? Maybe it will deter another category of investor, like those who value high hashrate? Maybe the 'earnings' of staking will not be held or spent on ways to benefit the network but go on food, wine and fast cars. Ryan Taylor is only guessing and making assumptions about the market. But that is a risky business. What if he is seriously underestimating the 'work' in proof of work?