I presume you're referring to these candles at the end of 2015.

At that time we didn't have 5000 hungry masternodes drawing their reward straight out of the capital value of the chain while giving nothing back in the way of upwards difficulty adjustments as miners are required to do.

The masternode count was also growing, not static as is now. That was what anaesthetised us to the adverse side of having such a huge relative masternode reward and ever growing uneconomic masternode operating profitability compared to mining as price rose many multiples past the operating cost of a node.

It's the GROWTH of the masternode count that sucks the supply out of orderbooks, but it doesn't address the case where the count reaches equilibrium between nodes bought and nodes sold. At that point we're no different from bitcoin where supply is "locked up in wallets" instead of "locked up in masternodes". Spork 21 simply assumes that the additional 10% incentive will create an additional 10% demand which will therefore set the growth going again.

But it doesn't work that way, does it because:

1. the market isn't interested in how much extra Dash it gets from the reward, it's far more interested in the capital gain on the 1000 Dash collateral

2. every time a masternode is sold, it fragments into hundreds of pieces which draws the "equilibrium" nodecount level ever closer and lower instead of pushing it further away

3. the reward itself has to be paid out of the capital value of the chain. There's no economic activity that nodes do which compensates for the "free gifted" Dash that's given to them

The only way to address this problem of nodecount equilibrium IMO is to set the protocol reward ratio such that masternode and mining operating profitability are at least far closer to parity than they are now, for an initial target price of, say $500 per Dash. That would put the supply back to work again in a way that prioritises scarcity and capital gain over ever more worthless masternode rewards paid in Dash but not manifesting in Dollars.

 • we would retain the advantage over mined competitors of having incentivised nodes who's profitability grew as price rose (since they have fixed costs). So no need to "fiddle" with the reward ratio to improve their incentives

 • we would retain the advantage over mined competitors of having a governance system and treasury - the effectiveness of which also depends on capital gain, not masternode reward share

 • we would retain the advantage over mined competitors of all our utility features since the whole POINT of a dual-layer protocol is that you don't have to throw the mining budget under a bus (as we are doing now) to implement on-chain services

https://i.imgur.com/l1ADkjI.png

The charts are also totally different for the comparisons you make. Look at the On Balance Volume for your 2015 example. It's flat, going against the trend of price which tells you that there was accumulation going on back then well below the first green candle that "took flight 0.0065 to 0.016". Compare with now: the OBV is diverging to the downside ever more. The weekly price candle is hammering off support looking like it wants to go to the next support level which will probably take us to the 0.001 range, specially if bitcoin continues its rise.

https://i.imgur.com/rL927h0.png