If hashrate was really a "cost" to the network such that any reduction in this "cost" made the network more efficient in a way that fed through to value, don't you think we'd have seen that by now ?
Regarding changing the mining reward percentage, the only thing I have ever argued was that the change implemented was minor and so gradual that if it has any effect we won't see it for years.
We should have skyrocketed above litecoin eons ago with such an advantage.
We will, don't worry.
But in the meantime why don't you answer why, LTC with it's 100% mining, is also hovering around it's ATL vs BTC.
POINTS MADE ABOUT POS CHAINS
Some responders above seem to take the view that the blockchain's purpose is just to get the coins "out there". Who cares how they get there, what matters is the amount of hype and hand waving you do after that to pump the price. I'm afraid I most definitely do not subscribe to this point of view. These things are far more nuanced and subject (in the longer term) to fundamental capital flow characteristics than that IMO.
Seriously now, who made this argument here? I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt (over and over again) but you continue to "debate" using straw man arguments. A straw man is when you misrepresent someone's position as something other than what it was and then you argue against this fake position and then claim victory.
Please stop doing that. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are not doing it on purpose but now that I've pointed it out please just stop.
In particular, smart contract chains aren't comparable with the mining model because they're a service platform. That service platform hosts on-chain dapps that consum token supply as it "froths up" from the staking system. The "froth" as I tend to think of it is assigned to existing holders by the staking system and then the burning of supply by dapps completes the cycle. So work is done by the token which serves as "fuel" for the dapps.
The only smart contract coin that has enough dapp use to consume token supply is ETH which also happens to be 100% POW mined.
So, this doesn't explain why these POS smart contract chains are ahead of DASH in the CMC rankings.
Also, once Dash Platform is released, DASH will also be a service chain. Not as a smart-contract chain but as a smart-data chain. These services will need to be paid for as well.
A mined coin on the other hand is a scarcity analogue. The "work done" here is in enforcing scarcity to a measurable value (signalled by the cost of effort required to extract the next block from the chain). You can't say that because POS chains "give away tokens" then it's ok for Dash to do it. That's just lazy, un thought-through reasoning IMO. Even in a bank you don't get interest for just having a deposit there. The interest accrues from some economic activity that the deposit was invested in.
Again, I never said POS chains just "give away tokens". You said DASH gives away 50% of its coins for "free". I used your logic and applied it to POS chains and asked you to explain that given your position on DASH's masternode rewards, how do you explain how POS chains don't "give away" 100% of their coins. You said dapp use yet they have so little of this it certainly doesn't offset these staking/delegation rewards.