If you feel you have some "modern concept" of value that somehow defies the appraisals I made above, be my guest.

Hand waving philosophical vagaries, bald assertions and speaking in generalities has never and will never impress any potential investors. They understand basic things like how hashrate affects scarcity, how masternode rewards far outweigh operating costs (so "overpaid") and long term ranking performance is an arbitrator on the governance priorities we make.

This coin has some core properties that are very good and it's survived nearly 7 years so far with reasonable visibility. That is about to end because the market is turning around and it isn't taking us with it this time so some soul searching is in order. The kind of arguments you've offered up so far in response to my criticisms that the reward ratio is set wrong, are 2014 type stuff. We can't get away with that anymore - we need things nailed down and a granular understanding of the economics of the coin which REFLECTS what we see in the market, not that contradicts it.

There needs to be monetary tightening. If you really need a "for dummies" rule of thumb, a good indicator of "loose ship" economics is bloated parasitical profits being made by any type of stakeholder, be it miners, masternodes, contractors, traders, whatever. In that respect the masternode reward sticks out like a sore thumb.

Put it this way, if you were earning $500 per week from masternode rewards, would you rather that came in the form of 2 Dash or 0.2 Dash ? Reflect on that for a moment because in the latter case your collateral would be worth 10 times more than in the former.

The DAO also needs some reform. The contracts on there are paltry. They are a pale shadow of the activity a few years back when there was a lot more contention in the community but a lot more action and broader participation as well. That all got shut down and needs to be invigorated but part of that process is acknowledging that this is not a "club", it's an industry and that requires critical self appraisals, not the kind of "everything's alright and everything will be alright" that seems to have characterised your responses so far.

All in all what I'm saying is that there is no way forward other than to make ourselves highly competitive in the store of value asset market. That will mean some bullet biting decisions IMHO.