13,000 nodes, running 2m users, paying $1/day (who wouldn't pay that for anonymity). That gets you something like $60k/year per Master Node in Revenue.
We currently have around 4.5m coins, at 75% - I think that works out at 3,400 nodes. With the same revenue metrics, you would be looking at $215k per Master Node per year. Not sure on costs to run, but it can't be anywhere near that, lol..... $ signs
Hang on.
This is all going a bit gaga. We're potential headed into load of trouble here.
DRK was a currency, not a service. Its low coin supply was attractive and consistent with its role as a currency / store of value.
A currency should have NO utility value to be of any worth as a monetary medium. That's what makes crypto attractive. As soon as it starts to have utility value it goes out of circulation and becomes a utility which then exposes it to competition from other utilities.
So if we're now talking about a service, we're into a whole new ballgame. Different rules apply.
For a start, the limited coin supply is going to be a hindrance not a help. 1000 nodes is nothing in terms of a bandwidth infrastructure. You need 100's of thousands or millions because we're not just talking coin 'washing' we're talking high bandwith transport (I imagine).
Secondly, with it being a service, not a currency, there's nothing to stop other players from competing. Adoption isn't an objective anymore, revenue is. My own opinion is that a Darkcoin TOR network will never even get near the kind of income your talking about - there are so many players in this market who a way ahead in this technology. We're talking about a whole new industry sector. This is dreamland stuff.
Nobody gets to make that kind of money in a technology market and keep market share - it just doesn't happen, so lets get our feet back on the ground and establish exactly what this project is about.
This is a very big deal and must be thought through on all front before people start getting dollar signs in their eyes.
That sounds about right. However, Darkcoin was always service oriented, by giving anonymity service. I don't think the number of available coins is going to be a problem though, because of course, we can simply move the decimal point. I don't think there is any way we would get close to 10,000 masternodes (which was the upper limit that Evan originally wanted to stay within) because it just gets far too expensive to buy.
As far as legalities, that I have no idea about. I guess I'd just take my servers off shore if that's a problem, and use our service to access them ;P