Satoshis principles of how a blockchain is secured and validated. You just want to let the validation be done by an elitist club of early adopters, instead of giving EVERYBODY a chance of participating in the coin creation. That's what I don't get.
Mining gives everybody the possibility to get to some DRK without the need to go thru an exchange or thru some smug MN holder who thinks he is now supposed to be the sole source of DRK.
I am mining all kinds of coins, so I don't need to go thru the whole established banking system with all their KYC etc...
No bank anywhere has my personal information and knows that I bought cryptocurrencies, EXACTLY because I was able to get to some coins by running a mining machine!
So, if you get rid of mining, you take away from people the possibility that they can create coins themselves, instead you are forcing them to only be able to buy darkcoins thru an exchange, which is INSANE!
Darkcoin is VERY COOL in that regard, because it let's you still mine with your CPU/GPU. (And imagine in the future having X11 USB ASICS that cost 10 $? Isn't that fantastic? Giving some kid a X11 miner as present and having him participate in the network. Ok, maybe in some rich elitist famility they can give some kid 1000 DRK complete with managed server, .... )
If the blockchain were to be validated by MN network only, I would not trust it. Sure, everybody can provide a blockchain, it's not just about its visibility, it's about its integrity!
You have the burden of the proof to show that MN network can really replace mining. Not me!
Such extraordinairy claims require extraordinairy evidence.
This is a great point, especially when you consider that in some parts of the world, people have had their bank accounts closed for being involved in trading cryptocurrencies. To be fair though, if you really wanted Darkcoins, you could receive some in exchange for goods or services without going through the exchanges.
To add to your point, at the moment the plan regarding instant transactions is to use the miners' block generation as a backup when there is a problem. Without the miners, that wouldn't be possible.
That said, I think the point thelonecrouton raises about not needing so much computing power to process the transactions is a valid one, what's needed is consensus. I'm not condoning the abolition of miners either, but it is important to adapt. Things do not necessarily need to be done the way they've always been done in the past.
This is why I'd love to see diversification in the role provided by miners. Let pools/miners mine. But lets also encourage people to CPU mine using their QT wallets too if only for reasons of distribution and collective hash rate.
As I said on DCT yesterday, this coin is barely a sapling right now. Less than a year old. I can't help but think that making decisions about changing the fundamentals at this point could turn out to be a fatal mistake. For this reason, lets diversify and distribute. Lets do what we can to make sure that masternode owners and miners are able to do so profitably but more importantly...
....lets concentrate efforts on attracting new money and ADOPTION.
We can start playing around with how things work in a year or two when we know what sort of tree the sapling has grown into.