Staking is a popular recent trend that allows users to earn passive revenue by setting aside a portion of their coins or tokens. Thus, if you stake crypto instead of holding it in your wallet, you get a profit.
While staking has become commonplace for many cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum, Cardano, and others, what about Dash? Can you stake Dash? Let’s find out!
Understanding Dash
Dash (DASH – official Dash coin on exchanges) is a decentralized digital currency that aims to make transactions secure, fast, and more private. The platform emerged as a fork of Bitcoin in 2014 and has since evolved into a standalone project with specific goals. Dash uses a two-tier network comprised of miners and masternodes: which is its biggest peculiarity.
Dash’s main goal is to improve transaction speed and privacy, given that it was created as Bitcoin’s fork, which is known for slow transaction processing times. Dash uses a technology known as PrivateSend, which allows users to obfuscate their transaction history, making it difficult to trace and increasing privacy.
Moreover, Dash has launched InstantSend, a feature that allows for near-instantaneous transactions by employing a network of masternodes to validate transactions quickly. Dash also includes a self-funding mechanism known as the Treasury. The Treasury receives a share of the block rewards to fund the project’s campaigns. Dash’s decentralized governance architecture enables it to make collective decisions and change over time.
Is Dash Staking Possible?
So, how to stake Dash? Or is staking Dash even possible? Let’s delve into the consensus mechanism details of Dash to answer this question. Dash was using a mining method similar to Bitcoin, in which new coins were created via a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
However, Dash introduced a novel feature known as the masternode network, which expanded its consensus mechanism and changed the way new currencies are minted. Dash launched masternodes, which provide extra network functions such as InstantSend and PrivateSend, in addition to mining. Participants must possess a certain quantity of Dash (1,000 DASH) as collateral to become a masternode.
A percentage of the block rewards in the Dash network is distributed to three different entities: miners, masternodes, and the Treasury. The Treasury gets the smallest amount, while miners and masternodes split the block rewards in half (45% each). Currently, the block reward is 3.35 DASH, or 1.5075 for miners, 1.5075 for masternodes, and 0.335 for the Treasury.
So the answer is positive, you can stake your DASH, but not like on other PoS blockchains. The blog reward is split between miners and masternodes. Moreover, you become a masternode rather than a stakeholder as it works on PoS blockchains.