Recently @dantheman posted the following story:
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@dantheman/can-bitcoin-scale-to-keep-up-with-demand-created-by-steem
The issue he brings up is simply this, if Steem continues to grow at the current rate, within about a year we may be seeing a million or so people using the network and getting paid. This may cause problems, however, because Bitcoin is currently limited in the amount of transaction that it can handle. If there are too many transactions, it may clog the network. And since there is considerable trouble in raising the block-size, the limiting factor here, this could hamper Steem's growth, giving it a similar scaling problem like that faced by services like Facebook and Amazon.
Dash Might Be A Solution
This is where the Dash network comes in. Dash is technically superior to Bitcoin. I mean technically as in based on its technical attributes, not just 'strictly based on the facts'. While the blocksize debate has been a publicly discussed issue since at least 2014, and recognized since Satoshi published the Bitcoin whitepaper, there has been little if any headway made on solving this issue. The politics have become so heavy that it is unlikely that it will change any time soon. However, the Dash network in this respect is far superior to Bitcoin. Dash is a fork of the Bitcoin code that has two main advantages over it: Coin-mixing is built into the network to add anonymity Dash possesses a 2-tier'ed network, allowing a governance board that allows for decisions that affect the entire network to be made in a decentralized and rapid fashion
There are regular dash nodes and masternodes. Each masternode gets exactly 1 vote on issues that are raised to them. So when the issue of the block size came up earlier this year. They voted to raise it to 2 MB in under 24 hours! And just like that, no more issue. The way the masternodes are incentivized causes them to have an equal stake with miners in the maintenance and upkeep of the network. Currently, 45% of all mining rewards go to miners, another 45% goes to masternodes and the final 10% goes to upkeep of the network in the network fund.
So every month, there is a vote done to decide what to do with that 10% fund. This allows them to pay for development, advertising, ATMs, etc. But most importantly, it allows them to fund the furtherance of the network so that when things need to be done they can get done.
So What About Steem?
Well, this means that if we play our cards right, we can alleviate the pressure on Bitcoin to fiat conversions by using the Dash network. There are several places online where you can sell Dash for USD, like https://bleutrade.com/exchange/DCR/BTC, https://bter.com, https://c-cex.com, giving you a direct payment gateway. And since Dash has both far fewer transactions than Bitcoin, and a much faster block time--2.5 minutes instead of 10--along with the ability to raise their transaction limit rapidly if need be, the issue presented in Dan's article can be sidestepped almost completely!
I like DASH as well. But what about Steem Dollar? Shouldn’t be that the fiat<->STEEM converter currency?
Great question, eventually that is the plan I'm sure. However, I don't know of any places where you can sell Steem and get dollars yet. Currently, if you want to get paid its Steem->Bitcoin->USD. What I'm suggesting is that, at least for the foreseeable future we could also go Steem->Dash->USD due to their being places where you can make the Dash->USD trade available today.