Masternodes are paid by the network for the InstantSend, CoinJoin and governance services they provide. The staking rewards for DASH are generated by:

Block Rewards: A maximum of 10% of the block reward goes to the budget for proposal winners with the remaining 90% split between miners and masternodes per this block reward reallocation table. Then, every 16,616 blocks (approximately 30.29 days), a superblock is created that contains the aforementioned 10% payout to the budget proposal winners. The rewards are issued every nine days.

It’s important to keep in mind that the total annual rewards are divided among all active stakers. As the number of staked tokens increases, the reward rate decreases.

Furthermore, there are governance proposals that could adjust some of the on-chain parameters, which could also change the APR if they are approved.

You’re welcome to use our Staking Calculator to get a better understanding of how these factors can impact your rewards.

DASH is the native token of the Dash network and it is used to perform various important functions within the network:

Token Utilities

Staking: Masternode owners can stake a minimum of 1,000 DASH tokens as funding collateral to set up masternodes, as a means to ensure operation of the network and receive block rewards for the services.

Store of value: Similar to Bitcoin or fiat currency, DASH is used as a unit of measure for the value exchanged on the Dash network. Users interact with it by sending it to one another, by buying and selling on exchanges or the OTC market or interacting with DeFi for lending an staking. 

Governance: DASH is used to vote on governance proposals on the network. The Dash DAO governs the network through its treasury, which funds project proposals that advance the Dash network and ecosystem. Voting on project proposals encourages engagement with the overall network and ecosystem, resulting in numerous projects being funded that advance Dash in terms of technology development, marketing, and business development.

Dash, like Bitcoin, is created through a cryptographically difficult process known as mining. The Dash network is one of the most secure blockchain-based payments network, thanks to technological innovations such as ChainLocks. ChainLocks works by forcing any would-be attackers to successfully attack both the mining layer and the masternode layer in order to carry out a 51% attack. This means that a malicious actor would need to spend a large amount of Dash to attempt to add false entries to the blockchain, which would drive up the price of Dash and make the attack cost-prohibitive. As a result, the Dash network is highly resistant to 51% attacks.

The most important differentiating feature of the Dash payments network is the concept of a masternode. On a traditional p2p network, nodes participate equally in the sharing of data and network resources. These nodes are all compensated equally for their contributions toward preserving the network. The Dash network has a second layer of network participants that provide enhanced functionality in exchange for greater compensation. This second layer of masternodes is the reason why Dash is the most secure payments network, and can provide industry-leading features such as instant transaction settlement and usernames.

Dash’s total coin emission (total supply) is the sum of a geometric series, but the ultimate total coin emission is uncertain because it cannot be known how much of the 10% block reward reserved for budget proposals will actually be allocated. 

While Bitcoin reduces the coin emission rate by 50% every 4 years, Dash reduces the emission by one-fourteenth (approx. 7.14%) every 210240 blocks (approx. 383.25 days). This means Dash will continue to emit coins for approximately 192 years before a full year of mining creates less than 1 DASH. A maximum and minimum possible coin supply in the year 2254 can be calculated to be between 17,742,696 DASH (if zero treasury allocation) and 18,921,005 DASH (if 10% of all block rewards are allocated to treasury for proposals).

Initial Token Distribution

During the first 48 hours of its launch, Dash mined a significantly higher number of coins than planned, with approximately 2.0 million coins mined. This was due to a bug in the difficulty adjustment algorithm, which was inherited from Litecoin.