Dash is in the news again! Dash’s network processed a historic number of transactions during its recent stress test, far surpassing the previous record for a Bitcoin-based network held by the now-second Bitcoin Cash. Was the Dash Stress Test a success? We think so!
On November 11th, a pre-planned stress test was launched on the Dash Network. The stress test was run by Delta Engine, the company behind MyDashWallet. The results of the stress-test broke previous record, reaching over 3 million in a 24-hour period. This was 6 times more than the previous impromptu stress test in July of this year when Dash had 464,000. The new test-stress results also outshined Bitcoin Cash, which had 2.1 million transactions in September.
Arizona State University has done Scaling research; it concluded that Dash could easily scale to near-PayPal levels with relative ease. The latest stress-test shows that even with 2mb blocks, Dash can process nearly 10 times the transaction loads that strained the Bitcoin network in late 2017.
Overall, the winner is Dash. Dash’s network handled the load with minimal disruption. The Dash Network was able to process the sudden and unprecedented transaction load with ease. According to data from BitInfoCharts, the median transaction fee during the stress-test remained at the low $0.03 cents. However, the backlog of unconfirmed transactions, usually empty, climbed to a peak of almost 31,000 pending transactions during the test.
DeltaEngine CEO Benjamin Nitschke commented on the few interruptions that transpired, saying: “Based on our six nodes we had running for services, etc., none of them went above 2% and they all downloaded 500mb extra block data during the 24-hour stress test without a hitch. But several masternodes and some explorers crashed, probably due to memory issues or running out of space. Some users reported 100% CPU usage, but we didn’t see that for any node ourselves.”
During the stress test, the chance of an orphaned block rose to 6, which is somewhat above the normal, which typically has a day with around 2 orphans every 1-2 weeks. This was significantly lower than the most recent spike outside of a stress-test. That was on December 28th of 2017, when 54 orphaned blocks occurred. This had occurred before Dash had implemented compact blocks. During the stress-test, the vast majority of the masternode network ran smoothly. Around 68 masternodes, or about 1.4% of the network, went offline due to their inability to keep up with the transaction load.
The masternode network is currently incentivized with 45% of the block reward, as well as some fees, to stay online and keep Dash running smoothly. Nodes that go down for any reasons, such as the 68 above, get kicked to the back of the payment queue and therefore lose income. This incentivizes the masternodes to stay online and functioning as often as possible, if not at all times.
Significant stress tests such as this demonstrates the previously theoretical ability of the Dash network to handle a very high number of users, far beyond the previous user base of Bitcoin. The stress-test was to showcase how much traffic the network could handle, and boast its ability in the attempts to win over potential users and businesses that see Dash as a viable payment network.
At present date, DiscoverDash lists 4,045 Dash-accepting merchants around the world. Without doing a thing, the present Dash network could easily handle 10 times this number of merchants. Dash is no doubt one of the best cryptocurrencies equipped for handling mass adoption today.
What do you think? Yesterday, we noted how millennials are clamoring for cryptocurrency. We’ve also covered how Dash is making inroads with Africa and Venezuela, and is fast becoming the go-to-currency in some regions. Do you think Dash will make inroads in your country? Let’s do a roll-call, let us know where you’re at and let us know what you think on our Facebook page!
