In a recent announcement, the SmartCash development team made the decision to push a mandatory update expected to be released within two weeks regarding the necessary collateral in order to run a SmartNode on the network from 10,000 to 100,000 SMART coins. After the 1.2.8 update hits the live servers, the remaining nodes with under 100,000 collateral in their wallet address will no longer be SmartNodes.
Reasons Behind The 1.2.8 Update
The idea behind this update is to cover two main aspects of the SmartCash network. First, the overall server quality that runs the SmartNodes will improve. After testing, the result is that the quality of the nodes is much more crucial than the count of nodes in the network. With the increase of the collateral necessary for a node will incentivize users to host them on more powerful machines, stabilizing the network. Second, the update will also bring new balance to the economic incentives that come with supporting a large node network, thus providing a more robust and resilient cryptocurrency network with potential for future expansion.
How Will 1.2.8 Update Affect its Users?
The update will have effect only for the current owners of SmartNodes running on the network. They will have up to 10 days after the launch of the update to amend their nodes collateral balance. If after 10 days a SmartNode does not have 100,000 SMART in its address, it will no longer be eligible for block rewards, which will be paid out roughly every two days.
When asked when the update will be coming live, the dev team advised that it may take up to two weeks to perform thorough testing before launching it. After hearing about this mandatory update forcing the SmartNode owners to acquire more SMART to keep their masternode status in the network, the community lashed out stating that the whole idea of the project was to be a decentralized cryptocurrency network. The confusion came from the way governance is handled in the network, where the community can vote and give propositions for future updates with SmartHive. In his attempt to explain that voting is for projects and proposals, but not regarding the network protocol, development coordinator “JuicyG” responded with a statement over Discord after being asked why this decision was not voted on by the community:
“The people whining about voting didn’t do their homework before buying SmartCash. We never put protocol changes up to a vote. We never did that and never will. Our governance isn’t democratic and that’s a great thing.” – JuicyG