I am continuing this post from a previous thread regarding master nodes so that it may reach a wider audience:

https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@donkeykong9000/masterswor-er-masternodes-yay-or-nay


In reading some of the [GRC 4.0 roadmap proposals](https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@jringo/gridcoin-research-4-0-proposals-and-preliminary-polls), I noticed that TomasBrod's Dynamic Witness Participation (DWP) is not actually that far off from the idea of  a masternodes proposed by Rob Halford. The delegate node volunteers to act in the creation of a superblock containing BOINC project stats. The delegate receives an increased reward for participating in this process. The only difference is that delegate nodes do not act to secure the network and do not need to maintain a minimum balance.

What if we maintained PoS as we have now with all wallets acting as full nodes, and "masternodes" AKA delegate nodes  that poll BOINC servers for project info? It does make sense also to require these nodes to maintain a minimum balance in order to ensure that we get honest/committed participants in this process. Of course not quite the level of 400 k proposed by Rob but something more reasonable like 25 to 75 k GRC. These delegate nodes would get a reward such that over several years they would be able to recoup their full investment.

So this solution would provide 3 ways to earn GRC:

  * Act as a delegate/master node to keep track of BOINC project stats
  * PoS mining interest (with all nodes acting as full nodes) based upon constant block reward
  * BOINC computations 

The rewards split could be something like 15% to delegate/master nodes, 15% PoS, and 70% BOINC. Keep in the mind that many delegate nodes would also be staking and or BOINC projects simultaneously  so running a delegate node could be attractive to give your earnings a boost if you were already doing the other two. Meanwhile, all staking wallets would still be able to secure the network via PoS. 

The pros would be that all nodes could still participate in voting, could still act in securing the network via staking, and we would have a masternode type system to keep track of boinc stats without overwhelming the boinc servers. A minimum balance ensures that boinc project stats are not tampered with (or at the very least, an attacker would need a significant amount of GRC to set up delegate/master nodes in order to tamper with projects). Meanwhile the network itself does not become overly centralized since all nodes continue to act as full nodes. The only increase in centralization comes from the master/delegate nodes querying BOINC servers, but some centralization is necessary in this case since we cannot have all wallets querying the servers all the time. 

I think this could be a decent compromise between the two proposals with relatively few drawbacks. We would have 3 separate ways to earn GRC (master/delegate node, PoS staking, or BOINC) giving something for everyone who wants to be a part of the community. At the same time, the network is secure and decentralized since no restrictions are being placed on who can stake.

![master-sword-2002961_640 - Copy.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmUDkick5Ukm8x7dffGgk2Wak3SXTBJkmUs9hjm1t2EX8V/master-sword-2002961_640%20-%20Copy.png)
Credit: Ricinator