Quorums make sense within the realm of blockchain and decentralized governance. Dash’s masternode quorums help run masternode-enabled features in a decentralized and deterministic way, but also in an efficient way since not all masternodes are required to participate in all quorums.
Masternode-enabled features include the aforementioned InstantSend and ChainLocks. They are decentralized because they rely on many participants within the Dash network, rather than any single, central authority. Unlike the general concept of a “quorum,” InstantSend and ChainLocks require a supermajority vote of 60%, instead of a simple majority of 51%.
Reaching this majority is significant for instances in which there is a high chance of disagreement. There needs to be certainty when it comes to confirming transactions on a network. After all, a blockchain is a distributed ledger that relies on the concept of consensus.
The network is required to properly address conflicting transactions, in order to avoid issues like double spending. A double-spend occurs when one unit of a given cryptocurrency is fraudulently used a second time. The use of quorums on Dash’s InstantSend addressed the issue of conflicting transactions by resolving ambiguities within the Dash network.