Dash Community Q&A – July 2019

Each month, the ten most popular questions submitted by the Dash community at Dash Nation Discord are collected and sent to Dash Core Group for answers. The intention is to select important and well-thought out questions and filter out unpopular questions, questions that have already been answered and other noise. Some questions were kept back to be answered on the upcoming quarterly call this month. The submissions for July 2019 are as follows:

1. Q: Hi. Quick question – is there any way to find out the protocol version for all MNs? This info was available in pre-0.14 version, now it’s gone. (TheFrog)

   A (codablock): No, there is no way to do this since the activation of DIP3. The reason is that the protocol version was only part of the non-deterministic list and we couldn’t easily add it to the deterministic on-chain list. Doing so would have been unreliable, as we assumed that MNOs would keep forgetting about updating the version on-chain or updating it without actually updating the node software.

2. Q: Not a pun intended question. Could Ryan please improve on the lighting of his office when giving interviews? A simple light setup goes a long way to look a bit more professional. (fuzzyduck)

   A (Ryan): This has already been done, and any videos with poor lighting are likely dated videos.

3. Q: Checking out the new openbazaar haven app and realizing that its awesome and knowing that the ob1 team will integrate dash, what can dash core do to aid features such as PrivateSend into their builtin wallet and other 3rd party wallets now that ChainLocks are in place? (dancefordistribution)

   A (Ryan): Dash provides education on our unique features and technical support for external products to implement them on an ongoing basis. We would be happy to reach out to them with this information and offer our assistance. I’ve just added it to our next business development meeting agenda, thanks to your question!

4. Q: If there is a disagreement among DCG core team members about whether a pull request should be merged into the Dash code repository, how is the final decision made? Last year there was an incident regarding the new logo adoption where DCG team members had differing interpretations of how governance decision proposals ought to be applied, which ultimately came to a resolution, but something like this could come up again in the future. Are the Dash Github administrator accounts legally owned/controlled by DCG (the entity), so that developers cannot go against a decision that was made from the aforementioned procedure? (TroyDASH)

   A (Ryan): DCG has a “value team” that spans different disciplines to debate and resolve contentious issues. It is highly effective at raising the level of conversation and considering all angles to difficult decisions. Because of the strong collaborative culture at DCG and well-defined vision, mission, and values, this process is usually very effective at reaching a resolution. In exceptional circumstances, we can encounter decisions that due to any number of reasons a member of the team is willing to “pound the table” for their position despite it not being the decision most team members support.

   This kind of dissent is healthy and ensures the level of conviction is a factor in decisions, because if a team member feels that level of conviction, likely members in our community would as well. In such cases, it is prudent to find a solution that accommodates that conviction rather than alienates a part of our community, and in the case you mentioned, that’s exactly what we did. The process we selected addressed the problem, and despite being a bit slower, ensured that buy-in for the outcome was as high as possible.

   (An answer from Bob is pending regarding management of commit access.)

5. Q: Will PrivateSend mixing be integrated into evolution accounts? Can we make it default? Values and differentiation from products such as Libra will allow Dash to stand out, one of them being private transactions.. imo it should be the default, just as for InstantSend. (dancefordistribution)

   A (Ryan): Evolution is the platform for enhanced data capabilities, whereas PrivateSend is a base layer functionality that will not be impacted by the addition of the platform features. I believe the intent of the question is whether PrivateSend will be integrated into DashPay – the mobile application we plan to launch on the platform featuring usernames and contact lists. We do intend to add PrivateSend features to mobile wallets in the future. It will not be included in the initial release, but ChainLocks and Chained InstantSend were prerequisites to integrating PrivateSend on mobile devices. So we are positioning the technology to be able to add this feature to mobile devices.

6. Q: Are there any major exchanges that are waiting for post-evo to do their integration work so they don’t have to do it 2 times? (sile)

   A (Ryan): No. This has never been the attitude of any of the exchanges with whom we have interacted.

7. Q: Is the Grayscale investment fund being pursued to lobby for Dash as an investment in their portfolio? (dancefordistribution)

   A (Ryan): We can not comment on business development efforts with specific entities.

8. Q: Many of the Dash icons (logo) within the official iOS Dash wallet are distorted (squashed horizontally). Can they be brought in line with the official style guide for the brand? Dash core devs should be leading the way with the correct presentation and use of our brand assets. I also note the old dash logo is still being used in many (even new) apps around the web, does anyone know why this is? Personally I suspect this guy is to blame. Can DCG staff upload an official royalty free version to this website (and others), and/or contact the creator to update his assets to the correct Dash logo. Also https://worldvectorlogo.com/logo/dash-2 (triptolemoose)

   A (strophy): Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have created accounts with both services and uploaded our official vectors. They are available here:
   https://worldvectorlogo.com/logo/dash-4
   https://worldvectorlogo.com/logo/dash-5
   https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/dash-vector-26362462
   https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/dash-d-vector-26362471

   A (Brian): UI improvements to unify the appearance of our apps have been in progress for some time, including this issue previously brought to our attention by triptolemoose. We are estimating to have the redesign released near the end of September.

9. Q: Ryan recently spoke about incentives to switch as one of three attributes for mass adoption. What is Core’s approach to the disincentive of volatility? What does the optimal ‘stable’ solution look like?

   A (Ryan): One of the keys to price stability is growth in usage displacing the ratio of speculative investment. Our volatility has continued dropping as transactions on the network grow. However, it will take a lot more growth for a high level of stability to be achieved. One of the benefits of Dash is the ability for both consumers to acquire and spend – and merchants to receive and cash out – immediately. This means that for use cases where the consumer or merchant are unwilling to accept currency fluctuation risk, they don’t have to. Of course, many of the growth strategies we are pursuing, such as crypto trading, Venezuela, and gambling are categories where there is less concern for the volatility, which makes these categories less hindered by volatility and a base from which we can grow the commerce on the network.