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HempSweet Decentralized Industrialization Alliance Proposal

I have to call it a day, but will be back tomorrow. This was a really good set of questions asked on slack and I wanted to share them here with my answers of course:

@mranderson Plus, the only thing "DASH" is funding is a hemp refinery to develop large scale production of a healthy sugar (learn about at http://hempxylitol.com/health.html ) xylitol that has been known for well over a hundred years and commercialized since 1960's and legal in every country on the planet. The only reason it hasn't taken off more is scalability and more importantly because it displaces the sugar industry, big pharma. Then you add in we are using hemp, which displaces big pharma, oil (anything petro can do...hemp does better), paper industry.....to name just a few. We purposefully selected this product as our first because it is the safest, non-controversial product that will help billions of people suffering from chronic disease caused by refined sugars and artificial sweeteners.

darkcoin
Why should we turn down a great business opportunity just because it involves hemp industry? It's a legal product even. We're not "going down that road", but just funding actual use of Dash. It could be anything being traded really, but this has a lot of potential because of the banks blocking their business.. Isn't that exactly what crypto aims to solve?
Posted in #proposalsToday at 12:05 AM
hempxylitol.com
HempSweet - Health Benefits of Xylitol
Xylitol is an amazingly healthy sugar, but adoption has been slow due to the difficult process of making it from Birch Hardwood or Corn. Now that Industrial Hemp and the 50,000 different uses of it, has returned to the USA.......we will change the way we use sugar.

paragon [6:49 PM]
@mranderson whenever u get a chance I'd appreciate if u could answer my above questions

mranderson [6:50 PM]
I apologize if @fergish already addressed this. What we are asking is for DASH to fund PureHemp Technologies, LLC http://purehemptech.com which includes their parent company Pure Vision Technology Inc that has been in the biomass industry (long before hemp) for over 20 years http://www.purevisiontechnology.com/about

Dang just figured out I have to hit ctrl enter to start new line. I will include my answer to your specific question with regard to HempSweet and returning value back to DASH for the investment in another post.
paragon
@fergish @mranderson Could you clarify your business's history and current financial state? Correct me if I'm wrong, it seems you are asking Dash to fund HempSweet in exchange for a percentage of your business profits as well as your most sincere attempt to spread the use of the Dash within your industry? Could you explain in more detail how Dash can be assured the profit-sharing will be fair and how we can be assured you indeed have sufficient connections to your industry's biggest players that you will indeed be able to achieve significant levels of Dash adoption?
Posted in #proposalsToday at 11:41 AM
purehemptech.com
PureHemp Technology LLC - converting industrial hemp and biomass to diverse bio-products
PureHemp biorefineries will convert industrial hemp and other locally grown biomass into many diverse bio-products, create sustainable agriculture opportunities for farmers and provide abundant green jobs.
purevisiontechnology.com
The Pure Vision of PureVision Technology, Inc.
PureVision Technology is a biorefining R&D company developing and licensing technology packages for the lowest cost production of sugars, lignin and pulp from diverse non-food biomass to industries manufacturing biobased products.
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mranderson [7:04 PM]
I will expand in more detail on our profit sharing scheme with graphs and such later, but basically because HempSweet is using digital token assets (UIA) on the BitShares platform to track all income revenue, orders, where it is in the production stream, etc, all of our "business" will be open to everyone to track and verify; we are decentralizing as much as we can including open patents so to further encourage collaboration and adoption. This is all on the Graphene Blockchain that runs the DEX (They are doing stress and security tests now that already show ~4,000 transactions/second and 30k+ operations/second) that is immutable, transparent, and auditable by anyone at anytime. ALL revenue into HempSweet will go directly into an account that will then share drop it out equally to every "VALUE" token in circulation. We will be setting a 2 of 3 multi-sig wallet that one DASH core developer, one DASH forum leader, and one HempSweet rep will hold (You can scale further multisigs on top with up to 10 accounts per signing key). That DASH-HempSweet multi-sig account will receive their portion of VALUE tokens as they are paid out with any capital paid out directly from the DASH network.
paragon

@fergish @mranderson Could you clarify your business's history and current financial state? Correct me if I'm wrong, it seems you are asking Dash to fund HempSweet in exchange for a percentage of your business profits as well as your most sincere attempt to spread the use of the Dash within your industry? Could you explain in more detail how Dash can be assured the profit-sharing will be fair and how we can be assured you indeed have sufficient connections to your industry's biggest players that you will indeed be able to achieve significant levels of Dash adoption?
 
I would like to see some correspondence with @babygiraffe @TaoOfSatoshi on this if possible.

Much to consider here.

I will hold my tongue and votes for a while longer during my period of consideration.
John came into the offices to meet with me this week and share his proposal. Here are some of the main points I expressed:
1) While the product may exist, the process for producing it at scale does not. This introduces significant risks that cannot be mitigated. There are no guarantees that an efficient process can be developed to extract the sugar from the plant at costs capable of competing with traditional sources of sugar. Dash could wind up spending approximately 15% of its annual budget on this project to wind up with absolutely nothing of value. This alone is an unacceptable level of risk in my mind, and an unacceptable portion of the budget to be allocating to high-risk, unproven agricultural technologies... a field that I (and likely most of the masternode owners) are ill-equipped to assess.
2) Even if they do succeed in creating the process, there remains the very difficult task of developing a supply chain and consumer market for these products, which may take several years. This introduces additional risk (and I suspect cost).
3) Dash has access to many markets and products that exist TODAY and are available to access TODAY, not years from now. And because these products and markets exist already, the benefit of funding them is immediate, and the cost to develop those markets is zero... the only costs we incur are integration expenses.
4) There are likely other sources of funding available to HempSweet that would be more motivated to invest. For example, cannabis growers (who happen to be cash-rich) may be interested in seeing a market develop for the stems and stalks that are currently waste in their business. New revenue streams are always welcome. There are countless growers they could approach to obtain this funding.
5) I think that the proposed solution may be too complex... there are multiple tokens, discounting schemes, etc. involved. I'm not sure the added purchasing complexity adds any value and introduces significant friction to the purchase process. This friction may inhibit the adoption of his idea, even if the R&D risks are overcome. It is also inconsistent with Dash's brand --- simple.

To be clear, I am supportive of HempSweets' efforts to introduce a new product that appears to be valuable. It's why I gave him my honest assessment of the challenges he faces and tried to help him identify funding sources that would have more incentive / motivation to support his cause. I personally don't feel that Dash is quite the right fit, especially at our current scale.
 
I agree with Ryan and posed the below question to Travis in the #proposals slack chatroom earlier this morning (which he hasn't yet gotten to):

Do you think it might make more sense to ask Dash to fund you to promote/spread the use of Dash as a currency and a payment method throughout your industry which has difficulty with the traditional banking system rather than asking Dash to fund your company whose goal is to extract or produce xylitol from the hemp plant which has no connection to Dash's purpose?

If you could provide Dash with ample reason to believe that you indeed could promote significant Dash adoption within your industry, I think you might find many of us possibly in favor.
 
Do you think it might make more sense to ask Dash to fund you to promote/spread the use of Dash as a currency and a payment method throughout your industry which has difficulty with the traditional banking system rather than asking Dash to fund your company whose goal is to extract or produce xylitol from the hemp plant which has no connection to Dash's purpose?
Funding directly for promoting Dash is part of it, and might be something we could do otherwise, but the picture is a lot bigger. See next post, shortly.
 
I agree with Ryan and posed the below question to Travis in the #proposals slack chatroom earlier this morning (which he hasn't yet gotten to):

Do you think it might make more sense to ask Dash to fund you to promote/spread the use of Dash as a currency and a payment method throughout your industry which has difficulty with the traditional banking system rather than asking Dash to fund your company whose goal is to extract or produce xylitol from the hemp plant which has no connection to Dash's purpose?

If you could provide Dash with ample reason to believe that you indeed could promote significant Dash adoption within your industry, I think you might find many of us possibly in favor.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. ---Albert Einstein

First if someone does not see or believe there is a problem, then it is impossible to communicate a solution in anyway that will ever be understood.
Second, if that quote does not make sense then what we are presenting has very little chance of having any real meaning to you. That is perfectly okay, but please consider just abstaining your vote because how can you make a decision of support or non-support if you do not understand what you are reading.

We all are using the same English language here, but I think our largest challenge is communication. I am dedicated to providing a future for my children where the solutions we create today include everyone or frankly they just are not worth creating. I have seen and experienced great value in leveraging free, transparent, permission-less, self-empowering, decentralized-control technologies, and why I have spent every single moment of the last 5 years looking for an opportunity to prove that what we are building here and leveraging massive risk of our most valuable resource (our time) is genuine, honest and offers everyone who voluntarily participates something they can use to empower their own special unique life. How do I "promote" something as money if it is controlled by a few who think they know more than everyone else how to use that language of money and entitlement of authority of what is valuable? How can anyone promote any technology (coins, banknotes, promissory notes, IOU's, sea shells) as money if it does not provide any improvement on technologies humans are already using to communicate value to each other?

The reason why I finally see a way to truly promote a crypto-currency, DASH specifically, and why I'm here today openly sharing this opportunity in the most selfless way I possibly can is because I know that this simple act of 99k worth of DASH (that otherwise will just be wastefully destroyed) created will be a catalyst for change that will unite the potential in all of us and give real tangible meaning to express to the world why DASH is the solution to the problem many in this space preach they understand. Many people have asked for the elevator pitch of what HempSweet offers. Well here is mine:
HempSweet is the first opportunity for everyone who believes enough in DASH to move forward in-spite of all traditional logic telling us it is impossible and who also see DASH's value as much more than a payment service, to actually give the other 99.9% of the world an elevator pitch about DASH that actually has meaning with substance.
The way I see it is if I cannot successfully express value to enough people here that hold the power to create true change with nothing more than a single click of a button (that alone has inspired me) then I stand zero chance to express the value of crypto to any person. If you are going to dismiss this value proposition, then at least give me and all the people who have selflessly given their time the respect by first reading our words (where there is an answer to every question that has come up) and make a judgment based on your personal perspective. Frankly, if you cannot make an informed decision or opinion on your own effort, then I ask you make none at all with regard to our proposal.

I see my ultimate ownership of HempSweet as about the same level of ownership anyone of us can claim over DASH. Without standing on the shoulders of greatness who have cut a new path for humanity, DASH or HempSweet would be nothing and be able to provide nothing. When approaching the quality of life of every human, which HempSweets solution of curing the largest destructive force in existence (sugar), I see value in a spreadsheets of risk, profit, loss.

If you believed enough in DASH to lock away such large value required to be a master node, then I have faith that if you approach this proposal in the same way you did when you took that risk then whatever decision is made will be the right one.
 
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Its much too long. The first bit took so long to say that you were going to sum it up in two sentences that I didn't get to them. I simply dont have the attention span needed to read all this guff. Sorry - its just me. No - really. I'm really really sorry. I'm going to get into trouble for this comment. But I cant help it. Far too many words.
 
John came into the offices to meet with me this week and share his proposal. Here are some of the main points I expressed:
1) While the product may exist, the process for producing it at scale does not. This introduces significant risks that cannot be mitigated. There . . .
(This is a long post because it has to be. It our the last substantial post on the subject before we complete formulating a proposal, so it is hoped that MNs will take the time to read it, and if interested, look further into other posts. Any additional feedback would be appreciated. We understand there is a lot to consider, but the worst-case results below are worth considering as well.)

As @babygiraffe states, I met with him last week and presented an overview of what we are trying to do. He was very gracious with his time and attention, amongst his many other concerns. I gave him a copy of our whitepaper, but our exchange was mostly verbal.

As a CFO, Ryan shares the appropriate initial inclination to respond to any request for spending an organization’s money: “No.” I have absolutely no beef with that because it is his job.

Under the circumstances his response is completely understandable. What we are proposing IS a sizable expenditure from the Dash Treasury. There are a number of factors that make the plan, especially as I presented verbally, hard to follow without really digging into it. Even then it’s a lot to take in. With his busy schedule and my explanation, I’m sure Ryan has not had the chance or inclination to dig into the details and see the larger possibilities, as compared to the downside risks.

We decided to post what we’ve posted on the forum and Slack to get feedback from the MasterNode community, to see what traction is there and what modifications we need to make to be a workable fit for all. The response from those who have taken the effort to dig into the plan has been quite positive overall.

Meaning no disrespect to @babygiraffe, I’m responding here to some points which I do not feel are clear.

“1) While the product may exist, the process for producing it at scale does not. This introduces significant risks that cannot be mitigated. There are no guarantees that an efficient process can be developed to extract the sugar from the plant at costs capable of competing with traditional sources of sugar. Dash could wind up spending approximately 15% of its annual budget on this project to wind up with absolutely nothing of value. This alone is an unacceptable level of risk in my mind, and an unacceptable portion of the budget to be allocating to high-risk, unproven agricultural technologies... a field that I (and likely most of the masternode owners) are ill-equipped to assess.”

First, there is absolutely no question that the process can be scaled in this manner. Tests at smaller scale have showed very positive results. The purpose of the research is to isolate the exact best combination(s) of yeast/bacteria, temperature, acidity, batch cycle-time, etc., necessary to allow a completely automated batching for optimum, reproducible results at large-production level. PureHemp Technologies’ scientists are fully capable of accomplishing this, and have done so on other processes in the past.

Second, while the long-range hope is to compete with refined sugar, the immediate and target is to undercut the unsustainable and unscalable production of xylitol with a superior, hemp-derived product. Beyond that, the field is wide open for expansion along with the hemp industry.

“2) Even if they do succeed in creating the process, there remains the very difficult task of developing a supply chain and consumer market for these products, which may take several years. This introduces additional risk (and I suspect cost).”

The mechanics of the supply chain are already largely in place and initial demand it already huge, not just for the retail, but for liquids and bulk for production of sodas, edibles, etc. Expansion will drive and fund itself and require more work in the future, but initial demand is already in place, ready to consume.

“3) Dash has access to many markets and products that exist TODAY and are available to access TODAY, not years from now. And because these products and markets exist already, the benefit of funding them is immediate, and the cost to develop those markets is zero... the only costs we incur are integration expenses.”

This is certainly true. What is lacking though, and what we are trying to bring to the table, is to directly involve the producers as well as the consumers in the cycle of Dash currency flow. Almost everyone who touches “hemp” is being squeezed in their ability to transact value. This starts with the producers. If we open up their ability to transact easily, starting with a direct exchange for value, we open many, many outgoing ripples within the industry, starting immediately. We want Dash in direct use as much as possible, rather than always having to interface with existing Fintech. This is a direct, opening move in a much bigger picture that goes way beyond what we are directly doing with HempSweet, and boosts the use of Dash in the hemp industry right away.

“4) There are likely other sources of funding available to HempSweet that would be more motivated to invest. For example, cannabis growers (who happen to be cash-rich) may be interested in seeing a market develop for the stems and stalks that are currently waste in their business. New revenue streams are always welcome. There are countless growers they could approach to obtain this funding.”

Ryan’s input on these options is very valuable and we are pursuing them. However, the point of pursuing the course of funding by the Dash community is to establish an ongoing currency cycle within the hemp industry. The cycle is really this: Dash becomes the first blockchain to directly pay industrial engineers and scientists to produce open-source research which will benefit not only HempSweet, producers all over the world. That Dash is then used to directly pay farmers for their crops and employees for their word. Farmers then use that Dash to pay seed and equipment suppliers, etc., all the way through to manufacturer and wholesalers.

“5) I think that the proposed solution may be too complex... there are multiple tokens, discounting schemes, etc. involved. I'm not sure the added purchasing complexity adds any value and introduces significant friction to the purchase process. This friction may inhibit the adoption of his idea, even if the R&D risks are overcome. It is also inconsistent with Dash's brand --- simple.”

I understand this perspective, but I’d like to point out that Dash IS complex, under the hood. We’re looking under the hood and tuning a production/exchange cycle with channels we are establishing. The focus is on simplicity at every endpoint, but currently the pain in the industry will allow for slightly more complexity to begin with, if it will alleviate the pain of being choked out.

“To be clear, I am supportive of HempSweets' efforts to introduce a new product that appears to be valuable. It's why I gave him my honest assessment of the challenges he faces and tried to help him identify funding sources that would have more incentive / motivation to support his cause. I personally don't feel that Dash is quite the right fit, especially at our current scale.

As I say, I do understand Ryan’s perspective but feel that there is a huge opportunity here which would be worth the risks.

We will be making a proposal for three months to begin, with reporting on timelines and production before each pay out. This will allow the MasterNodes to defund us at any time we are seen as not returning value. This provision has already been agreed to by all relevant parties, to be reflected in writing.

So let us examine the worst-case scenario. Say that the project fails to make a decent showing along the way and are defunded.

The Dash community will have enabled a historic of a blockchain directly funding chemical engineers and scientists to execute research for the advancement of open source industrialization. Succeed or fail, this is a notable, newsworthy event. The Dash MasterNodes will have been the first DAO to have a make/break degree of oversight on an industrialization project. Again, historic and newsworthy.

The largest portion of the Dash expended will be to PureHemp Technologies for its research. That dish will go into direct circulation in the hemp industry to pay farmers, employees, etc., thus setting a precedent and opening the flow in the industry. Again, big news, much interest, and increased attention and use of Dash in a multi-billion dollar industry which is being choked on the fintech side. That alone will give additional traction to Dash’s other efforts to set up fiat interfaces and other direct use of Dash.

Payment to the two HempSweet principals will have been promoting Dash, the Dash DAO, etc., in the hemp industry and generated a lot of interest. Barring heinous behavior on our part (for which we have shown no precedent), there is little downside on the promotion value of this. It will result in interviews, events, etc. An article in The Hemp Connoisseur Magazine is assured as my co-host on The Hemp Corner of the Technology & Choice podcast is the CFO of the mag.

We fully intend to take the project all the way, but these are the worst-case scenerio.

Thanks for your patience,

John
 
Maybe I see things differently from others but, in my mind, Dash's treasury funds should be used to build, run, improve and promote Dash. I don't really see how funding your research and your agricultural processing business with the hopes that you'll be able to spread Dash adoption and gain media attention is something that will be worth the massive investment and risk you're asking us to take.

I also wanted to question Travis's claim that unused funds in our budget are wasted. If we don't use money in our budget, that means there is less inflation and more purchasing power retained by all Dash holders
 
ok - out of respect for babygiraffe - i read it all. Probably a good thing. However I will be voting no, as far as I can see, because:

- Partly, I don't like long wordy proposals that try to be persuasive before getting to the important bit
- Partly, its a lot of money
- Mainly, if it were a safe and legal place to put money you wouldn't be unbanked, nor would you be short of investors. Its almost certainly very dangerous to our long term survival to be putting money into this. I think its only a matter of time before governments try to use legal intervention to control us, and this would be a perfect place to start.
 
I must say, I agree with the above - too many moving parts, proposal is too hard to read / follow.

Asking for massive funding for no guarantee of any deliverables. Additionally this is to fund a business that does not correlate or mesh with the Dash brand well.

Too complex of a structure for this to be successful and looks very risky. Totally agree with @babygiraffe - if this proposal is up I will be voting no.
 
ok - out of respect for babygiraffe - i read it all. Probably a good thing. However I will be voting no, as far as I can see, because:

- Partly, I don't like long wordy proposals that try to be persuasive before getting to the important bit
- Partly, its a lot of money
- Mainly, if it were a safe and legal place to put money you wouldn't be unbanked, nor would you be short of investors. Its almost certainly very dangerous to our long term survival to be putting money into this. I think its only a matter of time before governments try to use legal intervention to control us, and this would be a perfect place to start.

I have no reasonable argument against it being wordy --if that is our biggest fault then I am satisfied with what we are doing. All I can say is this effort put forth by everyone including yourself has already shown what can happen when we see a common goal and fine tune big ideas into simple core logic. Our formal proposal will be culmination of that.

~99k/700k is 14.14% of the total budget for this payment cycle. For the "it will make all the current DASH in circulation less valuable because of inflation" argument then here are the facts: $92.36/DASH and $99k would be 1071.89 DASH, which is 0.0149% dilution of DASH.

"Mainly, if it were a safe and legal place to put money you wouldn't be unbanked, nor would you be short of investors." This makes no sense for a community that says that our technology is superior to legacy banking (Obviously it is superior) to judge the quality of a company wanting to leverage this new found monetary instrument on whether they are tied down to a few gatekeepers who hold all the power, I see a traditional company dependency on banks as a severe weakness. PureHemp tech is not short on investors, but use for the other 60% of the plant that will likely be funded (especially if crypto doesn't capitalize on this opportunity) through traditional investments.......nothing will change. A few "investors" who own the rights to technologies that have the potential to improve the quality of life for everyone, but will either be destroyed or privileged to a few.

"I think its only a matter of time before governments try to use legal intervention to control us, and this would be a perfect place to start." So you do not think this has been the case from day one of any attempt by the people to gain more control over their lives and wealth. Or that government hasn't already used legal means to control us? Hell ask Charlie Shrem who also has an active proposal. Think about things in different terms. How could the government spin a story that involved them obstructing the peaceful development of a food that has proven to be much safer and healthier for everyone on the planet? If HempSweet or any individual was funding them then sure they could attack the source of value that allows the R&D, but how do you suppose they would attack a decentralized blockchain that is funding research that is supposed to be so difficult that only "governments" or powerful corporations are supposed to be doing?
 
A few obvious points here. It's all about choices. The masternode owners gave 1100 Dash per month for the Terpin PR fiasco. The masternode owners gave over 7300 Dash for an ATM fiasco. ATMs? Seriously? And what are we discussing now? More ATMs and a Tesla? Are you kidding me?

This proposal is much more far reaching than those. Let me spell it out for you. The Dash that would be allocated would be USED and RE-USED in a circle of real world adoption. To quote above: "all participants from grower to processor to manufacturer to supplier to retailer agreed to accept and pay in cryptocurrencies, with incentives favoring DASH..."

This is what it's all about. While it's fine to talk about exposure, this is real world acceptance and use of Dash. That is the Holy Grail of the entire Dash project, is it not?
200_s.gif
 
Thankyou for taking the time to answer my questions. I still struggle to glean the nuggets of hard facts from the answers, however. On the price, if this were a one-off payment I would accept your suggestion that it is easily afforded, but as 12 months it feels uncomfortable. This same argument feeds into the legal questions. We will be funding the canabis industry for a long period of time. I am not qualified to weigh the legal arguments. Almost everyone here would say that Charlie Shrem did nothing wrong, and would have wondered how a government could spin a story that would make him a criminal, and yet he was given a 2 year sentence. Indeed, ask him what they can and will do! We may be decentralised, but we have offices and people who get paid and work. Governments search out individuals and hold them responsible, even when they are not. I am risk averse here.
 
Thankyou for taking the time to answer my questions. I still struggle to glean the nuggets of hard facts from the answers, however. On the price, if this were a one-off payment I would accept your suggestion that it is easily afforded, but as 12 months it feels uncomfortable. This same argument feeds into the legal questions. We will be funding the canabis industry for a long period of time. I am not qualified to weigh the legal arguments. Almost everyone here would say that Charlie Shrem did nothing wrong, and would have wondered how a government could spin a story that would make him a criminal, and yet he was given a 2 year sentence. Indeed, ask him what they can and will do! We may be decentralised, but we have offices and people who get paid and work. Governments search out individuals and hold them responsible, even when they are not. I am risk averse here.
The initial proposal will be one-off, with the necessity to continually prove efficacy to maintain funding. All parties are in agreement on this.
Re ongoing funding: The funding is going to a biomass processor. That that processor has a division that focuses on processing and development of the perfectly legal hemp plant is of no consequence. Those who wish to choke off the hemp industry while Monsanto and its cohorts get ahead of things will likely have a problem with their illegitimate gates being bypassed but, hey, that's what we're all about isn't it? There is absolutely nothing even remotely illegal involved here.
Charlie's saga is completely different.
Of course, gangsters of any stripe will do what they will do. Can't count on them doing the right thing. Shall we cower, or do what's right, honest and of benefit to humanity?
 
VENDORS ARE USERS, TOO!

Or at least they would be if crypto were not hostile to them... I'm still impressed by the ability of the DASH community and leadership to still not understand this.

You have to support someone other than the showflakes. IX seemed to be the answer, but it appears that it's creator has no idea what it's good for or why.

The full-circle is the objective, but the everyday user can't actually use without the vendors. At least band-aid them a DASH -> FIAT solution, and then you can fill in the rest of the circle from there.

Vendors are the starting point for drawing the circle.

No, I'm just a troll for saying so... fuckin' echo chamber cryptotards...
 
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Basically, it seems like you wish us to partner with you, funding your enterprise, and I worry we could get into legal troubles this way, NOT because what your work is, is illegal, but rather business legal troubles. This is not something for us MNs to jump feet first into. It would require a well written contract and a legal team for the MNs to rely on to keep our interests and safety paramount. But we don't have something like that. The Dash Foundation does, but we as a distributed network don't.
 
VENDORS ARE USERS, TOO!

Or at least they would be if crypto were not hostile to them... I'm still impressed by the ability of the DASH community and leadership to still not understand this.

You have to support someone other than the showflakes. IX seemed to be the answer, but it appears that it's creator has no idea what it's good for or why.

The full-circle is the objective, but the everyday user can't actually use without the vendors. At least band-aid them a DASH -> FIAT solution, and then you can fill in the rest of the circle from there.

Vendors are the starting point for drawing the circle.

No, I'm just a troll for saying so... fuckin' echo chamber cryptotards...
What if this venture could be interpreted that we, the Dash Network, are responsible for what these guys do? They want us to hire two people and pay their salaries. Then something goes wrong, Hell, someone falls and hits their head on a forklift and dies. Now the MNs are all responsible.

It reads like a full partnership. The verbiage is frightening, and I really think we need a law firm that represents the protections of the MNs to do something like this.

Also, we're not here to be a banking institution, giving out loans. How could we even begin to supervise this project?
 
What if this venture could be interpreted that we, the Dash Network, are responsible for what these guys do? They want us to hire two people and pay their salaries. Then something goes wrong, Hell, someone falls and hits their head on a forklift and dies. Now the MNs are all responsible.

It reads like a full partnership. The verbiage is frightening, and I really think we need a law firm that represents the protections of the MNs to do something like this.

Also, we're not here to be a banking institution, giving out loans. How could we even begin to supervise this project?

No what HempSweet is proposing is the DASH block reward pay partial R&D costs to PureHemp Technologies, LLC, which is needed to scale production. As far as being held liable for any injury could be applied to any of these worker proposals. IMHO I think that fear generating statement is totally unfair since I've never seen this come up before for projects with exponentially higher risk. What if a central exchange gets hacked and loses all of the DASH because of one of the masternode's "workers" error? There is zero difference between what John and I are doing for the DASH network and any other human.

I will post what my month of April milestones are and John as well.
 
All the other proposals went through the core team. They have access to core team attorneys, or the Dash Foundation hired and retained Law firm. We have approved things like "pay for X number of videos" "sponsor our show" and help pay for me to install an ATM which I will run and take responsibility for, and I will give a discount to Dash users on". It's 100% different to

DASH Gives:
  • Dash blockchain/community pays a hemp biomass processor directly to complete development of the best specific biologic pathway and practices for industrial scale conversion of hemp xylose syrup to healthy xylitol sugar, becoming the first blockchain to directly fund a bio/mechanical engineering project in developing an open-source process for the public good. The full potentials of this are expounded in linked supporting materials. The results of this research will be open-sourced to the world (after an initial development period wherein only direct partners will have access) so it is not just to the benefit of HempSweet, but in the interest of putting this type of product into use worldwide, whether associated with HempSweet or not. Such payment could be viewed as paying a company to perform a charitable activity, since HempSweet is not the sole beneficiary, because the data will be open-sourced. The specifics of this activity are covered in the draft Hempsweet whitepaper http://bit.ly/hempsweet
  • Dash temporarily pays salaries and expenses of two HempSweet principals to shepherd and promote the project and Dash to the multi-billion dollar (and just getting started) hemp industry.
  • Attention and oversight of how the Dash contributed is spent vs the value the project gives.

We are not equiped to do this, and never will be.
 
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John came into the offices to meet with me this week and share his proposal. Here are some of the main points I expressed:
1) While the product may exist, the process for producing it at scale does not. This introduces significant risks that cannot be mitigated. There are no guarantees that an efficient process can be developed to extract the sugar from the plant at costs capable of competing with traditional sources of sugar. Dash could wind up spending approximately 15% of its annual budget on this project to wind up with absolutely nothing of value. This alone is an unacceptable level of risk in my mind, and an unacceptable portion of the budget to be allocating to high-risk, unproven agricultural technologies... a field that I (and likely most of the masternode owners) are ill-equipped to assess.
2) Even if they do succeed in creating the process, there remains the very difficult task of developing a supply chain and consumer market for these products, which may take several years. This introduces additional risk (and I suspect cost).
3) Dash has access to many markets and products that exist TODAY and are available to access TODAY, not years from now. And because these products and markets exist already, the benefit of funding them is immediate, and the cost to develop those markets is zero... the only costs we incur are integration expenses.
4) There are likely other sources of funding available to HempSweet that would be more motivated to invest. For example, cannabis growers (who happen to be cash-rich) may be interested in seeing a market develop for the stems and stalks that are currently waste in their business. New revenue streams are always welcome. There are countless growers they could approach to obtain this funding.
5) I think that the proposed solution may be too complex... there are multiple tokens, discounting schemes, etc. involved. I'm not sure the added purchasing complexity adds any value and introduces significant friction to the purchase process. This friction may inhibit the adoption of his idea, even if the R&D risks are overcome. It is also inconsistent with Dash's brand --- simple.

To be clear, I am supportive of HempSweets' efforts to introduce a new product that appears to be valuable. It's why I gave him my honest assessment of the challenges he faces and tried to help him identify funding sources that would have more incentive / motivation to support his cause. I personally don't feel that Dash is quite the right fit, especially at our current scale.


Yes, I'm afraid it doesn't feel like the right fit either, mostly because it's all over our collective abilities to assess fully. It's a great sales pitch, though, but when I take out the emotions I see too many traps, sorry!
 
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