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I think Dash needs some changes

kot

Moderator
Masternode Owner/Operator
Dear Dash Community Members,

I would like to offer my thoughts about the project direction and possible changes we, as a project and community, should consider. I am not writing this to demand changes but rather offer my point of view and have productive conversation about the project's future.

I think Dash needs some corrections on strategic and operational levels and I would like to present some of my propositions on this matter. I am not going to argue with those who think the direction of the project is correct - this is not my intention.
The intention of this post is to focus on improvements and a better future of the project. This only - no fights, unproductive arguments and finger-pointing.

Few years ago, when Evan was still around, the brilliant idea of Evolution was created. At that time Dash was already a payments-focused project and Evolution was going to be a great supplement for the project's strategy. It was going to be a Venmo-like wallet run on blockchain. Sadly, Evan left the project and other engineers continued his work. Simple solution (wallet with user names and list of friends) grew to the idea of a development platform and DashPay wallet. According to the development teams, it was supposed to take only a few months to develop the platform and wallet, so the management team made a decision to go into that direction, despite possible delays. From the business perspective it was much more attractive and the estimated difference in the delivery time (3-6 months, according to the devs) was insignificant, compared to the possible advantages. It was 2018 - you know the rest very well.

2018 was also a year when the market crashed and DCG had to make many difficult decisions about the budget and headcount. The development teams constantly assured us about the relatively quick delivery time of the platform, management made a decision to focus on technology delivery, and not on other equally important iniatiatives such as marketing, comms, bizdev. All of our efforts and funds were used to retain developers and deliver Evo. This approach has not changed to this day and I consider it to be a mistake. I confess that as a member of senior management I am also guilty that it was kept this way for such a long time.

Crypto industry evolved, markets evolved, communities evolved but Dash remained narrowly focused on Evolution delivery and focused solely on developers and delivering the best possible technology. We can see now that it was not a perfect choice - markets punished us hard for this choice.

In my opinion changes in the current strategy and direction are necessary, if the Dash network wants to survive and thrive. We have always heard from our devs that good tech is going to defend itself and eventually will be recognized by the markets. I think the reality does not support this claim anymore. We have probably the best tech in the industry and despite this, the project is slowly fading (from the market perspective). Much (technologically) weaker projects managed to explode in the space - projects that are still in development, or completely without development, constantly failing (eg. stopped blockchains) are much more recognized and have a much better position in the industry. I think we should stop ignoring markets? and put more focus on what is working for other projects. And follow. Let's not repeat the same mistakes, expecting different outcomes.

It seems like the common thing to successful projects in our space is not a great tech, perfect decentralisation, sophisticated solutions and focus on development but instead:
  1. Focus on promotion and marketing
  2. Consistent, effective and incremental technology development and delivery
  3. Welcoming and enthusiastic communities around the world

So what, in my opinion, could we change?

1. More promotion and marketing
We already have great tech - there is no doubt about it. And almost no one knows about it. I am pretty sure that there is no need to create more new products or more sophisticated tech-oriented solutions. What is needed instead is cheering on what we are having, comparing to the competitors, screaming how good we are, creating videos, memes, messages etc. We have a lot to talk about.

After the expected platform release, I think there will be no necessity to put more money and effort into developing more tech. I think that much better use of the network money would be to spend it on promotion. It doesn't mean that we should stop development - no. I think we should limit money spent on development for a year or two and redirect this money towards promotion and marketing. Existing development teams should not be expanded but focus more on documentation, marketing support and actively participate in the promotion efforts (e.g. by doing videos, samples, tutorials, joining development communities and promoting our tech). Their help will be largely needed to promote the platform in the development community.

Recent changes in DCG communications and growing efforts on the community side created a solid foundation for better promotion. This created a constant flow of Dash-related information, increased visibility of the project and it should be definitely continued.
I think what is missing is a professional marketing campaign, driven by experienced agencies and/or people, who have experience in the field.
Dash needs good promotion and recognition - and there are people out there, who could help us to achieve it. In my opinion we don’t need perfection, we don’t need more experiments with DAO, we don’t need radical transparency, we don’t need more tech etc. We have made many of those experiments and we are pioneers in many things. However, we don’t have to be pioneers in everything and constantly experiment.
Let’s simply use the tools that work. Traditional marketing works.

So what would be my proposition here?
  1. Continue community and DCG efforts in constant flow of messages, communication and promotion. This is a great foundation and starts working well.
  2. When the platform is launched, move developers to promote it in the development community, create videos, visual materials, code samples, tutorials, great docs, articles, participate in conferences and hackathons and engage in discussions with other devs. Just don’t stay hidden in the caves or create more and more features - we don’t need more.
  3. As a supplement for the foundation, from time to time (not constantly) launch campaigns with professional agencies. Good example is Coca-Cola and their summer campaigns. When the time is right - which in our case is a bull market - we should push hard. Agencies from the industry know how to do it - they successfully promoted many projects. Let’s use their experience, hire them and work together. There is no magic in that - one or two experienced PMs could coordinate these efforts. What is needed is money. We could collect the funds earlier - slowly, to not drain the budget, and prepare for the right time.
    What is important is to not do these campaigns during the bear market - it would be a total waste of money.
2. Less focus on tech and developers
Just to be clear - by writing “developers” in this post, I mean all functions within DCG that are responsible for the code: developers, tech leads and CTO.

It is not easy to say but it needs to be said. Simple and straightforward - for a couple of years this project has been kept hostage by developers. And this needs to be changed.

As mentioned above, in 2018 the Dash network and DCG became focused on developers and gave them a lot of power and independence. And since then we were hearing that we need 3-6 months to deliver. We have GREAT developers but we also have problems with developers and the delivery process. It requires changes - the good thing is that those changes are easy to do.

The biggest of our problems is that developers are cheered, almost worshipped, despite not delivering as promised and not kept accountable for that. We have always shielded our devs. As a result, they do whatever they want, without focus on the delivery but with focus on development instead. If you let developers drive the project, they will do what they do the best - they will develop the code (the more sophisticated and geeky, the better) as development is fun for them - but this is not necessarily what the project needs. We need timely delivery, releases and products - not more and more super-complicated code.
This should be acknowledged and changed. We need results and delivery, not development for the sake of developing code.

There were tons of books written about why you should not give developers power to lead the project and product development. I am not going to repeat that - DYOR. Great summary of this is this the tweet from Andreas - it reflects our situation very well:
Just watch the latest 2-3 sprint reviews and you’ll know what I am talking about.

Our efforts should NOT be focused on developing code. Focus should be on delivering products and explaining why these products have value. Value to investors, users and also external developers. Great code is great but this code should serve the purpose of giving value to our users (not just giving fun to developers). And also encourage potential investors to buy Dash. This is really important - don’t ignore the power of the markets.

So I propose to apply the following changes in the delivery process:
  • Delivery excellence should be the key. Keep developers accountable for what they do and what they promise. Make sure they understand the goal of what we are doing (and this goal is not to develop as much code as possible to be clear)
  • Replace those, who don’t deliver like they promised or are unreliable. Accidental failures can be tolerated, constant failures and broken promises not.
  • Let other people do what they should do and let them control developers. We have other people, who could improve the delivery process a lot - let them work and not interfere. Scrum Masters should oversee the development process. Product Owners should control product roadmaps and delivery of products. SMs and POs should oversee and control developers, not the other way around.
  • Create a clear vision of what is going to be delivered and explain what is done already. In a simple language, understandable for the average person. Geeky, tech language is counterproductive in the long run - people don’t understand that.
  • Better plan of the releases. Avoid big releases (platform is a great example of that mistake) and plan small, incremental releases instead.
  • No releases during the bear market (or at least minimal number of releases). Bear market annihilates the positive impact of the releases - we have experienced this already. Market situation has a big impact on the project and Bitcoin dictates the market situation. Follow the market.
  • Last but not least - put the right people in charge and give them power to apply necessary changes. Even if those changes are difficult. If we don’t want to have more years of development but effective delivery instead, changes are absolutely necessary. Start from CEO - in my opinion it should be a market-, business- and user-oriented individual with a good understanding of financial business. We should only consider a person whose primary objective is the quick delivery of a platform.
  • On the other hand, if you think everything is great, any changes are unnecessary.

There is also an option to contract an external party, completely detached from the project, to make an audit and assessment of the technology development situation in DCG. They would create a report and suggest necessary changes - this is not uncommon and there are many consulting companies doing such assessments of agile companies. It is also not expensive. I would strongly recommend considering this to gain an external perspective on the internal challenges instead of relying solely on DCG internal developers opinions as those may be biased.
3. Community evolution
I think we also need change and evolution in our community. I remember well what a great community we were. Community is a vital part of the project and the backbone of it. We don’t need politics, manipulation, “transparency”, “investigations” etc. Dash needs enthusiastic and positive people who are all working together to make the Dash network successful..
I am not going to write a big elaborate entry here. Let’s just eliminate negativity and those who create it - it doesn’t serve the project in any positive way. Let’s focus on building a positive message, supporting those who do things, being welcoming to new people, inspiring positive change, supporting each other, and spreading the word about the project. I think you know very well what I mean here.

If you managed to read this to this moment - thank you very much. Please let me know what your opinion is about the changes needed for Dash.
I am happy to have a productive discussion and help make necessary changes, as I have much more free time now, and care deeply about this project.

Robert
 
There are two ways to learn based on errors:

1- own mistakes

2-mistakes of others.

Unfortunately we have chosen the second mode for several years.

I understand your position, and I appreciate your view of the current problem, from your perspective.


I support what you say, as sometimes, it is not necessary to achieve perfection, simply granting usefulness is more than enough.

As for the budget for programmers, engineers, and so on... if we have a working product, I guess we'll just need a smaller maintenance group, and not a huge set of programmers with nothing to code.

Regarding the issue of marketing, I consider it as something fundamental that must be treated very carefully. It is not the same to shoot 1000 bullets without aiming than one well-aimed one that hits the target.

Throwing funds away to promote minor events, I see it as absurd. I always remember everything that happened in Venezuela and that it has not been of much use seeing the popularity of Dash.

However, we all remember Matt Damon in the Cripto.com advertising

Take the platform forward and then you can focus a large part of the budget on showing it efficiently to the world, and you will see how it will go a long way.

Good luck,
 
Dear Dash Community Members,
..........rational and informative quotes , I agree with them..............
Crypto industry evolved, markets evolved, communities evolved but Dash remained narrowly focused on Evolution delivery and focused solely on developers and delivering the best possible technology. We can see now that it was not a perfect choice - markets punished us hard for this choice. In my opinion changes in the current strategy and direction are necessary, if the Dash network wants to survive and thrive. We have always heard from our devs that good tech is going to defend itself and eventually will be recognized by the markets. I think the reality does not support this claim anymore. We have probably the best tech in the industry and despite this, the project is slowly fading (from the market perspective). Much (technologically) weaker projects managed to explode in the space - projects that are still in development, or completely without development, constantly failing (eg. stopped blockchains) are much more recognized and have a much better position in the industry.

You made a big mistake in your logic, so I stop reading the rest of the message because it will be based on this absurd assumption.

Regarding Dash platform, Dash platform has the worst tech in the industry, because the scammers you hired as developers decided to wrote the whole thing in javascript. Period. The market recognizes good tech, thats why new governed coins that have good tech and are written in formally verified (or at least fairly secure) languages like cardano, polkadot, tezos, monero, algogrand, cosmos, hedera, helium e.t.c. substituted Dash in the first rows of coinmarketcap.

Javascript language assumes everyone is a good actor, and this principle is the biggest mistake someone can do when designing a cryptocurrency. Stop hiring half-taught sophomoric scammers as dash developers or dash designers, thats the point. Dash Platform developers were(are?) either half-taught sophomoric scammers, or alternatively agents who were paid more by Dash's rivals in order to destroy Dash. No serious cryptocurrency is written in javascript, no serious professional programmer who respects his name and his reputation accepts to code for a cryptocurrency written in javascript.
For the below simple reason, and the market knows that.....
unknown.png


Javascript is a Colosse aux pieds d'argile.

« Ô roi, tu regardais, et tu voyais une grande statue ; cette statue était immense, et d’une splendeur extraordinaire ; elle était debout devant toi, et son aspect était terrible. La tête de cette statue était d’or pur ; sa poitrine et ses bras étaient d’argent ; son ventre et ses cuisses étaient d’airain ; ses jambes, de fer ; ses pieds, en partie de fer et en partie d’argile. Tu regardais, lorsqu’une pierre se détacha sans le secours d’aucune main, frappa les pieds de fer et d’argile de la statue, et les mit en pièces. Alors le fer, l’argile, l’airain, l’argent et l’or, furent brisés ensemble, et devinrent comme la balle qui s’échappe d’une aire en été ; le vent les emporta, et nulle trace n’en fut retrouvée. Mais la pierre qui avait frappé la statue devint une grande montagne, et remplit toute la terre. »
 
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Good thing Javascript is getting converted to Rust then, with some 60% finished already by the devs. They may have started Dash Evolution / Dash Platform with Javascript, but they have adapted. Since the conversion from Javascript to Rust is not specifically delaying the release of Dash Platform (its done in parallel), i think this is a good and even necessary direction. In hindsight maybe they should have switched to Rust much earlier, i don't know.

I just wish they got Dash Core v18.0 out to Mainnet by now, it seems to me that is the cause of most of the current Dash project delayment.

Even the planned hard feature freeze for v18.0 is still not firmly in place today

See :

https://github.com/dashpay/dash/issues/4211
&
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-core-v18-0-0-0-rc1-released.53012/post-231114

Dash Platform and its separate parts on the other hand seems pretty much on track for release later this year, looking at the Dash Platform Product Sprint reviews on Youtube.

With regards to marketing, i agree that marketing has far less of an impact during a bear market, then during a bull market. So Dash marketing strategy should adapt to that.

I would have preferred to see a marketing initiative emerged independently from Dash Core Group, funded directly from the DAO and using a marketing agency (or several) that it screened and hired itself. It would function as a Sub-DAO with enough manpower and enough longterm funding to provide effective marketing for Dash.

But i don't see that emerging anytime soon.
 
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2020 May , dash price was 80. at that point of time, BTC was 7 K, and ETH was 200.

2022 June, dash price is 58, BTC is 30K, and ETH is 1780.

this projecrt is dead. please do not waste investors time and money,
 
2020 May , dash price was 80. at that point of time, BTC was 7 K, and ETH was 200.

2022 June, dash price is 58, BTC is 30K, and ETH is 1780.

this projecrt is dead. please do not waste investors time and money,

Ironically you posting in here is proof that this project is not dead. Why would anyone post in here if he or she truly believes this project is dead ? Why give it that much attention ? Lets face it, you are wayy too much invested in Dash, not necessarily financially, but you sure are following this forum, and you sure are getting triggered to comment in here.

I understand, it is difficult to stop caring about Dash. And stop posting about Dash.

I forgive you, new member.
 
Good thing Javascript is getting converted to Rust then, with some 60% finished already by the devs.

Who is in charge of converting Dash Platform from javascript to Rust?
Because I cannot see any rust activity in the github.

Rust (programming language) - Wikipedia

"In August 2020, Mozilla laid off 250 of its 1,000 employees worldwide as part of a corporate restructuring caused by the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.[52][53] The team behind Servo, a browser engine written in Rust, was completely disbanded. The event raised concerns about the future of Rust, as some members of the team were active contributors to Rust.[54]
In the following week, the Rust Core Team acknowledged the severe impact of the layoffs and announced that plans for a Rust foundation were underway. The first goal of the foundation would be to take ownership of all trademarks and domain names, and take financial responsibility for their costs.[55]
On February 8, 2021, the formation of the Rust Foundation was officially announced by its five founding companies (AWS, Huawei, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla).[56][57]
On April 6, 2021, Google announced support for Rust within Android Open Source Project as an alternative to C/C++"
 
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Who is in charge of converting Dash Platform from javascript to Rust?
Because I cannot see any rust activity in the github.

See
(timestamp 26:07 / one more thing)
That was from Dash Platform Product Sprint 82 (some three weeks ago).

Latest Dash Platform Product Sprint is 83 and they changed the progress overview there a bit i think and showed 60,9% completion.

(timestamp 31:38 / Rust Port Update)

Anton seems to be the developer in charge of this Rust port.
 
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The rust language was abbandoned in 2020 (a direct attack of the agents to the only governed cryptocurrency that supports accountability, polkadot, which is entirely written in rust. See how polkadot developers are complaining ), then in 2021 google,huwai,microsoft and mozilla tried to renovate it with a yearly budget of 625000$ (see how polkadot developers complain for compiler bugs)

The question is, is the rust of 2022 the same as the rust of 2020?
Because many old developers of rust have been fired, and others substituted them.
 
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The rust language was abbandoned in 2020 (an agents's attack to the only cryptocurrency that supports accountability, polkadot which is written in rust), then in 2021 google,huwai,microsoft and mozilla tried to renovate it with a yearly budget of 625000$ .

The question is, is the rust of 2022 the same as the rust of 2020?
Because many developers of rust have been fired, and others substituted them.

You should participate in those Dash Platform Product Sprint sessions and have your question answerred there... they have a Q&A at the end.
Or add your question as comment at the youtube video (better pick latest one, number 83).

Anton was pretty quick with answerring a question of mine about Rust in a previous Sprint session, although that was through Reddit i think.
 
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You should participate in those Dash Platform Product Sprint sessions and have your question answerred there... they have a Q&A at the end.
Or add your question as comment at the youtube video (better pick latest one, number 83).

Anton was pretty quick with answerring a question of mine about Rust in a previous Sprint session.

I do not like to participate in online-synchronous events. I am offline-asynchronous.

My question is:

If dash is planning to enter the rust field, dash should also become a partner of the rust foundation, and offer grants to the rust community members towards rust's security. If google,huwai,microsoft,mozilla denies to accept dash as an equal rust partner, then rust is obviously taken by the agents.

This is a question to the masternodes, not to Anton.
 
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By the way, i don't think this

''In August 2020, Mozilla laid off 250 of its 1,000 employees worldwide as part of a corporate restructuring caused by the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.[52][53] The team behind Servo, a browser engine written in Rust, was completely disbanded. The event raised concerns about the future of Rust, as some members of the team were active contributors to Rust.[54]''

equals your earlier stated :

''The rust language was abbandoned in 2020''
 
By the way, i don't think this

''In August 2020, Mozilla laid off 250 of its 1,000 employees worldwide as part of a corporate restructuring caused by the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.[52][53] The team behind Servo, a browser engine written in Rust, was completely disbanded. The event raised concerns about the future of Rust, as some members of the team were active contributors to Rust.[54]''

equals your stated :

''The rust language was abbandoned in 2020''
Watch the developers.
Contributors to rust-lang/rust · GitHub
The main developer abandoned the language in 2020. His last commit was then.

Then a BOOTSTRAP enthusiast, cloudflare employee appeared.
Also most of the errors in rust are compiler errors that are assigned to someone whose commits in rust started at 2021
 
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Watch the developers.
Contributors to rust-lang/rust · GitHub
The original developer abandoned the language in 2020. His last commit was then.

Then a BOOTSTRAP enthusiast appeared.

Rust is an open source project right ? Who cares that the original developer stopped contributing when other developers are still contributing? there were commits entered into the Rust Github a mere three hours ago. Github Issues and pull requests show plenty of healthy activity.

It is like saying Bitcoin is dead because its orginal developer (Satoshi) stopped contributing. Makes no sense.

Edit : anyways, i think we disrupted this thread with all this Rust talk long enough and entertained your unsupported theory about the Rust project taken-over
by 'the agents' more then enough as well.
 
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Rust is an open source project right ? Who cares that the original developer stopped contributing when other developers are still contributing? there were commits entered into the Rust Github a mere three hours ago. Github Issues and pull requests show plenty of healthy activity.

It is like saying Bitcoin is dead because its orginal developer (Satoshi) stopped contributing. Makes no sense.

I dont judge the security of a language, with the numbers of commits. The more commits are done, the less secure may be.

Do you know what bootstraping is? Rust grew out of a personal project begun in 2006 by Mozilla employee Graydon Hoare.[13] During the same year, work had shifted from the initial compiler written in OCaml to an LLVM-based self-hosting compiler written in Rust.[39] The compiler, rustc, successfully compiled itself (bootstaping) in 2011.[40]

Graydon Hoare's original rust is 11260 commits behind the new rust of aws,google,huwaii,microsoft,mozilla
GitHub - graydon/rust: personal fork for work on rust language

I think the dash community should investigate rust language in terms of security, before highly invest in that language.
Is the code of the original compiler of rust written in OCaml available anywhere?
OCAML is a formally verified language.
LLVM is?
 
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I'm just itching to say, "I told you so" but if @kot is converting to the dark side, I want to welcome him.

Three step plan to turn things around:
1. De-fund DMH (if it hasn't already, I haven't looked at the state of proposals for a long time).
2. Hire professionals for advertising and marketing. It's going to cost a pretty penny, get used to it.
3. De-collateralize masternodes, which is NOT the same thing as reducing the amount. Proof of Service needs to be the only requirement for earning income.
 
Robert, thank you for such a great post. As comms, I couldn't pass on it.

The changes are in the air, everyone feels them. IMO, Dash stands on the verge of significant paradigm shift.

After 1,5 months of working at DCG, I came up with the conclusion that our previous marketing efforts were hollow.
I absolutely agree that we need to focus on marketing, create effective campaigns, promos and stuff.

But there’s one important thing I would like to mention - marketing agencies not always work effectively. I can affirm it as a marketer with previous experience in agencies and marketing SaaS’. I can affirm it as a marketer came to Dash after Arden who, afaik, also opted for agencies. The problem is that they don’t get involved into a context, they don’t usually care about specifics of a particular service. They do have some strategy templates (taken from Hubspot or Moz or SEMrush or whatever) they’re applying to any company they’re working with without digging into details.

I’m not saying that all agencies suck. What I’m trying to say is that there’s a high risk to end up with another failed attempt to market Dash.

To my opinion, Dash needs a couple of good in-house marketers who could connect the community together and encourage other contributors to get involved into our marketing activities and deliver good performing content for masses. If we get Dash’s marketing work properly (I mean, growing popularity, growing rate, chart soaring on CMC, new customers, developers, hype stuff, you name it), then it can become a huge source of motivation for developers to be more accountable.

Right now, I’m working at DCG’s content strategy and activities for the next few months. These imply:

Dash use cases overview
Brown bag summaries
Platform overviews
Podcasts and AMAs with our partners and DAOs

It’s all about organic traffic and growth, and there are KPIs set for every activity.

I would love to create kick-ass campaigns with agencies of course, but the budget is quite short for these needs. But if organics work properly, then it may open the door to funding for a perfect paid traffic plan.
 
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