2022 DIF election method **ELECTION UPDATE : READ**

[Sven]

The annual election for the "Dash Investment Foundation" (DIF) supervisors is due this month. These elections used to be held by Dash Watch, but since they're no longer operational, we've been discussing internally what the best method would be to hold it. The two options are

a) the same way the trust protectors election was held, via a special election voting system derived from Dash Watch
b) using the regular treasury proposal system

The treasury proposal system (b) would involve posting one proposal for each candidate and letting the MNO community vote on each.

There are pros and cons for both approaches.

a) Special voting system

• no fees, cost effective
• easy to set up
• participation has been relatively low
• errors are possible when copy-pasting the voting string

b) Treasury proposals

• 5 Dash fee per candidate. I don't think we should make risking 5 Dash an eligibility requirement for DIF candidates. So the DIF would pay that fee. If a candidate clears the 10% margin requirement, we'd get the 5 Dash back, but for anyone the community isn't super enthusiastic about or if participation is not high enough, we'd be stuck with the fee - potentially a significant cost. Since the network owns the DIF, everyone of you would end up sharing a bit of this expense.
• more work to post all these individual proposals and update the candidate profiles in the proposal description on DashCentral
• most likely higher participation
• less error-prone for voters

For b) there is also an open question how No votes would be counted. In the past through a) we could only vote for a candidate, not against. Implementing a No option in a) for this election is not feasible. OTOH, in past treasury decision proposals, there have been voices claiming they won't even accept any proposals that don't clear the 10% threshold, much less ignore No votes. I believe the treasury system wasn't set up with elections in mind, so insisting in the 10% threshold for a voting proposal makes no sense, we'd just end up with a failed election.

What are your thoughts? Any strong feelings one way or the other?

PS: The poll is purely informational for us, don't see it as binding. I realize there is a bias: two options for b), one option for a) which splits the vote for b). But it's the best I could come up within the constraints of the forum. We value your verbal feedback as much as votes, so please comment!

 

[Sven]

I have been reading the DiFi space is suffering a lot any more thought and info to share on that especially as beginner investors on Dash..?

What do you mean by DiFi space?

In case you mean Defi, DIF stands for "Dash Investment Foundation" and has nothing to do with Defi. I'll edit the post to make that clearer for new folks.

 

[xkcd]

What do you mean by DiFi space?

In case you mean Defi, DIF stands for "Dash Investment Foundation" and has nothing to do with Defi. I'll edit the post to make that clearer for new folks.

It's a bot, these days AI is so smart it often passes the Turing test.

 

[xkcd]

I think you should use the regular proposal system and give each candidate a heading like,


DIF2022 Candidate - Sven

DIF2022 Candidate - Walter

etc

The you can copy/pasta each candidates Bio in the DC proposal description and finally have a fair election right there in the DAO.

and I think you should wait until we fork in V18 which will reduce the proposal fee to 1 Dash. I think the DIF should cover the proposal fees, but you can set the amount requested as 2x what it cost eg 10 Dash in the case of the existing fees, and 2 Dash in the case of new system, that way, you have a better chance to recover the fees paid, any 'profit' from the election can do into funding ongoing DIF operations.

We want to maximise transparency and using somebodies centralised database in a node.js hobby project is quite frank against the very core of decentralisation, openness and the spirit of transparency and fairness.

 

[Sven]

I think you should wait until we fork in V18 which will reduce the proposal fee to 1 Dash.

We considered that, but you know how things have been with releases. They're always just around the corner - and stay there. We owe the community a new election and we didn't think we should risk waiting for v18 release, lest someone claims we're clinging to our positions.

But I like the idea with asking for 2x the proposal fee!

 

[GrandMasterDash]

The treasury voting system is not elegant enough for such use cases. I think we should just continue with the usual method.

 

[Sven]

Some update re the upcoming election:

After some deliberation and with feedback here inconclusive, we decided:

• We are going to use the DAO treasury system.
• Proposal fees will be borne by the DIF.
• We will only count Yes votes.
  Abstain and No votes will be ignored.

Although we're aware that we're much behind in our regular schedule, the timing works in our favor with the release of Dash Core v18 now firmly announced. The reduction of the proposal fee will make running the election on the DAO a lot cheaper, and saving costs, esp. in these bear market times, should be in the interest of the community. We hope running it on the DAO will improve participation.

We decided against counting No votes because it could easily lead to an awkward situation, where the election winners actually have negative votes. Also, the DIF constitution clearly calls for an "approval-style election".

We're now preparing a form for interested candidates to submit their application, which should be live on the DIF website within a few days. I'll elaborate a little bit in an upcoming blog post.

In the meantime, if you're interested in running for the DIF, start writing up a self intro explaining your background, involvement with Dash and what makes you a good candidate. This will be published with your application to allow the Dash community to form an opinion and vote on you.

 

[vazaki3]

We decided against counting No votes because it could easily lead to an awkward situation, where the election winners actually have negative votes. Also, the DIF constitution clearly calls for an "approval-style election".

THE AGENTS STRIKE AGAIN!

THE DASH COMMUNITY SHOULD REACT IMMEDIATLY, SHOULD FIGHT AND STOP THE VOTING CENSHORSHIP OF THE AGENTS!!!
OTHERWISE DASH WILL FALL DEEPER INTO THE PIT OF DESPAIR!

WE WANT A "NO" VOTE, AND WE WANT IT NOW!

FASICIST AND CENSOR BASTARDS , FOR THE DIF ELECTIONS I WILL CAST ONLY "NO" VOTES, REGARDLESS THE CENSORSHIP OF THE AGENTS!!!!!
AND MY "NO" VOTES WILL BE COUNTED!!!!!

 

[GrandMasterDash]

I think they are just trying to work with what they have; they wanted a screwdriver but only have a hammer. A more refined governance system would let people create filters, questions, answers and logic trees in whatever way they like.

 

[vazaki3]

I think they are just trying to work with what they have; they wanted a screwdriver but only have a hammer. A more refined governance system would let people create filters, questions, answers and logic trees in whatever way they like.

They already have the screwdriver. It is the written software of the Trust Protectors election system, that also bans the NO votes.

But the agents dont want to use the screwdriver, they want to use the hammer of the dash budget system, and impose their fascism and censorship against the "negative votes for candidates" supporters there. The agents want to smash the "negative votes for candidates" supporters in the very place where these supporters have a tiny hope for their negative votes system to be established.

I hope that the masternodes will react against the censorship of the fascist agents, and demand the masternodes NO votes for candidates to be counted.

If the agents insist of banning the NO votes for the DIF candidates, I may pay 1 dash proposal fee and put a governance question about it into the budget.

 

[vazaki3]

<vote history>
What should be the voting platform for the upcoming DIF supervisor election?

• Special voting system as used in previous elections
  Votes: 5 - 55.6%
• Treasury proposals, "No" votes should count against the candidate, only the Yes-No balance counts
  Votes: 2 - 22.2% + I cast my vote, I wasnt aware of this poll = 3 votes
• Treasury proposals, "No" votes are ignored, only "Yes" votes count
  Votes: 2 - 22.2%
• Total voters 9 + 1
• Poll closed Aug 6, 2022 but it should re-open

</vote history>

 

[GrandMasterDash]

@vazaki3 the primary aim of dash governance is financial reward for work to be done. When Duffield tested governance decisions, it was just a kludge and tbh not much changed to refine it. If you go back to my early posts (many years ago) you will see I advocated for a more advanced system, one that allowed for the renting out of custom governance use cases. Other tasks took priority

But the point is, if someone wants to hold a poll based purely on Yes votes, that''s their prerogative. The only thing MNOs need to do is keep a check on those we hire. Personally, I'm not triggered by the DIF voting process, I think there are more important things, such as making the DIF members a paid position.

 

[vazaki3]

if someone wants to hold a poll based purely on Yes votes, that''s their prerogative.

The DIF money belongs to the Dash community. It is not a prerogative of the agents to mismanage or steal that money, neither it is a prerogative to censor those who want to shout about it by using their vote.

To understand the complete inconsistency of the agents, look at what the agents argued 3 years ago.

Vote count and results publication
Dash Core Group is preparing a website where masternodes will be able to vote on the published list of candidates using the same software that was used for the Dash Trust Protectors election. The software is open source and is fully described here.

“Why not use the existing budget system?”
It’s a valid question, and I’m glad someone might ask. This is actually different from the current budget system in that it’s not a simply binary yes/no, and the MN owners who currently delegate or e.g. share their voting keys with MN operators, may not want to delegate or share ability to vote for the Dash Trust Protectors.

Because of this difference and the importance of the Trust Protector position and to ensure that it is MN owners and not e.g. hosting providers or budget vote delegates, we determined that we needed to use the MN collateral key for signing and verifying messages.

And now they want to use the budget system, to smash the "negative vote for candidates" proponents in their very place, simply because the "negative vote for candidates" movement became popular among the Dash community. Simply because the "negative vote for candidates" movement is a direct threat for the agent's world order (similarly to the "voting the numbers" movement which unfortunately still remains dormant).

#13
#13
#13

 

[vazaki3]

Three questions, addresed to all Trust Protectos (TP) DIF candidates.

1. What should be the minimum number of votes , as a precentage of the total possible votes, you should receive in order to be named a DIF member? In the hypothetical case you would receive only 3 votes (out of 4144 possible) and still you would be able to get elected, do you think it is fair for you to become a DIF member?
2. The DIF election procedure allows voters to cast only positive votes, and not negative votes. I can vote for the DIF I trust, but not for the DIF I do not trust. For example, in case someone is trusted by 500 masternodes and not trusted by 2000, due to the election system he is elected as a DIF member. Do you think this is fair?
3. Is trust something that starts a specific date and ends a week later, during the DIF election period? What if I the network trusts someone during the DIF election week, and after a month it stops trusting him because he stole all the money? Do you think it is fair for the network to tolerate this DIF member for the next one year?

TLDR: The TP DIF election system is stupid, and stupid are also all those who do not question it and trust it.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

As a consumer of goods and services, I think I try harder than most to talk with my wallet. How many people accept the status quo, continue to pay for shit services? I don't. It's no different with dash contractors, the real No vote is to speak with your wallet. If more of us did that, then all of these perceived problems would go away.

 

[vazaki3]

As a consumer of goods and services, I think I try harder than most to talk with my wallet. How many people accept the status quo, continue to pay for shit services? I don't. It's no different with dash contractors, the real No vote is to speak with your wallet. If more of us did that, then all of these perceived problems would go away.

The problem when voting with your wallet, is that your wallet belongs to the agents.
Thats the reason it is preferable to own a real vote (a white vote) rather than a big wallet.

"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white vote, and on the vote a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it."

 

[vazaki3]

Balanced Ballot presentation at WFD 20171109 - YouTube

Has anyone ever tried Negative Votes? (researchgate.net)

Fascist and censor BASTARDS , the negative vote is a basic human right . Whoever deprives me of this right must expect to face my wrath.

 

[Sven]

Everyone please notice that funding of Two Dash per proposal is being requested by the DIF in these elections. ...

You are raising valid concerns. I wish you had raised them earlier though. Please scroll up, we did ask for community feedback on how to conduct this election including the question on how to deal with the fees right here. We also posted the poll on Discord asking for feedback, so everyone should've had a chance to weigh in.

You may notice in post #4 a prominent community member suggested "you can set the amount requested as 2x what it cost eg 10 Dash in the case of the existing fees, and 2 Dash in the case of new system". Nobody objected to that idea, instead the post got a few thumbs-up. So we considered it internally and decided to go with it.

And I believe in this particular case, it's not as bad as you make it look. Let's look at it as one package with 4 Dash at stake:

The outcome of the election, i.e. candidates getting confirmed by a simple majority Yes > No, is one thing. Whether any or all of them clear the 10% threshold for the fee reimbursement to kick in is a different story. I don't even have a good gut feeling one way or the other, it's a toss-up. So we're looking at anything between a 4-Dash loss for the DIF if all four candidates stay below the 10% and a 4-Dash gain for the DIF if all four end up above. The expected outcome is zero. To us that seemed fair enough and that's why we went with the suggestion above.

Also keep in mind that unlike most other proposals that have individuals benefiting directly from the payout, nobody at the DIF does. We donate our time, we don't get paid and therefore have no incentive to milk the treasury for more funds with "perverse proposals", as you put it.

That said, I realize that it can set an undesirable, if misunderstood precedent, where other proposal owners may point at us and say "If they can, why can't I?". We will take that into consideration for any future elections. The currently running election will continue as is though. We will not resubmit the proposals. Of course, you are free to submit your own copy-and-pasted identical proposals, nobody can stop you. But please understand that we will only count the results of our own proposals for determining the outcome of this election.

 

[onetime]

You are raising valid concerns.

Thank you Sven. ℹ I can understand why the DIF's election proposals ended up with the request for 2 Dash each. Since this is an election of simple yes/no counts, it might end up not being a problem this time if the 10%-more-yesses-than-nos threshold doesn't get passed on three or more of the proposals.

In the private MNO-only discord channel, we had recently just been arguing a lot about this tactic being a problem, literally right before the DIF submitted its election proposals. The timing of when this happened made it seem quite intentional... but I guess the DIF wasn't even aware of all the arguments we'd been having.

I rarely ever read anything on the forum (it takes too much effort having to click through disparate posts and scroll through many pages of random comments ), so I wasn't aware that the DIF had been asking for feedback there before the election. I get my Dash information in the general discord channel, in the MNO-only discord channel, on twitter, and in the weekly afterparty meeting.

This is actually the third instance I have seen (so far) of what I consider to be a game-tactic, to conflate a decision-proposal answer with a personal (or to an entity like the DIF) funding payout. I know the DIF did not intend malice , but as a DAO we need to have good and well-understood procedures to avoid future abuse of decision proposals.

Thanks for taking this concern into consideration for future election proposals. I will not object to this month's DIF election anymore; from now on hopefully this won't be a problem anymore.