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April 2016 Budget Proposal

eduffield

Core Developer
It’s that time again, here are the core team budget proposals for this month. The next superblock is scheduled for block 448632, which should occur approximately the afternoon (UTC) of Wednesday, April 6th.

Our project is maturing quickly and we’re having to make many modifications to the way we operate. One of the planned changes concerns the way the budget system has been used and for what purposes. Up until this point, the core team has not sponsored any projects which paid core team members for the work they were doing (aside from a token thanks provided from the core team budget). The system has been used primarily for expense reimbursements for plane tickets, conference fees, legal expenses, and other expenses incurred.

While the budget system has been an amazing resource, there are a couple of issues with the manner in which we are using it. First, when opportunities arise which involve a cost - such as purchasing a domain name or attending a conference - team members incurring the expenses are forced to take on risk that the network may fail to reimburse them or other proposals might garner more support. Second, token payments are certainly appropriate for volunteers, but as the need for full-time developers expands we need to provide a living wage if we expect to make rapid progress.

The next stage of our growth will be defined by rapid, paid development, executing across many fronts… simultaneously. This is going to move very quickly, so keep good track of your hat, lest it fly off your head when we begin.

The Need For Contracts

For the time being until the release of v12.1, we would discourage submitting additional multi-month commitments within the budget system. We first had problems a couple months ago and now we are again facing the same situation this month. We have a multi-month proposal which has gotten kicked out of the system and won’t be funded.

Once v12.1 is out, contracts will be supported which are prioritized in the payment queue, then we won’t have this issue anymore.

Dash Foundation Priorities


Beginning this month, the Dash Foundation will begin issuing a list of funding priorities for the ecosystem. The core team invested significant effort developing a roadmap that will provide the highest probability of success over the next few years, but we’re going to have to be increasingly careful about how we spend money. In our judgment, for the time being it is best to focus on development and infrastructure, not advertising. Immediately, we intend to redirect all advertising funding from our budgeting system into infrastructure development.

  • Dash Core Maintenance (keeping up with existing code)
  • Dash Evolution Development
  • Other Core Architecture (servers, etc)
  • Fiat-to-Dash gateways (lamassu, home grown exchanges, etc)
  • Other Products (debit cards, etc)

We are proud of the significant progress we have already made against our 2016 Strategy, and the market is clearly recognizing our achievements and promise. Masternode operators are encouraged to vote with our current development priorities, however, they are obviously free to vote as they wish. We certainly hope that we have earned your trust.

V12.1 update

Work has been accelerating on 12.1 and we’re presently finishing up an implementation of contracts and settings. Contracts are 3 to 12 month immutable proposals, which are prioritized in payouts. Settings are a new type of governance object, which are voted on by the network and enabled. They act like decentralized network variables that we can use to nimbly alter network attributes such as fee-per-kb for transactions.

Due to this, the budget system will be “reset” when 12.1 is deployed and we will add each budget proposal back manually. This will be a great time to reposition ourselves for the next leg in our journey.

Previous Items:
Core Team Budget - 1,176 DASH (ongoing)
Public Awareness Campaign - 2,156 DASH (ongoing)
Dash.org domain acquisition - 2,100 DASH (missing 1 payment - see below)
Liquidity Providers - 140 DASH (payment #5 of 12)
Dash-Lamassu ATM Integration - 610 DASH (payment #4 of 12)

New Core Team Proposal Items:

Electrum Server Maintenance Contract
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/electrum-maintainence

The light client software electrum allows users to access the network without having to download the entire blockchain, but this requires hosting servers that provide the service. We don’t have a very robust setup for this currently, and the infrastructure needs a good deal of work to improve redundancy. We’ve made a deal with Rob Nelson from mazaclub to help. For 45.80D per month, he will upkeep three redundant installations with the freshest software and keep our network humming.


Evo Specifications
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/evo-specifications

To aid in the speedy development of our platform, we’ve split the development team into two parts. I will continue to lead the core team. The second team, focusing on delivering Evolution, is being led by Andy Freer, a talented engineer from the UK who is working full-time on the project. In exchange for more of Andy’s time and dropping side projects, we’ve worked out a deal where the network will pay Andy 150D/mo. This is obviously a bargain rate for top-tier talent, and we owe Andy a great deal of gratitude for committing himself fully to the project.

This deal expires in 3 months and is a temporary solution to allow Evolution development to continue. Once we have proper contracts capabilities with 12.1, we will move Andy and any other network contracts to the new budget system.

Dash.org - December Payment Replacement

The purchase of the Dash.org domain name was a previously approved project from late last year. It consisted of 2,100 Dash per month for four months. Unfortunately, there was an issue with the December budget which prevented all budgets from finalizing. As a consequence, the 2,100 Dash that should have been distributed at the beginning of December never occurred. This proposal will correct for the missed payment. Unfortunately, there isn’t a ton of space in this month’s budget, so we are proposing spreading the remaining amount over the next three months.

Dashtalk Acquisition

Dashtalk.org has been a valuable resource for the Dash community and contains a great deal of our community's collective history, work, creativity, and ideas. However, Dashtalk was actually started by a community member at their own expense. However, because the core team didn't control this asset, whenever outages, expired certificates, or other issues have occurred, we have been dependent on the owner to fix the issues. If you use the forums as a resource, I'm sure you've noticed the many outages it has experienced lately. As the database continues to grow, the value of Dashtalk to the community - and our dependence on it - only increases, so it was critical for us to control it.

So, we are pleased to share that the core team has negotiated the purchase of Dashtalk and the forum’s historical database and is working to transition / import the entire site to Dash control, while upgrading the versions of software it is running on. This is great news for the community that we were able to preserve the site in its entirety for a reasonable cost.

Non-Core Team Proposal Items:

https://www.dashwhale.org/p/dash-debit-card
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/dashpay-woocommerce
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/ROKOS-permanent-add
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/DashTrader
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/DashWorld-v.2
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/Alex-ru-Promotion-1
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/Proof_of_Labour

Complete Budget (as of current voting rank):

Note: USD conversion in the table assumes $6.96 as of March 30th, 2016 for new budgets and core team budgets with durations over 12 months. Existing fixed-duration budgets use the exchange rate at the time of creation / approval. Exchange rate risk is carried only by the proposer of these budget proposals and not by the network.

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I suggest we split up the Public Awareness (now Exchange Awareness) into each specific activity. Hopefully, this is obvious that a $15,000 budget item should not have 5 different activities in it that are all different from the original proposal that was voted in.
 
I suggest we split up the Public Awareness (now Exchange Awareness) into each specific activity. Hopefully, this is obvious that a $15,000 budget item should not have 5 different activities in it that are all different from the original proposal that was voted in.

I would like to take a moment and say how excited I am that this one budget item alone is now (in fiat terms) almost as much as the entire budget was at inception. How we've grown!
 
eduffield Does this mean that you will be discouraging non-core budgets in general? Will you try to use the new contract system to prioritize core budgets above all other proposals, and, if this is the case, will submitting new "contract" proposals be somehow limited to the core team?

Pablo.
 
Does this mean that you will be discouraging non-core budgets in general?

No. Absolutely not. Especially as the value of Dash grows, there should actually be a larger budget and more and more funding available to both core and non-core projects.

Will you try to use the new contract system to prioritize core budgets above all other proposals, and, if this is the case, will submitting new "contract" proposals be somehow limited to the core team?

No. Absolutely not. Voting will determine what is funded and what is not, and the core team will be subject to the same thresholds as any other proposals of the same type. Not all core team proposals are approved today, and I expect that will continue to be the case.
 
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Sounds great. Don't read much into my questions, I just wanted to understand what you guys were up to :).

Pablo.
 
"Uncancellable" month-to-month projects are a scary proposition. I'm not sure I would approve of any of them, except the Dash Core team's monthly budget.

When someone proposes an uncancellable month-to-month project, you should really be asking, "Should this person's proposal be tied to the volatility of Dash?" or rather, "Would I still fund this project if the value of Dash was $100/Dash?"

I think that the Dash core team's salary should largely rely in the price of Dash. If Dash's value rises to $100/Dash, I think the Dash core team deserves that as a reward.

"Reimbursements" should definitely not be uncancellable. Marketing budgets, IMO, also should not.... though based on my personal views, I would probably vote up the open-source exchange project if it were a 3-month budget, since I think it will do wonders for Dash's price.
 
"Uncancellable" month-to-month projects are a scary proposition. I'm not sure I would approve of any of them, except the Dash Core team's monthly budget.

When someone proposes an uncancellable month-to-month project, you should really be asking, "Should this person's proposal be tied to the volatility of Dash?" or rather, "Would I still fund this project if the value of Dash was $100/Dash?"

I think that the Dash core team's salary should largely rely in the price of Dash. If Dash's value rises to $100/Dash, I think the Dash core team deserves that as a reward.

"Reimbursements" should definitely not be uncancellable. Marketing budgets, IMO, also should not.... though based on my personal views, I would probably vote up the open-source exchange project if it were a 3-month budget, since I think it will do wonders for Dash's price.

From my understanding they will not be "un-cancelable", but rather require higher vote differences for approval and cancellation.

Pablo.
 
For Electrum Server Maintenance Contract,
Please kindly register 3 mentioned servers from Rob Nelson on https://1209k.com/bitcoin-eye/ele.php?chain=dash or create a webpage of his 3 servers's realtime status and announce that.
So we know that the servers really keep our network humming and the network is not humming by volunteers only like now.
Too bad that this proposal may eventually kill servers running by volunteers.
 
From my understanding they will not be "un-cancelable", but rather require higher vote differences for approval and cancellation.

Pablo.

No, my understanding is that they would require a higher threshold to approve, but once approved, would be uncancellable. Can we *please* have some dialogue with the core developers on this at some point *BEFORE* they dump version 12.1 on us? This needs to be discussed with the community so we know exactly what we are doing about this. As it stands right now, I do not support irrevocable contracts in any form even if they require a higher threshold to initially approve, and I won't be updating my DASH nodes with the new version if it includes this without a community consensus.

EDIT: posted a poll about this in General Discussion.
 
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No, my understanding is that they would require a higher threshold to approve, but once approved, would be uncancellable. Can we *please* have some dialogue with the core developers on this at some point *BEFORE* they dump version 12.1 on us? This needs to be discussed with the community so we know exactly what we are doing about this. As it stands right now, I do not support irrevocable contracts in any form even if they require a higher threshold to initially approve, and I won't be updating my DASH nodes with the new version if it includes this without a community consensus.

EDIT: posted a poll about this in General Discussion.

If you don't update, the masternodes will fork your clients off the network.
 
If you don't update, the masternodes will fork your clients off the network.

That's the idea. I am hoping enough masternode owners will share my opinion and refuse to update if this isn't hashed out prior to release. The devs should not be forcing updates down our throats if there are controversial features and shouldn't expect the network to go along with it if they try.
 
For Electrum Server Maintenance Contract,
Too bad that this proposal may eventually kill servers running by volunteers.

There is no reason this needs to be the case! Default server lists are easily updated in the electrum-dash client to add new volunteers, and servers interconnect via IRC to share their connection information (so each server can deliver this info to clients).

The current Electrum-Dash server database takes up to 24hrs to produce on SSD, and server operation is not uncomplex. This presents a significant barrier to new potential server operators.

In addition to producing a highly scalable, highly available network, we're producing ready-to-run databases, server docker images & start-scripts, and all the configuration for more operators to more easily run their own servers. Databases are already available via IPFS, and we'll have all the tools posted to github this week.
 
That's the idea. I am hoping enough masternode owners will share my opinion and refuse to update if this isn't hashed out prior to release. The devs should not be forcing updates down our throats if there are controversial features and shouldn't expect the network to go along with it if they try.

We need alot more discussion on this honestly.

Whats up with the reasoning behind all these changes core team? I'm not so sure we all "want" contracts in place honestly...

Can we ask the network in a poll if they want to add irrevocable contracts to dash?
 
Looks exciting, i cant wait for 12.1 to get here and finally implement the contracts and their higher tresholds.
To be honest i was hoping for normal (one-time) budget proposals to get some higher tresholds then 10% as well but i
understand if thats not absolutely necessary.

It will be interesting to see how all these budget proposals will cope when they fall under the category "contracts" once 12.1
is out there and they therefore need to gather a lot more votes in order to pass.

Also i have no problems with contracts being "immutable" as i think this will bring more stability to the budget system longterm.
 
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Looks exciting, i cant wait for 12.1 to get here and finally implement the contracts and their higher tresholds.
To be honest i was hoping for normal (one-time) budget proposals to get some higher tresholds then 10% as well but i
understand if thats not absolutely necessary.

It will be interesting to see how all these budget proposals will cope when they fall under the category "contracts" once 12.1
is out there and they therefore need to gather a lot more votes in order to pass.

Also i have no problems with contracts being "immutable" as i think this will bring more stability to the budget system longterm.

No businessperson in their right mind would ever sign a contract that says they are bound to continue paying for a good or service for several months in a row, when the entity on the other side of the contract is not bound to actually deliver anything. That's not even a contract, it's a binding promissory note. Why should the DASH network be locked into a monthly payment if the budget proposal owner turns out to be a scammer, or incompetent (clearly not delivering the promised service) or they disappear or jump off a cliff? I don't think we should wait for that to actually happen before figuring out that we need to address it.
 
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IMO
Anyone who provides any contracted service to the DASH community should be compensated reasonably.
Cudo's to them if they waive fees, or accept any lesser amount.
I very much like the morph from the moniker of Darkcoin to DASH ! Astute decision !
How may I achieve a position so my personal opinion, and vote, will count, when decisions are made upon the future of DASH ?
I am newbie... as of yet, no dog in the race.
Yet I am trying...
Emphasis Must be made on fiat access ramps, as ed has declared, and public awareness, overall.
IMO, the fade to dark of Amanda B. Johnson channel, The Daily Decrypt, is an opportunity lost, for DASH community.
It was, an attractive presentation. Provocative... Excellent for general public digestion.

I have posted my saga with the other newbies...
It is becoming obvious to me the DASH Core is Not an operation that should be frivolously turned off, and on. I shall strive for a low power consumption battery back-up 24/7/365 run time within our typical household bandwidth. From what I can tell, so far, the hash floor is typically low, only exacerbated by my own off & on practices. Somehow, emphasis must also be placed upon implementation of the Evolution wallet. IMO.

Stand up.
Speak for yourself !
P2P implemented is an opportunity waiting to happen !

Best
rc
 
How may I achieve a position so my personal opinion, and vote, will count, when decisions are made upon the future of DASH ?

All opinions and posts are listened/read to and are welcome
Voting is for Masternodes only, but community votes (there are some threads) always give a good opinion to the core team

as for newcomers, i hear you, it is always a bit hard to crack into that 'old gang'
keep posting, make friends, engage, stick to your opinions .... and eventually you will count as all other
who have been around much longer or just a little :wink:
 
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