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Budget System v2 / Transform PR

eduffield

Core Developer
Hello,

I’m guessing most of the community is aware that we had a 3-month contract with Transform PR that started last month. This contract was for $6000, denominated in Dash and locked into a rate of $3.38. I believe this contract was going really well and that we were making the correct choice when we originally went with Transform PR. At the end of the first month, some vocal members of the community began lobbying to remove the Transform PR contract from the system while it was active.

I would like to post some evidence of the ongoing work that Transform was doing for us at the time the contract was voided and make some suggestions to alter the system so that we have better communication and we don’t experience problems like this again in the future.

To start, I’m posting the final report from Transform PR, which shows the work they were doing. As you can see, they were the major driver of most of the media attention we were getting during the last month. They were even working with a major mainstream media outlet, Reuters, to publish a story on Dash.

December Transform PR Activity
Proposal For Next Contract


As a decentralized autonomous organization we need to be able to work with outside vendors reliably, so when the network makes a decision to fund a contract, we need to be able to support that decision in an irrevocable way. I believe the budget system failed us and it needs to be altered slightly to support this type of arrangement in the future.

Here are my suggestions for the budget system:

Proposals:

Ordinary one-time or month-to-month proposals will continue to function as they presently do; votes can be changed at any time, which will move these proposals up or down the payment queue (or even disapprove them altogether). These can be thought of as month-to-month contracts, which require ongoing review in order to keep supporting.

Contracts:

These will be an extended version of a proposal, with a minimum voting period of 30 days. During this period of time, an actual, legally binding contract between the vendor (promisor) and a network representative (promisee) should be evaluated. The promisee can be any legal entity which will act as the networks representative (legal firm, foundation, natural person, etc).

After the voting period (minimum of 30 days) has expired, any contracts which have been approved by the necessary number of votes will be paid until their expiration. Contracts, due to their legally binding nature, will be given priority for funding in the new budget system. Regular proposals will be funded by the system after funding is given to contracts.

I propose that the new contract system have a significantly higher voting threshold than ordinary proposals:

3-month contracts must be voted on by at least 20% of the masternode network.
6-month contracts must be voted on by at least 33% of the masternode network.
12-month contracts must be voted on by at least 51% of the masternode network.

Once these minimum voting thresholds are met, contracts will be considered “passed” if at least 51% of the votes cast are “yes” votes.

USD/Dash Denomination:

All contracts and proposals shall be denominated in Dash, unless the proposer is doing business directly with our foundation, which will carry a USD balance.

Eventually we wish to add native USD support to the budget system, which will allow a contractor to get an exact amount of Dash that can be converted to USD without the contractor carrying the market risk while the work is ongoing.

V12.1 - budget-system proposal

To establish network support for the above proposed, I’ve added a proposal to the system “budget-system”. Please feel free to ask questions here about the proposed changes, I’ll answer as many of them as possible.

I’ve also submitted the proposal for a payout of 50 DASH. If successful I’ll be reimbursed for the creation of 10x proposal, which each cost 5 DASH a piece to submit to the network. To see all proposals that have ever been submitted you can use dash ninja, https://dashninja.pl/budgets.html.

If you support the idea and my reimbursement, please use the command (“vote-many a54a4fc99dde45b6841465c1cdb7b8f5ce4e6059c0086524ed26183f2b91f6dd yes”).

What’s Next?

During the time Transform PR was an active contract, they did fantastic work for us. I would really like to work with them again after we have irrevocable contracts, which will be available in 12.1. Transform PR has provided us with the plan they were going to use from March through May, which I have posted in order to give the community an idea of what our future work with them (if approved after 12.1) would look like.

Creating and fully testing a new version of the software will take about six months. The good news, however, is that while we’re working on 12.1, we also have a separate development team led by Andy Freer doing work on Dash Evolution. Because of this, 12.1 shouldn’t delay the release of Dash Evolution. We are right on schedule.

Best,

Evan Duffield
 
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Completely agree, we need to be able to sustain long term contractual relationships outside of changing sentiment. Also, I've seen a lot of criticism of Transform PR, but it strikes me we had good coverage plus the Satoshi invite during their tenure; both of which seem to me to have paid for themselves.

Pablo.
 
I brought up the subject of legitimately ending an agreement early in another thread.

Most contracts allow both parties to exit the contract before the time frame allocated under certain conditions - I would think there should be some way for Dash to exit out of a contract as well. What if we had a situation where a vendor really drops the ball and isn't honoring their end of the deal? How could Dash get out of that?

Based on your proposed percentages, perhaps something like a 75% vote could end the agreement? I would assume such language would be written into the contract, so the vendor knows this is a possibility.
 
How about we take that $6,000 p/month and put it into development or into something that actually produces a product? Crazy idea huh?

Why do we need OUTSIDE people to work for Dash? We have plenty of loyal Dash members that are capable of doing the same with much less. Funds shouldn't leave our ecosystem.

This Terpin guy is really becoming a pain in my ....
 
Not that I think anyone would deny your being reimbursed 50 Dash, this should probably be 2 separate proposals, no?
ie. one proposal for reimbursement, and another for the re-vamped budget system
 
I brought up the subject of legitimately ending an agreement early in another thread.

Most contracts allow both parties to exit the contract before the time frame allocated under certain conditions - I would think there should be some way for Dash to exit out of a contract as well. What if we had a situation where a vendor really drops the ball and isn't honoring their end of the deal? How could Dash get out of that?

Based on your proposed percentages, perhaps something like a 75% vote could end the agreement? I would assume such language would be written into the contract, so the vendor knows this is a possibility.

I think it is OK when they receive all the money. There should just be some something to prevent them from acting maliciously. But I believe this can be solved in current legal framework and pretty swiftly.
 
How about we take that $6,000 p/month and put it into development or into something that actually produces a product? Crazy idea huh?

Why do we need OUTSIDE people to work for Dash? We have plenty of loyal Dash members that are capable of doing the same with much less. Funds shouldn't leave our ecosystem.

This Terpin guy is really becoming a pain in my ....

Aka Decentralization. Our main goal. Hiring transform just creates centralization in a place we should be building a distributed team instead. Eveerything needs to get decentralized, just like the "core" team is.

Stop thinking in short term goals everyone! Dash is the home run of crypto. Stop trying to be Bitcoin. Ignore Bitcoin and focus on Dash, we don't need a yoshis island resort OR a PR company.

more explanation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/44pnts/what_is_dash_i_think_we_need_to_update_the/

Not worth my time to argue with anyone so if you wanna argue with me just do it in your head.
 
Damn


i truly believe the recent uprise in Dash value was a direct consequences of the media coverage !
how can't you see that ?
it was very exciting to see the upcoming news in a daily basis

sorry thedashguy
i truly appreciate your efforts to promote dash and i love to retweet your stuff in tweeter
but this time i disagree

love you !:smile:


If there is no proof of this we need to stop acting like its true. Noone said terpin didnt lay out a low level campaign, we're saying the current timing and cost is NOT worth it to the network and the network proved that, not that we needed to add arbitrary limits to the evolution of Dash via "contracts". Yea sure we need contracts, but we don't them so Terpin can get his way and make some money off us, we're still in the dev and business dev part of Dash's growth, NOT the marketing and PR part.

Why can't people see this? We are 2 years old. Not 7. We are not Bitcoin, nor do we want to be. We are Dash, which is in my opinion the "true" Bitcoin. Bitcoin is just the best name created thus far and people know it so we all assume our end game is become Bitcoin. It is not. Our end game is become skynet (The worlds first Decentralized Autonomous Organization). It's not a joke.

Why did Hollywood make Skynet sound and look so evil? Because Skynet is the government, minus the greed and profiteering.
 
I would like to add that those 20 articles helped to promote DASH on Russian Media space - some of them were translated (we are still in process with it) and published on Russian, here are some examples with just 1 RU-news-site (forklog.net - they translated themselves!) (I don't want to share other publications):

http://forklog.net/dash-is-determined-to-supersede-bitcoin-as-a-real-paypal-alternative/
http://forklog.com/sozdatel-dash-vidit-kriptovalyutu-detsentralizovannoj-p2p-versiej-paypal/
http://forklog.com/sozdan-prinimayushhij-dash-apparat-dlya-prodazhi-napitkov/

I hope we will see new DASH articles soon!!! - I've already organized translator's team for this task...
 
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I brought up the subject of legitimately ending an agreement early in another thread.

Most contracts allow both parties to exit the contract before the time frame allocated under certain conditions - I would think there should be some way for Dash to exit out of a contract as well. What if we had a situation where a vendor really drops the ball and isn't honoring their end of the deal? How could Dash get out of that?

Based on your proposed percentages, perhaps something like a 75% vote could end the agreement? I would assume such language would be written into the contract, so the vendor knows this is a possibility.
I agree 100%. We cannot have hit and run contractors that keep getting paid month after month, long after they run off. There must be a contract voiding mechanism that is tough to invoke but can be done when an extraordinary situation arises.
 
In the report Evan linked Terpin makes the claim this article is the equivalent of over $14k USD of paid advertising, an article with 0 comments on some obscure website. If anyone of you is even vaguely familiar with paid advertising there's no point me saying how totally ridiculous Terpin's claim is. This is all I will say on this topic.
 
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Am I the only one that saw a rise in price?

So what do you think had the most effect on Dash price in the last month?

  • Bitcoin double spend post by Peter Todd (do you remember the huge bitcoin drop)
  • Evolution Release
  • Miami Conference - Paypal like payments announced
  • InstantX added to 3 mobile wallets
  • Electrum wallets released
  • Dash N Drink and several articles specifically about it.
  • Cryptsy Collapse with announcement no more Dash is getting sold.
  • Transform - Articles on online sites

If we don't have proof that that was Terpin, then we can't assume it. There are a lot of other PR companies. Don't get attached because we hired them for 3 weeks which just so happens to be when Dash was very active with events and activities.
 
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Oh forgot one.
  • Dash N Drink interview with remote Instantx by TaoOfSatoshi and Tweeted Out.
Personally, I thought this was the most influential. Price hit the month high during that interview....but hey, I just happen to have a lot of respect for that guy in Miami doing it. :wink: Tao did a good job too.
 
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USD/Dash Denomination:

All contracts and proposals shall be denominated in Dash, unless the proposer is doing business directly with our foundation, which will carry a USD balance.
Could you explain this part a little more, please?
USD denominated long-term contracts are a particular point of contention here, I believe.

Are you suggesting that there could be a Dash-denominated monthly contract to contribute to the Foundation, which it would immediately exchange into USD, regardless of exchange rate? Then once the Foundation built up enough USD to make deals, it would then independently contract with outside entities.

If that's the case, then it certainly sounds reasonable, as the burden of volatility risk would then be on the Foundation, not the network.
 
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