Each month, the ten most popular questions submitted by the Dash community at Dash Nation Discord are collected and sent to Dash Core Group for answers. The intention is to select important and well-thought out questions and filter out unpopular questions, questions that have already been answered and other noise. The submissions for December 2018 are as follows:
- Q: Are we making efforts to get Ryan on to Laura Shin's in depth podcast? She has access to the biggest names in crypto and she also has the ear of a number of significant legislators. She is an influencer that we want on our side.
A (Fernando): Yes, we’ve had contact with her on several occasions, but we’ve had no results yet.
- Q: I think we had hired a South American coordinator kind of person. If yes, what steps are they taking to help us "close the loop" in Venezuela? "Close the loop" means enabling Venezuelans to earn Dash directly. Without a means to earn Dash, having 10,000 merchants won't get us much traction.
A (Bradley): We originally had 2 headcount slotted for Latin America. We hired Ernesto Contreras as the regional business development manager for Latin America on 17 May of this year and he owns BD for the region. We separately had plans to hire a Venezuela country manager, which was unfortunately put on hold due to budget constraints. While we are exploring multiple solutions - and certainly expanding opportunities to earn Dash is one - in our opinion, this does not close the loop by itself. Rather it’s only one potential route of a broader goal to enable users to Acquire Dash - which is our focus.
- Q: Is Dash at risk from mining attacks by SharkPool?
A (strophy): Dash has by far the highest hash rate of any X11 coin, and there is no evidence Sharkpool controls significant X11 hashing power. InstantSend would not be affected even if Dash were to be attacked, and any blocks mined by honest miners could accommodate the remaining transactions, since our blocks are not full. Finally, ChainLocks (once implemented) will remove any incentives for secret mining.
- Q: DCG: given that you rely on the treasury for funding to survive. What active initiatives are in place to get people adopting dash? Adoption = higher price = dcg remains safe?
A (Ryan & Bradley): Dash Core Group’s primary aim is increasing the adoption of Dash. Our initiatives are primarily in the areas of technical development, business development, marketing, and support. Our last quarterly community call would be the best, and most recent, source of information on what DCG is currently working towards. We will present the next quarterly call in late January or early February timeframe.
- Q: Does DCG plan to start reporting to dashwatch, like almost every other proposal owner? If not, why not?
A (Bradley): No, because DCG is an entirely different entity when compared to those who submit proposals and report to Dash Watch. DCG is owned by the Masternodes through a NZ trust - there is no other proposal owner submitting to the network where the Masternodes have an ownership stake. The accountability/governance with DCG, that is otherwise lacking with other proposal owners, is through the Board of Directors. Additionally, we report on our results quarterly to the community in a live broadcast. Dash Watch provides an important service/value to the network through holding proposal owners - who do not have the same channels or legal structure as DCG - accountable.
A (Ryan): Dash Core Group prides itself on both transparency and governance. Our quarterly calls provide much greater transparency into DCG’s operations, finances, and progress than other entities servicing the network are expected to provide through Dash Watch. Because of the extent of our reporting, we do not feel there is significant value in repackaging the information already provided through our quarterly calls into Dash Watch’s service and format, which best addresses the reporting needs of discrete projects from entities with outside ownership. In contrast, DCG is effectively owned by the masternode operators through the Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust. This eliminates many of the risks associated with typical proposal owners. For example, this ownership eliminates the possibility of a company owner confiscating the funding, and enables the network to elect representatives to directly oversee DCG. The first election of this body will take place in March. These are far more effective governance mechanisms than the post-funding monitoring that Dash Watch provides in regards to other projects.
- Q: Can dash core collect data on dash tx volume from key dash partners such as anypay, spark, qr, bitrefill, piiko, rewards, etc and present them each quarter on the quarterly call?
A (Bradley): In limited circumstances, such as the most recent news on Kriptomobile, where we had pre-approval from the partners involved, we are happy to share results and will continue to take it up on a case-by-case basis. However, this data is frequently highly confidential material nonpublic information for our partners. When data is shared with DCG, it is often shared with restrictions on its use, under non-disclosure agreements, or in sanitized formats. Additionally, public corporations are regulated as to what data they are able to share publicly and through which communication channels. As a consequence, this is not something the community should expect to receive on a regular basis. We understand that this will likely disappoint many - but we will work to provide data where possible.
- Q: Will dash core wallet on android natively support hardware wallets? Or any planned release of those features?
A (HashEngineering): There are no plans currently. This will have to be brought up with the team to see if we want to add support for hardware wallets and how such support may or may not work with upcoming Evolution features.
- Q: If the DAOs are owned by the masternodes in trust, how does ownership of dash ventures as well as the core team pass during a chain split?
A (Ryan): First, because of the nature of the Dash network, the possibility of a chain split is greatly diminished compared with other networks. In addition, there is technically only one DAO, which is the masternode network itself. DCG is a Delaware C Corporation funded by the DAO, but is not a DAO itself. It is this entity that is effectively controlled by the masternode network. Therefore, in the event that a minority of the masternodes supported a second network and chain with differing protocol, DCG would continue serving the chain the majority of masternodes supported during the split. Again, this is a very low probability event given our governance mechanisms, and any split would likely result in a clear minority chain. A hash war can be “rented” but the masternode network ownership is far less manipulatable immediately after any split.
Ultimately, the annually-elected trust protectors of the Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust has the right to replace the DCG board at any time. In the event of a chain split, these representatives would therefore have the final say over which chain DCG supported, since they could install a board that would support its desired outcome. As elected representatives of the masternodes, they would be obligated to fulfill the intent of the majority of masternodes.
Dash Ventures will be separately managed and controlled by the masternode network through a similar election system. Just like the Dash DAO, they would also have representatives that could instill the will of the majority of masternode owners in the event of a split.
- Q: I checked Plus500 today and I can see a lot of cryptos listed but not DASH... seems Dash should pursue being listed there?
A (Bradley): Thank you for the suggestion. We’ll input within our CRM and prioritise accordingly. As an FYI, for those who also have partner suggestions, please feel free to reach out to [email protected]. We’d only ask that you provide a brief description as to why a particular partner is interesting.
- Q: What is the "histogram" of Dash merchants in Venezuela and the world receiving Dash in amount of TX and amount of value?
A (Bradley): No idea to be honest. We don’t have merchant level metrics in which to report something like the above.
A (Ryan): Dash Core Group does not operate the Dash network. As a peer-to-peer network, there are no entities with comprehensive access into the source or destination of the transactions traversing the network. Therefore, we simply cannot derive data on particular merchants using the Dash network.