Dash Research Asia

[QuantumExplorer]

It's been an exciting few months. Angela and Arnaud started to set up the entity in Thailand. They prepared a report for the community explaining where we are at. I'll let Angela post it below.

 

[Angela Zhang]

Initial Proposal Link: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/internshipsDashThailand


***UPDATE 3/23/2018***


Hello from Dash Research Asia!


Here is a brief summary on why we initiated this proposal for those that hadn’t yet heard about it. We are committed to two main goals:

1. The recruitment of a diverse group of talented graduate students devoted to research in the pursuit to better Dash. We plan for the graduate students to write and release research papers which might potentially increase our credibility in the eyes of Academia and create relationships with universities. We also have plans for doubling the size of Testnet and creating tools for the Core team and the Community. Furthermore if the students do well then we would potentially supply Dash Core a talent pool to hire from.


2. Creation of a BOI (Board of Investment of Thailand) Legal Entity and a Foreign Business License to operate in Thailand. As a 100% foreign owned legal entity in Thailand, a Company shall be granted a BOI Promotion prior to an operation of the Business restricted under the FBA (Foreign Business Act B.E. 2542). The point here is to supply goal 1 with a legal framework to succeed.


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Our office in Bangkok has started base operations (only those permitted by law before we receive the BOI and Foreign Business License) since March 1, 2018. And our team has gradually grown and been working since the beginning of February. So we are here to give a debrief of last two months and a quick look on our plan for April.


What have we accomplished so far?


1. Dash Research Asia was incorporated on February 19th, 2018.


2. We found a perfect office space at a great price and moved in on March 5th, 2018.


3. An initial round of interviews were conducted. We interviewed around 15 potential candidates over multiple weeks for various positions.


4. We found our first Thai developer. Currently part-time, will become full-time on May 1st, 2018. His initial task will consist of a tool for continuous integration of masternodes which could potentially help Core with testing various upgrade scenarios.


5. A UI/UX designer has agreed to accept our offer and will be joining us on April 1st, 2018.


6. Multiple Legal meetings have taken place for a better understanding of the local framework in which we will need to operate. BOI(Board of Investment of Thailand) application has been completed in English and is currently being translated into Thai by our law firm. We hope for it to be submitted before the end of the month.


What’s our plan for end-March/April?


1. Preparing the paperwork for trademarking DASH in Thailand. Thailand is not party to international trademark agreements. Hence we will apply to trademark DASH in the country to secure it. We believe this process will take at least a year, so best to start it as soon as possible.


2. Preparing the paperwork for a Foreign Business License application in Thailand. The official process won’t begin until the BOI application is approved. We hence are preemptively doing this work to be ready at that time.


3. Stirring up our contacts at universities and starting to advertise the program in order to search for candidates. Assuming everything goes well, we will begin to conduct interviews from late April-early May.

Thanks everyone for your support!

Any questions or feedback from the community will be more than welcome at any time.

 

[Angela Zhang]

***UPDATE 4/23/2018***



Greetings from Dash Research Asia! It has been a pretty busy month and we are here to share some exciting news with you all in the community.



What have we accomplished during the past month?



1. Our newly hired UI/UX designer joined us on April 4th, 2018.



2. Logo and business cards for of Dash Research Asia were completed on April 10th, 2018.



3. Internship Program Advertising page was completed on April 12th, 2018.



4. Contacted 3 universities for the Graduate Placement Program, including Tsinghua University (Ranked #1 in China in CS, #19 in World), Peking University (Ranked #11 in China in CS, #60 in World) and EPITECH from France.



5. Posted Internship Program Advertisement on intranet of 5 universities (including Tsinghua University,Peking University from China and EPITECH, Polytechnique and ENS from France) and 1 public website(yingjiesheng.com) for students looking for internship.



6. So far got 23 applicants who are currently studying in 5 different countries and areas, including France, Mainland China, Hong Kong, UK and Japan.



7. Conducted 11 interviews after initial screenings with brief talks. Got 1 suitable candidate but he didn’t accept our offer. 2 of these 11 applicants are to be followed up.



8. Multiple legal meetings had taken place to better our BOI (Board of Investment of Thailand) application documentation and the official legal process has started to commence since April 23rd, 2018.



9. Our first developer became full-time on April 23rd, 2018. He took some time off during part-time so he could start full-time earlier than planned. His initial task consists of a tool for continuous integration of masternodes which could potentially help Core with testing various upgrade scenarios.



10. Started to prepare the paperwork for trademarking DASH in Thailand.



What’s our plan for end-April/May?



1. Continuing to search for candidates for Internship Program and conduct interviews. We will contact more universities and advertise our Internship Program on more websites and social media platforms. Hopefully we will get at least 2 top-tier candidates to accept our offer by next month.



2. Preparing for the interview with BOI officers about details of our future business activities in Thailand. We will have this interview with BOI officers in person to answer all the questions they will have about this company after reviewing our submitted application documentation in one month. This is an important part of the standard BOI granting procedure.



3. Continuing to prepare the paperwork for trademarking DASH in Thailand. Hopefully we can proceed into the official legal process by the beginning of June.



4. Searching for one more developer to potentially speed up our progress with the tool for continuous integration of masternodes. However this is not a priority.




Thanks everyone for your support!


Any questions or feedback from the community will be more than welcome at any time.

 

[Angela Zhang]

***UPDATE 5/24/2018***



Hello from Dash Research Asia! It has been a busy month and we would love to share how things are going on here with everyone in the community.



What have we accomplished during the past month?



1. Got 2 candidates to accept our offer of Graduate Placement Program, who will be joining us around the 10th of June. One is French from École Polytechnique of France and the other is Chinese from INSA Lyon (Institut National Des Sciences Appliquées) of France.



2. Contacted 4 universities for the Graduate Placement Program, including University of Amsterdam, University of Manchester, University of Cambridge and Fudan University.



3. Posted Graduate Placement Program Advertisement on intranets of multiple universities from UK, Russia, Netherlands, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore, and also on many websites for students looking for internship in different countries and areas.



4. Conducted around 20 interviews out of over 60 applicants from different countries and areas.



5. Talked with marketing team in Dash Core about trademarking Dash in Thailand. They have requested we leave it for them for trademarking Dash in Thailand, however we will offer help and support if requested.



6. Multiple legal meetings have taken place to prepare for the interview with BOI officers about details of our future business activities in Thailand. The date of this interview has been arranged on 7th of June and afterwards we will have the initial approval within 40 days with which we will be able to open company bank account and start to issue work permits.



7. Development progress is currently being made on applications that will support our graduate students. Once we have our BOI approved we will offer a more comprehensive update on this topic.



What’s our plan for end-May/June?



1. Continuing to search for candidates for Graduate Placement Program and conduct interviews. We will continue to contact more universities and advertise our Internship Program on more websites and social media platforms. With the depreciation of Dash value, we might consider decreasing Graduate Placement Program to 3 interns instead of 4 originally unless additional funding is received.



2. Two interns will be onboarding with us on the 11th of June. And they will start on two research topics: Potential optimizations on bloom filter parameters or other probabilistic filters when combining multiple filters on one server; Privacy retaining probabilistic filters for servers with a high number of simplified payment verification clients.



3. Attending the interview with BOI officers about details of our future business activities in Thailand.



Thanks everyone for your support all along!


Any questions or feedback from the community will be more than welcome at any time.

 

[Angela Zhang]

***UPDATE 6/22/2018***



Hello from Dash Research Asia! It has been another busy month with progress and we would love to share some exciting news here with everyone in the community.



What have we accomplished during the past month?


1. Two interns onboarded with us on June 11th. One is French from École Polytechnique of France and the other is Chinese from INSA Lyon (Institut National Des Sciences Appliquées) of France.



2. Two interns have started working on two research topics: Potential optimizations on bloom filter parameters or other probabilistic filters when combining multiple filters on one server; Privacy retaining probabilistic filters for nodes with a high number of simplified payment verification clients.



3. An alpha version of Dash Playground (tool for rapid deployment and debugging of masternodes has been internally released). QuantumExplorer will start to test it in real scenarios against devnet. We are hopeful that this tool will eventually allow for quicker debugging of new core version, which will lead to faster release cycles. Below are some screenshots of the application that can give some idea about its use cases.

4. Multiple options of the graphic interface of master nodes on the application have been ready to provide a better UI/UX experience on Devnet for Core team later. Below are some screenshot of options we have so far, and please let us know if you have any preferences or suggestions about this.

5. Another 3 interviews had been conducted for the Graduate Placement Program this month, but unfortunately we decided to freeze hiring on this program for now in consideration of the depreciation of Dash value recently. We will restart this program when the price of Dash improves or/and the program gets more funding.



6. We attended the interview with BOI officers on June 7th, but unfortunately the regulations have just changed under the influence of the newly established law for cryptocurrency in Thailand from the beginning of June. Now all BOI applications related to cryptocurrency or blockchain have to do an additional presentation in front of a special committee of 12 BOI officers to get the approval. So currently we are preparing for this presentation in collaboration with our law firm and we will get the date of it next week.



What’s our plan for end-June/July?



1. Two main sprints for Dash Playground for the next month will be: Master node debugging console; Automatic reporting in case of failure.



2. Interns will be continuing to work on their research topics mainly on constructing network simulations for the next month.



3. Preparing the meeting for Core team in Bangkok.



4. Preparing the presentation and attending the second round interview for BOI approval with the committee of BOI officers.



Thanks everyone for your support all along!


Any questions or feedback from the community will be more than welcome at any time.

 

[Angela Zhang]

***UPDATE 8/27/2018***

Hello from Dash Research Asia! Our research and development projects have been progressing with some achievements for the past 2 months and we would love to share it with everyone in the community. So please check the videos below and any questions or feedback from the community will be more than welcome at any time. Thanks everyone for your support all along and we will come back with another update soon!

 

[TaoOfSatoshi]

***UPDATE 8/27/2018***

Hello from Dash Research Asia! Our research and development projects have been progressing with some achievements for the past 2 months and we would love to share it with everyone in the community. So please check the videos below and any questions or feedback from the community will be more than welcome at any time. Thanks everyone for your support all along and we will come back with another update soon!

Very informative, nice to see your contributions to Dash!

 

[Angela Zhang]

***UPDATE 9/28/2018***

Hello from Dash Research Asia! Please check the summary of our research project results because we are trying to get it published and full papers will be released to the community afterwards. And the video below is the latest version of Dash Playground. Any questions or feedback from the community will be more than welcome at any time. Thanks everyone for your support all along and we will come back with another update soon!