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Dash Trust Protectors Please React!

kot

kot

Moderator
Masternode Owner/Operator
To: Ash Francis, Michael Lewis, Patrick Quinn, Hytham Abdel-Karim, Hilawe Semunegus

Dear Dash Trust Protectors,

As a DCG board member, MNO, and community member, I am writing to you in regards to the recent event that happened on Wednesday, 23rd of March 2022 on the community Discord server.
One of the Dash Irrevocable Trust members - Mark Mason - posted the message attached below.

Mark-Mason-23-Mar-2022-small.png


In this message Mark Mason formulated:
1. An accusation of the financial fraud committed by DCG - this is a serious criminal accusation and potential career-ruining event for CFO.
2. Mark suggested that our former colleague had a romantic relationship outside of his marriage, and this relationship potentially led to the financial fraud mentioned above. I consider it a disgusting violation of the privacy of another person and also a possible life-ruining act.
3. In the same channel Mark Mason also disclosed confidential information shared with the DTPs by Ryan Taylor. This is a violation of the standard of business conduct and trust between the DCG board and DTPs.

Mark Mason acted as a Trust Protector and used his title to strengthen the message. He attacked DCG's current and former contributors, despite his function to protect the network and company. Mark Mason orchestrated a previous attack on Ryan Taylor and now made more allegations, with absolutely no evidence to support it and without contacting DCG to verify the information. As a Trust Protector, Mark could simply ask for access to the DCG books in order to verify his claims. He didn't do it but decided to publicly accuse DCG of financial fraud and immoral actions, without any evidence.

In response to these allegations, Glenn Austin (DCG) denounced all Mark's revelations and I have publicly stated that I refuse to work with Mark Mason in any capacity. I have also sent an email to the Trust Protectors requesting immediate reactions, removing Mark Mason from the DTPs board and public condemnation of his actions. Glenn Austin and I also had a call with Partick Quinn (one of the DTPs) on Thursday to clarify our position and express our concerns. Patrick informed us later that DTPs are going to meet and send an official response to the DCG board members. We are still waiting for their reaction, dealing with a lot of uncertainty and concerns in the company.

At the same time, Mark Mason's wife fabricates more ungrounded accusations, attacking DCG and DCG members on Discord. At this point, I consider it a coordinated attack on the project and request Dash Trust Protectors to stand and protect the company and project, according to their mandate and function.
I am demanding DTPs to immediately release official, public statements and explain what is the position of the Dash Trust Protectors in this case.

Thank you,
Robert Wiecko
 
Is this the Dash "Civil War"? I started following Dash in February of this year, but I still can't figure out what's going on inside the project. Some kind of infighting.
 
These public accusations are indeed very serious.

This must be clarified by a court of law.

On the other hand, I have a hard time taking this as fact.

Contextually, Mark Meson has been rejected by the DAO as well as Demelza Hays is no longer employed by DIF, this may look like a destructive exit after a rejection of these two people.

As for the so-called community discord server, it is in fact a server set up and owned by Mark Meson, and no he does not represent the entire Dash community, just a part of it.
Among other things because of this proximity with Mark Meson, it is more a propaganda tool of the latter in order to control the opinion of some by allowing to attack his opponents without ever being attacked himself and his close friends.

And if there is no clear communication from the members of the trust protector his accusations, it seems to me that the DCG will have to go directly to court.

DCG is owned by the Dash network, an attack on its employees is an attack on the Dash network.

We need to be sure that this is either true or unfounded without question.

This goes to the reputation of the Dash network.
 
DCG is owned by the Dash network, an attack on its employees is an attack on the Dash network.

I am not sure of your statement.

DCG's work does belong to the Dash network, but the personal actions of members are not the responsibility of DCG.

If we dedicated ourselves to working and carrying out the project instead of stirring up shit, we would be very high in capitalization and use.

I don't care about DCG's personal problems as DCG doesn't care about my personal problems at all, so I hope they don't interfere with present and future developments.

Many faceshave passed through DCG, and some of them have done absolutely nothing. I won't single out anyone, but most of us have several names in mind.

We learn from mistakes, and if we don't learn from it, we are condemned to repeat them, or worse, to disappear.

All the best
 
Maybe it is time to reconsider Dash Core Group's current engagement on Dash Discord and instead shift its engagement back to this dash.org/forum.
From a marketing perspective Discord does not have a great outreach and is also not very open nor easily accessible.

Use the official announcements section on this forum more and use the general discussion on this forum more. There is a lot that Dash Core Group can do to steer away from Discord and promote itself to the Dash community more openly and more fairly.
Promote software updates in here, promote Dash Trust Protector elections here, promote deveopers activities / livestreams in here. Simply engage more with the Dash community in here.

With regards to the acussations of Mark Mason : he will either need to back those up with evidence or needs to be relieved of his duty as Dash Trust Protector in my opinion. There are new Dash Trust Protector elections coming up, that would be a good way to change things, to elect different people for the Dash Trust Protector position.

Source :
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/tkizgd
 
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That's one point of view,
Mine is different. and is more focused on the general image of Dash

The accusations are from a known person not a simple pseudonym. And they are public.

Personally, this kind of thing happens in cases when there is a slip and it happens sometimes by mistake or by malice. It is settled either amicably or discreetly in court to avoid damage to the whole company and its employees and in our case to the whole network.

His accusations are serious and therefore may cause the DCG to lose confidence from its partners.

If these accusations are founded, we can thank her. And the justice will point out the abnormal actions, their responsible individually and Dash can not be accused of being a scam.


Now let us consider that her public accusations are unfounded,

Without a clear ruling that the information revealed publicly by a known person would be a cover-up and would tarnish Dash's image for a long time.

Another question arises for Dash's partners and the trust in these actors, trust.

I do not believe that this lady is an employee or contractual relationship with DCG ?, how would this lady have access to confidential information?
Would there be one or more people who would pass on information about what is going on in DCG, and in this information passed on to a third party is there information that could be used by a third party against Dash or to take personal advantage.



This lady has publicly claimed to manage crypto investment funds.

Would she have obtained non-public information? And could this be seen as insider trading or industrial espionage ?

Just a guess.

Personally I have no idea if these repeated public accusations by a known person (not pseudonymous) are founded or not.

If there was an act against the interests of Dash I hope that justice will shed light on who is responsible, who was aware and who passed on information.


A simple retraction of this person publicly, after his serious public accusations could appear even more suspicious as if Dash is a scam that hides under the carpet

These public accusations bring more complex long term consequences than may appear from my point of view.

When it comes to attacks on the privacy of a company's employees, if it is the duty of a company to file a complaint for the privacy of its employees when it takes place within the framework of their work. Whether the information is false or not.

It seems, that some of the Dash community members have forgotten one of the founding principles of Dash and its community, the respect of privacy.
 
DCG has lost its way. Instead of being accountable to the network, the organisation breeds a culture of secrecy and ass covering. Mark Mason is trying to uncover that and natrually is being shot at from the DCG cohort.

kot said:
In this message Mark Mason formulated:
1. An accusation of the financial fraud committed by DCG - this is a serious criminal accusation and potential career-ruining event for CFO.
2. Mark suggested that our former colleague had a romantic relationship outside of his marriage, and this relationship potentially led to the financial fraud mentioned above. I consider it a disgusting violation of the privacy of another person and also a possible life-ruining act.
3. In the same channel Mark Mason also disclosed confidential information shared with the DTPs by Ryan Taylor. This is a violation of the standard of business conduct and trust between the DCG board and DTPs.
Click to expand...

kot, instead of being outraged that Mark Mason had the audacity to ask these questions please confirm that Alisha was not working in any capacity with DCG at the time these allegations where made. Instead of being outraged that it was leaked in the discord that Ryan Taylor had resigned BEFORE the allegations of Black Balling Mark were made and before Ryan's AMA with Joel and indeed before he publicly announced he had resigned can you explain why this important information was with held from the community, when Ryan's role as CEO was very much at the focus.

1648441773683.png



So, what the heck was all that about? Ryan knew he had already resigned. The MNOs wanted his resignation instead his pride beat loud and he never moved to settle the sitauation by saying he had already resigned, instead he was silent for days busily getting MNO whales to vote in his favour, he then had a chance to announce he had already resigned on Joel's AMA, instead he threw piles of mud on Mark Mason without any shed of proof, much of which has since been dismissed as pure lies and a fiction of his diseased mind and the very best you can do is scold Mark on revealing information that we should have been aware of weeks ago.

With Ryan Taylor, the network always came last. First was his pride, then the DCG org.

To this day, this how DCG operates, everyone protecting their position, covering their asses and why? Because there is little accountability to the network, because they suck as much money out of the network they like and not have to account for it, because in the entire time DCG has been active, it has never been turned down for funding, because the employees of DCG think the MNOs are stupid mugs that will never come to their senses and will mindlessly fund these people til all value is extracted from the coin when they will finally walk and repeat the process elsewhere.
 
Here is the message shared by Glenn Austin in response to Mark Mason's accusations:

Image from iOS.png Image from iOS (1).png Image from iOS (2).png Image from iOS (3).png

I have no idea what is the goal of Mark Mason, and I am not going to make sensational speculations. This is not my department.
All I want and ask is the Trust Protestors stepping in and acting according to their role and mandate - they were elected to oversee and protect the company, representing the best interest of the network. DTPs have authority and access to all information, necessary to verify facts.
We aspire to be a professional organization, so let's focus on this part then - aside from the moral aspect of this case or even aside from the basic human decency.
If there was financial embezzlement committed by DCG, there need to be serious consequences in order to protect the project.
If there was an ungrounded attack made by one of DTPs, based on fabricated accusations of criminal actions, there need to be serious consequences in order to protect the project.
Dash Trust Protectors play a substantial role in the Dash ecosystem and I am expecting them to act accordingly to their role.
 
qwizzie said:
From a marketing perspective Discord does not have a great outreach and is also not very open nor easily accessible.
Click to expand...
You are definitely right. The DCG needs to develop its own community forum so that all newcomers can easily join and keep up with what's going on. The Discord doesn't provide that opportunity. Everyone should see that the DASH community is large and active. For example I, as a newbie, began to feel that the DCG had no driving force in the form of a community.In Russia, the vast majority believes that the DASH has deflated like a balloon. And that's because you can't see any activity around the DASH.
 
Hello Dash Community,

I don't usually comment publicly on these matters, however, a DCG board member has decided to make this a public discussion and so it will require a public response from the parties mentioned.

At this point I wish to make clear that I speak for myself here, and I'm not speaking on behalf of the TP Board.

First, I think we're all agreed that this has been an unhelpful addition to the increased workload of the Trust Protector and DCG boards currently. The Trust Protectors have had very fruitful, respectful and productive communications with the DCG Board so far, and we were getting ready to present our proposed plans to the DCG board this week. Instead, we've now had to spend many hours doing an exhaustive investigation and report into the allegations made above. There are no winners when individuals let personal issues get in the way of conducting business professionally, and the timing of this development has been extremely unhelpful in the context of the TPs ongoing work to secure organisational stability for DCG since Ryan's resignation.

I can confirm that we have completed our investigation and are in the process of discussing internally and drafting a response. TPs will make a formal reply to the DCG board within the next 48 hours.

I wish to make clear that it is my personal view that forcible removal of a democratically elected officer from the TP board at the explicit request of the DCG Board members would set a very dangerous precedent in my opinion. If there is clear evidence of wrongdoing then TPs have the power to independently act if we believe the threat to the network is immediate and serious enough. However, in all but the most exceptional cases, I believe the network should be the final arbiter on the suitability of individual Trust Protectors to hold office. There is a reason why we elect Six Protectors, and we (the network) have the ability to do this annually via the Trust Protector Elections.

Finally, it is my opinion that we are elected as Dash Trust Protectors, to hold DCG Inc accountable and to shepherd the organisation on behalf of the network. We are not Dash Core Group Protectors, and we are not elected to our offices to protect Dash Core Group against legitimate network/community requests for transparency/accountability. Our role is to protect the network's assets/interests that are held in the Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust, and as such we will protect those assets against legitimate threats and continue to work with the DCG Inc board in a positive and constructive way for the betterment of the network.

Mike Lewis - aka Walter
 
@Walter
Thank you for the update. I will be waiting for the statement from the Dash Trust Protectors.

I want to relate to some inconsistencies in your message.

Walter said:
a DCG board member has decided to make this a public discussion and so it will require a public response from the parties mentioned.
Click to expand...
This actually is not me (the mentioned above DCG board member), who has decided to make this a public discussion. This is one of the DTPs - Mark Mason - who has decided to make a public discussion. I have responded the same way - publicly - I find it completely proportional and justified.

Walter said:
I think we're all agreed that this has been an unhelpful addition to the increased workload of the Trust Protector and DCG boards currently.
Click to expand...
I fully agree with you - this has been an unhelpful and unnecessary addition to the increased workload of many people, not only your group. If only Mark Mason reached out to us and asked for clarification of his questions, it would probably take around 10 minutes to address this.
However - with all due respect Mike - this is the work you have decided to do for the network by accepting the DTP role. Not an unhelpful addition to your work - this is exactly why you have been appointed to your role.
I did not force you to be one of the DTPs - you have made your decision yourself.

Walter said:
We are not Dash Core Group Protectors, and we are not elected to our offices to protect Dash Core Group against legitimate network/community requests for transparency/accountability. . Our role is to protect the network's assets/interests that are held in the Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust
Click to expand...
Yes, you are absolutely right Mike - this is your role - Dash Core Group is the network asset that is held in the Dash DAO Irrevocable Trust. Therefore, I have asked for your involvement - I have asked you to fulfill your mandate and protect the network asset.

It is hard for me to recognize the ungrounded accusations and blatant lies as a "legitimate network/community request", especially when made by the member of the Trust Protectors board. I suppose that you are going to refer to that in your report and formal reply for the sake of continuation of the fruitful, respectful, and productive communications between our boards.
Thank you again for your work.
 
As one of our best MNs said above (xkcd), It's starting to look like DCG has lost his way.

Part of the problem here is that DCG acts as any other corporation who has a contract with a client. They will hide everything they can from the client (the DAO) to only show what looks good, in order to keep the contract running and their pockets filled. That is standard business practice, and I know because I work as a Product Manager with a bunch of corporate people.

We (the people, the DAO) have been asking DCG to be more transparent, to stop treating us as their client and to start treating us as their owner, but they keep giving excuses, with the exception of the Development teams, in which Quantum Explorer is doing an excellent job in this regard.

Mark has a confrontational approach, but I personally see immense value in the transparency his investigations are bringing to DCG. We shouldn't be afraid of openness, we need more, not less.

Keep it going Trust Protectors!
Pozo
 
Hi Walter, thanks for taking the time to address this issue.

I have to start by saying that I agree with you in this assessment:

Walter said:
We are elected as Dash Trust Protectors, to hold DCG Inc accountable and to shepherd the organisation on behalf of the network. We are not Dash Core Group Protectors, and we are not elected to our offices to protect Dash Core Group against legitimate network/community requests for transparency/accountability.
Click to expand...

In this case, making a public condemnation and distancing the TPs from this kind of unethical behavior is actually in defense of the Trust Protectors role and position within the Dash ecosystem; as it would set a dangerous precedent to allow an individual Trust Protector to publicly defame and slander another DFO, just because this person has a personal agenda.

The Trust protectors are elected to increase transparency, oversee processes, and replace DCG directors if needed, they are not elected to abuse the trust given to them, or defame other Dash teams.

As the head of the BD area, I can assure you that during the time the TPs have been operating, not once has a request for information, data, or results has been denied when it comes to Business development activities or expenditures. We have communicated with all of the TPs that have requested information through slack, emails, weekly meetings, private meetings, discord messages, hangout calls, and whatever means was necessary; and never was a request to audit any action or activity been denied; so if Mark, or any other Trust Protector wanted to review any information besides what was presented in the quarterly calls, the data and facts have always been available.

In any organization there are minimal ethical behaviours to which members should be held accountable in order to be part of this organization. So this is not a question of whether the trust protectors choose to defend DCG, this is a question of what is the lowest ethical standard that is accepted as a member of the Trust Protectors, and what that means for the future of the organizations that live in the Dash DAO.

Thank you for your time and effort,

Ernesto
 
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How strange and ironic, in the sacrosanct name of truth and transparency someone can throw some random and false allegation?

MM had all the necessarily tools in hand to be able to investigate a little further those points before making defamatory allegation. He didn't, why?

I also found MM behavior unprofessional and I hope he'll not represent himself at DTP election, as he is clearly not anymore impartial and apparently have resentment against DCG (some DCG members).
 
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Hi @Walter ,
thank you for your answer.

Walter said:
..., a DCG board member has decided to make this a public discussion and so it will require a public response from the parties mentioned.
Click to expand...
This statement is incorrect, I found out about this from public accusations by Mark Meson who is an elected member of the Trust Protector. As well as by a third person having no professional link with DCG or the Dash protector to my knowledge?

On this point I would like to have your opinion I saw that Ms. Demalza Hays publicly said she had information on a fraud in DCG. This is how I came to know about these serious accusations in a comment on a public youtube video. This lady seems to be a crypto fund manager.

As far as I know she is not an employee or contractor of DCG ?
How did she gain access to confidential internal DCG information?

To go further, who gives her internal and confidential information on Dash DCG?

I remind you that DCG is supported by the vast majority of Dash network, and we must be sure that one or more members of trust protector do not act against the interests of DCG deliberately for personal reasons or for political agenda for an election.

I understand that what Mark initiated gives you additional distractions in addition to managing Ryan's replacement.


Thank you,
 
kot said:
1. An accusation of the financial fraud committed by DCG - this is a serious criminal accusation and potential career-ruining event for CFO.
Click to expand...

Does this refer to the following text (extracted from the Discord channel):
"I think Alisha may have ... been a direct recipient of DCG Biz Dev funds possibly even a grant?!"
"If ... provided by DCG using network funds, we need to identify the root problem and then put a process in place ... to prevent this from happening again. We also need to establish that there are no more skeletons in the closet for risk management purposes."
?

If not, please specify the part of the text you deem as the accusation of the financial fraud with serious criminal career-ruining potential. So that it is obvious you are not making unnecessarily bold statements.

If the reference holds, what makes the text regarding Alisha unacceptable as a "legitimate network/community request"?
Is it its form or wording?
Is it the subject that it addresses?
That you personally see it as "ungrounded accusations and blatant lies" does NOT mean that it cannot be considered as intriguing information for the owner of DCG.

The root of the problem being how difficult is it for voters to get relevant information for decisions regarding financing DCG activities.
 
kot said:
2. Mark suggested that our former colleague had a romantic relationship outside of his marriage, and this relationship potentially led to the financial fraud mentioned above. I consider it a disgusting violation of the privacy of another person and also a possible life-ruining act.
Click to expand...

This must refer to the following text (extracted from the Discord channel):
"I believe this is the very same Alisha with Omar ... at the Dash booth ... I believe there may have been romantic relations involved with a now ex-DCG employee which makes this all so much worse"

This is personal issue between Mark Mason, Alisha and Omar. It is your, mine, or anybody's else choice to condemn Mason for such personal denigration. Omar and/or Alisha can perhaps take Mark Mason to the court, if they want to. But it is their personal business. Not yours or anybody else's.

It is misleading or even irrelevant subject to the relationship and communication between DCG and its owner for the sake of decision-making regarding financing of DCG activities. It was unfortunate collateral damage of Mark Mason's confrontational behavior in attempt to get info on Alisha.

It is true that the Mason's role as Trust Protector is almost schizophrenic. He reveals issues with DCG but makes them somehow worse in parallel. But the issues for voters to get relevant information for decisions regarding financing DCG activities is NOT Mason's fault. He is not helping to solve them, but they are there, and you, Robert, should recognize them.
 
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