Dash Watch Fourth Pre-Proposal
Dash Watch will be submitting a single-month proposal this December 2018 cycle (barring any contest) to continue providing verification, accountability, and reporting to Dash-funded proposals for the MNO community.
The reason we are requesting one month of funding is to minimize our impact month-to-month on the tight and competitive budget in the case that the price is to fluctuate. This will enable us to continue to either scale down or up and to consequently adjust the number of new features and improvements we undertake based on the available funding in order to leave the most funds possible to grow both other Dash proposals and Dash Watch. We believe doing a monthly follow-up with active proposals is key to continuing to build a strong and sustainable accountability and governance model that will serve Dash well into the future as we work through this market downturn and prepare ourselves to spring forward when the next uptrend begins.
Two team members that were in the financial position to be able to have temporarily foregone salary to allow the project to continue and the other three are working with reduced compensation. Our data entry and verification team member has also been moved to part-time. The entire team has agreed to continue working at this reduced rate as they believe in the Dash project and even though Dash Watch received 50% less funding in December than requested due to Dash depreciation, we will still be delivering reports for more than 30 proposals in December. These reports have been receiving over 500 reads each month in both October and November. We are committed to continuing to deliver the fair and unbiased reporting quality and support the MNO community has come to expect.
We recognize that some MNOs may view a proposal reporting service as an added luxury while the budget remains tight and many proposals compete for the limited funds. We believe however that halting the Dash Watch initiative would be a mistake given the number of proposals that continue to provide updates for Dash Watch (which took a while to achieve) and the progress and improvements we continue to make with the metrics and reports. As many other projects in the cryptocurrency space begin to crumble due to the market downturn, we hope our proposal will remain a strong foundation to the Dash ecosystem. It took a lot of thought, outreach, and continuous refinement, to establish the processes and procedures we have today. It also required a lot of trial and error to arrive at the presentation we have today and closing our doors would mean it will be harder for masternodes to determine the objective facts about the accomplishments of a proposal. As a result, proposal owner drive and accountability may drop significantly if there is less concern of community awareness or pushback for lack of performance.
Work Completed
Monthly Report Documents
- July HERE
- August HERE
- September HERE
- October HERE
- November HERE
- December in progress
- ALL Dash Watch Reports since February 2018 found here https://dashwatch.org/reports
Dash Watch has produced 300+ monthly reports and videos for Dash-funded proposals covering proposal status, milestone delivery, expenditures and additional news posted on dashwatch.org since February 2018.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been expanded and customized for proposal categories and Dash Watch has now collected 3 months of detailed category-specific KPI data that can be viewed in monthly proposal reports.
Milestone verification has been added to all reports, allowing MNOs to easily see which milestones listed by the proposal owner have supporting documentation, and are verified as being complete.
The financial breakdowns provided in the Dash Watch reports have been increased to more accurately track the funding allocation throughout the entire runtime of a proposal with funding that is rolled over being separated from funding that has not been clearly accounted for in the expenditure breakdown provided. We are also conducting monthly financial audits of randomly selected proposals to ensure the expenditure data provided is accurate and validated.
Dash Watch performed a comprehensive review of all funded proposals to identify common pain points that can be addressed in the pre-proposal phase. A summary of these results can be found HERE. The Dash Watch team is working with Dash Nexus to find ways to address these issues systematically and has been assisting the Nexus team in continuing to refine the proposal creator aspects of the Dash Nexus Platform that is launching its MVP this month.
Dash Watch has continued to improve community engagement with reports, including producing a spreadsheet that links all of the completed reports for a given month for August, September, October, and November and with one planned for December. This document is shared directly with the community on our twitter and DashNation Discord and has significantly increased the community engagement with our reports.
Examples of Additional work completed
Dash Watch has published a video with Fernando of DCG and Jesse of Wachsman to provide clarity on marketing and PR activity HERE
Community concern reports Dash Venezuela Expenditures HERE, Dash Africa-Dash Leopard dispute HERE and Green Candle-Dash Boost HERE.
In-depth summary report for Dash Embassy HERE
MNO Guide to Dash Venezuela and Dash Caracas HERE
Support documents have been created to help proposal owners clearly define the key proposal hypotheses and key performance indicators they are going to be tracking and providing for Dash Watch reports HERE and Proposal Owner guide to completing the monthly report builder questionnaire HERE. Dash Watch has also continued to add new proposals, metrics, events, milestones, and reports to dashwatch.org.
Mediated Dash Boost and Green Candle dispute as an objective third party (We are in communication with Green Candle and continue to wait for them to provide the results of the tax obligation and are giving GC until their hard deadline which is the end of the year 2018 before releasing our final conclusionary report)
Continued to answer numerous direct questions from individual MNOs about proposals and gather specific information when requested
Core calendar events added to the Dash Watch site along with proposal events
Monthly Budget Allocation
3 Person Reporting and Research Team: $10,000
Data Verification and Data Entry: $800
Web Hosting and Reporting Software/Miscellaneous: $400
Contingency 20%: $2,240 (this will be rolled over to future months if the Dash price remains stable or goes up) (we have to include a 20% buffer to ensure that the team member minimum compensation numbers are met to pay for their living expense obligations)
Total USD Budget Request: $13,440 per month
5 Dash Proposal Fee
Dash price of $60 per Dash= 224+5 Dash
Note: We have always and will always roll over any extra Dash into future months. We have never and will never take on the benefits of appreciation or risk of depreciation in the price of Dash.
We have decided to not request reimbursement for the 25% fiat shortfall on the total funding requested during our previous proposal even though we had explicitly stated: “any shortfall will be requested in a future proposal.” We are hunkering down our expenses and working at a discount as much as possible trying to minimize the strain on the budget in order to allow Dash to continue funding as many other important projects as possible during the downturn. The team took reduced compensation or forfeited salaries to manage that depreciation loss from the $185 per Dash submission value to under $90 in this last month’s payout.
Future Plans
Continue producing detailed monthly reports on active and ongoing proposals
Data visualization for Dash Watch reports helping present KPI data from proposals in a clear and informative way
Continue to engage with MNOs to add additional features and components to the work we do to add value to the network
Continue doing more detailed verification reports for proposals that require additional attestations and due diligence work
Dash Watch reports posted on Dash Nexus when this feature becomes available
Continued work with DCG to update the community on PR and marketing efforts
Continue to improve and professionalize the structure and appearance of Dash Watch reports
Feedback and comments are appreciated and welcome as we continue to evolve and improve the service we provide to the Dash community.
Please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or on Discord as paragon, DashWatchTeam, Dash-Al, MattDash, or peytondw
Thanks your support and we look forward to continuing to serve the masternodes and community!