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I think Dash needs some changes

I see another bleeding heart post from kot, I skimmed through it to find the bit where he accepts responsibility, no surprise, it was absent. To say it was the fault of the devs is like a parent blaming their dis-obedient children for the state of the house! YOU are the manager, YOU control your staff! Stop making excuses! You are in charge, OK, you WERE in charge. You should have DEALT with it, it is YOUR FAULT, not theirs! Devs will always walk over their managers given half the chance, have you never worked in a professional setting before? Did you just fall into your role at DCG?

At the core all the issue of this project stem from management's lack of leadership and shirking of responsibility. Yes, devs suck, ask anyone that ever worked with one and they will tell you straight, what makes a dev good is stern leadership behind to give them the discipline they so badly lack.

It is good you are now gone, it opens up DCG for the possibility of more stern and professional leadership that can put together a plan, execute it and stick to the plan. All the best for what comes next for you.

Best Regard,

-Xk.
 
@xkcd
With all due respect, I think you are confusing me with the manager responsible for the development teams. It wasn't my department - check the org chart - it is not secret. I have failed as a board member not stopping the failing delivery process - that's for sure. But I won't say my operations teams failed. They did and do good job. I have no doubts about that.
However, as I already wrote, I am not here to blame on anyone. I am here to find solutions together.

Thank you for wishes.
 
But I won't say my operations teams failed. They did and do good job. I have no doubts about that.

Thanks kot, I got a lot of feedback from different sources that you ran your end well and in the end even helped us with some issues outside your line of responsibilities, so thanks for that! Let's put it as water under the bridge and support new leaders that come into DCG so they can get things back on track.
 
DCG just announced the cancellation of the security audit of Dash Platform due to bear market / low Dash price and intends to use the funding of the Dash Core Group Security Audits (which was created to address a lower Dash price anyways) now solely for the security audit of Dash Core.

See comment Brian Foster : https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Sec-Audit-Jul22

So we now have a DCG that transitioned into a pure tech-focused company and mostly run by devs, which does not manage to find funding for its own security audits ? With masternode rewards planned to get split in halve with the release of Dash Platform and partly flowing through Dash Platform in the form of claimable credits through some combined pool, it is absolutely essential in my eyes that Dash Platform gets an objective third party security audit.

Call me worried.
 
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DCG just announced the cancellation of the security audit of Dash Platform due to bear market / low Dash price and intends to use the funding of the Dash Core Group Security Audits (which was created to address a lower Dash price anyways) now solely for the security audit of Dash Core.

See comment Brian Foster : https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Sec-Audit-Jul22

So we now have a DCG that transitioned into a pure tech-focused company and mostly run by devs, which does not manage to find funding for its own security audits ? With masternode rewards planned to get split in halve with the release of Dash Platform and partly flowing through Dash Platform in the form of claimable credits through some combined pool, it is absolutely essential in my eyes that Dash Platform gets an objective third party security audit.

Call me worried.

Well, to be frank, with Platform so far off in the future, a security audit can wait, we need to make sure Dashcore is fully audited, in a market like this DCG needs to be nimble and pivot resources where they are most needed. glad to also see they are not sticking to the 60% ask of Treasury and put in a supplemental at this Dash market price, we need to keep development funded.
 
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Well, to be frank, with Platform so far off in the future, a security audit can wait, we need to make sure Dashcore is fully audited, in a market like this DCG needs to be nimble and pivot resources where they are most needed.

There is a difference between postponing a security audit and outright cancelling one. The Dash Platform security audit was already planned to start somewhere late in August-Sept, which gives devs more then enough time to implement the last Dash Platform update (v.0.23) on Testnet and have something complete to audit.

Now we have

A : No security audit planned for Dash Platform
B : No funding preparation for a security audit in place for Dash Platform anymore (remember any leftover funding of the DCG Security Audits will now go to Infrastructure)

Also keep in mind that Dash Core has been audited in the past, Dash Platform on the other hand is entirely new code that has never been audited and will have a masternode revenue stream running through it (Credits, Pool), that needs to be 100% protected against exploits and hacking attempts.

To me it feels like a security audit for Dash Platform is getting de-prioritized by DCG or has been put completely in the freezer, or there would have been an attempt to gather funding for it, if not for this cycle then the next.

For example, DCG could also have used part of the funding of their DCG Compensation Supplemental July (703 dash) to cover the additional costs of a security audit for Dash Platform, instead of adding part of it to their reserves.

I think wrong choices were made when a devs hire spree was initiated awhile ago, while the market was already moving towards a bear market / crypto winter.
Catching DCG again off guard. Now DCG finally has the reserves in place (which was missing during the previous major bear market), but DCG still can't afford a Dash Platform security audit and is again forced to lay off DCG personel (6), due to their untimely devs hire spree.
 
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It was the right move to cancel the audit - for now. The code base is WAY off from being done and active new dev is being done and large chunks of the code are being completely re-implemented in RUST from node.js. However, you can rest assured the audit will happen before it is pushed to mainnet. If the megaminds over at DCG do not themselves organise the audit, then we will get the masternode operators together and advise them for their safety and the safety of the end users to not run Evolution, the net effect will be the software will never reach the minimum threshold to activatate which is set at >75% of the network.
 
It was the right move to cancel the audit - for now. The code base is WAY off from being done and active new dev is being done and large chunks of the code are being completely re-implemented in RUST from node.js.

That has little to do with why the security audit for Dash Platform was cancelled, let me screenshot from Dash Central the specific reason :

Kt41DDL.png

Source : https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Sec-Audit-Jul22#comments

I am pretty sure Dash Core is also unfinished with its code, with v19 not even coded or on testnet, and yet that is getting a security audit.

No, i am getting more and more convinced this is due to bad DCG budget planning and hiring too many devs during a time they should have secured the essentials for the release of Dash Platform first (mainly the securing of funding for the two security audits, providing the setup documentation for masternode operators, setting aside some funding for marketing the release for Dash Platform) and most likely also due to them being catched off guard by this new crypto winter (again).
 
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This will be a short crypto winter as the bottom is already in and the recent price action was just a bunch of mismanaged funds getting liquidated. So, the funds for a platform audit will be available when we need them, also, as I said above, without the MNOs actually upgrading to Evo, it will never fork in, so I implore MNOs to make sure they are satisfied the code they will be running is actually working.
 
So, the funds for a platform audit will be available when we need them,
And when, under what circumstancies, will you need the funds?
Who is responsible for releasing or holding the allocated funds and what criteria did he follows to do so?
Who decides to hire or to fire some members of DCG?
Who decides the salary of every DCG member?

At the core all the issue of this project stem from management's lack of leadership and shirking of responsibility.
Thats exactly the problem. Lack of leadership, and lack of accountability.
After 8 years of Dash DAO, we finnaly discovered the responsibles of the failure.
 
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Dash forum reply



Hi!



I would love to refer to Robert’s initial message. Focusing on problems that might be concerning (related to the Network And to the Project).



Let’s imagine me as a potential crypto user (not advanced but aware of key principles of Bitcoin regarding fiat).

Why should I buy Dash? What Is so special there that i wont get in other similar (And „higher”) projects? Why should I use that?

Assuming I am a speculator - why should I invest in that project? What can convince me that the price May highly increase? I probably have better options in the market.

Assuming I am a more serious investor - why should I buy (And host) a Masternode? What actual % return I can count on yearly? I mean effectively in USD because my whole investment portfolio (stocks, gold etc.) Is being settled in USD. Shouldn’t I just buy some ETH?

I just dont understand this whole sophisticated cryptography, merkle trees, bls signatures, bft consensus engines … should I learn that? Dont have time (but maybe 1% of society gets that, dont know - still , too complex for me).





This Is the Real problem of Dash. Lack of vision, lack of transparent And „easy to digest” communication to the end user (And potentially to the Business). They wont use their time to do their own Research because they will go to the Competition which Is more user friendly And more easy to understand (or at least more hyped / with more positive image/brand).



If Dash wants success, we need to reach Mainstream adoption (easy, fun to use, clearly explained benefits). With that - it becomes very attractive to Business because they have huge customer base straight away. With Business in place - we can have the first , serious And Pro, B2B2C enterprise Solution for crypto.



And Hey - payment Coins seam dead now. No one will seriously treat L1 payments (just not pretty good UX and not user friendly). L2 use cases (including payments) are the way to go. Electronic devices show Numbers in Arabic (0-9) instead of binary Because human kind got used to that. The same reason why we will rather accept „traditional” payments (to my friend, to some institution, PayByName etc. - not to some weird And long string). We got used to traditional payment experience. And that Is how we will utilize crypto payments - with payment Dapps, on L2. Dash should be the gas for the ecosystem build on Top of Platform chain. Dash Network should lead the development of this ecosystem. And this Is a way to bring something valuable for the mainstream in crypto, with Dash



(and btw - Dash Platform is not a product, it is the extension to Dash which brings us to Dash 2.0 - the actual Product (the EVO).



Call me … mad/crazy :)
 
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And Hey - payment Coins are DEAD! No one will seriously treat L1 payments („I am just done with constantly checking if I copied this million character address properly …”).

This is mostly a garbage post, but I will address this one thing. Dash addresses use a restricted dictionary of allowed letters and numbers and the address has an internal checksum similar to credit card numbers, this means that if you make a mistake when copying/pasting the address it will be flagged as an invalid address not someone else's address. So, all the verification you need to do is check the first few and last few characters of the address and press send.
 
You are right And I probably could have brought a better example but the Point was - poor UX, not user friendly (my opinion obviously)
 
Thank you for sharing @maverick44

I don't think it is a garbage post - I think you are right (even if it is inconvenient realisation).
It is not 2015 anymore and no one cares about the next sophisticated, super-complicated decentralised technology and highly technical jargon. The brightest example of this was the release of chain-locks - the revolutionary technology for crypto and... in fact no one cares about.
Look at the roadmap and check what is there - here are some random examples:
  • Multi-package repository
  • Quorum rotation, stronger IS security
  • Initial Enhanced Hard Forking implementation
  • Platform fee system
  • Platform Decentralised API with HTTPS
  • BLS v1.0 implementation
  • Asset lock special transaction
  • ... and many others
Who in the world, except maybe 10 people, understands that?
Which investor would buy Dash because of what is written there??
How people could get excited reading this???
This is the path to nowhere in my opinion. This could be written in ancient Sumerian language and that probably would not make a big difference.
Marketing and business people should recognise and understand market needs, create roadmaps, communicate them, and set the direction, not developers.

During the recent weeks I have spoken with many friends who are not in crypto but heard about crypto. Basically, there are only 2 cases they are interested in:
  1. Speculation / investment (overwhelming majority - 90%)
  2. How can they use it in a real world (they paid some attention to my crypto.com card and asked about DashDirect but got disappointed learning that it is not available in Europe)
So let's drop the delusional thinking about the great future with more and more tech (that is being developed forever). Let's focus on the needs of people and learn from the past mistakes.
- Investors want great marketing and excitement.
- Users want working products (and they don't have to be perfect - hardly anything is perfect).
They don't care about another magic, non-understandable decentralised technology, or another geeky speech or more software development. We just lost the entire bull run waiting for the release of great tech - this is very bad.

I hope the new DCG CEO understands the necessity to make a quick shift from development and tech-oriented project to business- and user-oriented project. And I hope he will hold people accountable for promises and ensure delivery on time and what was promised.
I am curiously waiting for his announcements and changes he is going to implement. I hope that our marketing will be shifted towards investors and users, and development efforts towards releases and products.
 
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Look at the roadmap and check what is there - here are some random examples:
  • Multi-package repository
  • Quorum rotation, stronger IS security
  • Initial Enhanced Hard Forking implementation
Who in the world, except maybe 10 people, understands that? What investor would buy Dash because of what is written there?? How people could get excited reading this??? This is the road to nowhere in my opinion. This could be written in ancient Sumerian language and probably it would not make a big difference.

This is the reason the GOVERNANCE QUESTIONS in the budget system should be CHEAP!
The governance questions, in order to be voted by the masternodes, they have to be posed in a way that everyone understands them.

After a gov question is approved by the masternodes, the feelancer developers (and NOT nessecarily the salary paid, public servants devs of the DCG) may propose implementations of the gov questions that may contain tech jargon (you cannot escape from that).

This tech jargon that nobody understands occured and flooded both the roadmap and dash incubator due to the wrong philosofy of AndyDark, who thinks that only implementation proposals are necessary and should be proposed in the budget, who also thinks that the governmant questions should not be asked at all (in alliance to the red lines posed by the agents whose permanent goal is to destroy whatever effective crypto-governance occurs).

Your way of thinking is simply wrong. Α governance decision should precede any implementation proposal. Why a free lancer developer to spend his time investigating how to change the Dash code, if he is not sure that the masternodes want that? Thats why those kind of questions are tottaly needed to be answered by the masternodes. They are not implementation proposals, they are just governance questions, that will incentivize free lancer developers outside the core team to start searching implementation solutions, and then make their implementation proposals to the budget system that are compatible to the governance decisions.
The governance type questions will boost dash, they will free it from the salary paid developers (which tend to have a civil servant behavior). What is really at stake in this very vote, it is whether the free developers or the paid employees developers will lead dash's future. And I prefer the free market rather than the employees-servants.
I hope to have mass participation in this vote, because this will show that the masternodes operators (regardless whether they agree or not to the specific question) they understand the huge value that those governance-type questions have.

Because above all and behind all, philosophy stands....
 
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Thank you for sharing @maverick44

I don't think it is a garbage post - I think you are right (even if it is inconvenient realisation).
It is not 2015 anymore and no one cares about the next sophisticated, super-complicated decentralised technology and highly technical jargon. The brightest example of this was the release of chain-locks - the revolutionary technology for crypto and... in fact no one cares about.
Look at the roadmap and check what is there - here are some random examples:
  • Multi-package repository
  • Quorum rotation, stronger IS security
  • Initial Enhanced Hard Forking implementation
  • Platform fee system
  • Platform Decentralised API with HTTPS
  • BLS v1.0 implementation
  • Asset lock special transaction
  • ... and many others
Who in the world, except maybe 10 people, understands that?
Which investor would buy Dash because of what is written there??
How people could get excited reading this???
This is the path to nowhere in my opinion. This could be written in ancient Sumerian language and that probably would not make a big difference.
Marketing and business people should recognise and understand market needs, create roadmaps, communicate them, and set the direction, not developers.

During the recent weeks I have spoken with many friends who are not in crypto but heard about crypto. Basically, there are only 2 cases they are interested in:
  1. Speculation / investment (overwhelming majority - 90%)
  2. How can they use it in a real world (they paid some attention to my crypto.com card and asked about DashDirect but got disappointed learning that it is not available in Europe)
So let's drop the delusional thinking about the great future with more and more tech (that is being developed forever). Let's focus on the needs of people and learn from the past mistakes.
- Investors want great marketing and excitement.
- Users want working products (and they don't have to be perfect - hardly anything is perfect).
They don't care about another magic, non-understandable decentralised technology, or another geeky speech or more software development. We just lost the entire bull run waiting for the release of great tech - this is very bad.

I hope the new DCG CEO understands the necessity to make a quick shift from development and tech-oriented project to business- and user-oriented project. And I hope he will hold people accountable for promises and ensure delivery on time and what was promised.
I am curiously waiting for his announcements and changes he is going to implement. I hope that our marketing will be shifted towards investors and users, and development efforts towards releases and products.
Hey @kot - I think you hit the nail on the head. Also agree with what @maverick44 is saying.

What's missing here is focus on the value proposition of Platform itself - making crypto easy to use, in the form of:

1. Signup to Dash with a name you can use for anything Dash related
2. Download a single app that does everything (DashPay)
3. Use that app to then signin and use other apps that devs integrate using the decentralized API.

No crypto does this and its a solid value prop. Its the same proposition since 2017 when Platform concept was introduced (and the contract system, DashPay friending etc were propotyped)

Basically I feel if the focus on DCG was to get these usecases off the ground (and all the apps devs were building already) it would be something that would really position Dash uniquely and generate lot of interest, instead we are advertising lot of tech jargon no one is going to understand as you said @kot and actually the real value (the usecases platform ***devs*** will create) are stuck because the dev community built around Platform has been stuck for quite a while now without real support

So not to criticize DCG devs on what the quality of their work or the progress they're making - but this lack of understanding that keeping the users of a product happy is key to its growth, meaning the devs on Platform (e.g. currently mostly in Incubator) who are the real MVP / selling point and key to Dash's recovery, needs to be fixed for Dash to turn around. Hopefully we are moving towards that..

Andy
 
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Hey @kot - I think you hit the nail on the head. Also agree with what @maverick44 is saying.

What's missing here is focus on the value proposition of Platform itself - making crypto easy to use, in the form of:

1. Signup to Dash with a name you can use for anything Dash related
2. Download a single app that does everything (DashPay)
3. Use that app to then signin and use other apps that devs integrate using the decentralized API.

No crypto does this and its a solid value prop.

Of course there are cryptos that are doing this.

For example, in the proof of humanity, or in kleros, you signup with a name.
Also there are cryptos that implement decentralized apps. For example myst.
 
Of course there are cryptos that are doing this.

For example, in the proof of humanity, or in kleros, you signup with a name.
Also there are cryptos that implement decentralized apps. For example myst.

When I say 'signup to Dash' I mean actually signup to Dash - when Grandma asks you 'so how do i get into this crypto thing' you just link to dash.org and theres an actual signup form so she can do the same thing she does with Facebook or Instagram and it creates an actual account on our blockchain she can use from anywhere (with the DashPay wallet). Not have to connect a metamask wallet to use some 3rd party token running on Ethereum like the links you gave

We are talking about making Dash the first real cryptocurrency that's a decentralized Brand, in order to make it as easy to onboard as any centralized internet service, because that's something that the community can grow very quickly especially if we incentivize it (via governance, invites, referrals etc)

Its suprising still how many Dash people dont understand one of the most fundamental aspects of Evolution (and DCG still dont as there are zero plans to put anything on Dash.org as far as I know).

These are the kind of features that will make Dash stand out as a unique proposition that people can get interested in, because it's breaking down the barriers for people to actually onboard to crypto, and one of the Evo features that together enable us to become the "Apple of crypto". If we can get back to the fundamentals here which are all in the Evo vision since it was first laid out by Evan D and Platform was envisaged to solve, this is the route back to the front of the market for Dash.
 
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