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Dash internships / Representation Office Thailand

QuantumExplorer

Well-known member
Dash Core Group
This is a proposal to fund an international internship program as well as Dash representation office to promote Dash in the kingdom of Thailand. Though I set off the idea, the proposal will be run by Arnaud Beaudat and I will take no compensation from this proposal. Arnaud Beaudat brings to this project 3 years of project management, an expertise in quality assurance, and a passion for cryptocurrency. I have no doubts that under his supervision this project will succeed.

Interns will work on projects and problems thought of by dash core team leaders. Arnaud will issue a report every 2 months detailing advancement of the projects.

So let me let Arnaud take over and explain what is being proposed.
 
Hello Dash network, here is the proposal, hope to get everyone's support!

Thailand Dash Internship Program and SE Asia Representative Office

Internship Program

Overview

Due to the huge burden of work fulfilled by each Core team member, secondary tasks such as testnet tools, visualization helpers, stability testers, network attack tools, and focused blockchain research are set aside.

The idea is to hire approximately 6 interns on a 6 months internship program from around the world based on their qualifications to work on these tasks and to offer a support role to core team developers. Academic achievement and blockchain enthusiasm will be the main criteria for selection of individuals.

We would offer them a competitive intern package including a work visa and a flexible schedule, with travel expenses paid and compensation based on origin country/level of education. In exchange we would ask them to undertake projects of a more academic nature than we are used to. Things that would take a core team member maybe 6 months to come up with a benign answer. For example, at what message load would masternodes start failing, most likely it’s very high and we just don’t need to worry about it, but it’s a great project for interns. Even more, hopefully this will start a partnership between universities and Dash core as well. While we have some academics that have started being interested in Dash, we could do better.

Why Thailand?

Well foremost, because it’s doable. There are few countries in the world where immigration laws would allow this to be easy for most countries of the world. Business and living costs are pretty affordable, and it's also a dream place for interns to have their internship.

Thailand also has an strategic location and serves as a gateway into South East Asia, which is home to the largest growing economic market in the modern world.

Benefits

The best and most reliable interns could apply for a position in Dash Core at the end of their internship. They would already be formed and would enter our team much better prepared than current hires who need time to be onboarded.

Intern Compensation

Interns will be compensated based on their level of studies and location. Because of the reality of student loans faced by americans, any american intern will receive 50% increased pay. Minimum compensation will be set at 8$/hour and will increase per year of university studies past 3. So someone who has completed 4 years of university will get 10$ per hour, 15$ if american. A doctoral candidate who is in year 8 would get 18$ per hour.

We can estimate an average cost of 2000$/intern/month.

Leader role

Arnaud Beaudat will undertake the leader role in this endeavor. His tasks will include contacting universities and promotion of this program, identifying work items suited for the interns, managing time schedules, and dealing with local regulations.

Legal representation

We have been in contact with Harvey Law Group. They were the only law firm in Thailand that we found that knew about cryptocurrency and we found that they were best suited for our needs.

Representative office

In order to open the internship program, we would need to open a representative office, as a LLC would be prohibitively expensive and ill suited for our needs. Harvey law group explained to us that Thai immigration would frown upon and possibly deny so many foreign students if we didn’t hire a few Thai nationals, while we will consider thai nationals as normal interns the reality is that Thailand is way behind in the blockchain space and it would be doubtful to find quality computer science interns.

To remedy this problem we propose also creating a Thailand representative Office with the purpose of promoting Dash first in Thailand and then expanding to surrounding countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. In Malaysia for example a proposal passed to promote DASH, and now in the past 90 days Malaysia has by far the most downloads on Mobile ; 13 times the downloads of thailand and twice that of australia.

This really is a double win for us, at would solve 2 problems with 1 solution.

Roles in representative office
  • HR Manager : excellent level of English required, will promote the internship program throughout the world to get best suited students.
  • Accountant/Assistant
  • Senior Marketing Manager
  • Junior Marketing Researcher
  • Event Planner / Organizer
  • Event Assistant
  • UI/UX Designer

Trademarking Dash in Thailand

From Harvey Law Group : “Thailand is not party to any international conventions or treaties providing reciprocal enforcement with regard to trademarks. Only by registering locally can a trademark owner be assured of his rights over the trademark within the Kingdom of Thailand.”

Costs here are about 2000$ per trademark, let’s start by trademarking Dash in both english and Thai, and then maybe trademark Instant Send and Digital Cash later.

Budget Approximation

- Creation of the Representative Office Legal Fees : 160 000 THB (4930$) Fiat only
- Work permit and visa Legal and Government Fees : 40 000 THB x 8 = 320 000 THB (9840$) Fiat only
- Intern compensation : 2000$ x 6 interns x 6 months = 72 000$ Payable in Dash
- Office rent : 150 000 THB x 8 months (2 month deposit = 1 200 000 THB (36 900$) Fiat only
- Computer and office equipment for 13 people : 1 050 000 THB (32000$) Fiat only
- Thai nationals salary (included tax and SS) : 60 000 THB x 7 employees x 6 months = 2 520 000 THB (77000$) Fiat only
- Leader role compensation : 4000$ x 6 month = 24 000$ Payable in Dash
- Trademark : 66600 THB (2000$) Fiat only
- Promotional expenses : 300 000 THB to start (9243$) Fiat only
- Travel expenses (airline tickets for interns) : 50 000 THB x 6 = 300 000 THB (9243$) Fiat only

TOTAL : 298 595$ for a period of 6 months renewable with a new proposal.

Budget issuance

We will use Dash core address for this proposal and use their conversion guarantee which locks in the dollar amount of this proposal and which means that if the DASH price goes up all extra money will go to dash core. In this proposal we have hired a Thai accountant who will publish a monthly expenditure report for the community.

Because of possible unforeseen future events we have included a 10% margin in our calculations. If we do not use this money it will be used to continue the venture.

Because of Thai law, the representation office will need to acquire sufficient initial funding to prove to the thai government that we have funds. This means that at its start a certain amount will have to initially deposited into the Thai bank account from overseas before we can start hiring people. Therefore we will request from Dash core group if this proposal is indeed funded half of the total sum immediately and the second half after 2 months.

Thank you for reading this proposal. We appreciate your support if you liked it.
 
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Welcome!

@GrandMasterDash thank you for your support !
We only want 6 interns initially, to allow us to start the project in the best conditions.
Afterwards we could increase this number for the next batch of interns.
+1 to "start small, move fast" way of doing this.

... For example, at what message load would masternodes start failing, most likely it’s very high and we just don’t need to worry about it, but it’s a great project for interns....

We tested full 2mb blocks load few times on testnet prior to 12.2 launch, so it might not be a clear answer when MNs are going to start failing but 2 mb blocks should be ok. Would be interesting to see at what load things will start falling apart though :) That being said, you will require to manage a fleet of machines/VPS instances to test this kind of stuff least for a limited period of time (I would guess at least 100 of them to get a result which is somewhat close to reality) and I don't see any infrastructure expenses of this sort in your proposal.

...
testnet tools, visualization helpers, stability testers, network attack tools, and focused blockchain research
...
The idea is to hire approximately 6 interns on a 6 months internship program from around the world based on their qualifications to work on these tasks and to offer a support role to core team developers.
...
That's the "meat" of your proposal (if I get it right) but unfortunately it's described rather shortly. I'd like to see this part expanded - which tasks are planned exactly, why 6 interns etc. One example is not enough imo.
 
Thank you for the welcoming @UdjinM6 !

The intern projects would basically be chosen by core, based on what Quantum, you and other core developers wanted.

That being said, you will require to manage a fleet of machines/VPS instances to test this kind of stuff least for a limited period of time (I would guess at least 100 of them to get a result which is somewhat close to reality) and I don't see any infrastructure expenses of this sort in your proposal.

I sadly had forgotten the infrastructure expenses and originally was just assuming that an already existing dev testnet would be used. I agree that this might be a bad idea and it would be good to have a budget for this in case we want to create an internal testnet as to not slow down the one core uses.

That's the "meat" of your proposal (if I get it right) but unfortunately it's described rather shortly. I'd like to see this part expanded - which tasks are planned exactly, why 6 interns etc. One example is not enough imo.

Currently, slightly less than half of the budget of this proposal goes to the internship program, with slightly more than half going to promoting Dash in Thailand.

Quantum said he had a lot of ideas for interns but that he would discuss it with others and go off what devs in core thought was appropriate.
 
I'd like to add that Arnaud will also coordinate efforts with ASU and Darren Tapp. Arnaud will also have the job of following the interns' work and issuing progress reports.

As for possible assignments I wanted a few things, but I'm sure more will come up once these guys are available. One thing I was thinking about were testnet visualizers that would easily show the amount of
resources left on each Masternode in real time based on network load.

I was also thinking of quantifying the computational/resource requirements involved for various messages (not transactions). I'm thinking of governance here. Sure we work now with about 30x500 votes cast per month, but could our system work if 100 times more votes were cast, and what about 10,000 times more? How much blockchain space would be devoted to these votes if they were included on dash drive and referenced by transitions as Andy has suggested.

Maybe these aren't the best questions to have them work on, and knowing you I'm sure you can come up with better :D
 
Oh yeah ! That's an exciting proposal here !
We are all aware of all those non-urgent task that we would love to see being done (max load of a MN being one of them, but I also think of the differents area related to implementation optimisation, networking monitoring tools etc..) !
I totally support that project, I really love the idea of yet another entity, in another part of the world, and I get excited by the representative office =D

I might overdream it, but I can totally imagine having to read some research report being done during my nights, read them on the morning or launch the new networking tool that came up, and using them to fix/improve during the afternoon =D

I'm definitively loving that =D
 
Intern Compensation

Interns will be compensated based on their level of studies and location. Because of the reality of student loans faced by americans, any american intern will receive 50% increased pay. Minimum compensation will be set at 8$/hour and will increase per year of university studies past 3. So someone who has completed 4 years of university will get 10$ per hour, 15$ if american. A doctoral candidate who is in year 8 would get 18$ per hour.

equel work = equel pay it dont matter wher you from and espacely for an intership for futher work ok i dont minde.
Because the education sytem in the US is a loan base system or i think its totaly crasy but anyway its not fare for DASH people around the World.
if he is the best of the best and you need to pay him that ok but it should no matter wehre he/she is from. but just because he is an American? sorry this is not dashy

otherwise im cool with it
 
Is there not research being done by ASU?
Have you co-ordinated with them to eliminate redundancy?
 
@djcrypto The interns will be doing "testnet tools, visualization helpers, stability testers, network attack tools, and focused blockchain research" I imagine only 1 or 2 will be focused on research and even then it will be in a bigger scope than just pure research most likely.

Since then an extra 2 interns have been added, as we wanted to also take on someone in the field of economics and sociology.

I'd like to add that Arnaud will also coordinate efforts with ASU and Darren Tapp

There is however more to having interns than the work they will provide, I assume some will be hire-able talent for Dash core, and some others might go on to found Dash related businesses.
 
Great proposal. I love the idea - this could easily expand in different directions and create valuable impact for Dash Nation.
 
Things have changed a lot since the initial pre-proposal was made. Me and Arnaud met with lawyers a few times and the initial structure that we envisioned was just not feasible based on the latest documents they required.

We now have a legal solution however it will take 4-6 months to set up. We have revised the proposal based on what we can do now and what we will be doing after the legal structure is fully set up. Angela Zhang is also coming into the project as Director. Coming from one of the most prestigious Chinese Universities and having run HR divisions in medium and large size Chinese corporations, she already has a strong relationship with top Chinese universities which will be a great benefit to this project.

I will completely hand over this project to Arnaud and Angela. I will also take no salary from this project as I am already employed by Dash Core. I just want what's best for Dash and I think this project will help us down the road.

The project will now go in 3 initial phases for the next 11 months :

Phase 1 (2 Months):

- Start of Creation of Legal Entity in Thailand.
- Angela and Arnaud will contact universities and try to get top quality applicants.

Phase 2 (3 Months):

- Creation of Legal Entity in Thailand.
- Trademarking Dash in the Kingdom of Thailand.
- 4 Interns will start 3-6 month internships.

Phase 1 & 2 Budget:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UFV10eUHAiRtQVN-1TOKT8dsyjhQ1KnsKgUL_oNDVbk/edit?usp=sharing

Total Cost for Phase 1 & 2 : $179,132

Deliverables:

- Dash trademarked in Thailand.
- Creation of Legal Entity with BOI structure to allow future endeavors.
- Explanation of internship projects, both those that started, and those for phase 2.
- Initial work provided by interns.
- Increase of testnet size by 20 Masternodes for 1 year. (We are requesting the prefunding to increase this to 100, but will only be able to deliver this once the legal entity is set up.)

Phase 2 (6 Months)
- Those 4 interns will be allowed into Thailand (if they aren't already in Thailand) and will be joined by 4 more.
- Creation of Dash Thailand Marketing Department

Deliverables:
- Finished work provided by interns.
- 6-8 reviewed blockchain research papers.
- Increase in Dash usage in Thailand verifiable by mobile download data.
- Business partnerships.
- Strong presence in Thailand.
- Increase of testnet size by 80 more Masternodes for 1 year.

Total Cost for Phase 3 : $398,953

Proposal shall be incoming shortly.
 
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