Is it time to do something? Even bigger projects would be reluctant at that price. I expect it will cost over $5,000 by January.
A proposal now costs over $3,000
- Thread starter thesavoyard
- Start date
It does have the benefit of keeping out spam and petty proposals, but if someone fronts the money and the Masternodes vote no, they are out a lot of money now. I don't think that's the way Dash wants to treat its fans, personally. Maybe keep the proposal cost fairly high like 2.5 Dash and refund 50% of failed proposals? That way there is still a risk for bad or scam proposals.
No refund if your proposal fails. Between here and discord thier is enough ways to build support before diving in and making a proposal.
You may end up being told make it for less and shorter time then you want but that is how it is. I mean you should just come up with an idea and then make a proposal.
Its not fair to count recurring proposals. Having actually submitted two proposals (technically 3), it is not just monetary loss but loss in time as well if your proposal doesn't pass. I would argue that anything over 1 dash does more harm then good at this point. Proposals use to be $50 and there was no spam problem, why would that change? Soon it may not be bad proposals that don't pass but rather better proposals and a lack of available funds that month.
The reason it would change is because the network is growing. There is much greater interest and a lot more money to be sought after.
The trend towards more proposals is still there even if you only count new proposals in their first month.
I think asking someone to risk $3000-$5000 for a proposal is too much. It's punishing the community. We will also miss out on great ideas because people do not want to risk such a large sum of money. I don't get a vote on it but I would support 1 Dash. Also, why not a partial refund? If you maintain some loss you will still deter spam. Do you think someone with bad ideas and good faith deserves to be punished?
Half price proposals, one per cycle, for each masternode. This would create competition for proposal submissions, while keeping spam away.
One thing that might work is to refund the fee if the net votes are positive and burn the fee if the net votes are negative. This way the masternodes get to decide on a case by case basis.
Other than that I am not opposed to lowering the fee a bit but I wouldn't consider it an urgent issue so far.
Other than that I am not opposed to lowering the fee a bit but I wouldn't consider it an urgent issue so far.
I'm a new MNO and I've been disappointed by how hard it is to decide what to vote on each proposal. I think this mostly comes from the low quality of the proposals. By this I don't mean the projects, but the pitch/presentation. I think every proposal should at least include a professional video clearly presenting the proposal and the people, like a KickStarter project. MNO shouldn't have to do hours of work to vet a proposal if the proposer can't even be bothered to make a high quality proposal.
I think the fact that people are willing to risk 5 Dash without even making a high quality proposal presentation shows that the fee is too low rather than too high.
I think the fact that people are willing to risk 5 Dash without even making a high quality proposal presentation shows that the fee is too low rather than too high.
I agree that refunding the fee for net positive votes would alleviate this issue while maintaining the effectiveness of the spam prevention and deterrent to bad proposals. If it was done automatically then it would mean proposal owners would not even need to keep tacking on the fee to their requested amount as well.
I am a founder of Bitmzansi a cryto-startup based in South Africa, we are interested in producing a proposal within the Dash community in the hopes of creating something of substances that can benefit our country and Africa as a whole, we believe that this can only be achieved with the assistance of the Dash community.
We currently believe that the required 5 Dash is excluding potential startups that have excellent ideas from taking part, especially for indidivuals who are in poorer regions across the globe and given that the price of Dash was $9 a year ago, all that was required to pitch an proposal was around $50 compared to today $3000 needed to pitch a proposal.
We humbly request that the community takes these two factors into consideration and reviews the 5 Dash that is required for proposals submissions.
We currently believe that the required 5 Dash is excluding potential startups that have excellent ideas from taking part, especially for indidivuals who are in poorer regions across the globe and given that the price of Dash was $9 a year ago, all that was required to pitch an proposal was around $50 compared to today $3000 needed to pitch a proposal.
We humbly request that the community takes these two factors into consideration and reviews the 5 Dash that is required for proposals submissions.
If you make a high quality pre-proposal with an engaging and convincing video explaining your project and a detailed budget and plan, I think there are ways to help with the proposal fee.
Thank you for the feedback, we are more than willing to produce a well written and detailed pre-proposal as well as the video explaining our mission statement and goals.
I like this solution as well. I do think scam proposals should have negative consequences. As well as those who put little effort into their proposal. I still think the Dash core team needs a discretionary budget to fund proposals that they feel are worthwhile. Along with maybe someone to work on treasury issues full time?
I would be fine with this, but does the core team have time to go through lots of low quality proposals to find a few that might be worthwhile?
If someone is willing to sift through lots of proposals, I'd be happy to approve a 15 Dash proposal to fund the fee of the best 3, or something like that.
When the fee was low there was a much lower amount of money available.
I have three possible suggestions:
1) masternode vote which proposals do not get back their fee. So the votes become (Yes, Abstain, No, No and do not get back the fee)
the last one only used for spammy proposals. And from then on we stop people adding the proposal fee to the cost of the proposal
2) the fee must be proportional to the money you are asking. If you ask n dash, then the fee will be n/k (and we need to decide what would have to be k, but we can just pick the average of the last period)
3) people use the fee they want, but proposals are ordered by fee spent.
I have three possible suggestions:
1) masternode vote which proposals do not get back their fee. So the votes become (Yes, Abstain, No, No and do not get back the fee)
the last one only used for spammy proposals. And from then on we stop people adding the proposal fee to the cost of the proposal
2) the fee must be proportional to the money you are asking. If you ask n dash, then the fee will be n/k (and we need to decide what would have to be k, but we can just pick the average of the last period)
3) people use the fee they want, but proposals are ordered by fee spent.
TL;DR: 5 DASH fee is not only anti-spam, it's also limits the total number of proposals and incentivizes larger/cumulative proposals. And it does its job well IMO.
Should it be changed? Shall we allow a flow of smaller proposals? Well, I doubt it tbh, see below.
IMO, the 5 DASH fee is only high if:
- you ask for comparable amount of money and such use of a Treasury makes no sense;
- your proposal is simply relatively small comparing to the overall ~6650 DASH available.
Think of Treasury as of a way for money multiplication - you put 5 DASH in and you get 5xN DASH out to cover the fee and all your costs to deliver results and also to make some (reasonable) profit. So the question for each proposal is "Is my N large enough?". If N is 1-2 it's obvious that no, it's too low and not worth it. For N around 4-5 it's getting interesting IMO. But it really works the best (in a sense that the fee doesn't really matter if you can pull this kind of proposal off) for N > 10. Note, that you can fit 133 (N == 10) proposals in current budget and that's already would be a lot of work to review this. At current prices (N == 10) is $30k and IMO it matches the term "reasonably sized proposal" for $4m budget pretty well. For (N < 4-5, $12-15k) proposals there probably should be some DAO managing them like DashForce or smth similar, there is no way MNOs can review 250+ single proposals of this size IMO. There is indeed a problem that tiny proposals are already economically excluded while there is not enough of mid/large size proposals yet. In my mind, this is simply a result of a way too fast growth - it's hard for people to go from "printing stickers in a garage" to "manage a team of 10+ people" in 1 year. Some may never be able to do this, not everyone can be an entrepreneur, it's ok. This however should incentivize everyone (MNOs in the first place) to look for opportunities outside of the "safe zone" (small meetup proposals, etc) and should force people to try to reach out to some existing businesses or hot startups to establish some kind of partnership (pick your favorite one here) and/or collaborate (e.g. 1 DashForce instead of 10s of single meetup proposals).
NOTE: don't get me wrong, "printing stickers in a garage" and "small meetup" are perfectly fine, they just don't scale horizontally - you have to build some structure around them to scale, that's how they become "manage a team of 10+ people" and "DashForce-like DAO".
1) We could probably use another "signal" for that e.g. "endorsed" which is not used right now (we only use "funding" for manual voting now). So it would be smth like adding a rule "if AbsoluteYesCount for `endorsed` is < 0 then withhold the fee otherwise pay fee back automatically". This would separate funding support from actual anti-spam actions by MNOs a bit more clearly IMO and should already fit into existing vote structure.
2) I'm not sure it's a good idea, see the logic about money multiplicator above
3) Same as #2 plus it complicates things a lot IMO - there is no priority/sort order right now and I wouldn't agree that 10 DASH project spending 5 DASH as a fee is more important than 20 DASH project spending 4 DASH as a fee for example.
Should it be changed? Shall we allow a flow of smaller proposals? Well, I doubt it tbh, see below.
IMO, the 5 DASH fee is only high if:
- you ask for comparable amount of money and such use of a Treasury makes no sense;
- your proposal is simply relatively small comparing to the overall ~6650 DASH available.
Think of Treasury as of a way for money multiplication - you put 5 DASH in and you get 5xN DASH out to cover the fee and all your costs to deliver results and also to make some (reasonable) profit. So the question for each proposal is "Is my N large enough?". If N is 1-2 it's obvious that no, it's too low and not worth it. For N around 4-5 it's getting interesting IMO. But it really works the best (in a sense that the fee doesn't really matter if you can pull this kind of proposal off) for N > 10. Note, that you can fit 133 (N == 10) proposals in current budget and that's already would be a lot of work to review this. At current prices (N == 10) is $30k and IMO it matches the term "reasonably sized proposal" for $4m budget pretty well. For (N < 4-5, $12-15k) proposals there probably should be some DAO managing them like DashForce or smth similar, there is no way MNOs can review 250+ single proposals of this size IMO. There is indeed a problem that tiny proposals are already economically excluded while there is not enough of mid/large size proposals yet. In my mind, this is simply a result of a way too fast growth - it's hard for people to go from "printing stickers in a garage" to "manage a team of 10+ people" in 1 year. Some may never be able to do this, not everyone can be an entrepreneur, it's ok. This however should incentivize everyone (MNOs in the first place) to look for opportunities outside of the "safe zone" (small meetup proposals, etc) and should force people to try to reach out to some existing businesses or hot startups to establish some kind of partnership (pick your favorite one here) and/or collaborate (e.g. 1 DashForce instead of 10s of single meetup proposals).
NOTE: don't get me wrong, "printing stickers in a garage" and "small meetup" are perfectly fine, they just don't scale horizontally - you have to build some structure around them to scale, that's how they become "manage a team of 10+ people" and "DashForce-like DAO".
Interesting ideas, few comments:
1) We could probably use another "signal" for that e.g. "endorsed" which is not used right now (we only use "funding" for manual voting now). So it would be smth like adding a rule "if AbsoluteYesCount for `endorsed` is < 0 then withhold the fee otherwise pay fee back automatically". This would separate funding support from actual anti-spam actions by MNOs a bit more clearly IMO and should already fit into existing vote structure.
2) I'm not sure it's a good idea, see the logic about money multiplicator above
3) Same as #2 plus it complicates things a lot IMO - there is no priority/sort order right now and I wouldn't agree that 10 DASH project spending 5 DASH as a fee is more important than 20 DASH project spending 4 DASH as a fee for example.
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I like the idea that any proposals with more 'Yes' than 'No' votes should be refunded (even if the proposal does not pass).
This means the proposer is on the right track but needs to make some improvements and revisions to get it passed in the future.
This means the proposer is on the right track but needs to make some improvements and revisions to get it passed in the future.
This is a government decision, but who is gonna paid 5 dash for it?
@GrandMasterDash used to pay to ask governance questions, without having any personal gain. But this era is gone. Nowdays, everybody who is posting proposals he is doing it for his personal profit, and many reasonable governance proposals which have no personal benefit but benefit for the community, have not even the chance to be voted, as long as nobody proposes them in the budget system due to the existance of the high and hardcoded proposal fee (instead of having an adaptive fee)
Yet another proof that there is a structured methodology of the spies in order to destroy the governance of dash.
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Hey guys, I have a small dev team and I didn't know that it costs 5 Dash to post a proposal. Thats an insane amount to get advice. I would say that the price has discouraged some of my teammates to the point where we are maybe considering other platforms.
Here's some honest feedback and a look into a dev team trying to find a platform to build our product on top of. I love dash, I'm trying to defend my decision to spend a large amount of $$ on an idea submission.
Here's our strategy:
I set out to put in 5k of my own money to start from scratch to build our product to work with dash. Great niche products come from scrappy entrepreneurs like our team.
I get the incentive structure, but that price is getting lofty almost like an expensive conference that only the elite can afford.
Here's what $3,000 will take away:
- Legal advice
- Stripe Atlas
- Product video
- Higher level design comps
- Narrator for our video etc
I'll have to do things cheaper, how does this actually make your community better or our product better? Why wouldn't I just take the chance of submitting our idea somewhere else???
A first world problem is having "too many proposals of interested people". Having people submitting ideas or gaining interest in your platform is the MOST IMPORTANT THING you need for growth.
Some of the solutions you shouldn't consider:
- 5 dash, refund only 4 if you don't succeed. BAD - Say you reject my proposal and I spend $100, no big deal. If I lose $500 dollars for submitting an idea and I don't get it back, I would say the odds of me ever returning to the platform are less than 10%.
- Full Refund - Bad - just gonna get spammed.
Solutions to consider:
- 0.1 DASH ($50): The people that will create a company that could push dash into the mainstream is probably going to be a group of college kids. I'm not, but thats when I started my first company. Time after time, young entrepreneurs with no cash create products that are life changing.
- People will buy dash, thats exactly what you want to showcase the technology.
Think of AWS - 95% of startups fail, but 99% build on top of AWS. 5% of companies succeed, but every single one of those people with an idea now has AWS experience and may bring those skillsets to their next company.
Here's some honest feedback and a look into a dev team trying to find a platform to build our product on top of. I love dash, I'm trying to defend my decision to spend a large amount of $$ on an idea submission.
Here's our strategy:
I set out to put in 5k of my own money to start from scratch to build our product to work with dash. Great niche products come from scrappy entrepreneurs like our team.
I get the incentive structure, but that price is getting lofty almost like an expensive conference that only the elite can afford.
Here's what $3,000 will take away:
- Legal advice
- Stripe Atlas
- Product video
- Higher level design comps
- Narrator for our video etc
I'll have to do things cheaper, how does this actually make your community better or our product better? Why wouldn't I just take the chance of submitting our idea somewhere else???
A first world problem is having "too many proposals of interested people". Having people submitting ideas or gaining interest in your platform is the MOST IMPORTANT THING you need for growth.
Some of the solutions you shouldn't consider:
- 5 dash, refund only 4 if you don't succeed. BAD - Say you reject my proposal and I spend $100, no big deal. If I lose $500 dollars for submitting an idea and I don't get it back, I would say the odds of me ever returning to the platform are less than 10%.
- Full Refund - Bad - just gonna get spammed.
Solutions to consider:
- 0.1 DASH ($50): The people that will create a company that could push dash into the mainstream is probably going to be a group of college kids. I'm not, but thats when I started my first company. Time after time, young entrepreneurs with no cash create products that are life changing.
- People will buy dash, thats exactly what you want to showcase the technology.
Think of AWS - 95% of startups fail, but 99% build on top of AWS. 5% of companies succeed, but every single one of those people with an idea now has AWS experience and may bring those skillsets to their next company.
@Barrett Davis
Spies infiltrated dash in order to destroy its governance system, so your reasonable arguments cannot be heard. The Masternode owners are highly corrupted. The dash community should give voting power to more actors.
Spies infiltrated dash in order to destroy its governance system, so your reasonable arguments cannot be heard. The Masternode owners are highly corrupted. The dash community should give voting power to more actors.
Hi @UdjinM6 , thanks for replying me. If the system needs to lower the number of proposals that are considered it means that the governance is too centralised, and we have to redesign it (I am available, you know). We don't need all masternodes to evaluate all the proposals. The system can randomly select some masternode to evaluate some proposals. So each proposal is always evaluated by at least x masternodes (x > 100). And the bigger the fee requested is, the more masternode need to evaluate it. So I would say that the fee structure should only be to prevent spam. If not we are tying our own legs. Basically this is telling me that DASH is working much better than all the other systems. We have much more money available than other systems, there are a lot of ideas how to use this money. But masternodes are unable to follow all of those proposals and have become the bottleneck. To avoid this you force people to pay 3000$ for each proposal. What a terrible idea!
So, accepted that the fee is only to stop spam, proposals fall into 4 categories:
- Yes absolutely,
- maybe,
- No absolutely but thanks for asking,
- you are spamming me and I will punish you.
You made the same assumption that @UdjinM6 did. That the proposals should be judged in a limited time frame, then expire and be rejected for ever.
There is no way, as long as the proposals expire within a month. But proposals should never expire, should always be available to be voted. And the MNOs should be allowed to browse the proposal tree and vote an old or a new proposal, whithout time constrains.
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That's a completely different model. And an interesting one. I would't just agree to it as I would need to see the consequences. Like what if people suggest things that are not neutral or beneficial to the dash network, but hinder it. You might not want to find those proposals even if they were the only one to remain. Also money that is not used is not printed. And the less money is printed, the more the dash value will grow. So some masternodes might decide that a proposal is not worth the inflation it induces.
In the meantime proposals expire. That is how the system works right now, so it is not an assumption, it is an observation.
The YES threshold could be defined as a percentage of the total MNO population. In case people tend to suggest bad things in the proposal tree, this adaptive and voted YES threshold could increase, in order for the proposals to be able to be reviewed by more MNOs. In that case of course, and as long as the precentage of the YES votes is (adaptively) voted by the MNOs to be too high, then there is no garanty that 100% of the monthly budget will be spend. But if we allow the MNOs to vote this threshold number repeatedly and adaptively, then they will finally discover the optimal equilibrium that fits the best to the current community needs.
I dont understand this argument. The proposal tree will allow searching, tags, and classification. So no need to browse it all. Each masternode could browse only the part of the branch that he is specialized to it, or interested in it, and delegate to another masternode the rest of the branch.
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