Budget System v2 / Transform PR

[Jeztah]

Right! If Transform was close to honest about this type of reporting I could look past it. But this is outright dishonesty.

It appears the Superior Swarm Intelligence may have been right on this one.

I checked, the spreadsheet is listing reported site overall page views or "potential" sets of eyes. Not specific article/page views like you would like to see.

It's more of a gauge used to determine the "worth" of having an ad or article there.

(are we going off topic?)

 

[raganius]

Hello,

I’m guessing most of the community is aware that we had a 3-month contract with Transform PR that started last month. This contract was for $6000, denominated in Dash and locked into a rate of $3.38. I believe this contract was going really well and that we were making the correct choice when we originally went with Transform PR. At the end of the first month, some vocal members of the community began lobbying to remove the Transform PR contract from the system while it was active.

I would like to post some evidence of the ongoing work that Transform was doing for us at the time the contract was voided and make some suggestions to alter the system so that we have better communication and we don’t experience problems like this again in the future.

To start, I’m posting the final report from Transform PR, which shows the work they were doing. As you can see, they were the major driver of most of the media attention we were getting during the last month. They were even working with a major mainstream media outlet, Reuters, to publish a story on Dash.

December Transform PR Activity
Proposal For Next Contract

As a decentralized autonomous organization we need to be able to work with outside vendors reliably, so when the network makes a decision to fund a contract, we need to be able to support that decision in an irrevocable way. I believe the budget system failed us and it needs to be altered slightly to support this type of arrangement in the future.

(...)

What’s Next?

During the time Transform PR was an active contract, they did fantastic work for us. I would really like to work with them again after we have irrevocable contracts, which will be available in 12.1. Transform PR has provided us with the plan they were going to use from March through May, which I have posted in order to give the community an idea of what our future work with them (if approved after 12.1) would look like.

Creating and fully testing a new version of the software will take about six months. The good news, however, is that while we’re working on 12.1, we also have a separate development team led by Andy Freer doing work on Dash Evolution. Because of this, 12.1 shouldn’t delay the release of Dash Evolution. We are right on schedule.

Best,

Evan Duffield

I was sad to see what happened in this case, especially because of (what from my point of view was) DASH's breach of contract, to the detriment of the "Transform PR" works. (I could hardly believe.)

This must not become the "standard behaviour" of this community. It can only bring nefarious consequences against us.

Pacta sunt servanda, is a basic rule. The parts in a contract must keep the agreement. It's a good faith principle that a signed contract must be observed, and no part is allowed to ignore, break or abandon their commitments without a fair and due cause, notably when the other part is keeping its word.

It's shameful. And if such (considered "irresponsible") acts become frequent, no one will ever trust our community, or will want to do business with DASH, leaving us with a tarnished image.

Successful contracts demand at least a minimum level of legal security for both parts in order to flourish, The involved agents must trust each other. Dash will lose too much if it loses in trustworthiness.

The fact that the contract is denominated in USD (or in any local currency) and there is a significant increase or decrease in DASH's price on the exchanges is never enough reason to simply vote down our monthly budget commitment, in cases when the other part been successful in keeping his agreed part:

If there's a huge price up difference, there's always the possibility that, once (and only when) the total proposed USD amount is successfully paid, the community will vote down the payments (but the other part will still have the obligation to completelly meet its part of the deal);

If there's a huge price down difference, what can be done is, after proof of conclusion of its works an additional payment will be approved to the other part.

If the proposal is denominated in DASH, even better: "huge price differences" will make no difference, ideally.

Now, in cases when the other part cleary does not fulfil his obligation, it's obvious that the community must have the power to cease the payments due. But it would demand that IN FACT, the other part is not doing its part of the agreement. It should not be a matter of some member bringing generic accusations of the kind... "I don't like him"... "he is too ugly"... "he did not do his homework once in school, because I knew it"... etc... Such "accusations" must be brought BEFORE the approval of the budget, during the "voting" opportunity. It makes no sense to wait for a whole month of contract and works to start ad hoc accusations

Anyway, a problem I see is in cases when a "better proposal" come up to be voted, and receives more votes from the community, driving down previous contracts. And, the "Contracts" solution, as proposed above, seems to be a good "protection" in cases like these, avoiding the risk of an unfair breach of contracts caused by DASH's system.

From what I can see, our voting system is working great. The problem, it seems, is "the community is still learning" to use this powerful tool responsibly.

 

[TroyDASH]

The DASH ceasing payments to fund Transform-PR was not a breach of contract on the part of the network. The network never made any agreement to guarantee funding for multiple months because it is impossible to do that in the current budget system. Part of the problem here was that the causes for contract termination were not explicitly outlined in the proposal, so DASH was really not under any particular pressure to continue funding it. I think a huge chunk of this problem can be alleviated by having much more well defined contracts without even having to touch the protocol.

I agree that de-funding a budget item should typically require a higher "no" threshold than the "yes" amount required to pass it, to prevent items from just barely passing and then being right on the bubble of being defunded.. Perhaps the threshold required, instead of being hard-coded, can be agreed upon in the initial proposal?

Then there is the issue of over-budgeting which can cause other items to fall off, which is something we also need to deal with and is part of what Evan is trying to work with in this proposal. I'm just not convinced that the way Evan proposed it is the best way --

 

[BlueBeluga]

In regards to the proposal amount being 50 Dash to reimburse for the proposal payments on prior rejected proposals, and since this topic is about changing the proposal structure to add a new option "contracts".

I was wondering if it might also be useful to have an option for "polls" since proposals are already being used this way? In this case the "poll" contract could send the 5 dash payment back to a change address after the poll closes. This would have allowed Evan to test the communities desire to collect unspent budget units without needing to create another proposal to reimburse his payments.

Although I'm not a developer, so I don't know how much more work I'm suggesting, the only down side I can see is that bad actors could use our system to spam us.

 

[coingun]

If we are talking about v2 of the budgeting system I hope we don't leave out the following:

1) Higher voting threshold to see any proposals pass. I think the current limits are far to easy for the core people to simply vote through whatever they want based on the amounts of dash held. I think this at least warrants a discussion.

2) What is done with the unused funds. This is another piece of the puzzle that to me warrants a discussion. So far we have decided to not create upwards of 3 masternode's worth of funds that could be helping us in a lot of ways. I don't mind the idea of rolling them over to the next month. Or maybe moving them into a type of fund to pay for bug bounty's like other open source companies do but i think so far the reasons I've heard for why we are choosing to not create these funds aren't really reasonable.

3) Better documentation for outlining all the scenario's for the budgeting system. I think this last month was quite an interesting one from a stand point of the budgeting system. We have controversial things like the transform pr, we have late proposal's getting submitted not making the threshold, we had proposals stacking up with people not knowing why they did or didn't get funded. If this system is going to get more widely used I think it warrants some better documentation regarding all the inner workings of it.

4) What ever happened to the fancy website that was supposed to be created to submit proposals and stuff. Sort of like what dashwhale turned into but there was originally plans for this to be a site controlled by the core team or foundation is that still in the mix?

5) In the comments of one proposal you asked for some quite explicit answers regarding a proposals purpose and intentions much more then has ever been provided for any current proposals. If this is the type of explanation you'd like to see for proposals it would make sense to lead by example.

You mentioned the following...
(QUOTE)
Here’s some of our main concerns:

We don’t know what’s happening to the vending machine that was already made, who owns this vending machine and what’s the plan for it?
What are you going to be purchasing with the $3000? Can you give us an itemized breakdown?
Can you give us a plan on how you aim to use these funds each month?
Would it be possible to come up with milestones for this project? What are you planning on accomplishing? How will it benefit the ecosystem?
Are you planning on selling vending machines, components of them eventually, or something like this? Who will earn these rewards?

I would assume if the masternode network is funding your operation, it should receive a cut of the profits each quarter paid out as dividends. I would like to also establish some sort of agreement between yourselves and the Darkcoin foundation as well to make that agreement official.
(END QUOTE)

These are all valid requests but if you'd like to see them for all proposals then we should talk about that. We also bring up the discussion of what to do with stuff created by the network who gets ownership and such. I think elaborating on these is reasonable for a v2 product as well.

6) Double spending of proposal funds. During the mess last month it came out that some of the Transform PR proposal was getting funding by the PR awareness campaign and some of it was from it's own proposal. To me this type of double dipping shouldn't be possible and if it is it should be at least voted on by the network. To think that someone made the decision to take funds from another proposal and allocate them to one that was missing funds is absurd.

Overview
I'm sure there are more pieces that need to be discussed but if you are going to open the can of worms and talk about version 2.0 I hope you are willing to openly discuss the other area's where the current system is lacking.

I would also like to see a more detailed discussion about why the one month of the budget wasn't paid out and what exactly transpired there. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that you guys were just down in miami getting gigy with it and forgot to flip the switch but I didn't even know some manual process existed for the budget finalization and recently you did mention some sort of quorum needed to decentralize this process. Could you please elaborate on this?

Edit: Sorry about all the edits just keep thinking of more things and seeing stuff I messed up.

 

[TroyDASH]

I would also like to see a more detailed discussion about why the one month of the budget wasn't paid out and what exactly transpired there. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that you guys were just down in miami getting gigy with it and forgot to flip the switch but I didn't even know some manual process existed for the budget finalization and recently you did mention some sort of quorum needed to decentralize this process. Could you please elaborate on this?

See this thread https://dashtalk.org/threads/budget-glitch.7246/
I am not sure if the problem (if there is not decentralized finalization) was ever addressed? I am sure Evan can speak to this --

 

[eduffield]

Not that I think anyone would deny your being reimbursed 50 Dash, this should probably be 2 separate proposals, no?
ie. one proposal for reimbursement, and another for the re-vamped budget system

Probably...

 

[TanteStefana]

I've apologized elsewhere, but I want to say I feel so guilty about Transform PR's contract getting nixed. I remember earlier last week, I was surprised to learn the way the agreement was set up, and didn't like the idea of long term contracts paying out in Dash - or at least I didn't understand the contract and was surprised at how it was to be paid out. And this was when we were feeling the pinch of not enough funds to pay for all the great proposals. But I have since realized great uses for paying out in Dash as it can give great incentives for a contractor to perform as well as possible. It's a lot like paying in stocks, etc... to a CEO, or other workers in a business. Then, I disappeared and came back to the mess. I don't imagine myself as being important enough to cause this, but hate that my voice could have contributed to the mess. I'm so sorry, so much was happening at the time, a lot of negativity, that kinda made me unconsciously pull away and concentrate on other things at home.

On the other hand, I was always worried about the budget system becoming flaky if voters turned on a contractor without cause, so having this happen early may have been a blessing, though I'm sorry about it. I sure hope Transform PR will give us another try with the new budget system. Thanks Evan for putting your nose to the grind stone and finding a solution! I like this solution!

Andy Freer joined us full time in December, no? Wow, I had no idea he was taking over Evolution, and have to say that knowing the quality of help that you have, Evan, in such talented programmers, and also all the guys doing marketing, they're awesome. It's because you're such an awesome person that you've attracted these guys! Too cool, and it isn't a small thing to know a major update is being headed, not by the Founder of Dash, but rather one of our core team members. It shows Evan isn't a control freak. I get this feeling that the core team is also becoming diverse in a very meaningful way. I mean, do you all understand what I'm attempting to say? It's like Evan isn't (really hasn't been for a while, but still felt like) the only programmer with everyone else just doing small things. He's leading a real diverse and talented team. I think this is the first solid evidence of that and shouldn't be missed by the community

 

[Solarminer]

We don’t know what’s happening to the vending machine that was already made, who owns this vending machine and what’s the plan for it?
What are you going to be purchasing with the $3000? Can you give us an itemized breakdown?
Can you give us a plan on how you aim to use these funds each month?
Would it be possible to come up with milestones for this project? What are you planning on accomplishing? How will it benefit the ecosystem?
Are you planning on selling vending machines, components of them eventually, or something like this? Who will earn these rewards?

The Dash N Drink is at Camosoul's. The purpose was to show it at the Miami show, it wasn't intended to be used for profits. If you have a place or event you want to bring it to display it, coordinate with Camosoul.

The Vendor-Experience proposal was not voted in.

You made some other good points.

 

[Geert]

At this point, we have to trust Evan's judgement. He's in the best position to know what needs to be done, what is working and what needs to be changed. If you don't trust his judgement, why are you holding Dash?

 

[BolehVPN]

I'll confine my two cents to the budget system and not on Transform PR which I'm right now on the fence:

1. I am for the proposal and contract system with the contracts having a higher threshold.
2. I agree that contracts should not be for absurdly long times and should have a limit of 12 months for the moment.
3. There has to be ability for an exit vote where a contract that is not performing well or defaulting can be stopped. This is critical. Even in commercial contracts. This can be achieved either through No votes (which requires a higher threshold) or the proposer cancelling it or a combination of both. One way is to have it as follows, if proposer puts in the cancellation request, a lower threshold of votes is required but if the proposer doesn't, then a higher threshold is required. Especially when it's most likely the proposer that is entering into the contract with the third party (see below), the proposer should be given a bit more say in cancelling a contract.
   
4. Would be interesting to know who is the person that is entering into contracts with third parties right now.

I did post about this in a separate thread but I'll post it here again:

Well Dash itself does not have a separate legal entity unless you use the Dash Foundation but I don't think this is the right entity for this since masternode voters are not always Dash Foundation members. The Dash Foundation is more about promoting Dash interests rather than controlling the budget.

Strictly speaking, the contract should be between Dash masternode owners and the Vendor but we have to realize that Evan does not have the authority to bind the rest of the Dash voters unless given authority from the masternode owners nor is it ideal for him to be able to do so. The Dash dev team in their individual capacities can be bound but a clause should be inserted in their contracts that it is always subject to the voting mechanism and fernando should be on top of it. This allows a vendor to enter into contract with somebody and have some legal certainty on the terms but yet also have something in place if the vote turns the other way since that is out of the Dash dev's control. However if the voting mechanisms are changed halfway through the contract, we have to think what happens then.​

 

[SnowHater]

In the report Evan linked Terpin makes the claim this article is the equivalent of over $14k USD of paid advertising, an article with 0 comments on some obscure website. If anyone of you is even vaguely familiar with paid advertising there's no point me saying how totally ridiculous Terpin's claim is. This is all I will say on this topic.

Here is russian site about cryptocurrencies, check out number of comments there. And there are only about 250 millions russian speaking people in the world. Most of sites from the report are unknown to me. I agree, that maybe it is because I'm not live in US. But how many of them do you know?

 

[GreyGhost]

I'd like to understand one detail that bugs me. "Dash - Transform PR Public Relations Placements Year to Date 2016" has, among the other links, these:
https://coinreport.net/dash-announces-blocksize-increase/
https://coinreport.net/conversation-evan-duffield-dan-diaz-dash/

Carlo Thomas, author of both articles, seems to be working and / or contributing to the Coin Report regularly. So does the "Placement Report" means the Coin Report would NOT cover the DASH, constantly at the #5 -- #6 place on the https://coinmarketcap.com/#USD WITHOUT Transform PR?

The same, for example, stays for the link about the block size increase, here:
http://cryptomining-blog.com/6440-dash-block-size-increase-to-2-mb-has-been-accepted/
It's a regurgitated news, and that blog seems as doing just this, regurgitating, aggregating news. Not a biggie, one can easily have automated blogs all over the Net.

Does this mean they PAY for the placement? Does this mean NOT A SINGLE of these online publications would be interested in publishing an article like
http://cointelegraph.com/news/dash-...to-bitcoin-offered-by-the-lamassu-atm-project

If so, I am puzzled. Does that than mean ALL the articles are paid for? It does not feel right.

Than, I see the UVM (unique views per month I guess, metrics). For the Coin Telegraph it is a cool 1,000,000. Based on what matrices? How can we verify the data? Google operator site:http://cointelegraph.com reveals 66,200 indexed pages which means that IF UVM of 1,000,000 means (and it does mean that) a TOTAL of the views for the whole website so in the best case scenario 1,000,000 : 66,200 = 15 views per an indexed page. So these numbers do not correspond with any quantifiable analitics and I can't take them as presented without being a bit suspicious, sorry.

I mean, should we have a REAL PR written (not a difficult task) -- and all that the DASH's team had been producing over the months and months of hard work is more than REAL -- I myself can use a service I know and for less than $200.00 per a PR place it in Yahoo News, Google News (and yes, Reuters) and over 200 MAIN stream outlets, not only into the niche online publications that use each other's content.

So, I do not feel good about it.
(disclaimer: I make my money doing Net Marketing and SEO and am considered a top-notch expert generating a tons of real, legitimate traffic for my clients. The PR industry has been hit hard with Google's penalty and it, frankly, belongs to the past gazillion frauds in that unfortunate "SEO industry" had created using nonsense PR for marketing purposes. (while saying nothing real or newsworthy) So, I am still not convinced this particular company and that approach is the best value for the money. This way or around, I will be on d10e in Amsterdam in less than 10 days and will be very interested to hearing Mr. Terpin's DASH presentation should he be there. That would give me a better idea about what they're doing. Yet, Evan's presentation on d10e would be 100x more efficient, I am sure)

Just my 2 cents. Take them at their value or shrug them at will.

 

[crowning]

I mean, should we have a REAL PR written (not a difficult task) -- and all that the DASH's team had been producing over the months and months of hard work is more than REAL -- I myself can use a service I know and for less than $200.00 per a PR place it in Yahoo News, Google News (and yes, Reuters) and over 200 MAIN stream outlets, not only into the niche online publications that use each other content.

Sounds like a no-brainer in my non-marketing ears...

 

[flare]

It's a regurgitated news, and that blog seems as doing just this, regurgitating, aggregating news. Not a biggie, one can easily have automated blogs all over the Net.

Yep, same impression here. Someone might have created a network of crypto blog websites, regurgitating news to generate reveneue from google ads.

Than, I see the UVM (unique views per month I guess, metrics). For the Coin Telegraph it is a cool 1,000,000. Based on what matrices? How can we verify the data? Google operator site:http://cointelegraph.com reveals 66,200 indexed pages which means that IF UVM of 1,000,000 means (and it does mean that) a TOTAL of the views for the whole website so in the best case scenario 1,000,000 : 66,200 = 15 views per an indexed page. So these numbers do not correspond with any quantifiable analitics and I can't take them as presented without being a bit suspicious, sorry.

Again, fully agree. The metrics are bogus and without source. I'd rather not rely on metrics provided by the online PR service provider itself, but gather them from a independent source.

Like the a common german saying goes

Never trust any statistics that you didn’t forge yourself.

Traue keiner Statistik die du nicht selbst gefaelscht hast

 

[alex-ru]

I am not completely happy with Terpin's results - but they are better than nothing (that we had before)...
Finding the best service-provider is a matter of testing and switching to more effective ideas/providers (organizing a competition). It is much more effective than doing nothing, theoretically bla-bla-bla...

 

[coingun]

The Dash N Drink is at Camosoul's. The purpose was to show it at the Miami show, it wasn't intended to be used for profits. If you have a place or event you want to bring it to display it, coordinate with Camosoul.

The Vendor-Experience proposal was not voted in.

You made some other good points.

Those weren't my comments. Those were the comments evan made on that proposal. I thought I was showing that with the (QUOTE) stuff but maybe it was misunderstood.

 

[InTheWoods]

At this point, we have to trust Evan's judgement. He's in the best position to know what needs to be done, what is working and what needs to be changed. If you don't trust his judgement, why are you holding Dash?

The moment Dash becomes a one man show will be the moment I sell out.

Evan is a talented guy that inspires confidence, which is why I've bought into Dash few years ago but he doesn't know it all and he does make mistakes just like the rest of us.

I don't believe that Evan is in the best position to make calls about everything. Some of us were running our own businesses while Evan was still an employee, before he started Dash and quit his job. Even Google's founders hired someone like Schmidt because they didn't have executive experience. Just because you're good at coding and a visionary doesn't mean you're also good at calling out Terpin's bs.

 

[duffman]

Not that I think anyone would deny your being reimbursed 50 Dash, this should probably be 2 separate proposals, no?
ie. one proposal for reimbursement, and another for the re-vamped budget system

You told it all in a laconic sentence.

 

[SnowHater]

It may seems like offtopic, but I think, in future, we can use something like coloni.io in order to fund people accordingly with their DASH-community's-merit scores.

 

[stan.distortion]

Sounds like a step forward and contracts could have a lot of potential but they need to be machine readable and maybe allow for staging, ie. funds locked when accepted but only released when targets are met, votes to continue are passed, etc.
I'm not really in favour of denominating in USD but I'd guess most would see it as a positive and a mechanism for fetching current rates and using them in functions would be useful, USD, EUR, XAU, etc.

 

[suprtickets]

The importance of positive PR shouldn't be underestimated, and IMO this contract with Transform PR is worth it's weight in gold. What's the point in having the most secure, best supported and well developed system out there if people don't know about it?

Dash can and I think will become a major player in the crypto world (if it's not already), but we will definitely need external help such as this. I'd vote this ten times over.

Chris.

 

[qwizzie]

I'm all for Budget System v2, so if this is some form of poll you can consider my voice a yes.
Two things i still see up for debate :

* should we build-in a cancellation option with contracts if certain conditions / tresholds are met ?
this can and should be discussed in this thread further

* should we continue with Terpin's PR company to spread the word for Dash or should we
use another PR company for this ?

pref i would like to see this discussed on a seperate thread, and as we seem to have some PR experience
by some community members in this area they can even think about creating an alternative PR budget proposal
or contract themself (after update 12.1 / after +/- six months)

 

[stan.distortion]

I'm all for Budget System v2, so if this is some form of poll you can consider my voice a yes.
Two things i still see up for debate :

* should we build-in a cancellation option with contracts if certain conditions / thresholds are met ?
this can and should be discussed in this thread further
....

Imho things like that should be implemented as tools for the construction of contracts rather than as defaults as that would put a more direct path between what's included in contracts and how readily accepted they are, if contracts that include cancellation conditions have a 5x better chance of passing than ones that don't then it'll become the norm to include them and/or any other conditions that voters find favourable.

 

[Geert]

So you want a thousand masternode owners to try to evaluate whether the PR company is doing a good enough job and come to a consensus? That can't work. Also, you must remember what Voltaire said...

The best is the enemy of the good.

Dash is succeeding because it's providing "good enough" solutions to privacy and instant transactions. "Good enough" wins!

 

[TroyDASH]

So you want a thousand masternode owners to try to evaluate whether the PR company is doing a good enough job and come to a consensus? That can't work. Also, you must remember what Voltaire said...

The best is the enemy of the good.

Dash is succeeding because it's providing "good enough" solutions to privacy and instant transactions. "Good enough" wins!

The Masternodes are already doing that and they are the only ones who can do that. We are dealing in the realm of unenforceable contracts. I don't see it as a good thing to have a one-way binding.

 

[TheDashGuy]

from my Slack rant:


but for the record, when the hell did a company still working on the product, start marketing and hiring PR agencies?

and if they did, are they alive today? Or did they fall apart soon after because the decision making body was flawed in said startup....

i've worked for like 10+ tech companies. I'm not so sure how many of these "dash"ers have actually ever worked in the tech field.. after all the arguments I have been seeing combined with the lack of a correct definition for dash(edited)

is really screwing it up for people and their "simple" not researched understanding of what we are all a part of right now, we keep trying to become Bitcoin, but in reality Bitcoin needs to become Dash. Dash is Bitcoin v2.

Public relations professionals work to obtain free publicity for their client. Traditionally, that's done by sending press releases to journalists containing the information needed to write a positive story about the client. Newspapers, radio and TV stations (especially local ones) are always looking for fresh story ideas, particularly those with a "human interest" angle. - http://money.howstuffworks.com/business-communications/how-public-relations-works2.htm

see how that model doesnt match up with terpins model, because he operates like its 1995 and he thinks he still selling "keyword" packages.... he would be that one guy calling you up promising you tobe on page #1 of google, then a year later is still making excuses for why you can't be there,or giving you crap keywords/rankings instead saying its the best they could muster because " the market is too saturated" or some bullshit like that. All the while he's RAKING in the profits, and bloated projects keep stacking up until our "budget" is empty month after month from desperation.(edited)

Then after you finally get your gusto to fire him for ripping you off, you are broke, and dead in the water. While the rest of the businesses focused on products and supporting the product, you were over here jumping the gun on marketing & pr. We are 2 years old, not 7. Let's do this the right way people.

And eduffield I think you need to stop listening to the "entire" community of investors, and start trying to found out who your true "advisors" are. Because Terpin has wine and dined you guys into believing his BS and you need some sort of "support"to counteract this force in the future. Money talks, we get it. But money will also sell you out in a second.

Worry about the viability of your product, NOT the bottom line. PLEASE. If you'd like to discuss this concept further with the people pushing it please come join us on the other slack.

Slack Invite: https://dashchat.herokuapp.com/

 

[GreyGhost]

Not quite sure a rant is helpful. My concerns, aside to what I outlined in my previous post also lies in a simple fact that I am not (we are not) aware what sort of promises or deals, if any, Michael Terpin has offered to the key people.

He's a serial entrepreneur which might not be bad per se, but when I see a lack of focus (to, say, TransfromPR) I start to worry. On the other hand, he's also a founder of "BitAngels," or as they say, the "world's first distributed veteran entrepreneur and angel investor group," so I ask myself:

a) is there a plan to have some venture capital coming to DASH via the BitAngels and if no,
b) why is Mr. Terpin, who loves DASH ah so much, willing to accept quite a few bucks for the work that, thus far, had been less than impressive.

He for sure knows how to sell himself but I am not quite convinced yet that he's good is really selling something like DASH. (these press mentions from the link I posted are at best dubious) TransformPR team has only five (5) people, among them Maxine Terpin, but four (4) offices in powerful sounding places like Santa Monica, New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas, like they are some humongous corporation. That alone rises a tiny red flag in me: they are trying so hard to be bigger and better than they might be.

They were a PR agancy for MaidSafe (our supposed competitor) which brings me back to the point "a" -- are TransformPR guys just a PR agency for DASH or there's another angle to it -- and the simple question: do we need them to go on Kickstarter for us? (Transform PR biggest achievement with the PR, as stated in the MaidSafe case study, "MaidSafe broke not just technology crowdfunding records, but all modern crowdfunding records, selling out its allotted tokens and raising the equivalent of about $6M USD in only about 48 hours."

And think about this achievement: "Key outreach among Bitcoin enthusiast outlets to ramp up awareness among those most likely to participate in the MaidSafe crowdsale," and tell me WTF that means? I'll talk with Roger Ver about DASH in few days and I am a no one. We have d10e in 8 days in Amsterdam. Would it be so difficult to have our own, relevant people there (or in d10e San Francisco in July this year) and present our project? We have the coolest drinks thingy already, Amanda can be there and to create a media interest is an easy thing. Just have Chewbacca bringing Ewan to the stage and voila! the twitter will go berserk -- yes, I am kidding with the Chewbacca suggestion but using the TransformPR at the moment, I am sorry to say, still seems to be insulting to my own and to our collective intelligence. Evan and DASH deserve much better.

My 2nd 2 cents. Shrug them at will.

 

[Geert]

So here is how they did direct democracy in ancient Greece:

A subset of the citizens were selected to be "legislators," and a proposal was put before them. One eloquent person was selected to argue the FOR and one eloquent person was select to argue the AGAINST. At the end of the speeches the legislators voted.

I personally don't have time to bone up on what exactly PR is, and what one can expect from a modern PR firm. I am looking for someone I can trust to figure that out for me.

 

[xdashguy]

As mentioned yesterday in this thread, I have already begun to sell my dash holdings. No reason to wait around and see what a clusterfuck one-way enforceable contracts will be. Imagine you hire a guy to do work for you for a year and he dies after 1 month. Enjoy making those extra payments dash community!