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Company Memo: We just fired Michael Terpin!

To further clarify my statement, I did understand right from the beginning that the unspent part of the budget is burnt, however, in the way that Sapereaude phrased it, it seemed like funds for that specific proposal would get burnt anyway. Evan very much impressed me with the logical way he put together his systems, so I highly doubt this is true, but I'd just like some clarity to be on the safe side.
"Burnt" is not the correct wording, since the coins will never come into existence. The result is the same though.
 
"Burnt" is not the correct wording, since the coins will never come into existence. The result is the same though.

Thank you for clearing that up flare. My apologies for using that word ("burnt" sounds like such a strong word).

The fact that the coins never comes into existence seems to be good, sound, level-headed monetary policy. Again, the whole Dash system did not fail to impress me.

Thank you to you, Evan and all the developers!
 
Thank you for clearing that up flare. My apologies for using that word ("burnt" sounds like such a strong word).

The fact that the coins never comes into existence seems to be good, sound, level-headed monetary policy. Again, the whole Dash system did not fail to impress me.

Thank you to you, Evan and all the developers!
You are welcome :)

No need to apologize, i just wanted to point out that the Dash blockchain is not burning the coins as this is a totally different process:

When you are burning coins you send them to a syntactically correct address, but for which no private key can be constructed. E.g. the counterparty burn address

https://blockchain.info/address/1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr

Coins sent to this address are unspendable forever - burnt :wink:
 
I think that this was a huge win for the Dash Community. We basically sent a very clear and strong message that we, the decentralized autonomous organisation, will not take any BS.

We also sent a very clear message that the Dash Community will not honor the contracts that we make. We also damn near landed Evan in civil court for breach of contract. Who was going to develop Dash Evolution while he was in court defending against a lawsuit?

We're not in the kiddie pool anymore, folks. We're playing in the real world, with real professional organizations who won't hesitate to hold us accountable to the agreements we make. If you don't like a proposal, vote against it. But for heaven's sake, don't breach a legally binding contract once you've directed Evan to sign it. (That's what the initial vote did. The "board of directors" ... masternode owners ... told Evan to go ahead and sign a contract with this PR firm. He did so, and then the "board of directors" changed its mind and left Evan liable.)
 
We also sent a very clear message that the Dash Community will not honor the contracts that we make. We also damn near landed Evan in civil court for breach of contract. Who was going to develop Dash Evolution while he was in court defending against a lawsuit?

We're not in the kiddie pool anymore, folks. We're playing in the real world, with real professional organizations who won't hesitate to hold us accountable to the agreements we make. If you don't like a proposal, vote against it. But for heaven's sake, don't breach a legally binding contract once you've directed Evan to sign it. (That's what the initial vote did. The "board of directors" ... masternode owners ... told Evan to go ahead and sign a contract with this PR firm. He did so, and then the "board of directors" changed its mind and left Evan liable.)
Actually, more than 50% of the voting masternodes still support Terpin-PR. If it was a normal company, this would still be funded.
 
Then perhaps the lesson from this is that Evan shouldn't make a contract in the first place if it isn't funded. Or, write the contract in such a way that it is contingent on budget approval - that way the contractor can lobby for it themselves instead of having the foundation do all of it.

I don't have any problem with burning DASH. The budget system is like a tax on the entire system in order to accomplish certain things. Why should we tax ourselves for a service we don't want?
 
Then perhaps the lesson from this is that Evan shouldn't make a contract in the first place if it isn't funded. Or, write the contract in such a way that it is contingent on budget approval - that way the contractor can lobby for it themselves instead of having the foundation do all of it.

I don't have any problem with burning DASH. The budget system is like a tax on the entire system in order to accomplish certain things. Why should we tax ourselves for a service we don't want?

Perhaps this contract (if there was an actual contract) had flexible terms in which case it was very easy to terminate it. One would think Terpin was explained how the budget works or that the risks of downvoting the proposal were taken into account.
 
Perhaps this contract (if there was an actual contract) had flexible terms in which case it was very easy to terminate it. One would think Terpin was explained how the budget works or that the risks of downvoting the proposal were taken into account.

For the record it was and always has been denominated in USD as well, someone got their facts wrong. And no, I won't say how I know this :]
 
For the record it was and always has been denominated in USD as well, someone got their facts wrong. And no, I won't say how I know this :]

What? Didn't a bunch of people say Terpin was getting paid in Dash, that he was willing to accept Dash and that it was such a cool thing working with such people that accept Dash?
 
What? Didn't a bunch of people say Terpin was getting paid in Dash, that he was willing to accept Dash and that it was a cool thing of working with such people that accept Dash?

Fabrication/Assumptions to support an argument.

Critical thinking people!
 
Then perhaps the lesson from this is that Evan shouldn't make a contract in the first place if it isn't funded. Or, write the contract in such a way that it is contingent on budget approval - that way the contractor can lobby for it themselves instead of having the foundation do all of it.

That's why he's working on a new budget system that will fix the problem (if people agree and approve it).

I also seriously doubt any PR firm worth it's salt, or any law firm or other professional services firm for that matter, is going to spend much time "lobbying" the community. The really good firms that can do really good stuff...they don't have to go begging for customers because they don't have to. It's the lousy ones that are desperate enough for customers that they come begging.

I don't have any problem with burning DASH. The budget system is like a tax on the entire system in order to accomplish certain things. Why should we tax ourselves for a service we don't want?

Technically it's a "tax" that's paid whether or not it's used. Ten percent of the block rewards are withheld for the budget system, whether or not they are ever actually allocated. I personally think it's wasteful not to spend that money, because 1100 uncreated Dash will theoretically increase the value of our holdings by 0.018%. That same amount of money, $4600 at today's valuation, can do a lot more to increase our currency's value if spent on a worthy project rather than simply not being created.
 
Fabrication/Assumptions to support an argument.

Critical thinking people!

TheDashGuy Why in Alah's name do you keep pushing this notion that there us a hidden agenda? Haven't you had enough?? See, after our agreement to disagree yesterday, I come back to the conclusion that you indeed have a very very sneaky kind of agenda. What on earth is wrong with you ??

The PR campaign is a no show. Aren't you happy with that already?

.
 
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I have no inside knowledge and no evidence to back it up, but wouldn't it be ironic if Terpin actually fired us once he realized that next month this very same thing could happen again, and that maybe he didn't feel like dealing with all the drama anymore? Probably not, but it does present an interesting possible twist which would invalidate this entire thread.

I don't have any personal experience with him or his firm, and I don't know how exclusive they are when choosing clients. I do know that there are many firms with such a good reputation and so many people who want to be their customers, that they actually turn away prospective clients and/or fire ones that cause too much trouble.
 
That's why he's working on a new budget system that will fix the problem (if people agree and approve it).

I also seriously doubt any PR firm worth it's salt, or any law firm or other professional services firm for that matter, is going to spend much time "lobbying" the community. The really good firms that can do really good stuff...they don't have to go begging for customers because they don't have to. It's the lousy ones that are desperate enough for customers that they come begging.



Technically it's a "tax" that's paid whether or not it's used. Ten percent of the block rewards are withheld for the budget system, whether or not they are ever actually allocated. I personally think it's wasteful not to spend that money, because 1100 uncreated Dash will theoretically increase the value of our holdings by 0.018%. That same amount of money, $4600 at today's valuation, can do a lot more to increase our currency's value if spent on a worthy project rather than simply not being created.

It's only worth it if the project will produce more than $4600 in value. Unfortunately it is difficult to measure the actual added value. How many people does a PR campaign need to reach for it to be a significant value-add to the health of the DASH economy?
 
We also damn near landed Evan in civil court for breach of contract. Who was going to develop Dash Evolution while he was in court defending against a lawsuit?

OK this is news. I would never cast a vote that will land Evan in trouble, and was quite shocked when you said that. I immediately went to dashwhale.org to look at the original proposal. And sadly, there wasn't a single mention of any contracts being signed. This should have been clearly communicated to us, and I'm sure everyone would've allowed the last month to run out.

We also sent a very clear message that the Dash Community will not honor the contracts that we make.

David, I read some of your other posts and from what I can tell we both think very much alike. I really don't believe that this is the message we are sending. I had the opportunity to work as an intern for a large PR firm in my younger days. You would not believe how many times I saw campaign manager laugh off smaller companies and basically screwing them over. It's all about the almighty dollar, and some companies just don't care, because the next idiot is already lined up, simply because this specific PR company had a few big multinationals lined up. The name of the game was basically, keep the big guys super happy, screw over the smaller guys.

Now I don't have eyes and ears in Michael Terpin's company, so I cannot comment on whether or not this is their modus operandi. But after reading the proposal again, desperately trying to find where the contract part is mentioned, I did run into this (I quote from the proposal)

1. Establish Dash as the first privacy-centric cryptographic currency that is based on Bitcoin software and addresses many of the problems of Bitcoin.

OK, what came from his.

2. Increase understanding of Dash’s digital asset and unique blockchain technology.


Again, nothing more than what Evan already managed to do all by his lonesome self. How can one guy have a bigger impart than an entire big PR firm?

3. Raise visibility around Dash’s technological achievements within the crypto community through a steady stream of hard news coverage, as well as begin to penetrate top-tier business and technology media through features and commentary.

Steady stream? Where?

4. Substantially increase the visibility of Dash in blogs and/or Web searches throughout the three-month campaign, as well as in social media mentions as a result of this increased coverage.

Nothing.

5. Increase understanding and demand for Dash, resulting in higher volume and price relative to bitcoin.

Price is good, volume is very low.

As a tiny member of this "board of directors" I have to say again, I'm sure a lot of us support PR. I would vote yes in an instant for more PR. I just feel that as a PR company, Transform Public Relations did an exceptionally poor job at communicating to us what exactly they were doing.

I hope we can all learn from this. We're boldly going where no man has gone before to seek out new worlds. We're bound to make a few screw-ups along the way.
 
It's only worth it if the project will produce more than $4600 in value. Unfortunately it is difficult to measure the actual added value. How many people does a PR campaign need to reach for it to be a significant value-add to the health of the DASH economy?

Say you had a MN worth 3600 USD before Terpin started working on Dash. Now imagine less than a month later the same MN was worth 4600 USD, and corrected at 4200 USD. You alone would have gained 600 bucks in three weeks after Terpin. Now extrapolate that to the entire marketcap. Wouldn't that be wonderful ?

Oh wait, that's exactly what happened. Coincidence? Well, check last year's price chart ponder on that for a second.
But you are right. What if ? We would only know in the end of such campaign, a campaign that didn't even see the stepping stones leading to the main PR campaign execution.

.
 
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