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Dash Dental DAO- Early pre-proposal discussion

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VELTTE

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This is long. Thanks in advance for your time. Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Background:

I’ve been a practicing dentist in the United States for 4 years and have been a big fan of cryptocurrency for most of that time. For a long time I tried to think of a way that I could combine my career with blockchains/cryptocurrency. In 2016, some of you will remember, the DAO happened on Ethereum. This was an exciting idea and it really showed a lot of the potential for crypto (and soon after, showed a large negative side of crypto…). The basic idea was that a percentage of profits from the DAO company would go to the holders of that crypto token. The token holders were the actual owners of the company and Slock.it was the team chosen to run things and have stewardship over the funds raised. Their business idea wasn’t amazing. It was like automated locks or something that people use crypto to pay for. That idea was… fine… but the real excitement was around the DAO and its possibilities. This got me thinking about the possibilities of DAOs and it opened up a lot more options as far as ways to combine my career with crypto.

Dash’s budget and proposals:

Dash’s budget system is unique and, in my opinion, is still unmatched in crypto even with no real updates from its starting point a few years ago. While it hasn’t traditionally been used this way, the Dash budget gives the masternode network the ability to acquire assets that can be put to use to benefit all token holders. In order for something like this to happen though it needs to be mutually beneficial for the proposer and for the token holders.

I’ve been thinking about this idea for a few years now but haven’t been in the position to try and make it happen. Now that career-wise for me the time is right and crypto prices seem to have stabilized (or at least seem like they won’t keep dropping significantly), I wanted to try and get some discussion going to see what people thought. None of the details or numbers are final obviously and there are a lot of tweaks and changes that could be made to fine-tune things, so keep that in mind. I’m open to suggestions on all of it. The goal is to find a way to use my career and skills to benefit the Dash community while also benefitting enough myself that it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

The Dash Dental DAO Idea:

I'm hoping to propose the formation of a Dash Dental DAO that is governed by the masternode network. All assets owned would be technically owned by either the masternode holders or a subsidiary of the Dash core group set up to answer to masternode holders. Legally, making it a separate, unrelated part of the Dash core group seems like it would be the easiest/safest way to structure things. I want things to be as transparent and simple as possible, however, a network, or all participants in a network owning physical assets is such a new idea that I just don’t think it’s possible at this point to structure things that way. I would be hired as the steward of this Dash Dental DAO, but I would not personally own any of the assets.

A small two-chair dental office costs around $250,000 to $350,000 to start up depending on many factors including the quality of equipment, location, etc. Older practices with existing patient bases can sometimes be purchased for less than that, but including the cost to modernize things it comes out to around the same. I don’t think we want a Dash Dental office using old film x-rays and paper charts…

The Dash Dental DAO startup costs would be funded fully out of the budget. Two to three masternodes worth of Dash would also be requested. These would be run as masternodes and the monthly income ($1100/month per masternode at current price) would be used to help pay for the practice’s monthly costs such as the lease, utilities, etc. This is a larger proposal than would fit into the budget in one month, but it takes some time to do the necessary construction and things so it could easily be broken up into multiple months of funding. Just in case you’re already turned off by the amount that would be requested, remember, the assets purchased and the masternodes would be owned by the Dash Dental DAO and not me or any other person. The masternodes would never lose their value (in Dash, obviously). There would be a 12 month trial period. If the idea/practice ended up flopping the masternode network could decide to shut down the DAO. All of the physical assets and the practice would be sold, and there would be a vote held to determine what to do with that money plus the Dash from the masternodes. The most likely outcome is that it would go to the Dash core group to be held for future use. That is the worst case scenario and you still end up with the majority of the funds back, available for use. If the price of Dash changed significantly and the masternodes start producing more per month than needed, the Dash would just be held in the node until a vote took place in order to determine the desired course of action.

Benefit to dentist working at DASH Dental office (probably me for the first year at least):

With the 2-3 masternodes covering a portion of the practice’s overhead costs and no loan for the startup costs for dentist to worry about paying back, there is a lot of room to play around with the incentives. Generally in a dental practice, 50% overhead is considered pretty good. This means that an owner dentist will get to take home 50% of what he collects. Associates who go to work for other general dentists usually get 25-35% of their collections. With $2,000-$3,000ish of the monthly expenses paid for by the DAO masternodes the DASH Dental office would probably be at around only 35% overhead or even less. This means that we can offer the working dentist almost as much as a practice owner, incentivizing him to try to grow the practice, get good reviews/word of mouth, etc. The dentist would know that he was never going to get another job with this much freedom and this much pay. Offering 40-45% seems like a fair balance when the trade-off is that there is no minimum guaranteed pay for the dentist and he's not actually the owner or in charge. Many offices that offer 25%-35% for associates generally have a guaranteed minimum pay of $100,000 per year for the dentist and there is also a lot more job security when you're hired for a normal job and not a blockchain DAO experiment.

Benefits to masternode owners and general Dash holders/investors:

I hope you’ve stayed with me because this is where I think things get even more interesting. I’ve thought about a couple of different possibilities for how to make this beneficial to the everyday Dash holder and I think we could really do some interesting things.

Benefit 1- Discounts for paying using Dash. For the most part, procedures at the practice would be priced right around the normal price for dental care in the area, however due to the masternodes paying for a percentage of the overhead, those savings can be passed on to people who use Dash. 20-25% off is a pretty significant discount for a lot of dental procedures. If regular customers off the street see that they can pay for procedures using Dash for discounts, it's a safe bet that people are going to look into it. People sign up for credit cards and do all sorts of things to save just 5% on purchases. 20-25% is a strong incentive.

Benefit 2- All dental care could be free or “at cost” for Dash holders who “lock up” a certain amount of Dash. When I say “all” I mean basically everything that is offered. Obviously we couldn’t offer braces and jaw surgery and some other advanced procedures if the dentist doesn’t do those. But the basics (exams, cleanings, fillings, crowns, extractions, root canals, dentures) could all be offered just at the cost of lab fees. (If we bumped things up to 4 masternodes, the extra masternode’s monthly income could possibly cover all of these fees and it could all be offered for free). So instead of a crown costing you $1000 or whatever, it would be more like $200- the cost that the lab charges. Things like root canals that don't have lab fees could be completely free. The way this would work is that we would need to have people deposit/lock up 50 Dash (working number) for a minimum of 60 days (working timeframe) before their appointment. This would prevent people from abusing the system just to get free emergency care. After a total of 6 months the funds unlock and they get it all back. The number required to lock and qualify for benefits needs to be high enough that we don’t overload the office with free Dash patients, high enough that it actually increases demand for Dash, but low enough that it’s reasonably accessible. This is more of a benefit to long term holders who already hold Dash, but could also appeal to customers who would have paid cash for their treatment or who may just have expensive needs.

I picture this as one of the biggest/most interesting ways that Dash holders could benefit- especially in the future. If someone knew they needed a root canal and crown they could lock up their 50 Dash, take an overnight or 3 day trip to the office location for their treatment, and fly home for less than the cost they would have paid. If/when the price of Dash goes back up and the masternodes started producing more we could introduce a proposal to offer free round trip flights to the office, hotel stay, and free treatment. Or if that is voted down, the extra funds could be returned to the Dash core group, partially paid as a bonus to the staff for number of free Dash patients treated that quarter, used for advertising, etc.

Benefit 3- Any profit after overhead costs and dentist pay could be either set aside for future expansion of new offices around the country for the DAO (in order to make it more accessible for Dash holders and increase profits) or used to purchase Dash back on the open market to either hold indefinitely or burn. A single practitioner dental office can fairly easily make from $400,000-$1,000,000 gross in a year once things get going. In the first year starting up realistically it would probably be closer to $150,000-$200,000. If we’re running with the 35% overhead number and 45% to the dentist, 20% of the profit would be used to directly benefit Dash holders- and this is on top of the treatment benefits gained.

Benefit 4- All of the above described benefits increase the demand and lower the supply of Dash, which is the basic formula to raise the price, if you didn't catch the theme. So even Dash holders/investors who are too far from the office or don’t have enough dental needs to really benefit from the other possibilities gain something from this proposal. I know that Dash is worldwide and a single dental office isn’t going to be able to meet everyone’s needs. There’s not much that can be done about that at this point. But the benefits of projects like this which increase actual demand for the coin benefit all investors.

Conclusion:

So that’s the basic gist of the Dash Dental DAO proposal. In order for it to work structure-wise certain things would need to be coordinated in conjunction with the Dash Core team. I have no contacts there and haven’t run this past anyone, so maybe this is dead in the water. I just wanted to get the idea out there and see how the community felt about something like this. It’s a little unorthodox as far as proposals go, but I see a lot of benefits to something like this. This is the type of idea that I thought Evan was talking about last year when he said he wanted to see some Dash DAOs (and possibly even donate masternodes to the DAOs to use for funding). This could be an organization effectively owned by Dash that provides real physical benefits to investors and also increases demand. In a way, the free dental treatment option is almost like a new form of dental insurance with no monthly costs or payments and no fees going to anyone. As long as you hold that 50 Dash you know that the vast majority of your dental needs are taken care of. It’s pretty new and exciting.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read through this. Please let me know what you think and any ideas or suggestions you may have. Like I said before, a lot of this is up in the air. I’m at the point in my career where I’m thinking about buying or starting up a practice and the timing seems right to try something interesting like this. It seems like it could be a mutually beneficial arrangement. If this pre-proposal gets a decently positive reception I’ll move forward with planning some more of the details. Like I said before, there are a lot of moving parts and decisions to be made. This proposal will probably end up needing a white paper to get into the details about what authority the steward of the DAO has, responsibilities of the hired dentist, what can be done without masternode approval, where funds can be used, breakdowns of when financial statements will be published, more solid estimates of costs, location, etc.

One final bonus outro pitch:

I have a career that, while not directly beneficial in most typical crypto situations, can potentially produce a lot of value and be a great benefit to the community. I think it’s a rare combo at this point that I am interested enough in Dash/crypto and invested deeply enough in my dental career that I want both to progress forward. Most dentists at this stage would be nervous about the risk of trying something this new and outlandish when they could be following a pretty reliable path to set themselves up for $400k+/year careers down the line. In my view though this idea seems like a net positive for all involved parties and looks like it could be worth the risks involved. I’m also obviously pretty excited by the idea. I look forward to your feedback.
 
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I love to see new use cases. It's is an intriguing incentive structure. One thing that would have to be explored is if you are, in effect, offering health insurance. If that's true, then a lot more government involvement and oversight comes to bear. God bless the government. I know my dentist offers an "in house" insurance plan, so it can't be rocket science.

It is true that the next few budget cycles are likely to be pretty skinny. Would you be amenable to waiting until the value of Dash recovers to our Treasury could afford this size experiment?
 
Is this the sort of proposal that will become feasible when the DAO gets a vehicle for legal ownership?
 
I love to see new use cases. It's is an intriguing incentive structure. One thing that would have to be explored is if you are, in effect, offering health insurance. If that's true, then a lot more government involvement and oversight comes to bear. God bless the government. I know my dentist offers an "in house" insurance plan, so it can't be rocket science.

It is true that the next few budget cycles are likely to be pretty skinny. Would you be amenable to waiting until the value of Dash recovers to our Treasury could afford this size experiment?

Yeah, I've looked into the insurance situation a little bit and I don't think anything in the potential plans would be considered an insurance offering. It would definitely be worth a legal review though to make sure there are no issues. If the structure and everything worked well it would just kind of take the place of dental insurance for some people... While being completely different and better. Instead of paying monthly, losing a lot of money to fees and things, and then not even receiving 100% coverage on many procedures, one could just hold onto 50 Dash and know that they are covered for most of their needs.

As far as the budgets go, I don't think this would quite be ready for the big time for a few months at least. There would probably have to be a couple phases of budget requests to make sure that everything could be put into place correctly. Phase one would probably a fairly small request to make sure that the legal side of things could all be worked out. If the legal side of things looked good (another legal concern one of my colleagues raised is addressed below in an "edit") we could move on and start finalizing some details, location, planning purchases, setting up the legal structure and contracts, etc. And then the larger budget requests would start up after that for things like equipment purchases, construction costs, and the "subsidizing masternodes" or whatever you want to call them. Anyway, yes, I'm pretty flexible time-wise. I do think it's a very feasible idea even at current budget levels, but a bump up in price wouldn't hurt obviously.
 
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Edit (that's not actually an edit because the post is too long):
I ran the idea past a few colleagues and wanted to address a few of their concerns. Both of these things have been considered but I left them out of this simple pre-proposal because I didn't want to weight it down with more detail than people could handle. I will say that the colleagues I've shown it to and explained the idea to become excited at the idea and are interested in being involved.

Concern 1: Legally only a dentist can own a dental practice.

This would just take a little more legal elbow grease from the lawyers. There are corporations not owned by dentists that own dental practices, so there are definite ways to get around this and have the DAO corporation be the owner. The hired dentist may also need to somehow be made a very limited owner in order to make it work. This is one of the legal details that we'd want to make sure could be ironed out before requesting any significant amount of funds and going much further with the idea.

Concern 2: Why would they trust some random guy with all of that money?

I would be all for structuring things in such a way that the funds and the network's investment are as protected as possible. I want it set up in a way that whoever is involved would absolutely be ruining their life if they tried to run off with the masternodes or the funds for purchasing equipment or anything dumb like that. We wouldn't even need full access to the masternodes. Those could all stay in a type of escrow with the Dash core group with just the monthly income from them rolling into the Dental DAO. I would try to have this planned and executed in as transparent a manner as possible- monthly financial statements with every detail visible, exact numbers and prices for purchases, details on where all of the money is going, etc. This would all be in the legal contracts and mandated by the DAO.

Concern 3: What is the incentive for the dentist to treat the free Dash patients?

This one we have some options to deal with. At first it wouldn't be a big concern if I was the one working the office, both because I would be a good faith actor, and also because I don't think we would have too many free Dash patients early on. However, if we hired someone else we would need to put incentives and/or processes in place to make sure they don't try to take advantage of the system. It would either need to be mandated in their contracts that they prioritize the Dash patients or they would need to receive some bonus. This is something that would need to be fine tuned and adjusted as the situation changed. If the budget was so high that we're flying people in and doing all care for free, there's probably enough funding to incentivize the dentist to see those patients as a top priority.
 
I like the idea, but have a few concerns: legal and technical ones.

Legal: everything that interfaces both crypto and physical world is very interesting, potentially very profitable, and very difficult. Since there's no technical protection of the funds invested (or have I missed something?), there should be legal ones. As far as I know, the Dash Core setup is quite complicated and expensive. What are your plans with regard to legal setup? How MNO would own the Dental Dash DAO legal entity?

Technical: how do you expect to run Dental Dash DAO? Who would invest there? Only few MNO's or the Dash Treasury? If there would be profit, how it would be distributed back, since there's no technical way to pay back all MNO's who voted for your proposal.

Thanks, interested in reading your thoughts.
 
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