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05 Decentralised Decision Making: The Dash Masternodes Association

DeepBlue

DeepBlue

Active member
Part 05: Decentralised Decision Making: The Dash Masternodes Association

This post is to discuss the setting up of the Dash Masternodes Association (DMA).

The current problems this would address are:
1. Declining MNO contributions: The declining interest and participation of MN in governance decisions
2. Continuity Ensuring continuity in governance decisions
3. Consistent decisions that align with Dash's core values and target markets: How to make sure that we make decisions based on Dash's target markets, Dash Goals as outlined in the Dash Decentralisation Charter document. https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/...-the-dash-decentralisation-charter-ddc.50379/
4. Making Better quality decisions as MNOs do not have time to thoroughly assess proposals would delegate their keys to members of Dash Masternode Association to assess projects and make their recommendations to MNOs that have delegated their voting keys.
5. Accountability. Ability to ensure project owners, including DCG and the DIF are held properly accountable to the network for their funding spends and decisions.


Currently with the Governance system there is lack of quality participation from the great majority of Masternodes. In many cases the votes for a proposal only come on the very last day of the proposal with very few constructive comments or criticisms of a project that has been put forward for funding in the Governance system. Unfortunately this means that poor governance decisions are still being made and valuable resources are being lost to obvious dead-end projects. In addition proposal owners do not feel accountable to a diverse group of masternodes who have a huge variety of ideas on how the DASH project should move forward. The great majority of Masternodes are not contributing their business experience and constructive comments to proposal owners. As a consequence we are not getting the best use of our investment money.

Another major problem is enforcing accountability on important projects such as Dash Core Group. Currently because MNOs are contributing independently as individual entities their voice is not that strong. As a consequence DCG often just ignore MNOs that are asking for greater clarity and accountability. What would be much better is to have an appointed Masternode Association in which a small group of Masternodes with established experience in business be set up and MNOs that do not have the time to properly assess project delegate their voting keys to specific members of the Masternode Association who they feel can make a better voting decision than they have time for. This would lead to more accountability for proposal owners and better quality decisions for the network.

One very important point to make clear is that each Masternode has the ability at any time to withdraw their voting keys from anyone in the Masternode association if they do not agree with their decision making. As long as a MNO has the power to withdraw their voting key at any time then the decision making is still in a decentralised driven decision.

What is absolutely clear is that there is not sufficient quality contributions being made by MNOs in assessing projects and this has to change in order for the project to be successful in my opinion. If we do not get the Governance system working efficiently for us then we will continue to make erratic and illogical business decisions and the DASH project will, in my opinion, eventually fail. We must make changes now so that we can start making solid,business decisions to get the project performing again.

I feel that in order for the governance system to be effective we need to separate the actions of assessing projects and holding project owners accountable from approval of that assessment.

Masternodes in the appointed masternode association would be required to give their logical reasoning for why they recommend MNOs go with their recommendation for voting on a project. The logic would be clearly laid out and MNOs could then assess if they want their voting keys to stay with the MN in the DMA or not.

Once a MN in the association has clearly stated how they intended to vote and the reasons for their vote decision would be clearly written out. Once a decision was made by a MNO in the association it could not be changed before a specified time in the voting cycle so that MNOs that have delegated their voting keys have an opportunity to revoke their keys if they are not happy with the voting decision made by any MNO.

Each MNO in the DMA would declare their areas of expertise so that MNOs who want to delegate their voting keys can feel confident that decisions made in those areas will be based on actual experience and not hearsay. If necessary DashWatch could run an optional confidential audit on the MNO to ensure they have the experience they say they have.

The benefit of the DMA for the DASH network would be better quality decisions being made with still the option to withdraw voting keys if MNOs are not happy with the performance of a MNO who is voting on their behalf.

The MNO association would also be responsible for other tasks such as drafting the Dash Decentralization Charter which I posted more information on here:

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/...-the-dash-decentralisation-charter-ddc.50379/

I would be interested in what other MNOs think about the concept of setting up the Dash Masternode Association to improve our governance decision-making and to help build the Dash Decentralization Charter.
 
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I like the idea of making vote delegation easier so that incompetent MNOs could have an easy way to delegate their vote to someone more qualified. I don't think **one** single association is the right way to go. I'd rather have certain MNOs (like you) create a document that stated your interpretation and spin on Dash's mission statement, your personal core values, your personal target markets, etc. and lobby for voting keys.

Instead of an all-encompassing DMA what I would support is for some developer to build an open source vote-delegating tool (website, cli, etc) built as open source code, and built on Dash Platform. People like you could then use that tool to garner votes from those who agree with your statements. The tool would show the principle (MNO) how the delegate is voting, their rationale, etc (most of the things you recommend), and would offer an easy way for the MNO to override the delegate if needed.

So basically I like the idea, I would just want a DMA where multiple instances are spun off of common infrastructure.
 
rion said:
I like the idea of making vote delegation easier so that incompetent MNOs could have an easy way to delegate their vote to someone more qualified. I don't think **one** single association is the right way to go. I'd rather have certain MNOs (like you) create a document that stated your interpretation and spin on Dash's mission statement, your personal core values, your personal target markets, etc. and lobby for voting keys.

Instead of an all-encompassing DMA what I would support is for some developer to build an open source vote-delegating tool (website, cli, etc) built as open source code, and built on Dash Platform. People like you could then use that tool to garner votes from those who agree with your statements. The tool would show the principle (MNO) how the delegate is voting, their rationale, etc (most of the things you recommend), and would offer an easy way for the MNO to override the delegate if needed.

So basically I like the idea, I would just want a DMA where multiple instances are spun off of common infrastructure.
Click to expand...

Yes, that would be great. So the DAO hijackers wouldn't even have to worry about DASH, just get a voting slave ... and keep sucking the rewards out of the system. He could also fan, cook, and wash dishes. Also a good idea to program a little button to change the slave.

There is no need to invent, what Duffield proposed (and the relevant media and people in the DASH hierarchy, all of them subsidized by the DAO, frequently advertise and expose so as not to give up micro-contributors of money that less and less reaches the project. ... and of course never comply) were shared Mnodes supported by the protocol. That would be an important voting niche that could only vote for the general interest of the project (since it would never get support for a minority to take advantage of the Common Treasury). Not to mention bringing insights from poor economies whose support DASH likes to falsely brag about in its most demagogic propaganda and that they are little more than a decorative item for 4 sad coins.

An exercise of quality vote and decentralization continuously announced (and claimed by people who, logically, have been feeling cheated for years) ... that obviously does not interest, beyond as a highly questionable historical means of raising capital.
Better to keep the treasure and monopolize elemental rights ... while philosophizing about the divine and the human.
 
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EUsouth said:
Yes, that would be great. So the DAO hijackers wouldn't even have to worry about DASH, just get a voting slave ... and keep sucking the rewards out of the system. He could also fan, cook, and wash dishes. Also a good idea to program a little button to change the slave.
Click to expand...

@EUsouth I have a question for you. If you had a medical problem with your eye would you go to a computer programmer for treatment or would you rather go to a specialist eye doctor?


Delegation of voting keys
Let me clarify exactly my suggestion about delegated voting. MNOs that have substantial business experience (e.g. run at least one business for 10+ years) will assess the projects for viability and post their findings and recommendations. MNOs who know they don't have the experience to make sound business decisions because they simply have never run a business will assign their voting keys to an MNO that they feel best represents their views on how Dash should move forward. Once the delegated MNO has made their assessment of the project this would be published in full to the MNO network. Those MNOs that have delegated their keys can either agree or not agree. If they dont' agree they simply revoke their voting keys. That means MNOs still retain 100% control over their voting power because they can simply revoke their key at any time.

Key take home message here is MNOs retain 100% control of their voting rights and can vote anyway they want at any time so there really is nothing to be concerned about. After time however MNOs that have delegated their keys may start to see that the decisions made by the MNO with the delegated keys have been reliable and consistent and hopefully with time their reputation will grow as a reliable decision maker.

Another point is sometimes tough decisions have to be made. I have seen so many times MNOs having weak hands and not voting against something that can improve the network. Instead MNOs just vote YES every time. An example is DCG office space which I have a bone to pick on that issue. They are spending 55k for office space which has been proven to be empty on every occasion a trusted member of the Dash community has visited their office. DCG Ryan Taylor and Glenn Austin have not answered my enquiries to this issue -remaining silent. We should not tolerate this type of waste of resource and we most definitely should not tolerate silence to valid questions asked on their spending. The 5th amendment rights are not applicable in decentralized funding I'm afraid. If you get money from the network you are accountable to the network and silence is not an acceptable response to valid enquiries. We need to stand up to this type of behaviour from DCG who are the biggest spenders of the treasury funds.

There are ways for DCG to get the office space they need when they want it in a much more economical way e.g. Using a Regis booking app where they can book the office as they need it. However MNOs keep voting in again and again with no resistance at all because it is DCG. That is plain dumb. We have to stand up and set standards for how the network money is being spent and make sure it is spent properly, efficiently and without any waste. We need to be able to stand up against DCG spending when it is wasteful but it seems very few MNOs are prepared to do this. However if we did stand up even just once to block their proposal they would have no option but to modify their behaviour and spend the money more efficiently. 55k on office space when it is not being used all the time is a waste of precious resources and most definitely should not be tolerated by the MNO network.

One problem area I could see however is if MNOs, including delegated MNOs, would be able to devote enough quality time to assessing projects on their own. It would take a lot of work including interviewing each proposal owner and writing a report. Perhaps therefore the network ought to consider a professional individual or firm that can assess business investments project to do some heavy lifting in terms of assessing the projects then the delegated MNOs would use that assessment and their own interviews with the proposal owner to make their recommendations.


I, personally, do not feel that I would be able to devote enough quality time to fulfilling the role to assess all projects at the moment due to my commitments to my own business. When I am assessing projects I normal focus on just one or two that I can get to know well. I think the key thing to making a good decision on a funding request is to get to know the project as well as possible and ask many questions of the proposal owners. You can get a better feel for what the team are like behind the project. I feel that many times too much emphasis is given on "the idea" rather than the team behind the project. It also helps to have a business plan to make assessments easier.

EUsouth said:
There is no need to invent, what Duffield proposed
Click to expand...

There is always a better way of doing something. Companies or organizations that don't improve their working practises will get taken over by other organizations that do. We either evolve or have other companies evolve and eventually overtake us. If it does not work we can always revert back or make modifications so that it will work. There has been huge tremendous financial waste with the governance system backing dead end projects that were dead end from the very start. The aim is for us to find a way to increase the chances of us backing winners and the way to do that is to have more input form people that are qualified and experienced to make better assessments and decisions.
 
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