Community Q&A - April 2019

[strophy]

Each month, the ten most popular questions submitted by the Dash community at Dash Nation Discord are collected and sent to Dash Core Group for answers. The intention is to select important and well-thought out questions and filter out unpopular questions, questions that have already been answered and other noise. For January, the questions were combined with the 2019 Q1 Quarterly Call, and those that could not be answered there will be answered in writing in this extra-large question thread! Apologies for any errors in the automatic voice transcription. The submissions for April 2019 are as follows:

1. Q: After resetting the votes on DIP3 activation, the most recent treasury cycle was the first in a long time not to use all the funds. What does DCG think about this and would things be done differently in hindsight and with future migrations? (masternube)
   
   A (Fernando): While not using all funds is not necessarily bad when it is the result of masternode owners considering that there are not enough proposals that deserve funding, in this case, it was clearly the result of lack of participation. This is unfortunate, especially because it damaged several proposals that could have used those funds. Each cycle the votes come closer to the deadline, but in this particular cycle, that was not the case. This problem is part of a wider one of lowish participation from masternode owners. We believe there is some voter fatigue, probably because we have more professional MNOs and fewer hobbyists. We plan to do some research to learn more and see if/how we can increase participation.
   
   As for the future, this was a one-off that could not be avoided. Resetting the voting system is not part of the normal update procedure and there are no new instances of this happening anytime soon. In this case, we published this was going to happen in January and reached out to proposal owners who could be affected and had major proposals before the time came. We also communicated it to many active community members. The reset was done at the beginning of a cycle to minimize the impact. Dash Core Group, and a big part of the community, actively communicated about it. If at some point in the future we have a similar situation we’ll stress communication more, but the network is decentralized and there is no way to reach out to MNOs directly, so there is only so much we can do beyond communication, not only in this case but in general.
   
   
2. Does DCG have any ideas on how to win market-share away from Localbitcoins in Venezuela? With those kind of numbers for Bitcoins being transacted per week in the country, it's possible that we are getting creamed in the savings/purchasing-power market -- that people are choosing Bitcoin en mass! Further, if look at our local Dash sites (Dashous & Dashnearby), they appear to be almost dead for use in VEZ. (T. Heights)
   
   A (Ryan): We are focused on working with established organizations to expand the selection of easy ways of acquiring Dash in Venezuela. Initially I think our focus is on cooperating with exchanges that are already operating there and working with their teams to reduce friction in their current processes as well as increasing liquidity on those platforms. We're also working with companies that are expanding into the country so that we can help them to succeed and finding ways for people to buy Dash in an easy and scalable way. So that that that's been our initial focus.
   
   Of course, the goal of all of this is to close the loop on the acquiring part of the process to complement our footprint of merchants in order for people to transact. Peer-to-peer matching sites like LocalBitcoins certainly have a place. While we don't seek to operate a business like that ourselves, we would welcome the opportunity to help a company offering those services to build their business in a similar manner to the support that we provide to others. I think that that there is a place for this and over the medium term we'd love to see more liquidity in more places. I think that while our initial focus is on existing established businesses, we'd be very interested in helping someone to expand within the country.
   
   
3. Q: Has there been any discussion or research on how to improve Dash's fungibility, both functionally and time-wise? I refer to the following post, "I traced a PrivateSend" (GrandMasterDash)
   
   Q: What steps if any is DCG taking in order to improve the intractability and anonymity of PS transactions? And I‘d like to add: Is DCG doing, funding, or participating in any kind of (academic) research in breaking and improving PS security? (dashfriend)
   
   A (Ryan):
   These two questions are obviously interlinked. First of all, let me comment on that post. I believe that one of our core developers commented on that, and it seemed like it was two-round mixing that the person managed to trace. That is something that we've long said is a risk - when you use fewer mixing rounds. The default in the wallet is for four mixing rounds. The reason we default to that is that it's a minimum to get even a basic level of security, and we allow up to 16 rounds. You can always trace the actual transaction through to its origin with CoinJoin, it doesn't matter which implementation of CoinJoin you're talking about. But PrivateSend is an improvement over general CoinJoin because of the denominated inputs and outputs that are used. But you can always trace it through - the issue is the more mixing rounds and more participants that you have, the more potential sources you can trace that transaction back to. There are other factors involved as well, such as how many different starting inputs you use in order to create your denominations. So there's a number of different factors that go into the level of anonymity or privacy that you are getting with with a PrivateSend mixing transaction.
   
   We've done a lot to try to improve the experience. One of the things that we've done is we've introduced a new denomination - a smaller denomination - and that allows more mixing to take place. When you go to send the Dash to an address, it reduces the the fees that you're required to pay, because you basically pay all of the change as a fee. So we've taken a number of steps to improve it. We've made it faster to find mixing partners, and as a result we have seen a surge in the use of PrivateSend, as we went over in the metrics earlier. So as we do that, we're encouraging more participants, we're enabling more rounds, and we're making it cheaper to use. All of that encourages use, and so as the use of it increases, the privacy that it provides increases. There are limitations to CoinJoin though. If you use a lower number of mixing rounds, and you use a lower number of initial inputs into creating your denominations, and there are fewer other people mixing on the network, then the uncertainty that is introduced through that mixing process goes down, and the privacy goes down. We are taking steps to make it better but recognize that there are limitations to the technology as implemented.
   
   
4. Q: Could Core provide a fairly detailed update on the progress of Alt-36? They seem reluctant to interact directly with the Masternode community. In some respects, that is totally understandable. (solarguy)
   
   Q: I was hoping you could inform me of the status of the Dash exclusivity that was included in the Alt36 proposal to the Dash treasury. Did that timeframe start when payment was received? Or once B2C system is fully launched? Or something else? (Pete from DashCrypto)
   
   A (Ryan): Our efforts with Alt36 have continued advancing as well. As many of you are aware, they closed on their Series A funding round recently, and while Alt36 added B2B services first, their consumer facing payment solution will be introduced in the immediate future. They will be launching a private beta of the consumer payment service in Arizona at select locations on June 1st, to begin testing and bug fixing in a production environment with their dispensary clients. With the recently announced funding round, they have already doubled the size of their engineering team, and are actively building out their operations team in the areas of sales compliant marketing and support. They're also using the funds to apply for money transmission licenses in six to nine additional states in the Midwest and East Coast to expand their addressable service area. These applications are anticipated to be submitted to those states in the next thirty to sixty days. We have supported Alt36 through potential client introductions, and we've also done it through support for co-branded conferences and events of the Dash/Alt36 solution in the cannabis industry. As an example, I will be speaking on a panel with the CEO of Alt36 Ken Ramirez at Cannabis World Conference and Business Expo in New York on May 31st. That is at the Javits Convention Center in Midtown.
   
   In terms of exclusivity, let me expand in that area. The exclusivity agreement that we signed with them stipulated that there would be a three-year exclusivity period for Dash on the platform upon commercial availability of the platform. The platform became commercially available in May of 2018, which in theory would be when that exclusivity period would start under the contract. However Alt36 approached us and said our first integration wasn't fully completed and signed off by Dash Core Group until January of 2019. We didn't complete our QA and testing of the solution until January, and that's when it fully got rolled out on CannTrade's platform. CannTrade was initially deployed over the summer of 2018 but only to a select number of merchants, and remained in beta testing for a period of time. Alt36 approached us unprompted and said "look, we don't think it's fair to hold the Dash network accountable to the original contract". The intent was that we would begin exclusivity when we launched our first product and since that didn't come until January of this year, they stepped forward and said let's modify this. The exclusivity period starts January of 2019. So I thought that really spoke a lot about what their intent is. They plan to stick with Dash, they love the partnership that we have, they love the product, they love the fact that we understand payments, and they can't work with any other project. With all of that in mind, as well as recognizing what is fair, they approached us and I really appreciated them stepping forward and volunteering that. Like I said, I think it speaks volumes about the value that they place in the partnership.
   
   
5. Q: Now that we have only v0.14 to go on the roadmap and it is on testnet, do we have a target date for sending v1.0 to testnet? (wikiwako)
   
   A (Bob): Great question! That's everybody's question, so I appreciate it being asked. We do not yet have a date to share on the release of v1.0 to testnet. I like the way that it was asked though, because that is where we will be providing dates - for the initial testnet releases. We talked about that a couple of quarters ago, so as soon as we do we'll publish one. Right now what we're trying to do is just provide dates for the next major release which is 0.14, and that is in Q2. We're doing this just because we want to manage expectations properly. I think that's something that benefits all of us in the community, when we can be confident in the things that we share and that we know that we can deliver on them as well. We're we're acting a bit conservatively in that. As we develop feature functionality that is quite industry-leading and innovative, I think that's appropriate as well. Without any unforeseen shifts in priorities v1.0 will be our next release. As soon as 14.0 adoption has completed on mainnet, we will begin setting targets for v1.0, and so I'm excited to share those with you. As we watch the adoption process once we put major releases on mainnet, as we all know, we go through several weeks of adoption to ensure that that adoption is is solid that it's safe and that it's secure. We'll go through similar processes with version 14 as we did with version 13. Obviously they're not the same because we have a different feature set that's being implemented. We will continue to act swiftly but conservatively as we have those rollouts. Once we get version 14 behind us with full adoption on mainnet we'll start looking at targets for v1.0, and we're excited for that.
   
   

 

[strophy]

1. Q: Are all devs now working on 0.14, or is there also progress made on v1.0 like usernames on blockchains, GUI etc? (fuzzyduck)
   
   A (Bob): It's really a mix. We're not working in a sequential manner, we're definitely working in parallel. The core team is primarily wrapped up on 0.14, but the Dash platform team, which includes all the great development work on Dash Drive or the Layer 2 storage and the DAPI API, all of that is is 100% devoted to 1.0 development. Then across the wallet teams, it's really a split. We have two wallet teams: one is entirely working on 1.0 and the other team has kind of split doing the version 0.14 enhancements, as well as working on 1.0. So it's a good split right now. I think if the question was being asked to ensure that we were not working sequentially and waiting till we got completed work on 0.14 before we started work on 1.0, you can rest assured that there is quite a bit of work that's going on. I'll just re-emphasize that we did open up the repos that had been private prior to that, so it'd be easier for the community to be aware of the team's work as well. So if you haven't had a chance to look at those at the level of technical detail that you like, please jump on GitHub and you'll see the work that's being done in those repositories.
   
   
2. Q: Does the newly released Crypto Token Guidance from the SEC offer any clarity for the expected status of the no-action letter? (Foxtrot)
   
   A (Ryan): The newly released Crypto Token Guidance from the SEC is not substantively different than the information that Dash Core Group already provided to the SEC. The director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, William Hinman, gave a speech on June 14th, 2018 which outlined a set of factors the SEC would consider in determining the security status of digital assets. This framework was codified by the Blockchain Association in January, which has come to be known as the Hinman Test. The Hinman Test was well-understood prior to our engagement with the SEC, and we included a legal analysis against the factors from Hinman’s speech within our submissions to the SEC. Those factors address elements beyond the Howey Test, which was prior to the advent of digital assets, the measure of whether something was a security. Therefore, the recent Crypto Token Guidance is nothing more than a repackaging of the Hinman Factors, and there are no additional topics that resulted from its publishing that we feel need to be addressed, and we communicated as such to the SEC. I think that there's really nothing new there other than the fact that it organizes it perhaps a bit better than it was given in a speech in verbal format.
   
   
3. Q: In June it is expected that the G-20 countries will meet and can dictate a global agreement about cryptocurrencies. What is the current status of the agreement with Coinfirm signed in 2016? about KYC/AML for institutional. (BlockChainTech)
   
   A (Ryan): Coinfirm remains a close partner, providing compliance services to exchanges, banks, and money services businesses. We continue to introduce them to new exchanges and vice versa. In addition to Coinfirm, we also work with BlockchainIntel, which is another platform offering compliance services to the Dash ecosystem.
   
   So exchanges have a choice in provider for those services, and we're in discussions with additional potential service providers that have expressed an interest in supporting Dash. Our ecosystem of KYL/AML providers that exchanges need in order to meet compliance standards is expanding, and I think that gives those exchanges more choice. What we don't want to have happen is have exchanges not even realizing that we have those options available, then being approached by a regulator about their compliance and making the decision to shut off Dash deposits, or Dash services. We have had that happen, and in that case we reach out ask them why Dash was delisted, and usually within a week, we're able to get them back up and running. So this is something we're on the lookout for, and we are proactively beginning to communicate with exchanges about these available options and ask them: "What is your plan for compliance if regulators require you to have this service? Do you know that we have these options available?" Because by providing that information to them, it can avoid Dash services being being removed and the services that are available do allow them to comply. So there's no reason for an exchange to ever need to shut off services for Dash if regulators express concern about their compliance standards across different coins.
   
   
4. Q: Once we have Dash Drive, will we store the DAO Trust Election Results on Drive? (dashameter)
   
   A (Bob): The answer is: we can! Because that is the purpose, to extend the blockchain and build distributed apps on top of it. I would consider that to be a great project request. What we built to service the first election was something we didn't have the capacity or the capability to do in that way at that point in time. I think what we should do is put that on our list of potential development projects which can have an appropriate priority, and we can then talk about different implementation approaches and whether that's something that we want to pick up and what the benefits are. We have discussed it around the team, and architecturally it's quite feasible on Layer 2 as it is on Layer 1. There's some different approaches that you could take with it. It would be a fun project to take on, and we'll have to see how it fits in with all the other priorities.
   
   
5. Q: There have been agreements with the Arizona's University that the treasury has financed. It is known that there are problems to find developers or mathematicians in blockchain. Is there a plan to recruit talented students to incorporate them as scholarship or developers within the DCG team? (BlockChainTech)
   
   A (Ryan): We have had the opportunity to use multiple students from Arizona State University and continue to work closely with their blockchain group. As opportunities arise, we will definitely look to them as a recruiting source. To be clear, we are in a hiring freeze right now, so we don't plan to fill any roles immediately, but that option is available to us. We worked directly with students last summer on our graphene research project and the team was excellent. The project ended at the end of last summer, and we haven’t had funds for additional projects over the past school year. We are meeting with the University later today to discuss whether there is mutual interest in any additional research topics that we might be able to propose to the network.
   
   We will keep the abreast of those conversations as they develop, and if we feel that there is a good opportunity to continue collaborating with the University on research topics, we'll bring that to the network. It really is a great resource for us, the reason being we could never conduct this research for the costs that are involved on our own. Arizona State University already has a large server farm that they can run simulations in. We couldn't afford to acquire that type of resource on our own, and when we put research dollars in, those research dollars are matched from federal funding and other sources within the university to stretch our dollar. So if there are ways that we can use an investment in a grant in order to access all of those resources at a fraction of the cost, it really does a great benefit to us and it does a great benefit to ASU as well. Because when we contribute towards one of the projects or topics that they're already interested in, it just makes it more feasible for them to be able to conduct that research. So they rely on multiple funding sources, our funding does allow us to kind of steer the conversation a bit towards things that are mutually of interest to us, so it is a great partnership for both sides in my opinion. I'm sure there are some topics that are worthwhile bringing to the network for a decision, and we'll work to do that.
   

 

[strophy]

The following questions were submitted in the YouTube live chat during the call:

1. Q: Anypay claimed that they have contributed to the Dashback funds for eGifter. Can you elaborate on whether this involved DCG Bizdev as well?
   
   A (Ryan): I think there's a little bit of confusion here because there's actually multiple contributors to that program. For users that access the eGifter program through the dash.org website, those transactions are funded from two sources. One is from the profits on the sale of the gift cards themselves. Normally an amount is shared with partners that market the eGifter platform. What we've done is we've negotiated to pass that on to our users as an incentive to use Dash. We're not making a profit off of those, and the eGifter platform itself is funding a good portion of those rewards. The second source of that is, on a temporary basis, Dash Core Group has funded a small amount of bonus Dash Back for a promotion period. When we first launched this we want to encourage people to try the service, experience the fact that Dash is so much faster, it's instant. You could actually use eGifter while waiting in line at the store to get to the cashier and have your gift card by the time you get to the front of the line. We have a differentiated experience, we want people to try it for the first time, we're using some additional incentives in order to really encourage that. So you'll see some some good Dash Back promotions right now.
   
   There is a second method, and AnyPay is contributing towards that. I don't know the details of it, but if accessed directly through eGifters website, apparently right now you can get 10% Dash Back in addition to some eGifter points, though they're capping that at up to five dollars is my understanding. So there are multiple different programs. I think that eGifter is trying to make decisions about which of those programs to continue forward with. I think that there is some concern that that could cause confusion if people have a different experience on one platform versus the other. Because of the way the two programs are structured, smaller payments or smaller gift card amounts, the rewards would be better with AnyPay, and with larger amounts, because of the cap on AnyPay's program, the Dash Back funded through the profits on the gift card sales would be a larger amount. So I think that eGifter has some decisions to make on their program and how they want to move forward with it. But for now, you can get choose one type of promotion or the other, depending on which website you access the promotion through. On a temporary basis you can take advantage of both depending on which is more advantageous, but those will probably be consolidated into something more consistent depending on how you access the platform in the future.
   
   
   
2. Q: Will Evolution have smart contracts? In what languages can these be programmed? Both BCH and BTC are planning to roll out this functionality. How large an edge will this give them over Dash?
   
   A (Bob): In our MVP version of Evolution, we're rolling out data contracts where developers can create their own schemas, where we'll have rule sets to validate data and have simple logic in there to facilitate applications. The concept of smart contracts is not part of our MVP release, but will be considered after that. As far as the edge - I think we're comparing apples and oranges a bit there so I don't consider that to be a significant edge for the other projects to have smart contracts in place. The target that we're going after with developers and layer 2 data storage, and just the fact that we have a masternode tier and the second layer of storage as opposed to shoving storage into tier one is a differentiator in itself. That's a bit of the apples and oranges that I alluded to there.
   
   
   
3. Q: What concrete actions in terms of governance stuff and funding will DCG take if Evolution is not out this year?
   
   A (Ryan): Evolution is obviously a complex undertaking. I know that in the past, some very unrealistic dates were put out there, before an initial design was even complete. That set expectations that the community had and we ourselves attempted like hell to try to stick to, but at the end of the day given the complexity of the platform and and all of the features that were trying to incorporate there, it really was a pretty unrealistic timeline. As a consequence, I think that there's a bit of additional anxiety about the current timelines that we're putting out. I think that we have a much more realistic picture at this point and so I have increasing confidence that we're in a good place for delivery. That said, there's still a lot of unknowns. If thingswere to get delayed further, it would depend a lot for me on what the causes of those delays were, in terms of any type of action, of changes that might be needed. If they were of a nature that was due to underperformance or due to some other aspect that that was a failure to deliver, it would result in one set of changes, and if it were due to unforeseen issues or a new attack vector that was revealed by a community member or researcher that we needed to go address prior to launch, those would be very different stories for me and require different types of actions. It's difficult for me to answer ahead of time, but I like the trajectory that we're on right now.
   
   I think you can see from the pace of development recently that the actions that we took in the second half of 2018 after Bob joined the team have had significant impact on our delivery performance. We've had two successful releases here onto testnet in a relatively short period of time. So I'm pretty happy with where we're at, and I'm happy with the improvements that have been made. Our current approach of getting 0.14 deployed on mainnet and then making a commitment on 1.0 will be one that the community will be happy with. I think it speaks volumes that we're able to open source at this point the repositories for 1.0, and anyone can go in there and see kind of where we're at. We're at the point where we're stitching it all together, resolving final decisions and implementing bug fixes and doing this type of work. So as far as this multi-year project is concerned, we're in the homestretch. Any changes, by the way, are disruptive. You always need to weigh off the experience that's been gained versus performance issues that might exist or other things. So I'm gonna take a very pragmatic approach to this. But hopefully this question never needs to be answered. I think the best answer for all of us is we continue to move forward on 1.0, continue to deliver rapidly between deployments and bring value to the network. That's the best outcome for everybody, so that's what we're focused on.
   
   
   
   
4. Q: Would it be possible to create tokens on Evolution, as easy as it is on EOS and Ethereum? How would this work, and at what cost?
   
   A (Bob): This is a both a product as well as a design question. One is product strategy: is this what we want to do and where we want to focus? It has not been the focus of our initial releases of Evolution to enable that on the platform. However, it is feasible. So we want to continue to look at that from a product standpoint as far as prioritizing the work that needs to be put into it. Would it be as easy as? I don't see any constraints that would not allow us to make it as easy as other platforms. But again, we need to ensure that this is something that we want to enable that this is going to provide value and build it into our roadmap. It's not a part of the 1.0 MVP product plan right now.
   
   
   
5. Q: Have all Dash Core Group code repositories been open sourced?
   
   A (Bob): The answer is yes, when we talk about Evolution. There's obviously also repositories that we build for internal purposes just to "keep the lights on" in in a sense. We've built repos that we don't use anymore that were trial and error types of things, so obviously we haven't opened things that are no longer functional. That just wouldn't make sense, it would lead to a confusing experience for the community. As far as everything for layer 2 for Evo, it is public as far as repositories go.
   There are two additional projects that we've been working on: A reference DAP for the community, so developers can look at other just distributed apps that we've created and say "okay, now I know how I can build one", and then also the DashPay wallet repo has not been opened yet. That will be soon, those two components. But those are just clients that have we've been working on that we will share with the community. But all of the fundamentals, if somebody said "I want to know as much as as is out there for Evo as a developer, because I want to participate in either enhancing or utilizing that code for your own projects", yes every component is now in a public repo for Evolution.
   
   
   
6. Q: I understand that masternodes will store unfiltered content. What are the risks to the network if masternodes deem this risk too high? New German law states hate speech needs to be removed within 24 hours, for example. Since there are a lot of Dash institutional investors who are sensitive to such risks, that might lead to some exits.
   
   Q: Should masternodes be concerned about the legal implications in the event if illegal/unlawful content is used on Dash Drive. As masternodes will be hosting the layer 2 solution that makes Dash Drive service possible for decentralized network storage.
   
   We have contemplated the ability to remove specific content on a masternode-by-masternode basis. As with all platforms, there is a risk of abuse, and that risk can usually be managed quite well when a platform is young and small. But processes need to be in place when it is larger. It is an issue that we're going to need to contemplate. I don't think it's absolutely necessary for MVP, but something that we could probably address as subsequent release. Our MVP is really focused on getting the functionality out there, subsequent releases are focused on improving that. There's a number of legal questions in here as well about liability of a masternode operator. All indications that we've had so far are that masternode owners cannot be held liable for filtering every piece of content that resides on their server, in the same way that the legal opinion we got on transactions that might be illegal running across the network. It's infeasible for a masternode owner to research every transaction and determine whether or not it should be relayed or stored in a block or whether they are participating in it. It's called mens rea. The legal concept is you have to have awareness that you're doing something to facilitate illegal activity. As an example, if you're a bus driver and someone who just robbed the bank gets on your bus and you have no idea. You can't be held criminally responsible for driving the getaway vehicle. You have to have some level of awareness.
   
   I think there are some legal precedents out there that you can't hold people criminally responsible for content on these platforms if they have no ability to manually filter through the content or utilize some tool that would allow them to do that. So I don't think there's much risk here for anyone who's operating a masternode that said we want to provide tools that allow people to have greater control over what they choose to participate in. That's a difficult issue to solve, it has been solved on other platforms. There are many examples of platforms that have failed because they failed to address this and drove away mass adoption type users, because the content devolved into something that they're not happy with. The good news here is you choose which applications to install and use, and it's the application owner that can control a lot of that. So as a user, you're not necessarily going to encounter a bunch of data or information that you didn't want to if that data is being stored by another application. The application owners themselves will have a great deal of control just by the nature of the way that the network is being set up. In summary, I think there's a lot of reasons why we think that this isn't a risk. There's legal precedent for why this isn't a risk. It is a risk from a reputation standpoint, and we need to manage for that and enable masternode owners to take greater control over the things that they might want to filter out.
   
   
   
7. Q: Does Dash have liquidity providers to back exchange transactions?
   
   A (Ryan): There are liquidity providers, third party liquidity providers, that can be brought to bear. They usually charge a fee to the exchange, and exchanges sometimes need those to get an initial set of users going. We provide those introductions for partners. We have provided temporary loans in order to get an initial set of Dash or initial order book on a platform. That isn't operated by us and and we do receive the money back. So there are ways that we can help, but ultimately the market needs to be self-sustaining after an initial service launches. So those measures are usually temporary in nature. But we do what we can to try to help build the ecosystem, for sure.

 

[strophy]

1. Q: Is Dash ...... will increase network value to all investors equally. What additional value does it provide for investors if direct distribution is off the table? (related to distribution from Dash Investment Foundation)
   
   A: There is additional value here beyond just the effect on price. The other value is that if we were to do a distribution, it would require participants to that distribution to submit information about themselves. That has a time cost to it, it has an operational cost to it, and so we can avoid a lot of those costs. Frankly a lot of people just wouldn't be willing to go through the trouble, or would be unwilling to compromise their privacy in order to receive distributions. So in some senses, it would be fundamentally unfair to expect that from people. The second benefit to it is it really defers a taxable event. In the event of a distribution, that's a taxable event immediately. In the event of taking Dash off the market, it has the effect of boosting the price but that doesn't become a taxable event until the Dash is sold. So it does provide some tax deference for for folks that are holding Dash so there are those advantages as well. To be clear, we don't really anticipate doing Dash buybacks for quite some time. The fund would need to build resources for a period of time before that would become feasible, or have a large event where a previous investment liquidates, e.g. a company goes through a funding round and they're able to extract profits from it and don't have another good use for it. That's going to be a long time in the future in my opinion. Obviously this will be determined by the supervisors and the investment managers, but I imagine there's plenty of good uses of the capital that we could go deploy in a productive manner. And it would always be good to have cash on hand in case a good opportunity comes along. You don't want to be in a position where you can't make investments because you don't have cash. So it's going to be awhile before I think that builds up to a point where there's an event that justifies buying back Dash. I don't think this is anything that's going to happen immediately, and ultimately the supervisors would be the ones who decide whether or not that's appropriate. The supervisors being assigned by the network itself. I think that the network will have the ability to provide input into that process both formally and informally through the election of the supervisors and the communication that they have with the supervisors. A decision like that would be one that I would expect the supervisors to be directly involved in. I wouldn't put too much weight in that - we just wanted to make sure that a mechanism was in place that allowed for the distribution of value back to the network, and that is what we came up with within the legal constraints that we had and within the goals that we had around maintaining user privacy and not requiring that operational overhead to do a distribution.
   
   
2. Q: Do we have any plans for capturing market share in the EU and US?
   
   A (Ryan): Within the US we already have plans for the cannabis industry. The gambling or gaming market is a global market. It's not defined to any one geographic area so there's certainly plenty of sports and eSports opportunities that focus on Europe as well. We have the remittance market - we're conducting educational seminars in Spain, as an example, where a lot of Venezuelans live, educating them on how to send international remittances. We've got a tie up between Bitnovo and Dash tax to do the same type of thing online. There's a lot of different use cases that apply globally or are specific to the European market. So we are engaged in activities that grow in Europe and the United States. The remittance play in the United States is really focused on the US - Mexico corridor initially, as well as Latin America in general. So I can point to a lot of different initiatives that we have that impact Europe and the United States. eGifter is another example here, where we've launched something in the US. We'd certainly be open to a similar program in Europe, so I think that we're always open to good opportunities. Our strategies are not necessarily geographically focused, but they do enable us to grow market share on a global basis. We don't have any specific plans to go address Europe. There actually is an organization there - DACH Embassy - that has been targeting several countries in Europe as a base to grow from. Turkey may be an opportunity if their inflation situation remains elevated, for us to expand the PlayBook from Venezuela there. I think there's things we're looking at all the time and deciding whether or not we want to expand that business development footprint. I think going after more opportunities is probably going to require more resources. Our business development team are working long hours and they're working very hard on the opportunities that we already have identified as our highest priority. If we're gonna go after other opportunities it's gonna require an expansion of that team. I don't think the budget allows for that quite yet, but it's definitely something we're keeping eye on.