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Fiat Access Gateways project description and update

kot

kot

Moderator
Masternode Owner/Operator
Dear Masternode Owners and Dash Community,

As we have observed some difficulties in understanding a general concept of the Fiat Gateways project, we would like to share a simplified version of the project description and specification (available here).

The goal of the project is to deliver a Trustless Application Framework (TAPP) and build business partnerships necessary to facilitate Dash access and availability for users through integration to crypto services that offer a bridge to FIAT or services with a large user base that can help holders of other crypto-currencies invest on Dash with less friction.
Therefore Fiat Access Gateways project contains two major parts:
  1. Software components delivery (TAPPs delivery: link)
  2. Strategic business relationship building

Software components delivery
Trustless Applications (TAPPs) are Command Line Interface (CLI) processes that can be used as building blocks for a numbers of crypto related services (e.g. exchanges, brokers, wallets,etc). Together, these provide a complete set of tools to be used for market access ramps with banking, cash, digital currency on and off-ramps by promoting their use with a network of interested partners, making it easier for more businesses to start offering Dash in their services and ultimately creating more options for Dash end users.

The assumption of the development process is to keep the connection with the Dash Evolution design in order to allow the exchange components usage of Evolution features to integrate to this same framework.

TAPPs to be delivered within the Fiat Gateways project:
  1. Shared Wallet: Simplest, most trusting implementation of a cryptocurrency hot wallet. The basic functionalities of a wallet will be storing, sending, and receiving assets. Specification link
  2. Exchange Node: Service that provides bid/ask exchange matching for a single market pair. It maintains the order-book and matches orders into trades. Specification link
  3. Broker: This component will let users convert one asset to another, using approved transaction networks (similarly to Shapeshift). Broker is build from Trade Manager, Shared Wallet + some specific broker code (10% of entire component). Specification link
  4. Trade Manager: This will provide a stable and uniform interface for exchange users to manage their trading activities. Specification: link
  5. Cosigner: An automated cosigning service to compliment Bitcore or other multi-signature wallet clients. Specification link

Strategic business relationship building
Relationships listed below are solid steps in bringing reliable business partners to the ecosystem and create additional fiat access ramps for Dash users. Project strategy is to maintain these relationships and secure more partnerships by offering the tools companies need to integrate Dash. Our on-boarding efforts are ongoing and will continue to get more business partners interested in Dash integration in their business.

Partnerships currently established and in the progress of integration:
  1. Coinapult ( https://coinapult.com/) - Broker and re-marketeer, who will implement Dash and will provide reliable web-wallet for Dash. They provide B2B and B2C services and also provide interface with fiat. Coinapult is already integrated with Myceliun - other Dash strategic partner.
  2. Cryptocapital ( https://cryptocapital.co/) - Offers fiat banking solution for crypto-currency businesses (especially exchanges like Kraken, Coinapult, BTCChina, Bitt and others). As part of the project, our tools will be interfaced with Cryptocapital to provide fiat access.
  3. TigoCTM ( https://tigoctm.com/) - ATM Operator and distributor to provide a network of ATM machines with Dash.
  4. Mycelium ( https://mycelium.com/) - Mycelium is going to the framework to provide access to the tools from the wallet, as an example the Broker multi-currency exchange capabilities.
  5. Partner A - Reputable Exchange Operator, who will be using the backend tools that are part of the framework and will be supporting Dash.
  6. Partner B - New partner of Dash on LATAM market. They offer multiple financial services on local markets: crypto-currency transfers, crypto-loaded debit cards, selling crypto currencies, phone top ups, remittances,etc.
Original text available in the following location: https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OC/Fiat+Access+Gateways+project+description
 
Let me also share the last project status update.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Lamassu
  1. Lamassu software branch
    • Software development progress: up-to-date with the original plans; not completed yet on the manufacturer side
    • Status: Alpha (due to Lamassu implementation process of multi-currency changes)
  2. “Unofficial” software branch (used by TigoCTM)
    • Lamassu is willing to install this software on newly-flashed machines, if requested by customer
Shared Wallet:
  • software development progress: 90% completed;
  • status of release: Private Beta
Exchange Node:
  • software development progress: 70% completed;
  • status of release: Private Beta
Broker:
  • software development progress: 80% completed;
  • status of release: Private Beta
Trade Manager:
  • software development progress: 90% completed;
  • status of release: Private Beta
Cosigner:
  • Software development progress: 50% completed;
  • Status of release: Alpha
  • Clarification if cosigner should co-sign the transaction only or if it should be used for admin configuration changes
*Possible status of the release: Alpha, Private Beta, Public Beta, Released


STRATEGIC BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
  • Work on the figuring out deployment plans, documenting and ensuring cross-compatibility with legacy partner systems.
  • Work on two new relationships in progress
-------------------
And the project dashboard:

FiatGatewaysDashboard-2016-08-19.PNG


-------------------
Full report and dashboard are available in the following location: https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OC/Fiat+Gateways?sortBy=name&sortOrder=ascending
 
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Also for your convenience Daniel Diaz and Ira Miller talk about the current state of the fiat gateways project, both the more technical side and the business development part.
In the first few minutes the camera is fixed on Daniel by mistake, but after that the problem is corrected and it goes from Daniel to Ira as they speak.
This video complements the written announcement above.

Enjoy watching it on our Youtube channel:

Thank you!
 
This is very good news and an excellent presentation!
Thank you for all the hard work!
Fiat access is a critical factor in acceptance.
rc
 
Thank you for this, I am happy to continue with voting yes my MNs for now.

I think the community has some additional questions stemming from the Slack channel:

  • Why was TigoCTM Registered _after_ the proposal was approved?
  • Tigo's website is very sparse and cannot buy directly from it, why not? when will this happen?
  • Who is TigoCTM. What is their network? It looks like there is no existing network?
 
Stealth923 said:
Thank you for this, I am happy to continue with voting yes my MNs for now.

I think the community has some additional questions stemming from the Slack channel:

  • Why was TigoCTM Registered _after_ the proposal was approved?
  • Tigo's website is very sparse and cannot buy directly from it, why not? when will this happen?
  • Who is TigoCTM. What is their network? It looks like there is no existing network?
Click to expand...

Hi Stealth923, TigoCTM is just one more partner no different from Coinapult or Cryptocapital. Dash has not funded any partner directly nor does it have any direct relationship with any budget proposals. All the different partners have hired/funded the GitGuild to develop a common framework as all the partners including Dash have common needs and can achieve efficiency by funding the same set of open source tools they all need to use. So the Dash network relationship is solely with the GitGuild but as a result all the partners working with the GuitGuild are interoperable and that is where integration becomes easy as Dash is already available in the framework that they will already be using for their business and that they are actually funding too. I hope that clarifies the nature of the relationship with the different partners.
 
X Posting this here as I see a lot of people have questions about this and is important to share a little history to understand:

Pablo's answer is a simple short summary but for the benefit of newcomers I would like to add some context. To fully understand the nature of this contract you have to transport yourself back to the early days of our funding system. On those early days the budget was very limited in monthly dollar amount available to invest and also liquidity of Dash in exchanges was very low. We made a commitment as a team that we would not sell any Dash on exchanges to fund projects as with the low liquidity it was a big concern at the time how the investments would affect the Dash price on the short term. Evan and me were looking for investment opportunities for the network to advance adoption and start working in this direction and we really feel Dash terminals/ATMs will play an important role in the future of the network and wanted to get started in that direction.
The first thing you need to know is that we started attempts to create a Lamassu integration in-house far before there was any contractor involved or even a funding system.

We tried unsuccessfully for months after I had contacted Lamassu back in 2014 and they had shown interest and said yes that they would support us working on an integration. We tried with internal developers for months before there was any contractor involved or even a funding system. At the time @flare helped with technical questions in the interactions with the Lamassu team @UdjinM6 worked on our first ever attempt to create an integration but his time and expertise was just more valuable with CPP work and we then assigned it to another team developer from those days Francis. This was one of the first projects that Robert @kot took over as PM before any funding systems or contractors were on sight. We were just unable to do it at the time because it required specialized knowledge of CTMs and was much more complex than what we originally estimated and we just could not do it based on volunteer contributions. At the time a few of us on the team, specially Evan and me, were supporting development with donations of masternode rewards and the funding system did not even exist yet. Some of the developers still on the team and earlier community members would remember the masternode donation program where we were trying to compensate our developers donating the equivalent of 10 masternode monthly rewards as a development slot for each developer on the program. This donation program was not successful as it was hard to get sponsors to help some generous people did step up, people like Oblox and Tungfa graciously offer to help with a few nodes, but in the end it was mostly Evan and me that ended up sponsoring this program before we had a funding system.

In fact the fact that we could not possibly scale our progress and the frustrations under the donation model lead to the development of the Governance system after our attempts to secure sponsors for donations were unsuccessful mainly because some of our investors that we approached did not like the free rider issue of funding development while other masternode operators would not be contributing and that is how the idea for a treasury came up after long discussions of how we could possibly solve this issue.

After we finally had a funding system and after being unable to produce an ATM integration for months on our own we started looking for contractors to finally produce Dash compatible ATM software that at the time was a big goal for us. We decided to hire the GitGuild (Deginner at the time) because the had a lot of experience with ATMs and had built plugins for them and had the experience to build it. Being something that we had being trying to do for months internally this was one of the first things we set out to do when we finally had a system. But again the size of our budget was small and the liquidity on exchanges was low so the best option for us at that time was to negotiate for the contractor to take a Dash contract, which was actually hard at the time it was not a given and also for the contractor to take terms/ monthly payments so it would not occupy a portion of our budget that was too large and would prevent us to do other investments at the same time. So that is the reason why we did a Dash based contract and not a USD based contract as we do now and is also the reason why we asked for terms and created a 12 month contract. We understand that as time passes the context of the situation at the time is forgotten and is easy to just multiply the current pricing back on one of our first contracts but that is just not the right way to see it and not how things went down back then. The contractor was also taking a risk with us the Dash economy was not back then what it is now. I can assure you we have made every decision at each phase looking to push the Dash network forward and with the best of intentions, our options were just extremely more limited at the time. I hope that this helps everyone that has join us along the way better understand the context. If you want more feedback from those days and how we came to those decisions you can ask any of the people that were involved at the time, to follow progress you can look at our update reports.
 
Minotaur said:
Hi Stealth923, TigoCTM is just one more partner no different from Coinapult or Cryptocapital. Dash has not funded any partner directly nor does it have any direct relationship with any budget proposals. All the different partners have hired/funded the GitGuild to develop a common framework as all the partners including Dash have common needs and can achieve efficiency by funding the same set of open source tools they all need to use. So the Dash network relationship is solely with the GitGuild but as a result all the partners working with the GuitGuild are interoperable and that is where integration becomes easy as Dash is already available in the framework that they will already be using for their business and that they are actually funding too. I hope that clarifies the nature of the relationship with the different partners.
Click to expand...

Thanks Minotaur, as Daniel is the one running with this, I would rather we get a formal response from him as there has been alot of talk about this in Slack.

Also, as there is such a large community on Slack dont you think there should be a member from the Core team present from time to time to provide communication relay into this platform??? There is alot of miscommunication and discussion without proper representation which is not a good.
 
Stealth923 said:
Thanks Minotaur, as Daniel is the one running with this, I would rather we get a formal response from him as there has been alot of talk about this in Slack.

Also, as there is such a large community on Slack dont you think there should be a member from the Core team present from time to time to provide communication relay into this platform??? There is alot of miscommunication and discussion without proper representation which is not a good.
Click to expand...

I am Daniel

Edit: You can refer people to this answers in the forum the answers are indexable and stay here permanently as you know on Slack things move really quickly and is more for live interactions.
 
@Minotaur thank you for providing all the information. I have had time to digest and I can now see that this project has expanded a lot since its initial inception. I think that having a official dash tools based solution portfolio for b2b is critical to our success.

Some people are probably still looking at the proposal name of lamassu integration and thinking that's the only deliverable and why hasn't it been done etc.

Understand there have been issues as there will always be in large scale complicated projects. I hope the team continues to provide updates and visibility to the community as this project is probably the most tracked due to the large commitment.

If anyone else from slack has more questions for Daniel post them up now or don't say you didn't have a chance!!!
 
Minotaur said:
We tried unsuccessfully for months after I had contacted Lamassu back in 2014 and they had shown interest and said yes that they would support us working on an integration. We tried with internal developers for months before there was any contractor involved or even a funding system. At the time @flare helped with technical questions in the interactions with the Lamassu team @UdjinM6 worked on our first ever attempt to create an integration but his time and expertise was just more valuable with CPP work and we then assigned it to another team developer from those days Francis. This was one of the first projects that Robert @kot took over as PM before any funding systems or contractors were on sight. We were just unable to do it at the time because it required specialized knowledge of CTMs and was much more complex than what we originally estimated and we just could not do it based on volunteer contributions. At the time a few of us on the team, specially Evan and me, were supporting development with donations of masternode rewards and the funding system did not even exist yet. Some of the developers still on the team and earlier community members would remember the masternode donation program where we were trying to compensate our developers donating the equivalent of 10 masternode monthly rewards as a development slot for each developer on the program. This donation program was not successful as it was hard to get sponsors to help some generous people did step up, people like Oblox and Tungfa graciously offer to help with a few nodes, but in the end it was mostly Evan and me that ended up sponsoring this program before we had a funding system.
Click to expand...

I hate to see so much effort put into shooting yourself in the foot.

ATMs are a band-aid for a problem DASH doesn't have. The concept of a crypt-atm is to deal with Vendors who refuse to take the risks and deal with the headache of converting crypto back to fiat. Since DASH can eliminate the risk with IX, and the crypto-to-fiat bridge can be automated; why was this ever done in the first place? Why was USDT even in the mix? This is a wildly complex solution to a problem that doesn't exist!

Even worse, it's clear that Lamassu has zero intention of doing anything with DASH.

The Olde Garde are not going to welcome their destruction. They've dug in, doubled-down. They're not going to be our friends. One of the dirty tricks is to pretend to be open and cooperative, but never actually do anything. Pretend to be nice and friendly as they watch you spin your wheels and go nowhere. You've spent almost a year on being a sucker. I'm at a point where I have to wonder if you're in on it and just sucking up funds... Maybe you really are so naive that you don't realize it, but jeez... That's a hard one to believe. You're grown men... Take the hint. If you want to do these things with limited resources, you have to 1) not waste those limited resources on things that don't need to be done 2) realize when you're being messed with. Are you really naive and don't see it? Do you not understand that this is a band-aid to a problem that other cryptos have, but DASH doesn't? Can you not deal with the real problem; Vendor Experience? Vendors are users, too! Or, they would be if BitClones weren't vendor hostile. It's not be a traditional concern for crypt since BitClones are, by design, vendor hostile. But DASH isn't. Yet you still behave as if this is a thing you don't know needs to be done... Just becaue BitClones have ignored thee primary half of the word "users" doesn't mean DASH should... In fact, this is the key to DASH being adopted where no other crypto can... It's THE ultimate, top priority that needs to be done above all else, and every time I bring it up, it's deer in the headlights, no clue what I'm talking about... Lets dick with some pointless ATMs...
 
Please don't be fooled by this fancy report. Making pretty reports with some fancy bar %s can cause you to miss the most obvious mistakes:

#1. Lamassu software is done? Really? There is no Lamassu software that uses Dash. Deginner/GitGuild/TigoCTM are the ones with software(really just Ira Miller who looks like is managing all those companies). Lamassu states they are not supporting 3rd party software.
#2. If I contact Lamassu, will they offer me a Dash option? NO. FAIL. If you ask for Dash, they respond with, "We do not support Dash". They then forward you to order through TigoCTM which has a no contact info website registered anonymously.
#3. Does Lamassu list Dash on their website? NOPE! FAIL.

These are the basics. Seriously, if you wanted to at least appear that Dash has something with Lamassu, it isn't working. The entire reason for this is to show off Dash. Is it too much trouble make a call and update the Lamassu website and tellers?

Did we forget the entire reason why Dash was cool with ATMs? It has InstantSend does not require waiting for confirmations to release cash. Was this not discussed? Did anyone ever think the BTC machines are getting shutdown because people can't wait 30 minutes for a confirmation phone text? I can't believe Lamassu wouldn't just say that InstantSend is important and do it at no cost. Obviously, it is the only feasable way to run a crypto ATM to dispense cash. They could put this on their site - no waiting to dispense cash with InstantSend.

Judging on actual deliverables with ATMs it isn't looking good; 0 delivered, 0 Dash+Lamassu marketing, 0 legitimate looking websites with ability to order a Dash ATM or even a real customer actually using a Dash ATM.

EDIT: Kot informed me that Lamassu has an agreement to offer ATMs ready with Dash. #2 Appears to be a customer service communication issue at Lamassu. Will forward more details to Kot/Daniel to correct.
 
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Dear Masternode Owners and Dash Community,
Let me share an update after the call we have had with Ira last week.

Lamassu update

As there is a lot of confusion about this project, I would like to recommend an important link for your attention. It should be very helpful to understand the project concept and it's complex environment and dependencies: https://github.com/deginner/DashLamassuProposal/wiki/MVP-and-Beyond

You can find a description of the few versions of the software that is going to be delivered during the project duration (although it was not an original scope but it was extended by the GitGuild).
  1. MVP was the original scope of the project. This is the basic version that works like the original Lamassu software. The software is already developed and its components are available in the repository. Installation process is exactly the same as described on the Lamassu support site: http://support.lamassu.is/support/home with Dash-specific components: https://github.com/deginner/DashLamassuProposal/wiki/Project .
  2. Dedicated Dash Services is the version that is being currently developed by the GitGuild. The software is released in alpha version and being installed on a few machines owned by TigoCTM and machine owned by Daniel. It is improved version of the MVP that uses components developed as a part of Fiat Gateways project (Shared Wallet and Broker).
  3. Tigo CTM Goal is the more versatile software developed for TigoCTM machines (but also fully compatible with Lamassu machines)
  4. Lamassu Next Generation is our dependency on the Lamassu side. They work on their new version of the software and do not apply/accept any external change requests. Lamassu consolidated their code (with ETH) into the alpha branch recently. We are waiting for them to release stable version in order to send a PR with Dash-related updates.

Important links:
  1. Technical documentation: https://github.com/GitGuild/gitguild_website/wiki/Git-Guild-Technical-Overview
  2. Components repository (for all versions of the software): https://github.com/CTMGuild
PS. Right after our last update in July, Git Guild shared a report (that probably went out unnoticed due to the vacation period): https://github.com/GitGuild/gitguild_website/wiki/Dash-Update-Q3-2016

Fiat Gateways
Last reporting period achievements:
  • Technical Documentation update
  • First version of the Shared Wallet software completed
  • First version of the Trade Manager software completed
Planned activities:
  • The initial CTM network fully deployed before laBITconf
  • Prepare installation instructions for the Dedicated Dash Services stack
  • Work on beta release of Dedicated Dash Services software
  • Business development
Important links (including source code):
  1. Shared Wallet: https://github.com/WalletGuild/
  2. Exchange Node: https://github.com/TradeGuild/
  3. Broker: https://github.com/TradeGuild/
  4. Trade Manager: https://github.com/TradeGuild/
  5. Cosigner: https://github.com/WalletGuild/
Other links:
  1. Deginner website (obsolete): https://github.com/deginner
  2. GitGuild website: https://github.com/GitGuild/
  3. TAPP repository: https://github.com/TAPPGuild
Project dashboard:
upload_2016-10-20_0-28-3.png
 
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