Financial accountability ?

[Icebucket]

This might have already been addressed before, but I did not find it.
Since DASH is a sort of a publicly owned company, should there not be a 3rd party audit on its financials. So that shareholders (masternodes) can review a unbiased review of how capital is being handled?

For example, I have no Idea how the core developer funds is being distributed and even who is being payd from that fund, or how much.

The worlds first DAO should have financial statements for shareholders to review right ?

 

[Icebucket]

Not trying to be a concerned troll here, just asking a legitimate question. Maybe Ryan Taylor can comment on this?, @babygiraffe are there any plans to make dash financials more transparent ?

 

[Ryan Taylor]

Not trying to be a concerned troll here, just asking a legitimate question. Maybe Ryan Taylor can comment on this?, @babygiraffe are there any plans to make dash financials more transparent ?

We do provide income and balance sheet statements on a quarterly basis starting with Q3 of last year. These reports were discussed on the last quarterly core team call, which you can watch on the YouTube channel. Prior to my involvement, the monies were handled in very informal fashion, and there was no consolidated information on the use of funds. The next set of accounting will be released on the 16th with the core team quarterly call.

We do not currently employ any third-party auditors, however. For now, I am ensuring that all accounting is there and can be audited starting with Q3 2016 (when I acquired the accounting software). Our software stores copies of receipts with each reimbursement for example and individual payments to each contractor. So at a future point in time, we can bring in external auditors to validate the published results.

The public reports do not disclose individual salaries, nor in my opinion should they for many reasons. These include individual rights to privacy, and the resulting "why is Dave paid more than me?" discontent. I do provide the number of full-time and part-time contractors that specific proposals fund, such as the Evolution development budget, so that people can see that we're not abusing the funding and in contrast are dramatically underpaying for the talent on the team today.

 

[Icebucket]

Thanks for your response Ryan. Im glad that there has been some thought put into financial transparency. And Im hoping that in the future it will be readily available in quarterly reports, not hidden inside some youtube video

 

[TroyDASH]

@Icebucket I think it's really two separate questions. One is specific to the dash core team -- the transparency of the team's financials as an organization. This would be more like the financial balance sheet babyg referred to from the Q3 presentaton, or if they were to hire an auditor. The other is more to do with our budget proposals, regardless of whether from core team or non-core, a system to evaluate them each on a case-by-case basis. That is, proposed projects, currently running projects, and previously funded projects. This would be more like the individual project updates section of our forum. I do think we could use (especially for masternode operators) a better system where we have people following up on proposals, compiling information that can be presented to inform the community about the status of projects, to what extent they might be considered to have delivered on goals or promises, whether or not proposal owners are reasonably responsive to inquiries, outstanding issues,...etc.

Of course I have to ping @bigrcanada --

 

[Ryan Taylor]

Thanks for your response Ryan. Im glad that there has been some thought put into financial transparency. And Im hoping that in the future it will be readily available in quarterly reports, not hidden inside some youtube video

It is available in our "Official Communication" portion of our Atlassian site. I was only referencing the video because it contains some supplemental discussion that I thought you might find useful.

Here is the document from the core team call, which contains a financial section.
https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OC/Dash+Core+Team+Q3+2016+Summary

 

[stan.distortion]

We do provide income and balance sheet statements on a quarterly basis starting with Q3 of last year. These reports were discussed on the last quarterly core team call, which you can watch on the YouTube channel. Prior to my involvement, the monies were handled in very informal fashion, and there was no consolidated information on the use of funds. The next set of accounting will be released on the 16th with the core team quarterly call.

We do not currently employ any third-party auditors, however. For now, I am ensuring that all accounting is there and can be audited starting with Q3 2016 (when I acquired the accounting software). Our software stores copies of receipts with each reimbursement for example and individual payments to each contractor. So at a future point in time, we can bring in external auditors to validate the published results.

The public reports do not disclose individual salaries, nor in my opinion should they for many reasons. These include individual rights to privacy, and the resulting "why is Dave paid more than me?" discontent. I do provide the number of full-time and part-time contractors that specific proposals fund, such as the Evolution development budget, so that people can see that we're not abusing the funding and in contrast are dramatically underpaying for the talent on the team today.

Transparency creates trust which in turn creates value and blockchains can be entirely self-auditing, can addresses be used for parts of the outlay? And could hiring be considered for tender? If the books are split up before fiat is involved then there can be competition for accounts.