Issue with the format of the proposal system

G

Gunna

Member
The proposal system seems to have an obvious flaw that could easily be manipulated to defraud the system.

From what I can see someone pays their fee, proposes an idea that is voted on and if successful moves forward and is paid.

The issue with the current system is there is no one acting as project manager to ensure deadlines are met, signing off that targets are met and meet the requirements of the proposal. These proposals are a business agreement and should be treated as such. At the moment someone could make a proposal and not deliver or deliver late and not be held accountable.

I would suggest a pool of people who either volunteer or are voted by the community to act as project managers. They are responsible for providing updates to the community on the progress of the project, they are the person the project owner needs to liaise with for questions and ultimately sign off on the progress payments.

Perhaps as compensation for their time they could earn a portion of the fee used to create the proposal depending on the amount of dash the proposal costs or based on the expected outcome to the value of the brand the proposal creates. There could be a metric system in place so proposals of importance can only go to select individuals who have proven their ability to perform the role.

A prime example of the above is the Charlie Shrem Dashpay Debit card. He was last on the forums 6 weeks ago and people are starting to wonder what is going on as their are no updates in either the forum or the DashCentral proposal page. I'm not saying he has taken off but it has been longer than the 4 weeks, A third of the project has gone and he claimed the cards would be in hand by 3 months. The domain he bought: DASHPayCard.com goes nowhere either, again i'm not accusing anyone of anything merely pointing out that if the proposal owner doesn't update the community no one knows anything.
 
I would agree. There has been confusion on where to give updates for most projects. Charlie gave some updates on slack.

As far as someone doing proposal escrow essentially there are several issues. It depends on the type.

1. Most people who are well known are busy on their own projects.
2. There is risk in holding the dash.
3. If they had a bad judgement call they lose credibility.
4. How much is their time worth on it.

I think this would be a lot easier with a 2/3 multisig on escrow payouts for milestones.
 
ampp said:
I would agree. There has been confusion on where to give updates for most projects. Charlie gave some updates on slack.

As far as someone doing proposal escrow essentially there are several issues. It depends on the type.

1. Most people who are well known are busy on their own projects.
2. There is risk in holding the dash.
3. If they had a bad judgement call they lose credibility.
4. How much is their time worth on it.

I think this would be a lot easier with a 2/3 multisig on escrow payouts for milestones.
Click to expand...

They wouldn't need to do Escrow though. Who makes the payments from treasury now?

The process could be:

New sub forum in here created for Project managers to create a thread, if required, for posting proposal updates

Project Managers are briefed on contact points within Dashcore team depending in type of information required, this can happen when they are voted in or volunteer and is not dependant on what proposal they are allocated. DashCore team keeps Projects managers up to date on contact points within the team.

1. Proposal approved
2. Project Manager assigned and touches base with proposal winner. A time line of updates should be established based on proposal length but no more than 3 - 4 weeks in between updates from proposal owner. If contact is lost, treasury is notified to withhold payment until notified.
3. Project Manager advises treasury to release initial payment, I do not think any proposal should be 100% funded from start, perhaps between 30% - 50% upfront to cover costs, this should not be a hard rule and should be up to the project manager's discretion.
4. Project manager and proposal owner discuss project and requirements of proposal progress for any future staged payments. Points of contacts within the dash team can be sent to proposal winner if required for technical information or other requirements.
5. Project manager can periodically touch base with Dash Core team and proposal owner to ensure proposal is moving forward and to get update from Core Team on potential delays from dash end. Proposal winner should already have been contacted by dash core team related to this, however this step could help some projects move forward in the event of missed emails.
6. Project manager posts updates in forum with updated information from either DashCore team\proposal winner.
7. Project Manager receives request from Proposal owner to release additional funds. based on timelines in step 3, project managers contact treasury and funds are released.
8. Steps 5 to 7 continues until proposal is completed.

I imagine this would be minimal work, perhaps 2 or 3 emails every couple of weeks and a post or 2 here. As for payment to project manager, that should be open for discussion
 
Except that nobody "makes the payments from treasury". The treasury payments are made automatically from the monthly "superblock". That is, the freshly minted coins go directly to the payment addresses of approved proposals.
 
There is an easier way. Vote no when you don't see a track record and the controls in place are not enough. It people did that, only properly set up proposals would go through and the failure rate would be much lower.

Also, vote no for proposals that promise what they can't deliver by themselves and don't have the explicit endorsement of whoever can do what they are proposing.
 
Gunna said:
I would suggest a pool of people who either volunteer or are voted by the community to act as project managers.
Click to expand...

So you do propopose to create another management layer, that MNO should trust? How different it would be from current situation? Just replacing proposal owner with project manager will leave same problems plus extra management. Pure loss.

Gunna said:
They are responsible for providing updates to the community on the progress of the project
Click to expand...

How are they responsible? In other words, if they won't provide updates (or would provide false info) what they will lose?
 
akhavr said:
So you do propopose to create another management layer, that MNO should trust? How different it would be from current situation? Just replacing proposal owner with project manager will leave same problems plus extra management. Pure loss.



How are they responsible? In other words, if they won't provide updates (or would provide false info) what they will lose?
Click to expand...

Good points on both counts.

Yes create an additional management layer that's been voted by the community to act in the communities best interest. At the moment there is nothing to stop progress payments being paused correct? There is no check that a proposal owner is in-fact working in the the proposal put forward. If they don't want to provide updates they don't have to. There is room for exploitation and when a proposal could be worth thousands its only a matter of time before it is exploited by someone, with dash increasing in price it will also attached scammers.

As an example, in a 4 month project we are just trusting the good faith of the proposal owner to deliver and it's not required that updates are posted or proof work is progressing. We are expected to wait to see if proposal owner delivers.

If the project manager is paid a portion of the proposal fee(currently 5 dash) then that is incentive to do a good job also as they have been voted in they stand to lose their trust from the community and some dash.

Tallyho said:
Except that nobody "makes the payments from treasury". The treasury payments are made automatically from the monthly "superblock". That is, the freshly minted coins go directly to the payment addresses of approved proposals.
Click to expand...

In staged payment proposals who\what initiates the additional payments?
 
Gunna said:
Yes create an additional management layer that's been voted by the community to act in the communities best interest.
Click to expand...

Kinda like elect representatives that's been voted by the community to act in the communities best interest? Oh, wait... That's called Parliament and President and government and it didn't work that well for last 100 years? ;)

Gunna said:
At the moment there is nothing to stop progress payments being paused correct? There is no check that a proposal owner is in-fact working in the the proposal put forward. If they don't want to provide updates they don't have to. There is room for exploitation and when a proposal could be worth thousands its only a matter of time before it is exploited by someone, with dash increasing in price it will also attached scammers.

As an example, in a 4 month project we are just trusting the good faith of the proposal owner to deliver and it's not required that updates are posted or proof work is progressing. We are expected to wait to see if proposal owner delivers.
Click to expand...

Yes. So vote against such proposals?

Gunna said:
In staged payment proposals who\what initiates the additional payments?
Click to expand...

So far, I'm unaware of such possibility. I might be wrong.

If your idea is to make deliverable-based payments, who and how will decide if the deliverable is actually what was promised? What if contractor disagrees? This opens a whole can of worms, so there are no easy answers.
 
So in my example I used the Dashpaycard proposal by CharlieShrem. There have been NO updates to that thread and the project ends in 12 days. We have no evidence that work is being progressed and no one is keeping an eye on it. Unless someone updates the thread it falls off the first page and get forgotten. I can see this happening time and time again. Perhaps I should stop mining and instead come up with new user accounts and slick well presented proposals for a couple dozen dash each time. Payout seems certain and no recourse for not delivering.

Just double checked the proposal and the dashpaycard was for 450 dash or $65 000

One or 2 of these a year and someone gets up to a cool 900 dash a year.......sign me up fellas, easy money!!!

Edit: Just checked www.DASHPayCard.com and its a simple picture with some text.
 
babygiraffe said: "We may want to consider full-time legal counsel to draft agreements between the network and third parties, with a clear mandate what to do with recovered funds. This could be a separate entity from the core team. The big question would be what to do with recovered funds."

And there is https://www.dashtreasury.org/

+ Biltongs PEC

So there is already stuff being done to improve the situation. And while there is probably a bunch of stuff that could be improved with the On-Chain Governance System I think this is not one of them. At least, for now, there are plenty of ways to fix this off-chain.
 
This is insane. The entire community has to ruin this guy if he doesn't deliver. If he asks for more funds the answer must be no.
 
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