I definitely like this idea. It is more or less the same as my "funded budget holders" preproposal, which got a reasonable reception. See here...
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/funded-budget-holders.13923/
As you say, we need a pilot to test it and get the details ironed out.
Do you like my suggestion that there should be broad categories with separate managers being responsible for categories they become experts in? Dash is in many countries used in many languages for many purposes.
I just read your proposal idea. We are definitely thinking along the same lines. There are some small differences in how we are proposing to improve the system, but we're working on the same challenge, and I think we can work together on this. I agree with you that specialties should emerge. I think we have to start more general and work towards specialization.
The main differences between this and DashForce are as follows
....
So really the two main areas that need addressing right now are Software projects like the one you are proposing to pay yourself for and a system to manage ATM projects so we don’t end up with 10-20 ATM proposals every month in the future. Someone would also need to follow up with all those projects and write reports on the progress etc.
However, there are already people in the community working on similar yet fully encompassing review committee type projects that are way more detailed and will be better organized to handle projects like that. I am helping consulate several people who are working on that but will remain an unpaid adviser.
Maybe you could be part of one of those jobs depending on your particular skill set and qualifications.
You say there are 5 projects to be funded in your proposal but you are planning on paying yourself 10 Dash to be one of them so it is really just 4. If you are going to be an administrator paying yourself 10 Dash you should recuse yourself from paying yourself for a still unknown software project that may or may not be needed or wanted. If you did recuse yourself from being an administrator there should be no obligation for your project to get funded over someone else. Either way that seems to create a conflict of interest and one reason i could not fully support this proposal last month when you approached me about running it or funding it or whatever. I felt you thought I would be obligated to choose your software project that you are still not open about disclosing, I was not comfortable with that.
One last thing, I still don’t understand is how this helps with decentralization as you claim. It would centralize several projects under you and you would decide who gets funded and who does not as you said in your video. There is not necessarily anything bad about that as long as you did a good job but it does centralize project development, not decentralize it. So let's be honest about that.
What qualifies you to decide who gets funded and who does not? Contest and competitions are a much better way of going about things if you want the best of the best to rise to the top in a truly decentralized fashion. Centralized planing can work but free market based decentralized solutions are better IMO.
Thanks for your response, Mastermined. It helped me understand better what DF is doing, and helped me distill and refine my own vision, and how it compares to yours.
It seems you have one main concern: redundancy. Let's assume the "worst case" scenario in terms of redundancy - that our projects are doing the exact same thing. In that case yes, we would have completely redundant projects. Is this a bad thing? I'm coming from the perspective that multiple parallel efforts are not only required, but healthy. How can we achieve decentralization without multiple people working on the same overall goals? (rhetorical questions)
I consider both of our efforts decentralizing in nature. They are both providing avenues to work for Dash. Let's start with the assumption for a moment that people want to contribute to Dash, but are neither working for Core nor submitting their own proposals (most people fall in this category, for varying reasons). People currently have two choices, submit a network proposal (very decentralized), or work for Core (very centralized). Both are challenging, which leads people to do neither. Your project was the first option that people had to find a middle ground. It improved the landscape for working for Dash. Before, they had two options, treasury contractor, or Core contractor. Your project gave a third option, work for DF. Working for DF is decentralizing if the likely alternative is working for Core. It's only centralizing if the likely alternative is putting in your own proposal and working directly for the MNOs (with your own treasury proposal).
So, whether adding more work options is centralizing or decentralizing depends entirely on the likely alternative of the contributors. I am arguing (based on the trends I'm seeing and foreseeing) that people are not likely (and will be even less likely in the future) to work independently as the proposal fee rises. You can combat this in two ways. Reduce the proposal fee, and/or increase the number of options for people to work. I support both, because compared to the status quo trends, both will yield greater decentralization. From this perspective, both of our projects are decentralizing.
If adding a third option to work for Dash (e.g. the addition of DF) was an improvement, which I believe it was, then adding a fourth option (e.g. the addition of community stipends) continues that trend of improvement.
All of that said, I do not believe our programs are exactly the same. My emphasis is bottom-up proposals - people submit
their ideas of what they'd like to do for Dash, just like the existing treasury system expects and operates, but without the hurdle of the high proposal fee. The work duration/load and amounts paid will reflect
stipends rather than tips. DF may move more towards this kind of a model as well, to which I say, great! Rather than discouraging others from doing this exact kind of thing, I encourage it. We can dispassionately let the MNOs decide if they like this idea through their voting. Actively fighting off new entrants seems to be an unhealthy precedent to set.
First of all, I’m sorry for you, but
the last thread didn't really end up well, a lot of drama about private conversations and so on. I'm not saying that it's your fault but, IMO, a skilled leader worth of being responsible for a Dash project, should have not fell in that trap....
Thank you for your comments, Leonidas. I looked at your comments in the other thread, and I think you are on to something. I like the idea of a crowdfunding tool customized for masternode proposals. This is exactly the kind of thing that could be funded through a custom community stipend, like I'm trying to facilitate.
If I've understood correctly, you too have concerns that my proposal will be centralizing, rather than decentralizing. Could you please look over my response to Mastermined above and follow up with any additional questions. I tried to explain this in
my video but apparently I didn't do a good enough job. I tried to boil it down more above, but let me know if something still isn't clear.
I found myself agreeing with almost everything you said, particularly that we don't need to try to centralize things, but rather, that that is the general nature of things to centralize. I think we have to be vigilant to push in the direction of decentralization. You may still disagree that my proposal will actually achieve that, but my intention is very clear that I wish to decentralize.
I found
this image very helpful to conceptualizing (de)centralization. We have
three kinds of networks. A
centralized system is very efficient. This is the top-down (or more accurately here, the center-out) model where there's point or origin on which all other points depend. This is efficient, but very prone to attack. Then we have a
de-centralized network where there are nodes of relative greater importance, but there is no identifiable single "center" of the network as a whole. Then we have a
distributed network. There is no center, and all points are generally equal with many connections to other points. This is ideal in terms of mitigating attacks due to single points of failure, but it's very complex and often inefficient.
Applied to Dash, a centralized network would be one in which Core got all the funding and paid subcontractors from their pool. A distributed network might represent the case where all work were performed by individuals putting in proposals for each scope of work they pursued. And a de-centralized network might be something in between where there are prime- and sub-contractor relationships. For better or worse, Dash is currently quite centralized. Close to 80% of the funding is funneled through Core. This produces efficient work, but it's more vulnerable to attack. At this point the only way to move towards decentralized funding is for more people to take DF's example and set up nodes of funding separate from the Core team. The more people/groups that do this the more our system will approach a healthy distribution. Our current makeup might be okay for now, but we should start heading in the right direction. Eventually I would hope that Core would start using less than 80% of the budget, but in order for that to happen new groups need to step up and compete. This "competition" is not adversarial or malicious, nor is it "redundant"; it's necessary for de-centralization. It's collaborative competition, and it's very healthy, especially considering the status quo and the trends.
I think I might be preaching to the choir here. Based on your comment I suspect you understand this stuff already. I just wanted to try to show how my proposal tries to achieve our (I believe) shared goals.
In the interest of saving time I'll be blunt, but please don't take that to be rude. Just trying to maximize efficiency in figuring out how you will best approach this proposal, so I'll ask no-nonsense hypotheticals that any good proposal should have no problem answering.
(DISCLAIMER: I didn't watch the new video. I doubt many have. I'm going on just what I've read, and you should assume the MNOs will do the same since not everyone is in a place where they can sit through a long video rather than quickly reading something)....
How does this improve efficiency?...
What are your goals and criteria? ...
Why would anyone trust you? ...
*Better solution: Purpose-specific sub-DAO projects* ...
There ya have it. Again, sorry for the bluntness in the interests of clarity and time saving. If the proposal is solid, you should have absolutely no issue addressing each of these questions/points. Good luck!
DesertLynx, I'll be blunt too. I like your work. A lot. See, blunt doesn't always have to be negative or skeptical.
Really though, thanks for being blunt. I would be more offended if you weren't. Who likes to be treated like a softy? I don't need sugar coating.
Watch the damn video if you want to have an effective counter-argument
If you don't have time for the video, you could have read the
document that I prepared, linked to in my original post, and explicitly described as being a more succinct way to get pretty much the same content as the video. I've commented to others above about efficiency vs. de-centralization. The are somewhat competing goals, so MNOs have to strike a balance. My motivation (goals) are spelled out in the video, the document, and comments above. I addressed the trust issue near the end of in my video (escrow funds with a trusted community member until I've delivered results, unfortunately there's no way to do it at the protocol level, so we deal with trust until that's improved). To briefly answer your questions: Why me? Because I'm one of the only ones with the balls to submit such a proposal I guess. Record of trust in the community? I'm trying to build one. Professional project management skills? Yes. I have been an energy efficiency engineer for almost a decade, which involved a lot of project management and subcontracting. LinkedIn? I have a profile, but I don't actively manage it, relative waste of time in my estimation. Qualifications? Yes, I'm qualified.
Regarding being "purpose-specific": I'm not opposed to moving in the direction of specialization, but I'm not going to come out of the gate thinking I know everything, and know what projects people want to do, and dictate exactly what the "best practices" are. I'm focussing on bottom-up innovation, but I'm willing to give ideas, direction, and general guidance or responses when asked (for specific things by specific people). The fact that you, and many others don't have the time to watch the video or read the document tells me I've probably actually given
too much information at this point, not too little. I don't blame people for not putting time into my proposal, really. People are busy. I tried to slim down the information to the basics in order to respect people's time, not hide details. I wouldn't assume that I don't have more information than I'm subjecting my audience to.
So, people are generally asking to be treated the same way they treat others, so I'm guessing you appreciated my blunt reply. I'm usually a little more cordial and less blunt with people whom I have just met for the first time, but hey, I'm just trying to speak your language. And to bring this chiasmus to a close I'll reemphasize, I like your writing, and I look forward to more of it in the future, long live Dash Force!
