Pre-Proposal: Reassign Sam Westrich, remove position as CTO

GrandMasterDash

GrandMasterDash

Well-known member
Masternode Owner/Operator
It does not come easy to write this but I think Sam Westrich needs to be reassigned within DCG and have his role as CTO removed. I believe this is necessary for dash to get back on track and focus on Dash the Payment Network. Dash Platform "Evolution" needs to be sidelined and have it's own proposal for funding. Let us have a clear distinction between work that is done for Dash Platform and that of Dash the Payment Network.

For the past few years, too much focus - the vast majority in fact - has been on Dash Platform "Evolution" at the expense of making Dash the best payment network. Many recent updates to Dash core were born of necessity to Dash Platform. And while some of these additions are good for payments, they were either late backports from bitcoin, such as P2SH, or required in Dash Platform, such as Deterministic InstantSend. Ask yourself, to a payment network, is Deterministic InstantSend a game changer to the end user? Was it a higher priority than, say, how long it took to implement one dash proposals?

An important question to ask is, in all the years Dash Platform has been in development, could DCG of implemented a username system and / or pay-to-phone-number as a stop-gap and then migrated it to Dash Platform later? Sure, it wouldn't of been so decentralized but something is better than nothing. This is called lost opportunity cost.

Things have gotten so bad within DCG, they are now seriously considering a new type of masternode to specifically handle Dash Platform transactions. Now, the way I see it, for the past few years, DCG has been working on an altcoin, funded by Dash the Payment Network, using our chain, and then riding on the back as a side-chain. Really, they could of just built an altcoin called Platform Evolution and had their own chain and funding. Indeed, if dash masternodes were never going to be good enough for them, why didn’t they just branch off and create their own coin? The dash community has been royally shafted and we really need to get back on track as a payment network, and the only way we're going to do this is by sidelining the CTO who's only interest is working on an altcoin called Platform Evolution.

If any of this rings true to you, you should act now by voting Yes.
 
I agree with everything you said, in fact I've been saying the same thing of Evo for years now. We have definitely neglected our bread and butter and overspent on something that resembles vapourware, but I don't agree with your proposed action at this point in time. I am not prepared to throw the monkey out with the bath water just yet.
 
xkcd said:
I agree with everything you said, in fact I've been saying the same thing of Evo for years now. We have definitely neglected our bread and butter and overspent on something that resembles vapourware, but I don't agree with your proposed action at this point in time. I am not prepared to throw the monkey out with the bath water just yet.
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I purposely stopped short of firing Sam. The option is there for someone else to take the lead. I'd rather Sam stay but he might perhaps choose to resign instead, or just simply ignore the outcome of this proposal.

I understand, after all this time and effort, it seems extremely difficult to give up. Like a final admission that it's never going to work out. But equally, better late than never.

Put it this way, if we continue on this course with separate nodes for Platform Evolution, there is a risk that dash will get forked to focus on Dash the Payment Network. Isn't one of the goals of governance to avoid such situations? If a fork emerges, whom will DashDirect side with? - a notarization network with high performance nodes, or a pure play payment network? Sam says both can coexist but, to be honest, it's all looking like a hijacking.

We have very little work to show on the payment side. Delayed Thorchain and no presence on DEX's such as decred. Almost no presence in DeFi and no presence for loans or payments in NFTs. To be a payment network we need to be ubiquitous, not years of sacrifice on an ever changing, never ending dream.

Radical products are high risk products. The pay-off is boom or bust. We exchanged years of off-topic development only to be told they were working on a platform requiring different nodes. I don't want to focus so much on "high performance nodes" but rather, it is the cherry on top to say, "all this time we were mis-leading you and developing an altcoin. We never had enough resources to work on our primary mission to be digital cash".
 
Problem is that it is not just Sam that is for the High Performance Masternode solution which sacrifice decentralization & security for much lower Platform fees, a lot of developers (5 so far in an ongoing poll) are also in favor of the High Performance Masternode solution / centralization.

Source : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/...gh-performance-nodes.53374/page-3#post-232226

Removing Sam from his position as CTO of DCG would not really fix this mess, where an u-turn on Dash ongoing decentralisation efforts over the years is now publicly contemplated by several devs.

I am honestly not sure how we can get out of this mess and have everyone moving in the same direction again.
And the timing of this all is just terrible.

I wonder if the devs understand what a hot potato the centralization topic is for any crypto community, specially the Dash community.
 
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