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Prioritization of fiat gateways

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eduffield

eduffield

Core Developer
Fiat access ramps development will be prioritized by the core team over PR and advertising during the next few months, starting in March. With certain small exceptions like Dash Chinese promotion in tandem with 8BTC.

For the next few months we will be focusing in partnerships, integrations and open source tools development that will facilitate better access to DASH and more options for user services to clear transactions on. Starting in March “public-awareness” budget funds are dedicated to this purpose as this is higher priority than advertising for the core team at the moment. Also, a series of back end open source tools will be made available for anyone looking to offer Dash services.

Budget prioritization, 12.1 and budget reset

The new 12.1 release will introduce new contracts functionality to DGBB. This version should be on testnet within the next month. When it is released into the mainnet all existing budgets will be cleared as part of the updating process and will need to be voted back in, on the new version.

At that point in time both the core-team and public-awareness budget proposals will be over and the core team will request new funding under a different model. We are currently working on it and more information will be released before 12.1 goes to the mainnet.

This is important to answer the question of why we are redirecting the public-awareness funds to build fiat access ramps instead voting down current proposals. The answer is, we will clear current core team proposals and will do it as part of the 12.1 release. This should give us enough time to finish preparing our new budget plan. In the meantime, the core project needs continuity so we kindly ask you to bear with us under the current model for 3 or 4 more months depending on testing results.

What are we working on?

Open Source - FIAT ACCESS RAMPS

The core team sees a need to strengthen direct FIAT access ramps to Dash in order to move into our next growth phase. We need to nurture the development of a rich ecosystem of user oriented applications.

Different user oriented applications are being created for Dash, like crypto ATMs, point of sale solutions, payment gateways, etc. Nevertheless we are currently missing one fundamental layer - all these user applications need more liquid and better FIAT – DASH exchange services to clear on, including fixed price broker services, instant FIAT exchange, bid/ask FIAT exchanges, etc.

Exchanges are part of the basic infrastructure of the crypto economy, they can be thought about as public infrastructure. Without proper FIAT exchange services is harder for an asset to be independent and find a proper valuation.

Major FIAT exchanges are primarily interested in adding assets that already have high volume and high market cap and are less willing to support projects through their growing phase. So after an asset has established itself on all the major altcoin exchanges there is a gap. We are left with a catch 22 situation, not high enough volume for the large FIAT exchanges to open a trading pair and in need of safe and proper FIAT exchanges to grow and raise our volumes to where they would be interesting to larger exchanges and institutional investment. Also, legacy exchanges do not seem to have the intention to support a safer multi-sig user experience in the short term.

Because of this Dash is partnering with well reputed Bitcoin service operators to create proper FIAT Exchange services for DASH that are trustless, open source and built with the end user in mind. For this we are funding development of a suite of backend tools and integrations that will enable DASH/FIAT trustless exchange in partnership with Deginner, Coinapult and CryptoCapital.

We have decided to redirect the public-awareness budget funds to building these access ramps for the next few months. All projects will have to be reset in more or less 3 months and all budget proposals will have to be taken out and then voted back into the new version, so we don’t want to go through this process twice. We also feel very strongly about this project and what it will represent for the Dash community

Safer FIAT Integration (CryptoCapital.co)

As part of this project, Dash will be integrated with CryptoCapital.co which is a fully licensed financial institution that allows each user to have their own private segregated fiat account. The funds that the user deposits to their own FIAT account can be made instantly available for trading on the exchange services. This is a key difference, the fact that each user will initially be sending money to themselves and then once those funds are available at CryptoCapital they can choose to move them to an exchange service and trade instantly.

Also besides exchange integration, CryptoCapital offers other services that will be available to Dash users too.

From their website:

“By providing each customer with their own private segregated fiat account, Crypto Capital is able to allow Approved Software Exchange Companies the ability to open an account with us, therefore allowing our Customers, Merchants, and Traders the ability to move Fiat Currency, USD, EUR, JPY, etc., in and out instantly within our accounts.

There will no longer be lag when transferring funds between a customer private fiat account with us and the exchange account. Any Crypto Currency sold on the exchange could be funded back directly to the customer's private account instantly and then these funds may be withdrawn from the account which can be accessed worldwide via a Visa Debit Card issued on behalf of the customer, or other traditional means of fund transfer, SEPA, EFT, ACH, Swift, etc.
  • A Private Individual/Corporate International Fiat account in your control.
  • Support for more than 30 different Fiat Currencies; USD, JPY, EUR etc. transact in your own currency.
  • The option for a Visa Debit Card with the ability to withdraw funds at any ATM worldwide, purchase goods and services on line and pay bills.
  • Several open Exchange platforms to convert Fiat Currency to any Crypto Currency and vice versa.
  • Corporate Merchant accounts for Companies that deal directly with the Crypto Currency economy and are in need for a Fiat Currency account to manage their own operations”
All of these services will be available for Dash users, merchants and service providers. For example, this will allow services like Node40 to have a safe and compliant way for users to move FIAT directly into running masternodes.

Coinapult Integration

As part of this project, Dash will be integrated to Coinapult. Coinapult is a Bitcoin wallet service provider. Coinapult offers online consumer and B2B services to a global market. It was founded in 2012 by Ira Miller and Erik Voorhees and was the first to offer bitcoin e-wallet services by email and SMS. In 2014, Coinapult was first to market with Locks, a service to help mitigate the price volatility of Bitcoin.

Ira Miller sold Coinapult in 2015 and remains an external advisor and provider of backend tools. Current CEO of Coinapult Gabriel Sukenik is leading the company to new frontiers, they recently integrated with Mycelium to offer Bitcoin locking services directly from the Mycelium app.

Coinapult will be integrating Dash to all of their existing services which include fully convertible USD accounts for DASH. Dash will be the first crypto-currency, other than Bitcoin, to be added to this service.

More partners are expected to join this consortium over time. For example, Mycelium is already integrated with Coinapult. With Dash’s being added to Coinapult too, that brings us one step closer to convertible to USD mobile accounts.

Open Source Backend Tools Development

In order to make these partnerships and integrations possible, Deginner will develop the following open source tools for DASH.

· Multi-sig wallet and cosigner hosting (e.g. Deglet, Copay)
· Broker (e.g. Coinapult, Shapeshift)
· Bid/Ask exchange
· Traditional financial services (e.g. Crypto Capital, Vogogo)
· Market makers and liquidity providers
 
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Multi-sig Wallet

A multi-signature wallet with client side key storage. Designed for white-labelling, the multi-sig wallet serves as the basis for a number of user interfaces, including the exchange. Built using React.js, the wallet will be ready to be transformed from a web app into a native app for Android, iOS, as well as a browser extension for Chrome or Firefox. It is the swiss army knife of cryptocurrency app development.

Cosigner

An automated cosigning service, this compliments the multi-sig wallet, Trustless Exchange, and other multi-signature features. Cosigning can be configured to meet custom criteria, such as request format, IP address, 2fa approval, and more.

Broker

Dash has specifically requested a broker service similar to Coinapult or Shapeshift. This will be available as an add-on to exchange, and can be made extremely low-trust from the first day of operations. Transactions will go in and out at almost the same time, but in between the broker will have temporary custody of funds. A fully trustless broker will be developed after the trustless exchange is complete.


Bid/Ask Exchange

Starting with at minimum a Dash-enabled fork of the stable wlox, the consortium will guarantee constant operation of a trustworthy exchange with a USD/DASH pair. This exchange will be integrated with banking partners, and include professional operators.

Planned for launch at the end of Q2 2016, the exchange will be a complete fresh start from wlox. The UI will be a custom fork, with the client-side key storage that entails. The exchange engine will automatically integrate with Crypto Capital, Coinapult, and others.

Tentatively planned for launch in Q4 2016, the next evolution will be a Trustless Exchange. In this version, the exchange will never have full custody of any funds, and will only host the orderbook and cosign. Both sides of the trade will be performed user to user, with each willing to trust the transaction instantly because of the exchange's cosigning. In the case of receiving Dash, InstantX will make this even easier, but the other party still needs instant trust verification.

Market Maker

Deginner's various trade bots and services will be put to work on Dash's exchange. These will ensure liquidity and a populated orderbook at all times. By default, they will initially keep roughly $10k at a time into the bots. Larger volume guarantees are possible with additional fees.

Investment

Total investment for this project is $ 42,500 USD, denominated in dollars and payable in Dash in monthly installments . The exchange rate USD/DASH will be taken on the day of each payment. This means that if the Dash prices goes up we would pay less Dash and if it goes down we would pay more Dash but the investment in USD will remain the same.

Not For Profit / No Transaction Fees

The operation of the exchange itself will be not-for-profit. Users will be charged no fees per transaction. Partners will make money through the fees they charge for FIAT deposits and withdrawals.


PERSONAL ACCOUNT
Minimum External Deposit or Withdraw $100
Hxwj49r2HnYSU94mKPSD9EVXmNXZPvAbEWQ-zGxzp9hZNcZkM1hgtwDer2suhvY9j18A4Rx5V9cVM1D2rh3IftQC29-Vs03xIIs-GcArGidZXR2VtlHr_F1qOnQxEzhrh0P9bM_0
Click to expand...


https://cryptocapital.co/fees.html

Other Benefits

All of the tools listed in the Open Source Backend Tools Development paragraph, will be put to use in the integration of Dash to the different partnering services, but will also come with the additional benefit that all tools are fully open source. Thanks to this any new crypto service that wants to use them or fork them to support Dash will be able to do so. We will have the reference exchange as a guaranteed result of the project but will also have the possibility of reusing these tools for other services in the future.

Current Status

Deginner has begun work, starting at the outside of the market and working in toward the center. The first stage (today) is connecting to the existing infrastructure by building standardized exchange clients. These are already being put to use in market making and trading bots, which will increase Dash's volume and orderbook depth. After the majority of the Dash market is covered by trading bots, a master bot will aggregate their volume and information into the fixed-price exchange service. This service will be available via API, similar to shapeshift.io, and will, at first, support a minimum of USD, BTC, and DASH.


Aggressive Timeline Estimate:

Today - Poloniex market making

1 week - Poloniex + Exmo or bitrex market making
2 weeks - Exmo, bittrex, and poloniex market making
3 weeks - unified Dash market bot
4 weeks - Dash broker service alpha
6-8 weeks - Dash broker service public beta
8-10 weeks - Integrate users of Dash broker service, like Lamassu operators


This project will also be supported by a formal contract, we are currently working on the details, should be signed and published within the next 30 days.


Additional Projects
Integration to AlphaPoint

As a result of the Satoshi Rountable we started conversations with Alphapoint. AlphaPoint is a white label exchange platform that provides a proprietary closed source exchange platform to different exchange operators around the world.


We have come to an agreement with AlphaPoint to add Dash support to their platform, this will make Dash easily available to all their exchange operators if they wanted to add a Dash pair to their exchanges. Alphapoint would notify their operators about the new Dash availability

This integration has a cost of $7500.00 USD

You can learn more about Alphapoint on their website: www.alphapoint.com

---

Thanks to Daniel Diaz for heading this project
 
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Evan,
This is fantastic, truly great things lay ahead.

I do want to say however, and this is bound to come up, that I am concerned by the core team redirecting the PR budget unilaterally. I have to say the money is going to a better purpose, but the core team should have taken the time to make a proposal (which we all know would have passed) and avoid the appearance of the budget system being a discretionary fund. I think the community was already sensitive about that from the last two budgets with no descriptions.

I hope that next time we re-purpose a budget we can go through the proper channels.

Congratulations to Daniel and everyone else for their hard work.

Pablo.
 
David said:
I agree that it would have been preferable, but the issue is how difficult it would be to vote down the public-awareness proposal and vote up a new proposal.

You could also look at this development as influencing public awareness...through the market rather than the press. After all, if we get some big fiat gateways, the public will become a lot more aware of us!
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Just to clear this point up:

It should actually have been pretty simple for the core team. Evan publicly stated in the past that the core team as a whole owns slightly under 10% of all coins in existence. If you consider the Yay votes have to be 10% over the Nay votes (only of voting nodes, not all nodes) for a proposal to pass, it should not have been that hard to down-vote the PR initiative. Or you could just start a new proposal indicating re-purposement of funds without having to down-vote anything; either option is pretty straight forward,

Anyway, like I said, I think its a great re-purposement, but we have to be careful not to become complacent.

:)

Pablo.
 
I'm a bit dubious as to how the exchange will be fully trustless if you need to be a certified money transmitter to withdraw to a bank. It is also not possible to duplicate Shapeshift's model (locking in a transaction rate for 10 minutes) without taking some kind of fee to handle market movement. I will most likely turn DashTrader.info into this service since I don't think this part of the proposal will ever come to fruition.
 
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fible1 said:
Evan,
This is fantastic, truly great things lay ahead.

I do want to say however, and this is bound to come up, that I am concerned by the core team redirecting the PR budget unilaterally. I have to say the money is going to a better purpose, but the core team should have taken the time to make a proposal (which we all know would have passed) and avoid the appearance of the budget system being a discretionary fund. I think the community was already sensitive about that from the last two budgets with no descriptions.

I hope that next time we re-purpose a budget we can go through the proper channels.

Congratulations to Daniel and everyone else for their hard work.

Pablo.
Click to expand...
I agree with your thoughts. The budget proposal system is so novel and powerful (and already slated for an overhaul LOL), that we find ourselves navigating uncharted waters. I think as the budgeting system gets more mileage on it, and as refinements come through with V12.1, the community and developers will find the proper balance of power.
 
fible1 said:
Evan,
This is fantastic, truly great things lay ahead.

I do want to say however, and this is bound to come up, that I am concerned by the core team redirecting the PR budget unilaterally. I have to say the money is going to a better purpose, but the core team should have taken the time to make a proposal (which we all know would have passed) and avoid the appearance of the budget system being a discretionary fund. I think the community was already sensitive about that from the last two budgets with no descriptions.

I hope that next time we re-purpose a budget we can go through the proper channels.

Congratulations to Daniel and everyone else for their hard work.

Pablo.
Click to expand...
Pablo,
I see your point, but as was already described by another post, it was work - not just for the core team, but for all the MN owners to go in and down-vote. All for a project that we have a high level of confidence would pass anyway.

Further, it would also be a significant risk that we might not get enough actively downvoted MN votes to kick out the PR budget within 6 days. Without getting it downvoted properly, there could have been unintended consequences (like PR still funding, the new proposal ALSO funding, which could then cause a bunch of other valuable projects to NOT receive funding).

The final rationale is that if the core team misjudged the reaction of the community, we are being transparent about the change, so the community is STILL FREE to downvote the PR proposal if it disagrees with how the money is to be spent OR the manner in which we redirected funds.

All things considered, we thought this was the better path to take given we are 6 days from budget finalization. Does that make more sense?

EDIT: We are trying our best to be thoughtful about these things!!!
 
babygiraffe said:
Pablo,
I see your point, but as was already described by another post, it was work - not just for the core team, but for all the MN owners to go in and down-vote. All for a project that we have a high level of confidence would pass anyway.

Further, it would also be a significant risk that we might not get enough actively downvoted MN votes to kick out the PR budget within 6 days. Without getting it downvoted properly, there could have been unintended consequences (like PR still funding, the new proposal ALSO funding, which could then cause a bunch of other valuable projects to NOT receive funding).

The final rationale is that if the core team misjudged the reaction of the community, we are being transparent about the change, so the community is STILL FREE to downvote the PR proposal if it disagrees with how the money is to be spent OR the manner in which we redirected funds.

All things considered, we thought this was the better path to take given we are 6 days from budget finalization. Does that make more sense?
Click to expand...

Not really, my point is that funds directed to one purpose, should not be unilaterally diverted by any custodian for any other purpose without consent. Good intentions not withstanding. Further, if you read one of me previous posts, I have addressed all of the issues you bring up as inconveniences.

Look, don't get me wrong, I am very happy with what has gone down. And frankly this issue is done for me; but I think that it is important for us as a community, to not allow the budget system to become a discretionary fund. I have no doubt you guys have the best intentions, and I think the project is more than worthwhile, but we have to be alert to what precedent we are setting.

Again, I'm happy with what has gone down, and I'm really not looking for a fight, I think I have made my ideas clear.

Pablo.
 
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David said:
Debate over "reallocation" notwithstanding, how often is it that you see a budget proposal bear results immediately? The market maker bot is going live on Polo today...that's some fast results!
Click to expand...
You might say, "InstantX results"! :grin:
 
babygiraffe said:
Pablo,
I see your point, but as was already described by another post, it was work - not just for the core team, but for all the MN owners to go in and down-vote.
...
so the community is STILL FREE to downvote the PR proposal if it disagrees with how the money is to be spent OR the manner in which we redirected funds.
Click to expand...

It's difficult to tie these 2 arguments together. It's too hard, but it's not hard?


babygiraffe said:
EDIT: We are trying our best to be thoughtful about these things!!!
Click to expand...

I appreciate that, however sometimes it's best to do things the right way. This is clearly not the right way.
 
koampapapa said:
I'm a bit dubious as to how the exchange will be fully trustless if you need to be a certified money transmitter to withdraw to a bank. It is also not possible to duplicate Shapeshift's model (locking in a transaction rate for 10 minutes) without taking some kind of fee to handle market movement. I will most likely turn DashTrader.info into this service since I don't think this part of the proposal will ever come to fruition.
Click to expand...

There is a difference between trusting a money transmitter and trusting an exchange. In one case you still have legal ownership of your money. Under the law, that is a "no trust" relationship, even if those of us in hard assets know better. Dealing in fiat money requires trusting someone, if only the monetary policy makers. Even Tether has counterparty risk, as it is stored at some financial institution. The "trustless" part, means that users aren't trusting each other, or the exchange itself.

As for fees... of course there are costs associated with making asset conversions, and managing risk. This project is to make open source software that serves as infrastructure for competing services, it isn't to create some subsidized monopoly.
 
David said:
It's half as hard to vote "no" to one proposal as it is to vote "yes" to a new one and "no" to an old one. The risk is also greater, as he said, of both the old and new getting funded and knocking other projects off.
Click to expand...

He also wrote: "All for a project that we have a high level of confidence would pass anyway," so they did not bother to go to the vote because they knew it will pass but in order to avoid a non-existent risk of voting they decided not to call for a vote by a "decentralized" voting system they designed with a purpose and instead just decided themselves... :wink:

Catch-22 at its best. Voting is overrated anyway. Just ask "democratic" "super-delegates." LOL
 
isysd My interpretation of the post is that we are creating subsidized trading bots to increase Dash's liquidity.

The trading bot requires 10k of liquidity. I assume this will be initialized in Dash? If so, this will require selling a lot of Dash, and is not a safe way to increase liquidity nor attract PR for Dash.

It would be great to know your experience in trading
 
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David said:
It's half as hard to vote "no" to one proposal as it is to vote "yes" to a new one and "no" to an old one.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's not. If you have your wallet open and synced and ready to vote entering 2 commands is just about as easy as entering 1 command.

The issue is not "ease of voting" or "best intentions" or "did ted cruz hire hookers"? It's about redirection. If masternode owners upvote a proposal for "public awareness", shouldn't it be spent doing that?

President Obama issues the following statement: "I know y'all voted for me, but as of today I am stepping down and appointing Edward Snowden as your new president." Nobody would have a problem with the end result, but shouldn't our budgeting system respect the actual votes?
 
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