In an effort to provide greater transparency to the Dash community on how funds are spent, we are providing this report covering Q2 2016. Going forward (starting with July's activities), we have subscribed to an accounting package that will make financial reporting much easier going forward, and will allow us to publish quarterly financial statements. Expect the first of these more formalized reports starting in October once the current quarter is closed.
The core team proposals in Q2 included the following:
- The core team salaries
- Evolution technical specifications
- Fiat gateways project (which was funded by redirecting most of the Public Awareness budget via a vote)
- A series of Electrum hardware wallet & masternode command proposals
- Final reimbursements for dash.org domain acquisition
- Liquidity providers funding
- Dashtalk.org acquisition and migration
- WebEx subscription
- Lamassau ATM project
- d10e conference sponsorship
Once again, most of these proposals are very straightforward, and were either reimbursements for expenses outlined directly in the proposal, or were payments for services denominated in Dash. Below is some additional information on each of the budgets. In addition, Daniel and Philipp have provided some additional information on the remaining Public Awareness balance and the fiat gateways expenses.
Core Team “Salary”
The core team is currently allocated 1,176 Dash per month for “salary”. I place “salary” in quotes because at current prices, this amount is little more than a token recognition of the work being done by the core team members, many of whom transitioned to full-time status in the last few months. During the quarter, these funds were used to recognize the contributions of 18 individuals that provided substantial support to core team initiatives. This budget is fully distributed every month.
Dash.org Reimbursement
The original Dash.org reimbursement proposal was meant to run from December through March to reimburse @eduffield (Evan), @Minotaur (Daniel), and @kot (Robert) for the purchase of the dash.org domain name late last year. The approved budget was for a total of 8,400 Dash spread over 4 months (2,100 Dash per month). The January through March payments distributed as expected, but due to an error, all December budgets were not paid. In order to complete the missing payment, three final payments of 700 Dash each were distributed to complete the reimbursement during the quarter.
Liquidity Providers
The Liquidity Providers budget proposal funds the hosting of six wallets on the network – each operated by community members – which constantly mix coins. This provides users with much faster mixing times and a better user experience with our privacy features. The budget called for a reduced 48.87 Dash per month compensation for these community members in May and June. The funding address is controlled by @yidakee (Tiago) - who administers the program - and distributed from there to the other community members providing the services. The liquidity provider proposal was defunded for a couple of months in March and April due to the cost, so we resubmitted the Liquidity Provider funding request at a lower payment amount to regain support for this valuable service, and have continued to adjust the amount each month to reflect $300 per month.
Evolution Technical Specifications
To aid in the speedy development of the Evo platform, we split the development team into two parts. This project funded additional capacity on the team to deliver the Evo technical specifications more quickly.
Electrum wallet proposals
There were several Electrum wallet proposals during the quarter that provided for 1) integration of the Dash masternode commands into the Electrum wallet, 2) add support for the hardware wallets KeepKey and Trezor, and 3) reimburse Holger for the cost of hardware wallets to test the vendor's completed work. This will provide masternode owners and general users much better security over their funds. Although the software is ready and tested, it will require a protocol change to implement on mainnet. To avoid disruption to the network, we are planning to launch the Electrum wallet concurrently with the deployment of Core 12.1.
Dashtalk.org acquisition
This proposal funded the acquisition of the Dash Forum (then known as Dashtalk.org) and the software and domain registrations needed to migrate the forum to its present location at dash.org/forum.
WebEx Subscription
This proposal funded a one-year subscription to WebEx, which the team uses for all internal team meetings and will start using next quarter for quarterly community reporting & Q&A sessions.
Lamassu ATM Integration
We have a support contract with Deginner to integrate Dash into the Lamassu ATM software. The contract with Deginner is denominated in Dash, consisting of 12 monthly payments of 610.26 Dash each. Although the final payment will be in December 2016, the contract actually provides 24 months of support through the end of 2017, including the integration of Dash into any future releases of Lamassu’s code. Payments for these services are paid directly to Deginner each month and credited to our balance with them. The cost of work is debited from our balance as it is approved and implemented.
d10e Conference
This was actually a combination core team and community proposal, which included the cost for our sponsorship of d10e itself, and also partial funding to transport the InstantSend demonstration soda machine from Florida to California for the conference.
Public Awareness / Fiat gateways project
For the months April through June, much of the Public Awareness budget was repurposed (through a network vote) toward building a series of tools needed for service providers to interface with the network collectively described as the "fiat gateways project".
The fiat gateways project is extensive, so I will not seek to describe all of its components here. There is an excellent report published about a week ago the provides fairly extensive descriptions. You may find that status report here: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/fiat-access-gateways-project-description-and-update.10290/
From a financial perspective, here are the details of the proposal income and costs:
Funding:
Public Awareness / Fiat Gateways funding = 2,156 Dash / mo. x 3 months = 6,468 Dash
Public Awareness expenses:
- International outreach / translations tips funding for Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian - 200 Dash per month x 3 months = 600 Dash
- "What is Dash?" video and voiceover updates from Dashpay.io to Dash.org - 38.47 Dash (payment May 9th)
Fiat gateways expenses:
4/6 - First installment payment - 1,900 Dash
5/9 - Second installment payment - 1,980 Dash
6/6 - Final installment payment - 1,047.34 Dash
Total: 4,927.34 Dash
In addition, there was a balance of 10.02 BTC at the end of 1Q 2016 and it was stated in the Q1 report that it would be expended on a promotion with 8BTC. 10.00 BTC was paid to 8BTC during the quarter for Chinese promotion on the site through mid-August.
The Public Awareness / Fiat Gateways project had the following balances at the end of the quarter:
- 0.02 BTC
- 910 DASH
As stated earlier, we have begun tracking core team income and expenses in Q3 in a formal accounting software package, so these reports will become much more formalized in the future. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please post them here and tag me to ensure I see the question, or feel free to reach out directly.
The core team proposals in Q2 included the following:
- The core team salaries
- Evolution technical specifications
- Fiat gateways project (which was funded by redirecting most of the Public Awareness budget via a vote)
- A series of Electrum hardware wallet & masternode command proposals
- Final reimbursements for dash.org domain acquisition
- Liquidity providers funding
- Dashtalk.org acquisition and migration
- WebEx subscription
- Lamassau ATM project
- d10e conference sponsorship
Once again, most of these proposals are very straightforward, and were either reimbursements for expenses outlined directly in the proposal, or were payments for services denominated in Dash. Below is some additional information on each of the budgets. In addition, Daniel and Philipp have provided some additional information on the remaining Public Awareness balance and the fiat gateways expenses.
Core Team “Salary”
The core team is currently allocated 1,176 Dash per month for “salary”. I place “salary” in quotes because at current prices, this amount is little more than a token recognition of the work being done by the core team members, many of whom transitioned to full-time status in the last few months. During the quarter, these funds were used to recognize the contributions of 18 individuals that provided substantial support to core team initiatives. This budget is fully distributed every month.
Dash.org Reimbursement
The original Dash.org reimbursement proposal was meant to run from December through March to reimburse @eduffield (Evan), @Minotaur (Daniel), and @kot (Robert) for the purchase of the dash.org domain name late last year. The approved budget was for a total of 8,400 Dash spread over 4 months (2,100 Dash per month). The January through March payments distributed as expected, but due to an error, all December budgets were not paid. In order to complete the missing payment, three final payments of 700 Dash each were distributed to complete the reimbursement during the quarter.
Liquidity Providers
The Liquidity Providers budget proposal funds the hosting of six wallets on the network – each operated by community members – which constantly mix coins. This provides users with much faster mixing times and a better user experience with our privacy features. The budget called for a reduced 48.87 Dash per month compensation for these community members in May and June. The funding address is controlled by @yidakee (Tiago) - who administers the program - and distributed from there to the other community members providing the services. The liquidity provider proposal was defunded for a couple of months in March and April due to the cost, so we resubmitted the Liquidity Provider funding request at a lower payment amount to regain support for this valuable service, and have continued to adjust the amount each month to reflect $300 per month.
Evolution Technical Specifications
To aid in the speedy development of the Evo platform, we split the development team into two parts. This project funded additional capacity on the team to deliver the Evo technical specifications more quickly.
Electrum wallet proposals
There were several Electrum wallet proposals during the quarter that provided for 1) integration of the Dash masternode commands into the Electrum wallet, 2) add support for the hardware wallets KeepKey and Trezor, and 3) reimburse Holger for the cost of hardware wallets to test the vendor's completed work. This will provide masternode owners and general users much better security over their funds. Although the software is ready and tested, it will require a protocol change to implement on mainnet. To avoid disruption to the network, we are planning to launch the Electrum wallet concurrently with the deployment of Core 12.1.
Dashtalk.org acquisition
This proposal funded the acquisition of the Dash Forum (then known as Dashtalk.org) and the software and domain registrations needed to migrate the forum to its present location at dash.org/forum.
WebEx Subscription
This proposal funded a one-year subscription to WebEx, which the team uses for all internal team meetings and will start using next quarter for quarterly community reporting & Q&A sessions.
Lamassu ATM Integration
We have a support contract with Deginner to integrate Dash into the Lamassu ATM software. The contract with Deginner is denominated in Dash, consisting of 12 monthly payments of 610.26 Dash each. Although the final payment will be in December 2016, the contract actually provides 24 months of support through the end of 2017, including the integration of Dash into any future releases of Lamassu’s code. Payments for these services are paid directly to Deginner each month and credited to our balance with them. The cost of work is debited from our balance as it is approved and implemented.
d10e Conference
This was actually a combination core team and community proposal, which included the cost for our sponsorship of d10e itself, and also partial funding to transport the InstantSend demonstration soda machine from Florida to California for the conference.
Public Awareness / Fiat gateways project
For the months April through June, much of the Public Awareness budget was repurposed (through a network vote) toward building a series of tools needed for service providers to interface with the network collectively described as the "fiat gateways project".
The fiat gateways project is extensive, so I will not seek to describe all of its components here. There is an excellent report published about a week ago the provides fairly extensive descriptions. You may find that status report here: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/fiat-access-gateways-project-description-and-update.10290/
From a financial perspective, here are the details of the proposal income and costs:
Funding:
Public Awareness / Fiat Gateways funding = 2,156 Dash / mo. x 3 months = 6,468 Dash
Public Awareness expenses:
- International outreach / translations tips funding for Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian - 200 Dash per month x 3 months = 600 Dash
- "What is Dash?" video and voiceover updates from Dashpay.io to Dash.org - 38.47 Dash (payment May 9th)
Fiat gateways expenses:
4/6 - First installment payment - 1,900 Dash
5/9 - Second installment payment - 1,980 Dash
6/6 - Final installment payment - 1,047.34 Dash
Total: 4,927.34 Dash
In addition, there was a balance of 10.02 BTC at the end of 1Q 2016 and it was stated in the Q1 report that it would be expended on a promotion with 8BTC. 10.00 BTC was paid to 8BTC during the quarter for Chinese promotion on the site through mid-August.
The Public Awareness / Fiat Gateways project had the following balances at the end of the quarter:
- 0.02 BTC
- 910 DASH
As stated earlier, we have begun tracking core team income and expenses in Q3 in a formal accounting software package, so these reports will become much more formalized in the future. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please post them here and tag me to ensure I see the question, or feel free to reach out directly.
