Suggestions For The Dash Community - Bounties

[CaptainPicard]

I'm a long time Dash Hodler. Recently I've been more involved in the EOS community, which intends to have a funding mechanism similar to Dash.

I posted the following comment in the EOS governance chat group to try to help them learn from some of the trial and error I've witnessed in this community. So I thought I'd post this message here as well, in case it sparks some consideration from the Dash community:
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I'll preface by saying I have a lot of respect for the Dash Core team and its community.

We are all making these things up as we go along and nobody knows the "right" way to fund a decentralized open source global community.

Overall I think the fact that Dash actually had funds set aside for development and funding proposals set it apart from most crypto projects (in a good way).

Without getting too specific, I think in general Dash did not recognize its primary value proposition, or if it did, it has not so far been well executed by the proposal funding mechanism. Part of this stems from the lack of a unified vision - everyone has their own idea of what Dash is and how to grow it, so you have hundreds of people pushing the project in different directions with no real cohesive strategy.

For example, funding local meetups seemed a good idea, but there'd be only a few people doing that globally, so instead of funding an army of meetup leaders all over the world, Dash has a handful. Giving every new meetup attendee $5 free dash for example (or free pizza or whatever) would only cost $500,000 per month to fund 1000 cities. Dash's budget this month is $1.6 million so it's not out of range. Target just 100 large cities and you're down to $50,000/month which is well within the Dash budget. As it is there isn't a Dash meetup presence in every major city because there weren't proposals from 100 cities.

Same with ATMs. Instead of rolling out a global network of 1000 Dash ATMs (for example) they had 2-3 people working on this, because those were the only ones who proposed to do it.

My numbers could be wrong as far as how many people are working on what but from what I could tell, it was a much smaller number than it needed to be or could have been.

Come to think of it, a better strategy might have been a bounty system: Eg. If you set up an ATM or a meetup in your city, get x Dash. Or if you sign up a merchant to accept dash, get x Dash. Instead Dash is funding colorful proposals in a dozen different directions.

Plenty more ideas like that were not executed en mass, so they did a little bit of everything (like expensive ads on airplanes or sports events) that weren't really effective.

Just my opinion... They certainly have achieved a lot, just not unified in their efforts (ironically, due to the 'decentralized' nature of the project).
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The more I thought about it, the more I thought Dash might benefit from the bounty idea... establish certain actions that are beneficial and easy to verify and can be easily replicated across the world. This concept might help Dash make better use of its funding mechanism.

Sorry if this has already been suggested and debated here, I've haven't been following this forum for quite some time.

 

[Arthyron]

Funny you should mention this, @CaptainPicard , we've actually been discussing this very thing among the Masternode Owners and ways to possibly implement it on a technical level. For the present, the Dash voting/treasury/etc protocol will probably remain as it is without a significant campaign to convince the majority of MNOs to make alterations to it. However, one of the proposals we recently funded is an upgraded treasury/proposal/voting/etc platform called Dash Nexus: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/dashnexus-strv

So we're discussing leveraging this new platform to potentially implement a bounty system. The real trick will be figuring out a way to honor the Dash network protocols by having a proposal put up that will allow the treasury to disburse funds that can be allocated toward bounty fulfillment. Assuming we could find a way to facilitate a vote on behalf of one of these bounties (including someone putting up the fee to put the proposal up), obviously these funds would need to be held in trust in some manner. Of course that opens up various vectors of potential abuse and fraud. There are a few ways to potentially implement a more trustless system, but we're a ways off cobbling one of those together. So rest assured, we're working toward this, slowly but surely.

I agree with your other points as well. Dash means and has come to mean so many different things to so many different people over time, and we haven't settled or coalesced on a particular, singular vision, and this is further complicated by the decoupling of the DAO and the Core Team which more and more begin to function as distinct entities (as per Evan's original vision). We're definitely going to have to hone and focus our vision and organize better when it comes to voting and funding. The difficult part of all of this is that in order to do that, the MNOs need to be on the same page, and right now only a fraction of us are actively engaged, and of those who are engaged, many of us are engaged across multiple, disparate platforms, so not everyone gets every memo, not everything participates in every discussion. Many MNOs don't take the time to review every proposal and only vote on particular ones that strike their fancy, etc. There are three things coming along relatively soon that should *hopefully* help change that:

1. One of the upcoming improvements to the protocol will entail splitting of Masternode Ownership in to three roles, one that owns the node, one that maintains the node, and one that votes in the treasury system, and the latter two can be delegated to whomever the former pleases without compromising the former. So theoretically, MNOs who don't have the time/energy/interest can have one person host and set up their node while another one votes on their behalf. Hopefully more MNOs will choose to delegate the voting roles to more active community members to ensure better participation and planning.

2. The aforementioned Dash Nexus platform will hopefully give us a sort of central hub that streamlines and more readily facilitates interactions between MNOs and between MNOs and the community (proposal owners included). Right now, there are just so many sites across which important information is scattered, so having all the truly important stuff in one place--or at least easy access to all the important stuff--and a professional, flagship presence for the DAO will be a significant improvement on our current situation. If we can get everyone on the same page--literally--I suspect it will be much easier to have these sorts of discussions and more quickly and easily come to consensus about the direction in which we need to take our budget allocations.

3. Ryan Taylor announced that in addition to the legal codification of the DAO as a trust and Dash Core Group Inc as its property, a parallel organization called Dash Ventures which will allow the DAO to start taking ownership and equity in the projects it funds. As such, by necessity, the way our budget is allocated will become incentivized toward more professional projects and products.

So I largely agree with your suggestions and criticisms, and I wanted you to know that you're not alone in this perspective and that we're working on solutions to these very issues.

 

[CaptainPicard]

Hey I really appreciate this detailed reply. Glad to see Dash is learning and improving as we go. I've been impressed with the inroads we're making in Venezuela. Perhaps a concerted effort to service that market would make great strides for Dash, and help a lot of people along the way.

 

[MrWilliamChui]

Funny you should mention this, @CaptainPicard , we've actually been discussing this very thing among the Masternode Owners and ways to possibly implement it on a technical level. For the present, the Dash voting/treasury/etc protocol will probably remain as it is without a significant campaign to convince the majority of MNOs to make alterations to it. However, one of the proposals we recently funded is an upgraded treasury/proposal/voting/etc platform called Dash Nexus: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/dashnexus-strv

Just had a look at the video of the pitch and WOW! Really makes things a lot clearer and easier for MNOs to make a decision (me thinks). I'll go post my thoughts there with what I think they should add or emphasise on.

1. One of the upcoming improvements to the protocol will entail splitting of Masternode Ownership in to three roles, one that owns the node, one that maintains the node, and one that votes in the treasury system, and the latter two can be delegated to whomever the former pleases without compromising the former. So theoretically, MNOs who don't have the time/energy/interest can have one person host and set up their node while another one votes on their behalf. Hopefully more MNOs will choose to delegate the voting roles to more active community members to ensure better participation and planning.

I'm not sure what/where discussions have gone on in the MNO voting space, but has there been a consideration for MNO to have their voting rights revoked should they fail to vote after 3 months? Or after a certain amount of proposals? This way, in order to keep your MNO status one will be compelled to cast at least one vote every voting period, that way there is participation from all.

3. Ryan Taylor announced that in addition to the legal codification of the DAO as a trust and Dash Core Group Inc as its property, a parallel organization called Dash Ventures which will allow the DAO to start taking ownership and equity in the projects it funds.

This should great, in that I assume there will be hand-holding/mentorship even after the "investment" as DV would want to see the business exiting.

 

[Arthyron]

Just had a look at the video of the pitch and WOW! Really makes things a lot clearer and easier for MNOs to make a decision (me thinks). I'll go post my thoughts there with what I think they should add or emphasise on.

Also be sure to visit the #dash-nexus channel on Dash Nation Discord, the developers are quite active on that platform if you want to chat with them.

I'm not sure what/where discussions have gone on in the MNO voting space, but has there been a consideration for MNO to have their voting rights revoked should they fail to vote after 3 months? Or after a certain amount of proposals? This way, in order to keep your MNO status one will be compelled to cast at least one vote every voting period, that way there is participation from all.

This has been discussed, but it's usually shot down very quickly because then MNOs would just write scripts to auto-vote randomly, and that wouldn't do us any good. While I would *love* if every MNO was active and engaged and thoroughly reading and vetting every proposal, those of us who *are* doing that are quite rare. However, the upside of that is the people who are actually voting tend to be people that do genuinely care and put forth the effort, so for those of us who have fewer nodes have a lot greater say than they would otherwise have. The voice of the active and engaged matters that much more. So ultimately, what matters is that we achieve the 10% threshold--which we have so far, though a few months have been close--and that the people voting are active, engaged, and putting effort in to reading, vetting, commenting, offering feedback, and debating the merits of each proposal to ensure the maximum value and benefit to the network. As long as we fulfill those requirements, the total voting turnout is less important, and like I said, forced voting could have undesirable effects as well.

This should great, in that I assume there will be hand-holding/mentorship even after the "investment" as DV would want to see the business exiting.

This is something I've been saying for a while. Many MNOs are not people who are experienced in any major industry as a business owner or investor, and certainly not in such a nascent space like this. Many of us are just computer geeks that got lucky a few years back. As such, I think many of us--myself included, even though I *am* a business owner--could benefit from a remedial course in the basics of business and investing and everything that goes with it so that we will make the best possible choices for the network moving forward. I also have a background in Philosophy--among other things--so basic education on critical thinking and reducing fallacious reasoning and cognitive biases should also be an essential part of that education. There's a prime opportunity for a potential qualified, experienced proposal owner in there to offer the MNOs a crash course in business, investing, etc. A tax lawyer once put up a proposal to write a tax guide for MNOs, but it didn't pass for various reasons. I think something with all of those qualities could be of great benefit to the network.

 

[MrWilliamChui]

Also be sure to visit the #dash-nexus channel on Dash Nation Discord, the developers are quite active on that platform if you want to chat with them.

Awesome, will do, thanks.

This has been discussed, but it's usually shot down very quickly because then MNOs would just write scripts to auto-vote randomly, and that wouldn't do us any good.

Is there any way to incentivise other activities, so that MNOs add more value to the ecosystem? I guess that's why the option you mentioned above of splitting the roles of an MNOs into 3 seems enticing.

Many MNOs are not people who are experienced in any major industry as a business owner or investor, and certainly not in such a nascent space like this. Many of us are just computer geeks that got lucky a few years back.

Then I think the option you mentioned above of ceding one's voting rights is the way to go. They cede their rights to those that are more active in these spaces and are up to date with what's going on.

 

[Arthyron]

Is there any way to incentivise other activities, so that MNOs add more value to the ecosystem? I guess that's why the option you mentioned above of splitting the roles of an MNOs into 3 seems enticing.
Then I think the option you mentioned above of ceding one's voting rights is the way to go. They cede their rights to those that are more active in these spaces and are up to date with what's going on.

Yeah, splitting up the roles will hopefully be the push we need, that and streamlining and enhancing the whole process of MNO interaction with proposal owners and the treasury through Dash Nexus. I can't think of any other real solutions that won't infringe upon MNOs, even if it is regrettable that most of us are too lazy to do what we're being paid to do.