Another 18 questions answered Community Q&A – Q3 2019 Summary Call

1. Q: Which Dash Platform fees collection scenario has been selected by Dash Core Group for collecting fees from state transitions? (scenarios: fees collected by the nodes who processed the state transition, versus fees added to ordinary masternode payouts, versus a fees hybrid solution) Has consensus been reached on that part?

   A (Liz): The team has completed initial research to define several possible approaches to this, and our next step is to have a discussion about which of the various options laid out will suit the network’s needs most effectively. The tradeoffs are around preventing malicious nodes from gaming the system and causing storage costs to rise for other nodes, while still ensuring consistent payouts.

2. Q: The Dash Blog states: “Deterministic fees are desirable for businesses and developers that may want to adopt Dash Platform, as they make it possible to calculate costs in advance for budgeting and planning purposes.” Deterministic is a mathematical term, and is not understandable to businesses making budget plans. What do deterministic fees mean in economic terms? Can you give an example?

   A: Deterministic just means that they will be stable and thus can be forecasted. The previous design of Dash Platform had state transitions being added to the core chain through mining the way other transactions are. However this would have subjected the fees to volatility as a result, with miners essentially determining the fee amount for a state transition. It was decided this volatility would not be acceptable to a business trying to do budget planning as you noted, or to a user who wants to know how much a particular action within an application will cost.

3. Q: There seem to be new initiatives using our old logo. Is anything being done to manage and guide people to the correct Dash branding? I note that Trezor is using our old logo on their wiki

   A: The issue specific to Trezor has been resolved in cooperation with Trezor support since this question was raised. All branding is available in a comprehensive brand guidelines section on dash.org, together with image assets in all common formats. We have created accounts and uploaded vector art compliant with our new branding style guide to all of the most popular vector art and logo sharing sites. We reached out to popular independent artists responsible for the rendered art common in crypto news media on stock image sites, and commissioned one of them to create new high resolution rendered art according to our new branding guidelines. We are also pleased to note that some community members are creating high quality art, and we encourage submissions to both free and paid image sharing sites to ensure this content is readily available.

4. Q: How are Ryan and the various team members emotionally handling this extended bear market and drop in ranking?

   A: The price does impact our ability to staff the team with all of the roles we need, which places extra responsibility on all of us. We are all playing multiple roles for extended periods. Emotionally, the team is holding up extremely well, and the prevailing attitude is to put our heads down and work our way through it. We are also more prepared to endure low prices than we were in December 2018.

5. Q: Do Tim Drapers decentralized accounts pose a threat to Dash Evolution?

   A: Liz (w/ help from Dana): This solution simply resolves an address to a username. This means that funds will be sent repeatedly to the same address, making it much easier to know how much money is being held with a particular username. As a result, this solution has some drawbacks when it comes to security and privacy. On the other hand, the name service being introduced as part of Dash Platform will preserve all the best features of HD wallets. Every time you send a payment, the blockchain records a different address. We are also looking at enabling interoperability with other coins in the future.

6. Q: Is it viable to develop a #BlockchainApp on a platform which has only one #token (no #ColouredCoins, #ERCtokens, etc)? Would this attract #developers? How important is for #startups to monetize their app through subtokens?

   A (Liz): The concept of subtokens is being explored as a potential roadmap item and could be added to Dash Platform in the future. We do believe there is potential to attract additional developers to the project by allowing them to easily bootstrap applications using our infrastructure. In the interim, developers will be able to create apps with Dash-based business models.

7. Q: Dash Evolution is one product with many functionalities. What % of the final vision will be delivered in testnet in 2019? The devil is in the details?

   A (Liz): As Bob alluded to on the quarterly, we actually view Evolution as a vision rather than a product. Therefore it is really one vision with many products, as opposed to one product with many functionalities. The release of the initial set of components of Dash Platform to the public testnet (Evonet) represents the next big step towards it. It is hard to say what % of the final vision that represents, as our goal is to follow an iterative release process that involves repeated testing and optimization based on the results and feedback we get.

8. Q: @RTaylor05 if you had to go 5 years back in time which decisions would you change? How does this answer affect your future decisions?

   A (Ryan): I get asked this question often. I would have made completion of the legal structures – particularly Dash Core Group and the trust – as my top priority in 2017. My vision was to get those structures in place and operational (e.g., elected trust protectors) so that DCG could build a reserve, and open bank and exchange accounts. In the absence of those structures, entrusting individuals with a core team wallet with millions of dollars was an unacceptable legal risk. If that work had happened faster, we could have built a massive reserve in late 2017 and early 2018 hedged out to USD. A financially strong DCG would have been valuable for the network going into this bear market. Much of the funding during that time went unused or was directed to low-value initiatives. Glenn and I have worked out extremely robust hedging, cash flow, and reserves processes that take advantage during high price periods to build reserves and preserve funding during low price periods.

   Our growth during 2017 was chaotic and frankly inefficient. I would have grown the team more slowly and taken a more active role on the technology side to ensure more structure and processes were in place before adding team members at the pace that we did. Bob has done a tremendous job making the technology activities efficient and high performing.

9. Q: What is the strategy, if any, regarding Dashpay username allocation?

   A (Liz): On the initial release of Dash Platform to the public testnet (Evonet), folks will be able to register test identities and names. However these will not be transferred to mainnet automatically when Platform is launched to mainnet, so users will have to re-register identities and names at that time. We have been considering various approaches to how to appropriately manage username registration on mainnet in a decentralized way that protects users of the system from fraud, and the username registration behavior observed on Evonet will help shed light on the best option to pursue.

10. Q: Have PR companies such as SHIFT given any advice on improving Dash’s branding and image or pointed out faults in Dash’s branding or image, and what are they?

    A (Fernando): We discuss our branding and how we are perceived constantly. Summarizing, they always insist on simplifying the messaging. Talking more about the users and the problems we solve. They’ve also brought up on several occasions the need for everyone involved in Dash to behave in a professional and friendly manner. More specifically, they have mentioned on several occasions how journalists have complained that the Dash project is too aggressive with them on social media and how that makes covering Dash less attractive to them.

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/community-q-a-q3-2019-summary-call.48912/#post-218125

1. : Does PR firm SHIFT have a marketing strategy for the release of Dash Core v1.0 ?

   A (Fernando): Shift is a PR firm. PR is an important part of our marketing mix, but it is just one part. The PR plan is to increase outreach to journalists during testing so we can then push for more coverage when Dash Platform reaches mainnet. However, their contract is due at the end of this month and they have just posted a new proposal, so they will only be involved if that proposal passes.

2. Q: Has there been any discussion regarding some sort of anonymous “payment code”, whereby people can accept payments without doing the username thing? For example, a six digit number with a two minute lifetime (similar to google authenticator).

   A (Liz): users who don’t want to register usernames will still be able to accept payment via any cryptographic address in the same way they do today. That said, our implementation of usernames is going to offer a higher level of financial privacy than many of the other username implementations out there in crypto at the moment, which often expose the entire payment history for a particular username and placing their financial security at risk. The Dash Platform implementation will ensure that a new address is recorded on the blockchain each time a payment is made for a particular username.

3. Q: How will usernames work? I think it is important that everyone has a unique username (like twitter or email) rather than multiple people with the same username but with the hidden identifier number like on Discord. People should be able to hold up a sign that says “please send Dash to @mastermined” or tell people on youtube/video to send donations to @mastermined. Is that how it will work?

   A (Liz): Yes, currently our plan is for usernames to be unique at the platform level for usability reasons, as you described. In addition, users of DashPay will have the ability to add a display name (also called a “nickname”), similar to most apps (for instance, on Twitter you have your handle of @mastermined, plus your display name). Unlike the username, the display name will live at the app level, meaning it is a specific feature of the DashPay app.

4. Q: Chain analysis companies are not only using on-chain data, they are analyzing communications between nodes (ping times etc). What can we do about this?

   A (pasta): All communication between nodes is non encrypted, bitcoin is working on changes a v2 P2P setup which is encrypted. We plan to backport that asap once it is merged into bitcoin (bitcoin works slow, may be a while).

5. Q: Is there a possibility to integrate some kind of “dispute resolution” for Dash transactions? I believe this to be a large barrier to mass adoption.

   A (Robert): This is one of the items on our backlog for long term, however it won’t be implemented with the MVP version.

6. Q: Has anyone considered Coinbase Earn, and if so is that a possibility? what’s the status is those talks have already begun?

   A (Fernando): Yes, we’ve discussed this with Coinbase. We are working with them in finding ways to fund the campaign since the token pays for everything, and the cost is much higher than what we can pay at once.

7. Q: Why was the Open House announced so late, only 3 weeks away?

   A (Fernando): We needed to be sure about certain development milestones were reached so we could be sure that everything and everyone was available at a specific date. This didn’t happen until quite recently, and then we had to work with SkySong to find an available date, which took us a few days. It is worth noting, however, that we already mentioned in the previous quarterly call deck that there would be an event. It was also mentioned in the Dash Convention Europe.

8. Q: Considering the high cost, difficulty, and loss of privacy involved in exchanging the money people earn (e.g. USD, VES) into DASH, what’s DCG strategy to facilitate sustainable consumer adoption?

   A (Fernando): We are looking for ways for users to receive Dash in exchange for their work, services or products. If they get paid in Dash and they use it, the costs and complications are drastically reduced. This also ends in someone else receiving Dash and repeating the cycle. Remittances or salaries paid partially or fully in Dash are examples of this.

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/community-q-a-q3-2019-summary-call.48912/#post-218126