Proposal description
Dash Core Group March 26th Funding Proposals:
DCG is submitting 3 funding proposals for the budget cycle that pays out on March 26th:
1) DCG Compensation: 2,296 Dash per month (currently in month 1/3)
2) DCG Infrastructure: 459 Dash (currently in month 1/2)
3) DCG Supplemental: A supplemental proposal for any unclaimed proposal funding most likely will be submitted a week before the end of the budget cycle.
What does this specific proposal fund?
This multi-month proposal funds Dash Core Group's ongoing infrastructure and corporate software costs. We detail these costs in the following “Infrastructure Cost Details” section.
A success story
In February we were able to reduce our spend on Cloud computing services from about 9.5k USD/month to around 4k USD/month (on average for the next 3 years).
There are multiple things that created this reduction:
We mostly emptied our infrastructure reserves by prepaying in advance the 49k USD to get this massive discount that will happen over time. Right now our infrastructure reserves are very low, however after this proposal passes we expect to no longer make infrastructure proposals for some time.
Infrastructure Cost Details
The tools and services to be covered by this proposal are critical for the DCG developers and other staff to work productively. It also includes hosting for externally-facing services including the website, forum, testnet, devnets, etc.
We expect our current infrastructure costs to average between $8,000 and $11,000 per month - that includes infrastructure, software licenses, tools, and applications used by DCG.
Funds requested for the following:
The expenses for cloud computing instances constitute the largest portion of our infrastructure costs, at approximately $4,000 per month. This includes cloud computing services for Dash Platform’s presence on testnet and devnets for the platform and mobile team environments. As said previously this has considerably decreased in costs since February.
Cost Reduction
We had previously estimated that our reduction of cost to be around 2-3k USD per month. In our last proposal we wrote : "Overall, we anticipate our infrastructure costs to drop at that point from an average in the $13,000 to $18,000 monthly range to between $11,000 and $15,000".
I am pleased to report that instead we now estimate costs between $8,000 and $12,000. We went from an estimated reduction of 2-3k USD to an actual reduction of 5-6k! And without losing any quality of service.
If you have any questions, please direct them to @strophy or @quantumexplorer in this Dashcentral post to ensure we are notified of your request.
Requested funding is as follows for the April and May budget cycles:
Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future infrastructure expenses and related taxes.
DCG is submitting 3 funding proposals for the budget cycle that pays out on March 26th:
1) DCG Compensation: 2,296 Dash per month (currently in month 1/3)
2) DCG Infrastructure: 459 Dash (currently in month 1/2)
3) DCG Supplemental: A supplemental proposal for any unclaimed proposal funding most likely will be submitted a week before the end of the budget cycle.
What does this specific proposal fund?
This multi-month proposal funds Dash Core Group's ongoing infrastructure and corporate software costs. We detail these costs in the following “Infrastructure Cost Details” section.
A success story
In February we were able to reduce our spend on Cloud computing services from about 9.5k USD/month to around 4k USD/month (on average for the next 3 years).
There are multiple things that created this reduction:
- We switched from GP2 storage to GP3 (storage cots 20% cheaper).
- We switched most instances to ARM architecture (compute 20% cheaper).
- We prepaid for 3 years the compute part (55% discount) - This made us pay around 49k USD in advance.
- Amazon business card with prime membership (5% off).
We mostly emptied our infrastructure reserves by prepaying in advance the 49k USD to get this massive discount that will happen over time. Right now our infrastructure reserves are very low, however after this proposal passes we expect to no longer make infrastructure proposals for some time.
Infrastructure Cost Details
The tools and services to be covered by this proposal are critical for the DCG developers and other staff to work productively. It also includes hosting for externally-facing services including the website, forum, testnet, devnets, etc.
We expect our current infrastructure costs to average between $8,000 and $11,000 per month - that includes infrastructure, software licenses, tools, and applications used by DCG.
Funds requested for the following:
- Cloud computing services (for hosting ~120 testnet and devnet servers, insight API, dash.org website, forum, etc.) with AWS and DigitalOcean. We currently have a devnet running using 18 nodes.
- Software development tools, licenses, and applications (including continuous integration builds).
- Google Workspace (includes email hosting, calendar, document management, video conferencing, and a number of other productivity tools).
- Security applications (password managers, VPN services, and custodial wallets)
- Infrastructure monitoring tools.
- Service desk licenses.
- Accounting, finance, and expense reimbursement software subscriptions.
- Video-conferencing services (Zoom - very small cost).
- Collaboration tools such as Atlassian and Slack that collectively constitute the DCG “workspace”.
- HR systems, recruitment and interview tracking/feedback/collaboration tools, and recruitment sites (currently on hold).
- Forum upgrades and maintenance done by third party freelancers.
The expenses for cloud computing instances constitute the largest portion of our infrastructure costs, at approximately $4,000 per month. This includes cloud computing services for Dash Platform’s presence on testnet and devnets for the platform and mobile team environments. As said previously this has considerably decreased in costs since February.
Cost Reduction
We had previously estimated that our reduction of cost to be around 2-3k USD per month. In our last proposal we wrote : "Overall, we anticipate our infrastructure costs to drop at that point from an average in the $13,000 to $18,000 monthly range to between $11,000 and $15,000".
I am pleased to report that instead we now estimate costs between $8,000 and $12,000. We went from an estimated reduction of 2-3k USD to an actual reduction of 5-6k! And without losing any quality of service.
If you have any questions, please direct them to @strophy or @quantumexplorer in this Dashcentral post to ensure we are notified of your request.
Requested funding is as follows for the April and May budget cycles:
- 458.5 Dash for core team infrastructure ($26,593 USD @ $58 per Dash / month)
- 0.5 Dash proposal reimbursement (per month)
Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future infrastructure expenses and related taxes.
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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
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See : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-core-v19-0-0-release-candidate-and-testnet-hardfork.53548/#post-233945
Yes from me.