Welcome!

Friendly reminder to Masternodes: All your votes from last month are cancelled, null and void. Unlike previous months where successful proposals can kind of coast because all their YES vote carry over, this month, THEY DON'T. Please go vote so that we don't leave deserving proposals high and dry. If you are having problems voting, this thread will likely solve your problem, otherwise ask.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/bi7bk3/1_day_to_go_for_latest_dash_budget_cycle_please/

The clock is ticking.....17 hours. Let's get after it!
solarguy

Thank you for the report. I have read it slowly and as well read the financial review of DMV again. The reports have been worked out professionally. Thank you.

I am not surprised we are not even hearing from the Venezuelan proposal owners anymore. After all the good-will and funding they have received from us, the Dash community. They just cleared out.

My personal guess is they have left/are leaving the country, just like the rest of all business men. After having filled their pockets with tens of thousands of dollars from the DAO that should give them a smooth jump-start somewhere else...

According to the financial review just 3 months ago they bought 16 brandnew computers and printers (sixteen !). Now that the project is over, where are they ? Are they being sold and the Dash community will obtain the remaining funds ?

I guess the fraudsters are lying somewhere in their hammock, taking the sun with a big smile in their face...

Well done !

Dash Watch February 24th 2019 Report on
Dash Merchant Venezuela - Stage 2 by alejandroe
https://dashwatchbeta.org/r/FEB19/DASH-MERCHANT-VENEZUELA-STAGE-2

@Dashwatch equally *you* also have not responded to my specific comments on how you mislead Lorenzo in the DW financial audit. You also have not responded to releasing the MNO name that raised allegations against the DMV team. Here is an abridged version of what I wrote. I, and the community are waiting for your response on these observations>

@DashWatch you have not given a reply to the 2 pieces of information I am repeatedly requesting. 1. You mislead the DMV team in your audit. You went back on your word on not disclosing the altered records in exchange for Lorenzo telling the truth. We need a clear statement on this issue. So far you have avoided answering any questions on this issue.

Secondly I want the name of the MNO who wished to remain anonymous released. The accused have a right to know who their accusers are - including in US law: See this reference:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/sixth_amendment

If a plea bargain is arranged in a legal proceedings they cannot go back on what was agreed. To do so undermines trust in the legal system.

By doing what you did DashWatch you now undermine any possible confidence that any proposal owner will ever have in telling the truth when there is a discrepancy. They simply will not tell the truth for fear of being exposes as you did with Lorenzo and Alejandro of DMV.

We need clear rules and guidelines on how DW can operate. They are currently setting their own rules and they are unfortunately causing inadvertent damage to the network.

My understanding as to the reason DMV have not provided an update on results is they do not want to work with DASH any more after the manner in which you mislead them in the Dash Audit to ruin their reputations. They are tired of the constant negativity thrown at them from a small group of people that think they should work for a pittance. They are tired of the repeated troll attacks, they are tired of not being respected for the work they have delivered to the network. They can earn a better living elsewhere and be respected and not have to deal with the constant and repeated negativity instigated by people who want to bring them down. Your posting above is of no value. What we need answers on is what I've been raising as an issue and you keep avoiding answering to my comments. I have posted those comment in detail in your proposal. I also posted private messages to you at the forum but neither in the private messages nor here nor in your proposal to date have you answered to the way you have mislead the DMV team in the audit. I will post here for convenience what I have posted in your proposal.

I know I've written a lot here about this issue but I strongly encourage all MNOs to read all my posts here and in the DashWatch proposal. It will only take you 15 minutes to do so. It is really important that the community understand the full situation on this.

I think there is very little chance that the DMV team will ever wish to work with DASH again. The reason I'm doing this work is to try and clear their names which I feel have been unjustly tarnished by DW and the way they dealt with their audit. I feel we own this to this team that have given Dash so much value.

I would like the community to know that I have posted questions to @paragon at DashWatch here in this proposal and also sent @paragon at DashWatch a request to respond yesterday by private message at the Dash Forum. I also followed up again today with a private message at the Dash Forum requesting DashWatch to respond to the questions I have posted. So far no reply to any of my requests for information for 2 days and no confirmation either that they will answer these questions.

There is a danger of significant damage to the Dash Network if the DashWatch service is not held accountable to MNO questions about the service offered and that we are paying for. It is important that DashWatch maintain *no bias* and professional when undertaking an investigation and to ensure investigations are undertaken to the same standard on *all* projects.

I will wait until tomorrow to see if DashWatch respond to my latest requests for information however if they do not answer then I will be raising greater awareness of these requests for information on the Dash Forum, on DFN forum and on Discord.

As a community we need to ensure that the DashWatch service is acting an unbiased manner and in a professional manner. I have informed DashWatch that I do not wish to discuss these issues in private because I want the DashWatch responses to be publicly accountable.

We cannot afford for DashWatch to be having bias in the way they undertake reports - to do so can have damaging effects for the Dash network as a whole.

I also now believe there should be a ombudsman service that is completely independent and based in another country other than the US, where all the key staff of DASH appear to be operating. This ombudsman should have the power to impartially investigate services such as DashWatch to ensure they maintain a equal standard when investigating projects.

I have personally put in 1 year's work with the DMV team. Lorenzo and Alejandro are entrepreneurs. They are not managers. These guys do not need Dash to make good money and to expect them to work for pittance is pure insanity. You cannot get people like this without paying good money because they can make better money elsewhere. We need to judge this team based on
* The Results* delivered for the money. So far nobody in the community is doing this because everyone is focusing exclusively on the personal salaries issue. Even the core team have specifically stated that salaries should not be disclosed and the success of a project should be based on the results along. Yet DashWatch made the salaries the centre point of their investigation. Therefore why has this DW report only focused on their salaries issue in this report? If DashWatch wanted access to personal accounts in this case they should do that with all projects to break down all salary information for all projects. Equal standards for all projects. But that is not the case. It appears that Dash Watch are not applying the same standards to all project assessments.

We need to ask are the results this team have delivered worth the money we paid? That is the real question. Who cares what salaries these people have earned if the results are present.

What big brand names have been signed up by any other Dash Funded project? Zero. Only in Venezuela and most of them by this team.

This team have delivered Subway, Pappa John's, REMAX and assisted in Church's chicken. These are huge brand names which add significant value to the Dash Brand. Which other projects have done that? The answer is none. The value of a big brand name cannot be underestimated because the world press notice this because a big brand name would not use a payment service unless it is credible. They have signed up 2500 merchants. No. 1 most signed up merchants in the world. Yet the Dash Watch report focused on one aspect only on the accounting.

Ernesto from the core team visited Venezuela and stated in a video it was great to be able to pay for everything in DASH for a whole week. Ernesto actually stated it was Amazing see this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3_TDGWJ7Og

Rodrigo visited Venezuela and also stated he paid everything in DASH during his whole visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PbciVl3nYU

There are over 50 videos with people in Venezuela going into shops and paying with DASH

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23VenezuelaPaysWithDash

2500 merchants signed up with DASH in Venezuela by this team:

https://discoverdash.com/stats/


I do not agree with what Lorenzo and Alejandro did however the same standards of investigation need to be applied to all projects and not just theirs, and if this cannot be done then we should be simply judging a project by its return on investment to the community based on the money we spent. Currently that is not the case and DW went out of their way to specifically get to their salary information. They initiated the response based on 2 characters that were trolling this forum with repeated negative attacks. We need to ask why did DASH Watch to the reports based on Characters like that?

DashWatch claim that the report was also requested by TroyDash however I messaged TroyDash and he confirmed that he did not initiate a request for the audit on DMV but only agreed it would be good idea based on the request from others. Here is the quote from TroyDash

"I did not initiate the idea to request a financial review, but when the topic was brought up by other members I agreed that I would like to see one"

There is a big difference DashWatch between people actively requesting a report and those that are just agreeing it would be a "good idea". I asked you who specifically had requested the report. The answer to that appears now to be Oceanman and RealMrHack and one other person that wants to remain anonymous. I believe that person who wishes to remain anonymous should also be made public. Should not the accused know who exactly is their accusers? The reason I believe all information should be made transparent is because it can give information if there is bias in their motives by that person e.g. if they were a KuvaCash supporter.

Possible negative bias toward a project by DashWatch could mean they have the power to destroy a project if they so wish. Using a higher investigation standard one project to wipe them out is an injustice and the community need to know if this is the case. Bias also interferes with undertaking an impartial and fair assessment of a project to the same standards as every other project. I do not believe that DashWatch have applied the same standard investigation this project as the other projects where they did not investigate personal salaries.

DashWatch have a responsibility to investigate the DMV team's results and fairly represent what this team have delivered for the money we paid for. This is a requirement for the community to know what we got for the money. The way this investigation has been undertaken raises questions about DashWatch and their service. I am asking for more information below to clarify these issues but so far have I not received a reply from DashWatch after 2 days and follow up private messages asking them to reply to these questions.

I might add that I have previously voted for DashWatch and I believe it is a valuable service provided the DW reports are non biased and remain impartial and only as long as DashWatch apply the same standard of investigation to *all* projects and not let their favoured ones get by with lower investigation standards. If that is the case the community need to know.

Hi DeepBlue,

Thanks for expressing your concerns. I would invite you next time to speak over encrypted private message or encrypted private voice call if that's your preference as that would save us both substantial time going forward. We are okay with publicly releasing the entire discussion afterwards as well. You can message me your contact information via the forum or Discord if that's how you'd like to communicate going forward.

Because the response was longer than the character limit, I've attached the answers to your concerns and questions in the form of a Google doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12xk-8C634hXQrdplFF8TIe84WX38p6kb28OnVJ__uc0/edit?usp=sharing

Hello @Paragon. There are some points that have not been made public regarding the DashWatch audit on DMV. Leaving out essential information has lead to a distortion of the truth. This is a disservice to the Dash Community, MNOs and this team which are now suffering the consequences.

This proposal only had 6 votes left to go until the DashWatch report was issued. There were still 6 days left to go of voting so this proposal would have easily got enough votes. The loss of funding was therefore a direct consequence of the DashWatch report and the manner in which it was issued.
The community and MNOs were satisfied with the results for the money delivered by this team. That is why the proposal was passing.

The DashWatch half-completed report had the following consequences for Lorenzo and Alejandro and their project:

1. The DashWatch report that published their true salaries has introduced a serious security risk to both Lorenzo and Alejandro in Venezuela were businessmen earning good salaries are studied and then purposely attacked by criminal gangs. The core team themselves have specifically stated that personal salaries should not be made public and that the results of the projects be used to determine if the project is worth the money invested. DashWatch disregarded the core team’s advice and actively sort to disclose this team’s salaries disregarding their personal safety risks.

See this BBC report on the criminals that undertake hijackings and muggings in Venezuela
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tMDy9iuhLI

2. DashWatch report has called into question the reputations of Lorenzo and Alejandro in the manner in how the report was undertaken and released. Until your report this team had an excellent reputation with the community. They had delivered outstanding results, they provided regular community feedback. Core team member Ernesto confirmed their results were, quote, “amazing” on his visit to Venezuela see this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3_TDGWJ7Og

DMV have collaborated and supported many other DASH projects including Dash Force News that created some excellent PR to report to the world media about their work. DMV gave us DashText, DashHelp Centre, and 2,500 merchants along with Big Brand names such as Subway, Pappa John’s, Remax etc. Something that no other Dash proposal owner has delivered in any country of the world. DMV have generated World media attention about signing these big brand names this is incalculable value to the DASH brand. A big brand will only use DASH if it is reliable. Work signing up more big brands that are in the pipeline has also been destroyed by the DashWatch report. I want to make certain that the DashWatch team are fully aware of the damage to the Dash network and to this team in the manner in which you issued this report. Now I will present the information that was left out of the DashWatch report:

DashWatch Audit Details: The community and MNOs have a right to know exactly how DashWatch I feel unfairly mislead Lorenzo in the financial audit:

Lorenzo had explained to Paragon during the audit the reasons why they did not want to give the accurate salary information. Primarily it was for personal safety reasons. Lorenzo explained he had been mugged 5 times to Paragon on the DashWatch audit. Paragon reassured Lorenzo by stating he only wanted to account for the money that was missing. Paragon stated that if Lorenzo told the truth about where the money went he had no intention to publish anything other than where the money went and this was Lorenzo’s opportunity to “come clean”. Reassured by this statement, Lorenzo explained the truth about the salaries and the reasons the documents were altered to keep the guys safe from being targets for being mugged. Paragon stated that he had no intention to publish the documents were altered to safeguard the team. Paragon has stated that the DMV team did not need to say anything, however Lorenzo told the truth to DashWatch about their salaries because they trusted Paragon at your word. However when Paragon spoke to Gethan he stated that he would leave DashWatch it was not made public. Lorenzo had spoke the truth about their salaries even though this presented personal risk. However Gethan insisted that the details be made public even though Lorenzo spoke the truth.

I find the manner in which this information was extracted and presented to be unprofessional behaviour from DashWatch. You gave a reassurance to Lorenzo that the alternations would not be mentioned in exchange for Lorenzo disclosing the truth. Lorenzo trusted Paragon and disclosed the truth, even though it put himself and Alejandro at risk of being targets for muggings. However DashWatch went back on their original agreement and made public the information that the documents presented on salaries had been altered.

I believe that DashWatch have acted unprofessionally in this issue by misrepresented this team to the community. Does the DW team know what it feels like to be threatened with a gun or knife pointed at you? To be forced to hand over your wallet and your valuables to a masked assailant? How would you feel knowing your salaries are made public to criminals so they can target you and your loved ones for assault, muggings and kidnaps? Yet, little regard was given to this point by DW. The reality is this DMV puts their personal safety on the line each day for DASH and each time they step in front of a video.

The DW financial audit could have been delayed to ensure to present a more balanced report and true results this team has delivered. However DW pushed ahead and published the financial audit before the voting cycle ended. DW could have waited just a few weeks to issue a full report to give a balanced view. I believe the early publishing of a half completed report focused on one aspect that it was stated would not make public shows negative bias against the Venezuela Merchant team and pro bias towards the accusers of this team.

With the full DW report the MNOs could then have judged if the actual results delivered by this team were worth the investment made by Dash. Are not the results delivered the real measure of a success of a project and not the accounting?

Paragon has confirmed in his reply in the link above that Lorenzo Rey, did, in fact, invite a DashWatch volunteer member, living in Colombia, to visit Venezuela to assess the results of DashMerchants program however the DashWatch volunteer did not visit Venezuela. Here is an except of what you wrote @Paragon in your reply in the google doc.

" A prospective but volunteer DashWatch team member living in Colombia did reach out to them on his personal time out of interest in and liking toward the Venezuelan efforts, and was offered this kind gesture and opportunity {of visiting Venezuela to assess the team’s work} , but never made the trip to Venezuela likely for safety reasons" Please note I added the comments between the {} for clarification purposes only.

Lorenzo has a screenshot showing the chat conversation between Lorenzo and DashWatch volunteer where Lorenzo invited DashWatch to Venezuela to assess the results for himself. So why did the DashWatch volunteer not go to Venezuela? The reason was they were too afraid to go for their own personal safety. Yet, this DashWatch person has not appeared on any video and their salary has not been made public, but you are OK for Lorenzo and Alejandro to do so, yet DW are too afraid to make a visit to Venezuela? This is double standards. Disclosing their real salaries makes this team a target for muggings. It is clear that DW have little empathy for this team’s situation or even begin to appreciate the risks these guys are taking on our behalf each day. You live securely in the USA. Caracas is the most dangerous city in the word:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate

Below is a link to a video of the Core Team member Ernesto in a video filmed in Venezuela where he stated that the results were quote "Amazing" because he was able to buy everything in DASH during a whole week in Venezuela. These were merchants signed up by this team - Lorenzo and Alejandro. Ernesto from the core team, actually visited Venezuela (something the DashWatch have not yet done) Ernesto is therefore in a stronger position than DashWatch to make an assessment of this team’s work. Ernesto stated in the video the work done by this team was, quote, "Amazing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3_TDGWJ7Og

"Oceanman and RealMrHack claims something different however, even though they have never met with the team, nor visited Venezuela to see the results for themselves.

Paragon stated DashWatch does not have a negative bias towards this team yet you chose to act on behalf of Oceanman and RealMrHack who were publicly dead set on discrediting this team. I believe this also shows negative bias against the DMV team. You have also chosen not to disclose the name of one MNO that made the accusations against this team but your are OK with disclosing the team’s personal salaries or not keeping private the modifications after Lorenzo spoke the truth? If DashWatch believes in transparency I want to know who the name of the MNO that wishes to remain anonymous because I believe disclosing this MNO will show negative bias against the DMV team.

We need to see a full report of the results delivered by this team. I also feel that DashWatch need to re-assess your working practises. You cannot assure someone that you will not publish information if they give the truth then go back on your word. I personally believe this is unprofessional conduct and the MNOs and community should know this information to make up their own minds.

Hi DeepBlue, I appreciate your concerns on this matter and it is my intention to remain neutral on this thread.

An instance of me has been mentioned from a number of months ago having contact with Lorenzo and also being loosely associated with Dash Watch which I would like to get straight. I have personally met Lorenzo twice and briefly asked him once over messages about the possibility of living in Caracas when my Colombian visa expired. At the time I was living in Colombia out of interest for Dash related projects as well as studying Spanish at university and I occasionally volunteered with Dash Watch by proof reading their documents before they were released at the end of the month. I have never accepted any payment from Dash Watch at all for assisting them in this way. I explained to Lorenzo that I was interested in staying in Venezuela mainly for personal reasons, while also trying to live off Dash. He assured me it would be safe, therefore that certainly wasn’t the deciding factor for me not to go. In the end I didn’t go because I was able to secure a more permanent visa to stay in Colombia which suited me much better having been established there already. I explained this to Lorenzo the second time we met in person so it’s very strange for this to come up now and to be taken out of context.

To clarify, I am not a formal member of the Dash Watch team, I assist them on a voluntary basis only, if and when I am available to proof read their reports 1-2 days before they are released. Doing so helps to get the reports out to the community sooner, but I also have lots of other things going on personally so not always. The “invitation” was when I simply inquired over messages on one occasion about the possibility of living in Venezuela for a period of time, which was mostly due to considering options for my visa limitations in Colombia, as well as supporting the Dash teams in Venezuela, and certainly not for the sole reason of reporting to Dash Watch. I also have message records:

Me: “I need to leave Colombia because my visa is finishing soon. I am very interested in what's happening in Venezuela and want to try to live off Dash.”

At the time I had no reason to question the activities in Venezuela and expressed my full support for their projects even with Lorenzo in person. I still support DMV and was extremely surprised by the recent turn of events.

Hello @Foxtrot thank you for your clarification. I just went off what paragon had written in his reply regarding your personal safety. However I accept your reply that it was due to your visa expiry for not visiting Venezuela.

We can say for sure that you are a DashWatch Volunteer. You were on your free time in Colombia. You were interested in the work that the DMV where doing and Lorenzo did invite you to visit Venezuela to take a look at their work. That much is accurate I believe.

The main point I'm trying to make is that the DMV team are proud of the work they have achieved and they wanted a representative of DashWatch to go over to witness their work. If they had something to hide in terms of results they would not do that.

I am also pleased that you have confirmed that the reason you did not go was not out of concern for your security. I am sure Lorenzo and Alejandro will extend a formal invite for DashWatch member to visit Venezuela to witness the results achieved by this team first hand.

There has been a lot of negativity thrown at this team. Note they are the top team with the top results of any team. There are a lot of people that want to take this team down and claim their position of the work they have done. This team need someone from DashWatch to visit Venezuela to witness for themselves the outstanding results delivered by this team. It seems the MNOs are not satisfied with Ernesto's testimonial after he spent a week in Venezuela. The are also not satisified with Rodrigo's documentary report of the results delivered by this team. Perhaps a DashWatch member can visit and put any concerns to rest about the results this team have delivered. If you care about this team and what they have achieved for DASH I am sure you could consider to renew your visa and take a visit to Venezuela to witness the results. If it is a matter of finances to visit I'm sure we can come to some arrangement if necessary. This team need their true allies now. It is easy for people to rejoice when all the results are positive, it's not so easy though to be there where there are problems. I am standing by this team because I've known them for a year. I believe in this team and their results and I can tell you that if we lose this team DASH we will be losing talented entrepreneurs that find solutions where nobody else can. That is what they have done and that is what they can do. We need entrepreneurs like this. Managers cannot pull this off at this stage of Dash's development we need these guys.

Something I have not shared yet but I feel is important. The reason I've provided voluntary support to these guys for a year is because I got a real buzz from working with true entrepreneurs. Lorenzo and Alejandro find solutions where most people cannot. I love working with people like this but it is so rare to find. Dash needs these guys and I am sure that if someone from DashWatch can just find the time to get over to Venezuela and witness their results first hand then you too would be impressed with what they have achieve and be able to share this first hand with the DASH community.

I would actually be happy to travel to Venezuela and meet with the team, even at my own expense, however I have now relocated back to Europe.

I appreciate the assistance you have offered DMV thus far and I hope other MNOs like you and I continue to support proposals on a voluntary basis where they can to add value.

Hi DeepBlue, your message has been received and passed on to Paragon and you will receive a response shortly.
Thanks
Dash Watch Team

Yes, hello @DeepBlue. Sorry for being late with a response.

I understand that you are disappointed that this project got stopped, despite a lot of your personal time being put into it. But it was not bearable anymore and there were just too many things wrong with this project.

I am trying to give you some answers to your lengthy wish list.

There is no point in picking out two whistleblower users now (me and others), who raised the alarm flag about this fraudulent project and publicly call to execute them now... I am disappointed that you are accusing me of 'spamming' or 'trolling' the discussion - Not at all ! The opposite is the case. Despite the emotions raging high we all gave our best to remain factual and objective. If you check who brought forth most of the analytic aspects about this project it was probably me.

I feel what you are now trying to do is to shoot the messenger who brought the bad news. That would be unfair - and absurd. Actually, we - as the Dash community members - are quite lucky that the media repercussions were rather mild and not way more negative about this failed project... This could have backfired badly onto all of us in terms of the Dash exchange rate, for example...

Reading your comment I feel very much reminded of medieval inquisition. Maybe you read more about that and what they did back then with people who were not willing to nod everything through... you seem to wanting to promote that...

You are quoting percentage numbers which user posted how many comments. Me allegedly 31%. Well, first of all there is nothing wrong with this. I analyzed and observed this project a lot, delivered many infos so that MNOs can make up their mind.

But you are elegantly leaving out the percentage number of key culprit of this whole mess - Mr. alejandroe (the PO) who not just embezzled vast amount of DAO funds over time, but eventually even handed in forged documents. This guy should be banned forever from anything Dash !!!

He posted about 50% of comments in the discussion and gets away with it - trying to silence diverging points of view and trying to lull users into handing over the funds to him.

So, according to you, the culprit is allowed to promote his breaches - warning voices however must be silenced ! - Aha.

Venezuela then, really seems to be your wonderland: There, I would get locked up, the usurper however becomes president... Good night !

I got a lot of positive personal responses from several MNOs I know for my efforts. Quite an amount of people were unhappy with how this (and other) Venezuela projects are/were running. Many Dash MNOs are very thankful with me that I obviously spent a lot of personal time to investigate and bring the mismanagement in Venezuela to light. It hasn't been fun, no, but it is better for the wider Dash community in the future. Imagine we would have gone on and on with the misallocation of DAO funds, the pop of the bubble and the resulting negative impact on the Dash community would have only been way bigger... let alone the waste of thousands and thousands of DAO Dash funds into a pointless project generating a couple of hunderds txs more...

Some quick answers to your other worries:

* My motives: Promote dash in a sustainable and enduring way by wisely investing DAO funds. Avoiding to promote emprty bubbles. As I -as many other MNOs- have invested considerable amounts into Dash.

* Your absurd claims of hate, spam, troll, etc.: The discussion remained comparatively gentle and contained regarding the scandalous abuses that happened in Venezuela... factual in order to avoid a huge media outbreak (which thank god didn't happen)...

* Multiple usernames: No, not me. I am oceanman and that's it. No need to hide... (But, yes, plz ask the PO about this one... the artificial praise and applause of his cronies was quite evident...)

* Dash forum: I am not obliged to write into any forum you want me to. But yes, I read it.

Please now accept once and forever:
THE DASH COMMUNITY DOESN'T LIKE TO GET RIPPED OFF, FOOLED, LIED TO AND FLEECED.

.

You are aware that the mentioned 31% of posts being from you, is actually a lot higher as rango has been actively deleting a lot of spam posts from you ?
You are aware that a budget proposal owner is judged on the feedback he or she provides on questions from the Dash community ? blaming a budget proposal owner for replying to questions that were directed at him is absurd.

Your behaviour in this thread has not been gone unnoticed and will influence how other masternode owners view your comments in the future.

@paragon thank you for your reply I've posted this message here to be more visible but I've also fixed some typos from my original post further below. My apologies for the double post.

I would be grateful if you could please confirm the following information about the MNOs Oceanman and RealMrHack. I am requesting this information because these 2 people have been posting repeated negative and attacking comments in this proposal and in others which is hardly in keeping of Dash community spirit. Their messages were eventually moderated by DashCentral admin because there were so many repeated spam messages. To base an in-depth enquiry using these 2 users that don't appear to have contributed to DASH in any meaningful way other than trolling and attacking comments against proposal owners seems somewhat unusual. I notice that Mr Dash supported George Donnelly proposal with a few positive words and one other proposal with a token "yes" comment however on the whole his comments have been attacking, negative and flaming in nature. Before their spam messages were deleted this is how many attacking messages they had posted in this proposal. You can see that together they accounted for 40% of all comments.

Total comments in the proposal (Jan 13th, 11:23 AST): 110

Oceanman: 34 comments (30.9%). Only oceanman has made the 30.9% of the total comments.
Realmrhack: 10 comments (9.09%). Only realmrhack has made the 9.09% of the total comments

I am raising this issue because DashWatch decided to make the in-depth audit based on the strength of characters such as this? DashWatch mentioned "community" however I would not class these characters are model community members by their nature of how they provide feedback. Feedback can be directed in a constructive way however these characters attack in an aggressive and trolling manner. If they have some points to make then by delivering it in such a hateful manner it actually lowers the value of what they have to say considerably, it also calls to question their true motives.

I would hardly say these people are representative of the Dash Community spirit -would you? Isn't DASH about aiming to foster an environment of collaboration, not hate. Constructive feedback is welcomed of course because it is the only way for us to improve but repeated hate and negativity is damaging to our community. One can make constructive criticisms and question a proposal owner of course but to repeatedly attack people is not what I feel the DASH community is about. Therefore to me this raises questions why DashWatch took these two members seriously and undertook an in-depth lengthy financial audit based on their request? I am searching for understanding on this point. Who, is permitted to have the authority to raise an in-depth financial audit by DashWatch on a proposal, bearing in mind the time, money and resources required to undertake such an financial audit?

I have checked the DASH forum on these two users and Oceanman has made no contributions in the past in the forum and RealMrHack has only appeared to attack other proposals. Hardly what we would call positive contributions to DASH:

You can see their profiles here:

Oceanman
https://www.dash.org/forum/members/oceanman.30279/ joined October 14 with Zero posts on the forum. This Dash user account is new and does not contribute anything to the forum.

RealMrHack
https://www.dash.org/forum/members/realmrhack.22513/ Joined January 18th his posts are mostly attacking other proposals. Interestingly the very first proposal he attacked was KuvaCash. If ever there is positive comment by this user it a cursory comment, not a real positive contribution. However his negative attacks are long and repeated as is the case in this proposal. Overall this users attacks proposal owners but contributes very little in a positive way.

Based on the profiles of these two users I'm somewhat surprised that DashWatch decided to take their requests for an audit seriously.

A few questions regarding these two users:

1. Can DashWatch confirm here if these users also go by other Dash usernames? If so, what are those other usernames?
2. How did these users contact you regarding the request for a financial audit?
3. Did DashWatch speak with these users directly at any time or any time in the past?
4. When DashWatch raises an audit what factors specifically are you using in order to determine a financial audit should be raised?

Regarding the financial review with KuvaCash could DashWatch confirm the following points please.
1. Did DashWatch also undertake an audit on the personal accounts of the proposal owners to determine their personal earnings from their project?

2. I notice that Drako has a MN badge. Can you confirm if DashWatch determined if those masternodes came from DAO funding of their proposal?

I would like to request a representation of the results delivered by this team by DASH Watch. I feel the results are actually more important than the financial audit because the results are what we are paying for. The Dash Core team themselves specifically stated that personal earnings should not be made public. Yet DashWatch insisted on this. If this is the case with DMV I hope going forward DashWatch is going to do this with all proposals.

The community has seen video evidence of the results of the DMV team. Rodrigo who visited Venezuela created a documentary of his visit and he clearly stated he bought everything in DASH during his stay. In addition Ernesto from the core team also make a visit to Venezuela and also stated in a video that they were able to buy all they needed from shops and restaurants in DASH. There are 2500 merchants signed up on DiscoverDash.org There are videos with people going into the shops and buying goods and services. We need a fair representation of what this team have delivered to the community. Big brand names have been signed up including Subway, Papa Johns, and Church's chicken. This cannot be underestimated in value to the DASH and the brand. No other country in the world has signed up big brand names like this and it adds substantial credibility to DASH to have these big world names on board. e.g. George Donnelly stated that the Venezuelan migrants were very sceptical about using DASH for remittances because they had never heard of DASH however all George would need to do to gain that credibility is to show the videos of the Subway, Pappa Johns and Church's chicken (which is the 4th Largest chicken restaurant in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church's_Chicken ) Although Church's chicken was signed up by DashVenezuela this team have provided support via the support help centre and other innovations that made these types of sign ups possible. Without the help centre this would not be possible because the big brand names want support. Damage to this proposal is damaging to all the work they do. The haters can throw their hateful comments at this proposal but these results cannot be argued against. Although there are some positive initial results from Colombia by George Donnelly he has not signed up any big brand names yet. Big Brand names using DASH is what will bolster the DASH brand. Whether these brand names are in Venezuela or not is not imporatnt the world is sitting up and noticing this work because a big brand name would not use DASH if it was not credible and this value cannot be underestimated. We need to see that value represented in your report. The value that this team have given. This team have generated positive news stories in the World media about the work in Venezuela when all there is doom and gloom in crypto this team have delivered results that are rays of positive hope not only for Venezuela but for cryptocurrency in the world. So make no mistake about it. The DashWatch report that is only focused on a financial audit with some irregularities (that have been given a valid reason for) is doing this team and the REAL work they have done a huge injustice. We need to see their results for the money spent. Then let the community decide if it was value for money or not.

One final point. Could you confirm here if a DashWatch member or collaborator of DASH Watch has ever been invited to visit Venezuela by Lorenzo Rey or any other member of DMV to assess for yourself the results of the DMV team? If this invite was given was a visit to Venezuela was made by DashWatch?

Thank you / DeepBlue

@DashWatch thank you for your comment. I have replied below, but am mentioning it here because my response is quite far down on the page. I would be grateful if you could respond to the questions I've posted in my reply in this proposal. Thank you. /DeepBlue.

just the q: the savings of the team are sufficient for to pay the running expenses for DashMerchantpos system?

I have been one of the biggest supporters of this and all projects involved with getting Dash integrated into Venezuela. I think it’s the most important work for Dash currently being undergone. I’ve also been a big supporter of Alejandro and Lorenzo. I’ve voted for all their proposals up to now (as well as this one), and have personally donated to their projects.

However, after the revelations about their falsifying financial data, I’ve changed my vote to a “No” vote for this specific proposal. I don’t think such behavior can be rewarded and go unpunished.

A few further thoughts:

I do not think this was a “long con” or “extortion” as I’ve seen some overheated people claim. I believe Alejandro and Lorenzo’s explanation, and don’t think they are nefarious people just out for themselves.

I have no problem with what they are paying themselves, as long as they produce results. People should be paid for their work, and this is no exception.

There’s no question that this team has produced results up to now. I’m not ready to dismiss all their existing projects as well as future ones. I am, however, going to be more hesitant in giving support to them in the future.

Glad to see the usual negative people frothing at the mouth, in glee, at the dashwatch report. Many in the greater crypto world would love to see Dash's Venezuela project fail, it's the one's in our community that dissappoint me with there delight at this report.

However I am confident that the greater MN community will realise the bang for their buck that the Venezuelan team is bringing to dash and will continue to support them. The best part of this would be the continued frothing at the mouth of the detractors which I thoroughly enjoy.

Hi MNO’s, it seems clear from a review that the new salary documentation showing Uphold transactions and Dash wallet to wallet transactions provided by Dash Merchant Venezuela are genuine and have not been altered or manipulated. We are putting together a spreadsheet containing the new salary data and previously reviewed invoice and expenditure information but have a few things to clarify and confirm with the proposal team before it will be ready to publish.
Thanks
Dash Watch Team

Well, that's good to hear. The thing is it doesn't tackle the problem that they are rubber-stamping high US-$ 'salaries' for themselves in one of the cheapest countries of the western hemisphere.

Does McDonalds pay their branch managers in Venezuela 3.000 US-$ a month ??? No. They pay them the regular local salary.

We are talking here that these two guys are letting the DAO funds rain down over themselves to an extent that they are earning 500 times a normal salary per month.

THIS IS CALLED EMBEZZLEMENT.

... and it has nothing to do with voluntary work (to an extent) in a grassroots project.

Any documentation needs to be solid or alternatives need to be sorted out (we can't settle for less). Good luck in the future.

What we have here is a situation where there is a Farrari that has a small paintwork scratch and a small group of individuals with an agenda to trash this project are repeatedly focusing the community's attention exclusively on the scratch and not the car as a whole.

Can we get real now.

MNOs we need to look at the bigger picture of what is going on here. We need to look at the results this team have delivered for the money. We need to look at the attacks this team have suffered by a small group of individuals. We need to truly ask ourselves do we trust a team that have continually and repeatedly delivered to the community with outstanding results with limited funds. We need to also ask what could motivate these upstanding and trusted members of the community to undertake an act as they did which is completely out of character for them.

I also am somewhat surprised by DASH Watch made this extra ordinary in-depth financial Audit going into every personal detail of the finances on the Dash Merchant project. This type of in-depth probing investigation is surely normally reserved for projects that have not delivered or are questionable in terms of results delivered? Audits of this nature are not for a project that has consistently delivered demonstrable results to the community for an extended period of time.

Yes, these young and inexperienced guys made a mistake of judgement to try and protect themselves from further attacks. Not just physical attack in Venezuela but also attacks from a small group of individual hell bent on destroying their project work and DASH Watch who ran an extremely in-depth detailed analysis of every aspect of only the financial's of this project that had the Dash merchant team working full time 7 whole days to provide all the details that DASH Watch wanted. I know that Lorenzo and Alejandro were feeling threatened by the onslaught of negativity, trolls and probing investigation by DashWatch to try and find something to expose them. This was not a fair and balanced DashWatch report. This was an investigatory financial audit which was unwarranted based on results given to the community.

Let me be clear I do not agree on what Alejandro and Lorenzo did, that was clearly wrong, however I can see how they could feel forced into a situation where they felt they had to protect themselves due to the onslaught of trolling attacks they have sustained not just in this project but on other Venezuela projects.

DASH Watch I am requesting the following information to be disclosed:

Quoting from your DASH Watch opening statement

" This financial review was performed upon community request and will only focus on the financial activities of the Dash Merchant Venezuela (DMV) proposal (and will not cover the milestone or KPI data) from October 1, 2018, to December 31, 2018. It will review how the 630 Dash disbursed HERE during that time by the Dash Treasury was allocated by the proposal team."

Firstly: I am calling on DASH Watch to be completely transparent. I want a full list of names of the people from the Community that requested the financial investigation probe into the DASH merchant project. I want a list of all their names publicly displayed here in this proposal.

The reason I want this information disclosed is because my understanding is the the great majority of the community respect and support the projects of Alejandro and Lorenzo. Therefore I do not see how the "community" would request such an in-depth probing financial report that does not focus on any of the actual results delivered by this team.

It needs to be clearly stated who Dash Watch are referring to when they say "community" in their statement above. Dash watch asked for transparency now I am requesting transparency from DASH Watch. A full list of names that requested the report publish here please.

Lorenzo and Alejandro spent a full 7 days working exclusively on co-operating with DASH watch who were asking for more and more detailed specific and personal information eventually requesting access to their own personal accounts. 7 days of hard work providing accounts, receipts and in-depth financial details this shows how much of an audit was made by DASH Watch. I remember in a DASH Watch proposal that they stated that DASH Watch is not funded to do financial audits but may do so if there was further additional funding. Therefore I'm not clear why we are spending money on in-depth financial audits on high performing projects that are delivered outstanding results. This is why I'm requesting the names of the individuals from the community that requested this audit.

Secondly I am requesting that DASH Watch to do a DASH Watch report on the results and work delivered by this team for the funds they received and present that report in this proposal. I notice that DASH Watch did that for other high profile projects such as with KuvaCash project they also gave KuvaCash an interview that lasted over one hour. Since Dash Merchants is higher in reputation in terms of results than any other project to date I think a fair balanced report on results should be given along with an interview in order for this to be a fair report and investigation. It appears to me to be unfair to focus on one aspect only of this project (financial audit) and not on the results delivered for the money. We also need to see what results were delivered for those financials for this to be a fair DASH Watch report.

I don't think I've seen any DASH proposal attacked as much as this project by a small group of individuals the same names keep coming up and we know who these people are.

I know for a fact Lorenzo and Alejandro are working their hearts out to bring DASH to Venezuela where it will benefit millions of people that are suffering in the country. We have to keep our eye on the ball which is the results for the money spent. Alejandro and Lorenzo have learn't their silly mistake and are committed going forward to providing the accounting information that DASH Watch want. Lesson learned.

MNOs need to answer this question. "Are the results delivered by this team worth the money we invested in their project"? If the answer is yes then we need to keep supporting them. This is why I am calling on DASH Watch to do a fair Dash Watch appraisal report of this team's results and performance and that includes the deliverable results by this team for the money spent. I am calling on that DASH Watch report to be created.

Hi DeepBlue, as usual thanks for your thoughtful concerns, and we would like to engage further with you on Discord or any real-time chat protocol if you ever choose to.

Even though we did not include verifying provided financial information from proposal owners in our initial scope, a few months ago, after internal and external discussion with various community members, we at Dash Watch felt that we would be considered negligent continuing to take financial data provided to us at face value without verification. In order to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of the financial data we provide to MNOs in our reports, we decided that we must implement at least some form of basic fraud detection mechanism. This is to prevent any long-lasting deception from being perpetrated against the DAO.

In order to fit within our limited budget, we settled on 1-2 random financial reviews per month being the best way to discourage fraud with the least cost to the DAO and more importantly the least burden on proposal owners. Instead of proposal owners having to substantiate expenses every month, they could opt to provide transparency on their finances by simply agreeing beforehand to cooperate on a financial review if they were selected knowing full well that this could happen any month. This we believed would encourage POs to be accurate and to keep diligent records in order to have substantiation of their expenditures available upon request.

We believe the risk of being chosen for a random financial review is likely to discourage financial dishonesty among proposal owners with the least burden for the proposal owner and the smallest cost to the DAO, however, please bear in mind no PO is obligated to cooperate with us on a financial review. We do however ask that proposal owners make their intention known ahead of time by either consenting or not consenting to the financial review if chosen at random or by community request in the initial questionnaire we send them. At least one proposal owner has refused to provide evidence of expenses and in the case of Dash Merchant Venezuela, they had every right to refuse to provide us financial information as well.

We have since been doing financial reviews of one or two randomly-chosen proposals per month. In the case where several established community members request a financial review of a proposal that was not randomly chosen, we have accommodated. So far we have done financial reviews of Kuvacash (requested), EWallet.co.uk (random), Dash Brazil (random), Dash Embassy Thailand (random), Dash India Remittance (random underway for the last two weeks), Dash Venezuela by Eugenia (requested but not able to carried out due to a lack of response), and Dash Colombia (random) is about to begin. Regarding who requested DMV's financial review, Mr Hack, Ageless, TroyDash, oceanman as well as one other MNO who would not like to be named either publicly requested or publicly supported the request for this financial review to be carried out.

As far as why this review seemed like a much bigger effort on our part, this is primarily because of the sheer magnitude and intricacy of the disbursement of funds by this proposal. In other words, by the very nature of this proposal, funds were and are being sent to many more people, contractors, companies, and exchanges than a typical proposal. In the case of the other financial reviews, our Kuvacash financial review took a comparable amount of time and effort (24 total man hours on our end). The Kuvacash report was comparable in size to DMV’s although it also included verification of deliverables which were not called into question in the case of DMV. In Kuvacash’s case, nothing was substantially different than what was represented to us nor was it in any of the other above-mentioned proposals, and as a result there was no need for as in-depth of a report.

Regarding your request for a more comprehensive report on DMV other than the one covering solely its financials, we were not able to release our regular report in January because DMV did not provide updates for milestones or KPIs and requested more time, but appears ready and willing to provide them currently. A much more comprehensive report was actually already something we had spoken to DMV about and we are hoping to complete this in February. In addition, the day we released our report we did reach out to DMV to conduct a video interview with us at their convenience which we will release this month if DMV obliges.

We do not ever want people to feel a proposal has been unfairly represented by us as that is completely antithetical to our role and core operating tenets and defeats our value proposition to MNOs along with encouraging a misallocation of capital, so we take your concerns and those of this nature very seriously and will do our best to address them in the ways mentioned above.

If you have any further concern, input, or advice please don't hesitate to let us know

@paragon thank you for your reply. I would be grateful if you could please confirm the following information about the MNOs Oceanman and RealMrHack. I am requesting this information because these 2 people have been posting repeated negative and attacking comments in this proposal and in others which is hardly in keeping of Dash communmity spirit. Their messages were eventually moderated by DashCentral admin because there were so many repeated spam messages. To base an indepth enquiry using these 2 users that don't appear to have contributed to DASH in any meaninful way other than trolling and attacking comments against proposal owners seems somewhat unusual. I notice that Mr Dash supported George Donnelly proposal with a few positive words and one other proposal with a token "yes" comment however on the whole his comments have been attacking, negative and flaming in nature. Before their spam messages were deleted this is how many attacking messages they had posted in this proposal. You can see that together they accounted for 40% of all comments.

Total comments in the proposal (Jan 13th, 11:23 AST): 110

Oceanman: 34 comments (30.9%). Only oceanman has made the 30.9% of the total comments.
Realmrhack: 10 comments (9.09%). Only realmrhack has made the 9.09% of the total comments

I am raising this issue because DashWatch decided to make the in-depth audit based on the strength of characters such as this? DashWatch mentioned "community" however I would not class these characters are model community members by their nature of how they provide feedback. Feedback can be directed in a constructive way however these characters attack in an agressive and trolling manner. If they have some points to make then by delivering it in such a hateful manner it actually lowers the value of what they have to say considerably, it also calls to question their true motives.

I would hardly say these people are representative of the Dash Community spirit -would you? Isn't DASH about aiming to foster an environment of colloboration, not hate. Constructive feedback is welcomed of course because it is the only way for us to improve but repeated hate and negativity is damaging to our community. One can make constructive critisisms and question a proposal owner of course but to repeatedly attack people is not what I feel the DASH community is about. Therefore to me this raises questions why DashWatch took these two members seriously and undertook an indepth lengthy financial audit based on their request? I am searching for understanding on this point. Who, is permitted to have the authority to raise an in-depth financial audit by DashWatch on a proposal, bearing in mind the time, money and resources required to undertake such an financial audit?

I have checked the DASH forum on these two users and Oceanman has made no contributions in the past in the forum and RealMrHack has only attacked other proposals. Hardly what we would call positive contributions to DASH:

You can see their profiles here:

Oceanman
https://www.dash.org/forum/members/oceanman.30279/ joined October 14 with Zero posts on the forum. This Dash user account is new and does not contribute anything to the forum.

RealMrHack
https://www.dash.org/forum/members/realmrhack.22513/ Joined January 18th his posts are mostly attacking other proposals. If ever there is positive comment it a cursory comment, not real positive contribution. However his negative attacks are long and repeated as is the case in this proposal. Overall this users attacks proposal owners but contributes very little in a postive way.

Based on the profiles of these two users I'm somewhat surprised that DashWatch decided to take their requests for an audit seriously.

A few questions regarding these two users:

1. Can DashWatch confirm here if these users also go by other Dash usernames? If so, what are those other usernames?
2. How did these users contact you regarding the request for a financial audit?
3. Did DashWatch speak with these users directly at any time or any time in the past?
4. When DashWatch raises an audit what factors specifically are you using in order to determine a financial audit should be raised?

Regarding the financial review with KuvaCash could DashWatch confirm the following points please.
1. Did DashWatch also undertake an audit on the personal accounts of the proposal owners to determine their personal earnings from their project?

2. I notice that Drako has a MN badge. Can you confirm if DashWatch determined if those masternodes came from DAO funding of their proposal?

I would like to request a representation of the results delivered by this team by DASH Watch. The results are actually more important than the financial audit because the results are what we are paying for.

The community has seen video evidence of the results of this team. Rodrigo who visited Venezuela created a documentary of his visit and he clearly stated he bought everything in DASH during his stay. In addition Earnesto from the core team also make a visit to Venezuela and also stated in a video that they were able to buy all they needed from shops and restaurants in DASH. There are 2500 merchants signed up on DiscoverDash. There are videos with people going into the shops and buying goods and services. We need a fair representation of what this team have delivered to the community. Big brand names have been signed up including Subway, Papa Johns, and Church's chicken. This cannot be underestimated in Value to the DASH brand. No other country in the world has signed up big brand names like this and it adds substantial credibility to DASH to have these big world names on board. e.g. George Donnelly stated that the Venezuelan migrants were very sceptical about using DASH for remittances because they had never heard of DASH however all George would need to do to gain that credibility is to show the videos of the Subway, Pappa Johns and Church's chicken (which is the 4th Largest chicken restaurant in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church's_Chicken ) Although Church's chicken was signed up by DashVenezuela this team have provided support via the support help centre and other innovations that made these types of sign ups possible. Without the help centre this would not be possible because the big brand names want support. Damage to this proposal is damaging to all the work they do. The haters can throw their hateful comments at this proposal but these results cannot be argued against. Althoug there are some positive initial results from Colombia by George Donnelly he has not signed up any big brand names yet. Big Brand names using DASH is what will bolster the DASH brand. Whether these brand names are in Venezuela or not the world is sitting up and noticing this work because a big brand name would not use DASH if it was not credible and this value cannot be underestimated. We need to see that value respresented. The value that this team have given. This team have generated postive news stories in the World media about the work in Venezuela when all there is doom and gloom in crypto this team have delivered results tha is a ray of positive hope not only for Venezueal but for cryptocurrency in the world. So make no mistake about it. The DashWatch report that is only focuse on a finacial audit with some irregularities that have been given a reason is doing this team and the REAL work they have done a huge injustice. We need to see their results. Then let the community decide if it was value for money or not.

One final point. Could you confirm here if a DashWatch member or colloborator of DASH Watch has ever been invited to visit Venezuela by Lorenzo Rey or any other member of DMV to assess for yourself the results of the DMV team? If this invite was given was a visit to Venezuela was made by DashWatch?

Thank you / DeepBlue

**Please note I reposted a corrected version of this comment at the top of this proposal. I also dealt with a few typos and added a few additional comments. Therefore please refer to my posting further up. My apologies for the inconvenience.

quoting :

"Regarding your request for a more comprehensive report on DMV other than the one covering solely its financials, we were not able to release our regular report in January because DMV did not provide updates for milestones or KPIs and requested more time, but appears ready and willing to provide them currently"

I was also wondering why there is only a financial report circulating and not a comprehensive report on your own Dash Watch site and that explains it then...

For the record i never requested a financial review but after having read it through a link the comments, i am interested now in reading the comprehensive report when its finished as well.

Interesting information about having 2 randomly chosen proposals per month to do financial reviews on.

BRAVO! I was hoping that you speak out for them! Thank you!
What you describe is exactly what happened to the D-A-CH Embassy (and they did not even commit such a mistake).
We as MNO have to protect POs from this vicious behavior.

I fully support this proposal.

Are you trying to rationalise fraud ?

MNO’s take note of this. Macno triggers and cannot think rationally. These people falsified documents to perpetuate a ‘long con’. Read about ‘the 5 stages of Grief, which is what Macno is suffering now.

Don’t get caught up in this ‘Stockholm-like’ syndrome.

Thanks,
Drako

@DeepBlue - Dash Watch has historically always provided further or more in-depth information at the request of any confirmed MNO. So while you may find it useful or important to know who those MNOs are, I want it to be very clear that Dash Watch is not in any way at fault for this, as that has always been their MO. Dash Watch has always ever acted in service to the network objectively and without bias, so I wanted to dispel any sort of notions to the contrary. I don't particularly care if the MNOs who made that request are outed or out themselves, to be clear.

"Alejandro and Lorenzo have learn't their silly mistake and are committed going forward to providing the accounting information that DASH Watch want. Lesson learned." It's really not that easy. Forging documents really can't be acceptable. It's pretty clear that with about a day left this proposal will not pass this cycle. I do want this to continue but I completely understand MNOs who say that we can not set a precedent where forging documents is acceptable. To get this proposal passing again I think we either need a change of leadership or a public apology where those responsible explain how they would offer to remedy this situation and restore confidence to the MNOs.

I also really want to end this "us vs them" attitude in our community. Dash watch did what they should have done here. False documents were given and they needed to speak up.

As for "Are the results delivered by this team worth the money we invested in their project"? I would answer most likely, and I am continuing to vote yes just out of support for the team they have built as they don't all deserve to lose their jobs.

It is the allover package we are getting why people don't wanna continue to support this Venezuela adventure:

* The team hasn't delivered in a long time

* The macro factors in the country have changed to the worse and are very different now from when we started to identify Vzla as in interesting target country

* The team abused of the trust us Dash MNOs - trust and integrity is about the most important asset you have when doing business...

* The concept itself doesn't work - the numbers and the track record prove that

* The No1 focus of the team is their own personal finances (to say it in a nice way...) and not to lead a grassroots project

* Now the deceit, fraud and document forgery just puts the cream on top of the cake...

Anybody with latino business experience and who understands "how things work" in South America will just phase this failed project/team out now.

You are what is wrong with the treasury. Rationalizing attempts to deceit and fraud as "mistakes" by young people that pay themselves salaries befitting CEOs of long living, professional and profitable businesses when in actuality they are operating grassroots movements that are still trying to figure things out.

The results have been long scrutinized and questionable since amount of txs is not picking up since November when I brought up the issue again. There is no metric for merchant burnout. Just a big number of new merchants.
The metrics for future success I believe are even more laughable. 200 txs per day until May 2019. Amazing work indeed.
From 0 to 200 in 1+ year of work and how much Dash exactly allocated to VZ?

You want a list of names that requested this audit? If you hang out in Discord that would be easy to figure out. Stat by adding MrHack in that list. While you are there thrown my name in there as well if it makes you feel better.

@deepblue add my name to list, I will and have publicly stated I requested the review.

Thank you

Proudly add my one , too: oceanman.

I agree. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.. MNOs should listen to both sides and consider the bigger picture before choosing which way to vote.

Walter

100% agree, here.
I also vote Yes again and give them another chance to prove that if they are prepared they can give financial reports.

Quote: DeepBlue
I don't think I've seen any DASH proposal attacked as much as this project by a small group of individuals the same names keep coming up and we know who these people are.

Well, excuse me. The Dash community is very grateful to these few individuals who spent many hours of their unpaid time into analyzing, writing, ringing the alarm bell and eventually stopping this scam.

Had people like you been more vigilant and done just an easy research about the Venezuelan price level, this massive loss of DAO funds would have never happened.

Maybe you should work on your own shortcomings instead of blaming others - who actually deserve a lot of gratitude for their commitment.

What we have here, is a situation where the network paid the price of a Ferrari but received a Lada Niva with a broken engine.

View this video from 3 mins onwards https://youtu.be/4tKvqj3U3O0

In addition, the team fabricated documents and provided them to our auditors and were busted for it.

There is no baby, just hopium wrapped up in towels of bs and fraud.

I realise this is a hard pill to swallow for a few people here, especially people like deepblue who has been working with these guys. The reality is that we are being scammed and ripped off, please view the facts and vote with your brains.

This is the biggest scam in a long time... and understandably many don't wanna hear about.

The good news is that we managed to stop it can now put 1.500 into projects that do deliver.

@deepblue to help with the winter grief

https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/

@deepblue

I mean if i was potentially benefiting from a mutual relationshop in vz its understandably going to make me angry as is the case with you

@deepblue your akin to someone whos girlfeiend has just dumped him and is angry and disgruntled hardly any benefit to know who all requested the review.

The main point which seems to allude you is the fact they where deceptive provided forged documents inter alia.

Have fun on your witch-hunt toddlers do seems to throw tantrums ;)

Thank you

Is there another team or other individuals that are offering the same or better services for a better price?

If so, let's fund those people.

If not, perhaps we should offer these people more, to encourage others to come in and compete for funds too.

P.S. I agree it was a mistake to offer false documents. But it is understandable - who would you trust to keep your info secure and private? Even banks and governments don't. They have come clean and apologized.

They seem sincere and probably won't make that mistake again.

On the other hand, if there are hundreds of other people that are offering to encourage merchant and customer adoption, by all means let's fund them instead. I don't really see a long line from here.

Penny for your thoughts:
What is not worth your money?
a) 2500 new Merchants during the biggest pricedrop in recent years but frauding documents because of paranoia for 1000 DASH
b) around 30 Videos with 300 views each and 0 new Merchants for 1000 DASH

Things are sometimes this easy.

@DashWatch
You guys from DashWatch must surely be proud of having ruined this proposal.

DashWatch, please focus on deliverables and not on whether PO's are good accountants and bookkeepers!!
Real life necessities do sometimes differ from what others might expect.
Focus on deliverables and this Team clearly has delivered in the past.

Still voting yes.

You're blaming the wrong group here.

Dash Watch did not ruin this proposal. The Proposal Owners did by choosing to submit false documents when viable alternatives were offered to them. The only people at fault here were the DMV Proposal Owners.

@EddieMurphy
Quote: You guys from DashWatch must surely be proud of having ruined this proposal.
.

Actually, it was me ! Dashwatch is not to blame as the fraud was just too obvious...

Do you agree then that a project manager of a grassroots idea earns a monthly salary of 500 times a normal salary ???

In US-$ terms, earning 1.500.000 $ per month for a couple of dozens of txs more ???

First, get your numbers right... and about which run-down socialist economy you are actually talking about... let alone, the fraudsters !

Quoting from the DashWatch report :

''After previewing our final report for errors on 1/24/2019, Dash Merchant Venezuela has acknowledged that they have provided us with inaccurate and deceptive documents regarding salary payouts. The stated reason for this was a concern for their safety and security in Venezuela. The below report was compiled before we learned this. We have, however, since been able to collect enough evidence to assess that the amount claimed as spent on tips over three months of 9,760.42USD is credible. DMV has committed to us going forward that they will be providing full and honest transparent reporting and have already started providing us corroborative documents to this end which we are actively working to prepare a follow-up report on."

Each masternode owner will have to check for themself if this changes how they voted on this budget proposal or how they plan to vote on this budget proposal.

Based on this having come to light, I have no choice but to withdraw my support at the very least until DMV and its team gets its house in order and answers sufficiently for their behavior and makes reparations for openly attempting to defraud the DAO. All of this could have been avoided if DMV had been forthcoming and transparent with Dash Watch from the beginning--which could have been done in a way that maintained the privacy and security of the team, which Dash Watch explicitly offered to do. They chose to be fraudulent instead. Even if the motivations behind it were ostensibly benign, it's not acceptable behavior for contractors that desire to receive funding from the DAO.

sad development. To withdraw support for now is the logical choice.

they are doing a q/a on discord mno-vip now

Dash watch: "We have, however, since been able to collect enough evidence to assess that the amount claimed as spent on tips over three months of 9,760.42USD is credible. DMV has committed to us going forward that they will be providing full and honest transparent reporting and have already started providing us corroborative documents to this end which we are actively working to prepare a follow-up report on. "https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RdBC6IIdxf_-A5V0pxxn5DuCyl3dKMEZ-9i2A4JdALs/edit

agree
same here

changed back to YES - i am all for 2nd chances and they did a good honest qna + they now know they are being watched

This maybe a bit off topic but this looks eerily similiar as what happened with the "Dash in Sudan" budget proposal, where an id picture of Hassna was falsified stating high personal risk and security reasons. Should that Sudan team then deserve a second chance as well ? This is what i'm personally struggling with at the moment ...

It's not at all the same, in one situation we have someone who has worked hard in our community building up dash venezuela for quite some time and strongly believes in the project and on the other we had someone who no one knew about. They made a mistake and should be reprimanded but the effort shouldn't be thrown away.

Poor boys... they were 'working' sooo hard... at only a monthly salary 500 times the one of others...

I'm not saying that i would not want to support this Venezuela team as i also believe in second chances, but to me it seems a bit hypocrite that we first massively downvote the Sudan team and then give a second chance to the Venezuela team, when they both seem to have been providing good services to the network and surprisingly both were engaged with falsified docs and both state pretty much the same reason for doing so.

But Lorenzo and Alejandro are real people and not some Fake person?

Two out of the three Sudan teammembers identified themself with correct pics from the start. Only Hassna (female) did not . Maybe things would have gone differently if they knew that their id could be optionally kept confidentially at DashWatch .. maybe there is some work cut out for us to raise that awareness, specially in countries where there are risks to personal safety.

Ok, I get your point. I still don't think it is really the same level of dishonesty.

I just read Alejandros comment and accept his apology. Voting Yes.

Disgusting. Really disgusting.

Dear MNOs and Dash Community,

Regarding the report from Dash Watch we must clarify and repeat that the main and only reason of the decision we took was due to privacy and personal safety concern regarding Venezuela's insecurity.

We didn’t want our salaries and our employees salaries to be disclosed due to the high risk this involves. We have, however, agreed to provide it privately with Dash Watch. We have already provided the accurate information to them and will continue to cooperate as much as we can. We still made a mistake and we say sorry.

However this doesn’t change anything regarding what we have done here. All our results are real and have been verified by different trusted people in the community (even from the Dash Core Group). We are one of the few teams that have provided so much value in the DAO history and we apologize that due to our fears and concerns we took a bad decision. We commit to have our finances more organized for the future and Dash Watch has agreed to not disclose any personal information so we will always provide accurate information from now on.

Sadly, this report will be used for those few people who don’t want Venezuela keep succeeding as the #1 country in crypto adoption.

Venezuela is on the worldwide loop of the crypto industry and at Dash Merchant Venezuela we are proud to be working hard at the forefront of these achievements. We want to highlight the good things because it is clear that those are much more than the negative ones.

We have big plans for the future and we hope to count with your support.

Finally, we want to thanks and congratulate Dash Watch for their professionalism and constant support.

Sincerely,
Dash Merchant Venezuela team.

Why do you believe you are entitled to such high salaries? The salaries you are getting are usually paid out to CEOs with long running, successful and professional business.

Fraudsters, busted in the act. End of story.

There is absolutely no excuse for providing fake docs to the audit team.

If this team receives more funding I will both be surprised and disappointed in my fellow MNOs.

http://bit.ly/DMVFinancialReview

Read the review MNO clear indicators of fraud and embezzlement!!

*********************************************************************************
*****FRAUD ALERT - DASH MERCHANT VENEZUELA EMBEZZLING FUNDS FROM THE DAO******

Dashwatch report here:
http://bit.ly/DMVFinancialReview

----- DEFUND NOW! ONLY TWO DAYS TO GO -----

DEAR MNO COMMUNITY - PLEASE READ THE LATEST REPORT FROM DASHWATCH - DASH MERCHANT VENEZUELA WAS SET UP TO DEFRAUD THE DAO AND HAS EMBEZZLED AND STOLEN/MISAPPROPRIATED OVER 64,000 USD OF PROPOSAL FUNDS TO DATE.

THEY RECENTLY ATTEMPTED TO DECEIVE DASHWATCH BY PROVIDING DOCTORED RECEIPTS WHICH THEY PROVIDED AFTER THEY WERE QUERIED ON THEIR FINANCIALS THAT SHOWED MAJOR DISCREPANCIES (AND THESE NUMBERS WERE FOUND TO HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY MADE UP). THEY ALSO HAVE ADMITTED TO THE FRAUD TO DASHWATCH - THIS TEAM, THEREFORE BOTH LORENZO REY AND ALEJANDRO ARE CONMEN AND LIARS, AND HAVE BEEN DEFRAUDING THE DAO.

PLEASE READ THE REPORT AND DEFUND THIS FRAUDULENT PROPOSAL. THE REPORT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.

--------
TO MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY THAT WERE FOOLED BY THIS PROPOSAL AND TEAM - IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT, THIS WAS A SOPHISTICATED CON, THEY USED TECHNICAL MEANS TO ATTEMPT TO DECEIVE DASHWATCH, AND WERE ONLY FOUND OUT BECAUSE OF THEIR PERSISTENCE. THEY POSTED UP HOPIUM VIDEOS THAT COST VERY LITTLE TO PRODUCE, AND WERE FABRICATED AS A CONFIDENCE TRICK IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS A LONG-TERM CON. THIS IS LIKELY NOT THE ONLY DAO PROJECT THAT IS FRAUDULENT, PLEASE READ DASHWATCH REPORTS AND INSIST ON ACCOUNTABILITY OF PROPOSALS.
---------

I am very relieved that the misuse of DAO funds in Venezuela is coming to light.

*********************************************************************************
*****FRAUD ALERT - DASH MERCHANT VENEZUELA EMBEZZLING FUNDS FROM THE DAO******

Dashwatch report here:
http://bit.ly/DMVFinancialReview

----- DEFUND NOW! ONLY TWO DAYS TO GO -----

DEAR MNO COMMUNITY - PLEASE READ THE LATEST REPORT FROM DASHWATCH - DASH MERCHANT VENEZUELA WAS SET UP TO DEFRAUD THE DAO AND HAS EMBEZZLED AND STOLEN/MISAPPROPRIATED OVER 64,000 USD OF PROPOSAL FUNDS TO DATE.

THEY RECENTLY ATTEMPTED TO DECEIVE DASHWATCH BY PROVIDING DOCTORED RECEIPTS WHICH THEY PROVIDED AFTER THEY WERE QUERIED ON THEIR FINANCIALS THAT SHOWED MAJOR DISCREPANCIES (AND THESE NUMBERS WERE FOUND TO HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY MADE UP). THEY ALSO HAVE ADMITTED TO THE FRAUD TO DASHWATCH - THIS TEAM, THEREFORE BOTH LORENZO REY AND ALEJANDRO ARE CONMEN AND LIARS, AND HAVE BEEN DEFRAUDING THE DAO.

PLEASE READ THE REPORT AND DEFUND THIS FRAUDULENT PROPOSAL. THE REPORT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.

--------
TO MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY THAT WERE FOOLED BY THIS PROPOSAL AND TEAM - IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT, THIS WAS A SOPHISTICATED CON, THEY USED TECHNICAL MEANS TO ATTEMPT TO DECEIVE DASHWATCH, AND WERE ONLY FOUND OUT BECAUSE OF THEIR PERSISTENCE. THEY POSTED UP HOPIUM VIDEOS THAT COST VERY LITTLE TO PRODUCE, AND WERE FABRICATED AS A CONFIDENCE TRICK IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS A LONG-TERM CON. THIS IS LIKELY NOT THE ONLY DAO PROJECT THAT IS FRAUDULENT, PLEASE READ DASHWATCH REPORTS AND INSIST ON ACCOUNTABILITY OF PROPOSALS.
---------

*********************************************************************************
*****FRAUD ALERT - DASH MERCHANT VENEZUELA EMBEZZLING FUNDS FROM THE DAO******

Dashwatch report here:
http://bit.ly/DMVFinancialReview

----- DEFUND NOW! ONLY TWO DAYS TO GO -----

DEAR MNO COMMUNITY - PLEASE READ THE LATEST REPORT FROM DASHWATCH - DASH MERCHANT VENEZUELA WAS SET UP TO DEFRAUD THE DAO AND HAS EMBEZZLED AND STOLEN/MISAPPROPRIATED OVER 64,000 USD OF PROPOSAL FUNDS TO DATE.

THEY RECENTLY ATTEMPTED TO DECEIVE DASHWATCH BY PROVIDING DOCTORED RECEIPTS WHICH THEY PROVIDED AFTER THEY WERE QUERIED ON THEIR FINANCIALS THAT SHOWED MAJOR DISCREPANCIES (AND THESE NUMBERS WERE FOUND TO HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY MADE UP). THEY ALSO HAVE ADMITTED TO THE FRAUD TO DASHWATCH - THIS TEAM, THEREFORE BOTH LORENZO REY AND ALEJANDRO ARE CONMEN AND LIARS, AND HAVE BEEN DEFRAUDING THE DAO.

PLEASE READ THE REPORT AND DEFUND THIS FRAUDULENT PROPOSAL. THE REPORT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.

--------
TO MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY THAT WERE FOOLED BY THIS PROPOSAL AND TEAM - IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT, THIS WAS A SOPHISTICATED CON, THEY USED TECHNICAL MEANS TO ATTEMPT TO DECEIVE DASHWATCH, AND WERE ONLY FOUND OUT BECAUSE OF THEIR PERSISTENCE. THEY POSTED UP HOPIUM VIDEOS THAT COST VERY LITTLE TO PRODUCE, AND WERE FABRICATED AS A CONFIDENCE TRICK IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS A LONG-TERM CON. THIS IS LIKELY NOT THE ONLY DAO PROJECT THAT IS FRAUDULENT, PLEASE READ DASHWATCH REPORTS AND INSIST ON ACCOUNTABILITY OF PROPOSALS.
---------

Thank you,
Drako

**********************************************************************
**********************************************************************

Is there any need to shout?

Actually yes. There are several good reasons. This whole botched proposal should have never gotten this far...

Alejandro, I'm very proud of your (and your team's) achievements and will of course support your project!
Keep up the good work
Voted YES.

Thank you for this mess !

Just because you were too narrowminded to understand the importance of a call center one year ago, you don't need to act tough now. They delivered a working call center for the fraction of european costs that spans the latam region and is still going.

Believe me, nobody from any South American country will have a conversation with a call center in Venezuela without immediately hanging up... it is like a call center in North Korea attending US customers...

Just shows once more that we have many people here

* who are not up to date what is going on in Vzla/Latam

* who don't understand the mentality in the different Latam countries

... but yes, think they can make smart investment decisions there...

We are just seeing the outcome....

So you are living in SA? Or are you also just "not up to date what is going on in Vzla/Latam"?

Because what you are saying is beyond stupid.

1. Almost every major US Company deploys a Call Center in India. People there have sometimes thick accents. Do callers hang up immediately? Of course not. They got a problem they need to solve. They might be annoyed, yes, but not hang up.

Even German Companies outsource Call Centers to Turkey, because they have enough people there who speak German.
We even outsource Call Centers within Germany to Sachsen (Saxony, State in the eastern part of germany) where they speak "Sächsisch" which was voted THE least sexy German dialect. Do people hang up when they hear "Sächsisch"? No they don't. I have witnessed call center agents with the heaviest Saxon dialect that had better KPIs than their standard German peers.

What I'm trying to tell you is, no matter the dialect, people won't hang up until their problem is solved. And I highly doubt that Alejandro and his team are answering the telephone with
"Hello Welcome to DASH HELP in VENEZUELA. DID YOU NOTICE WE ARE IN VENEZUELA?"

2. I actually reviewed the training material of Dash Help and it was fantastic. No one could have faked this kind of in depth knowledge of customer service. Did you review it?

3. Have you ever seen a call center from the inside? Probably not. So please keep your unprofessional generalizations to yourself.

That DMV cheated was stupid and doesn't need any further discussion. But DASH Help is legit.

Hello AnCapitol. Thanks so much for your words. I’m so glad to know you are still active in the community. You were the first one who believed in us 1 year back and we will never forget that.

Thanks so much for your continued support.

AlejandroE

Dash Watch began a full financial review with the Dash Merchant Venezuela (DMV) Proposal Team today 1/16/19 for expenditures made in October, November, and December and is now reviewing and verifying six separate spreadsheets and two documents with invoices and receipts provided by the proposal team. These documents cover the cashout and conversion data DMV recorded and Dash transactions as well as fiat expenses conducted by the proposal. Dash Watch has also requested all of the bank records to back the receipts and invoices provided regarding payments made in fiat currency, and the proposal team has agreed to provide all of this banking and invoice information by 1/21/19.

It is clear from this initial meeting that the accounting and the disbursement of the funds are far more intricate than what DMV provided to Dash Watch in the last three months. DMV has committed to providing all requested documentation and to cooperate fully on the Dash Watch financial review. Dash Watch will finish the report by 1/24/19.
Thanks,
Dash Watch Team

Eventhough a direct link to your DashWatch evaluation report is already circulating in these budget proposal comments, i seem to be missing the actual evaluation reporton your own site. Please add it so i can verify it with the now circulating short link.

Dw today is 01/24/2019 have you prepared the reports?

I would like to give a personal testimonial for the DASH merchant project which is one of the most important and successful that DASH is running today, bringing in world wide media attention and inspiring other projects in South America to start promoting DASH.

We can see from the discover DASH website how Venezuela leads the world in the number of merchants that have been signed up. This is ready for when we address the remittance market.

https://discoverdash.com/stats/

Ryan Taylor and the DASH core team stated in their Q4 call that their focus is now on Venezuela as a high priority for their marketing and promotion focus. I think this shows the importance of Venezuela for DASH.

I wrote an in-depth article at the forum that explains all the reasons why Venezuela needs to be the focus for DASH marketing which you can see here:

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/a-case-for-venezuela-why-focus-dash-promotion-in-venezuela-and-latin-america.40419/

A little background: I am an MNO and have been a business owner and entrepreneur now for over 25 years. I have been supporting Alejandro and Lorenzo and their team providing guidance and marketing advice for the past 8 months on their projects so I know this team well and the work they are doing. I have volunteered my time because I truly believe in this team and their vision of establishing DASH in Venezuela. I would not devote this amount of time to a good cause project if I did not truly believe this team will achieve that goal.

On average I spend anything between 3 to 8 hours a week communicating with Alejandro through signal calls, developing ideas and strategies to establish DASH in Venezuela. Over 8 months that is a considerable amount of my time on top of already a busy schedule of my own but it has been well worth the time when you see what this team have achieved in such a short time period.

At the beginning of 2018 there were no DASH merchants in Venezuela and now we have over 2500 merchants. As you may know this team is also responsible for other DASH project DASH Help providing World wide support to our users and tech support and DASH Text which is an innovative way for anyone to remit DASH using a simple low cost phone.

When Alejandro and Lorenzo started on this project nobody had done anything similar to this previously. They were starting completely from scratch working out how to establish DASH in a country were no precedent had been setup up previously.

However over the months and with continual refinements from feedback from customers and merchants we developed a strategy and plan for mass adoption. We had to find away around the “chicken and egg” situation ie. no customers and no merchants. In addition the liquidity of DASH is not sufficient in Venezuela. Our plans and goals had to address all these issues effectively for mass adoption to occur.

The plan for mass adoption in Venezuela is as follows:

Phase 1. Setup the DASH support help centre to support new customers and merchants as we grow the ecosystem. The help centre will provide larger companies and brand names confidence to sign up DASH. We are already seeing the success of this with Subway, Church’s chicken, Pappa Johns and some other big brand names to come. These companies would not feel confident without having a technical support centre to back up their staff, provide training and support their customers questions. This has been COMPLETED.

Phase 2. Merchant Sign Ups

The second phase is to sign up and train merchants quickly to learn from them and refine the merchant sign up process. The goal was to learn the merchants needs so that we can develop a POS system to meet those needs and to move on to the most important shops of all which are supermarkets and mini markets. All the merchants have been instructed that we are setting them up with DASH ready for when we can get DASH into the hands of the people through remittances from oversees.

With over 4 million Venezuelans now how left the country they want to make remittances home to support their families. The remittance market will bring in billions of USD in DASH into Venezuela. However people will not make remittances until they know their family in Venezuela can spend their DASH on food at supermarkets, and mini markets along with other essential items such as Pharmacy goods. Therefore in order for the remittance market to work we must first sign up the food shops, pharmacies and other essential shops that support every day life in Venezuela. That is the focus of this funding to achieve that. Without this the remittance market will not work. We must sign up large numbers of supermarkets and mini markets and now we can do that since the POS system for the food industry and now been developed.

The merchants that have been signed up already have been instructed that it will take some time before they will receive volume customers until we can address the remittance market but the are ready and waiting for this to happen.

This project is therefore to fund the signing up of food shops, mini markets and supermarkets so that we can move to the final stage which is to bring DASH into Venezuela through the remittance markets.

We expect that once the oversees family members realise their families in Venezuela can buy food and essential items the remittance market will take off because there is no low cost and efficient way currently to remit money to Venezuela because of sanctions and very high remittances costs. The remittance market will only work however if we get the food shops signed up which is what this proposal is all about.

Phase 3 is the Remittance market to bring large quantities of DASH into Venezuela

We have been following this plan systematically and we have been successful in each stage.

We have seen some comments saying that the transaction numbers of 150 to 200 per day are low however that is what we expect until we get to the remittance market going. Having said this it is still higher than anywhere else in the world for real world users. Currently people in Venezuela do not have sufficient DASH in the ecosystem but once we address the remittance markets the transactions will be expect to raise exponentially.

There is no short cut or other way around establishing DASH in a country. It is not possible to do all the stages at once as some people seem to expect. It is simply not possible.

The fact that over 4 million people have left Venezuela has created a huge remittance market but to tap into that market we need to sign these food shops up and this is where this project comes in.

This project is the most successful project that DASH has had in terms of numbers of genuine consumer transactions and merchant sign ups and this is even before we have signed up food shops and addressed the remittance market. I encourage all community members to look at the results that have been achieved with this team. This team are on track and have delivered every milestone even with the DASH price decreases.

quoting : "I have been supporting Alejandro and Lorenzo and their team providing guidance and marketing advice for the past 8 months on their projects so I know this team well and the work they are doing. "
Regarding the DashWatch evaluation report and the stated "inaccurate and deceptive documents regarding salary payouts" that was initially provided to DashWatch : was this ever discussed between you and the Dash Merchant Venezuela Team ? Has the option to provide sensitive information about things like salary confidentially to DashWatch ever been brought up as a way to reduce risk and increase their security ?

Thank you DeepBlue for a great synopsis on the project.

Hello DeepBlue. You couldn’t explain the strategy better than you did. That is exactly what we are working on and a big part of our ideas comes from you.

The remittances market will be the next step of our strategy, but as you well mentioned, we need to have the supermarkets and grocery stores first (90% of the remittances to Venezuela are meant to buy food).

We are following the strategy step by step and we are showing that it is working. As we have stated, this is not a thing of days, this will take some time but the most important thing is that we are actually having real results from the strategy.

Thank you so much for your continued support and advisory. We will keep working very hard.

AlejandroE

Well said DeepBlue. I agree. DCG Bus Dev main strategy is targeting Latin America highlighting Venezuela as a focus point. If Dash can't make it work in Venezuela where central banking has failed we have serious problems. Venezuelans need cryptocurrency right now. This team has done a phenomenal job in 2018 and I'm sure will continue to deliver bigger results for 2019.

I couldn't agree more. This is a sound and sensible approach with a budget and cost that can be supported by the Dash Network in a sustainable manner, even during the bottom of a bear market. You'll continue to get my yes votes.

Walter

Thank you so much for all you guys do!

I don't know much about remittance, but I feel like incentivizing spending with Dash is more important. I thought that Dash Merchant considers this the next big phase in the project as well, but you didn't mention this at all.

Anyway great job, keep it up. Dash Merchant is great.

@Macno @MarkMason @walters @Ancestor thanks so much for your words and support!

Damn this budget proposal thread has it all :

* an ocean of spamming comments from oceanman, who doesnt notice this is all actually backfiring at him as it irritate masternode owners more then anything.

* comments from realmrhack ranging from wild aquisations (accusing OP to be part of some omni group ? really ?) to usage of excessive questioning techniques. If only realmrhack was a valid masternode owner... sighh.
If only realmrhack could use one post to bundle his many many many thoughts... sighh.

* a now yellow colored budget propsal that is making certain people see red.

This is great, by all means please continue.

LOL yup not an MNO i just waste my time putting in comments on all proposals. Great assessment detective. You sure got great intellectual ability to assess the proposal or lack thereof

I wont trust any comment made by you unless you verify yourself. It doesn't take long. 5 min max

Well, lets be real here, all you are at this point is a whitelisted commenter. Without any proof you actually own any Dash or any
Masternodes. Even oceanman with his many flaws actually provides proof he is a masternode owner.

Why should a budget proposal creator pay this much time and energy to only a whitelisted commenter who also throws in wild personal aquisations like you do in this budget proposal ? The answer is simple... he should not.

aquisations --> accusations

Please no more accusations about Realmrhack´s aquisations

Lol

Still bluffing your way as a MN, hang in there sport :), these comments look like cut and pastes from your replies to me on the same theme some time ago. At least you are consistent ...lol!

Great investigating!!

You sure nailed it on the coffin!

And if you wherent aware alot of MNO dont care to have a flag beside their handles for obvious reasons.

But quite clearly if your unable to accurately ascertain that Im an MNO, than clearly you should not have any votes on the dao perhaps lucky by accident?

Hi Alejandro,


Could you please provide the data and information pertaining to the dash gove aways you have done

I look forward to reviewing this data

Thank you.

Ignore him, he's not evn a MN

How do you know ?

Hi Alejandro,

How many of the following merchants are currently accepting Dash in Venezuela:

Green Grocers / SuperMarkets
Electricity/other bill Providers
Leasing/Letting/Landlord Agencies
Transport Services

If you had the exact breakdown that would be great. I would really appreciate if there was a bigger emphasis put on the above merchants. I think one of these merchants could be worth magnitudes more than most of the bar/cafe/restaurant integrations. I think these are key to giving people confidence that they can start earning some Dash in their salary.

Hello Ageless, thanks for your question:

- Green Grocers / SuperMarkets: 17 green grocers. We haven't affiliated big Super markets because we didn't have the technological solutions to offer to this type of companies (like POS and web Payment processor). Now that we have developed it we are ready to go and one of our focus in this proposal will be affiliate super markets and pharmacies which are basics for Venezuelan, and this will connect directly with the remittances project.

- Electricity/other bill providers: the electricity distribution in Venezuela is owned by the government, so we are not be able to affiliate electricity providers yet.

- Leasing/Letting/Landlord agencies: 29, this includes Remax, other real state agencies and car leasing companies.

- Transport: 15. These are almost all taxi drivers and they are one of the most active merchants we have in Caracas.

The rest of our merchants includes:

- Restaurants (low, middle and high class)
- Kiosks
- Shoes stores
- General clothe store
- Celular/tech stores
- Hotels and tourist agencies
- Beauty (barbershops and spa)
- Proffesional services (attorneys, accountants, disgners).
- Health services: dentists, physicians.
- Sport/fitness stores.
- Chefs
- Pets stores
- Furnitore stores.
- And more.

Thanks again for your questions.

Alejandro

Thanks for the breakdown.

Makes sense about the electricity. Perhaps the government will accept Dash transactions for bill payments as this continues to grow.

Do you think there's a strategy we could encompass around letting/landlord agencies? Maybe through some form of subsidy we could discount rents and encourage people to pay their rent in Dash. This would then incentivise a worker to take some of their salary in Dash? Do Dash accepting merchants currently have the capability to pay their staff in Dash or would the liquidity constraint make that unreliable?

Hello Ageless thanks again for your question.

A focused strategy for letting/landlord agencies can be set up but due to the way Venezuelan market/economy is working, the best current strategy is focusing in grocery stores and supermarkets, since they sell essential products for people (food).

Another reason we haven’t affiliated supermarkets is because we decided to learn first with smaller merchants (althought we habe big merchants as well): what are their problems? How Dash can solve these problems? What is the best way to pitch them about Dash? What are the concerns of these merchants regarding cryptocurrencies?

Now that we have learned the details, we have the right tools developed (pos and web payment processor) and that we have demostrated merchants are willing to accept Dash, we will now go to the supermarkets. This will connect directly with the remittances. So we are building a solid infrastructure.

Regarding your other question: merchants are able to pay their employees in Dash and since many companies are paying “special bonus” to their employees in USD, this represent a perfect opportunity for Dash because they don’t have to open a US bank account or take the risk of having cash in their hands. So it is perfectly reliable.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Thanks again.

Alejandro

A lot of interesting feedback in there. I like the idea of companies paying employees bonuses in Dash. Yes from me, good luck!

Thanks ageless, we will keep workong hard a showing real results!

Alejandro

You get my support guys.
I don't like the proposals which have the duration more than 3 months but your case is an exception.
You're one of not many projects in Dash DAO which delivers over what you claim to do.
What Dash needs is a real use case and your plan is exactly focused on it.
I wish, you guys are funded and show the unbelievers they were wrong ;)
Keep calm and focus on the right things.

Hello splawik21, thanks so much for your words and support. As you say, we will stay focused on our goal and we will keep showing everybody real results.

Thanks again!

AlejandroE

At a time when the budget is tight due to the low Dash price, this is one of the few proposals I will vote for.

When I analyze a proposal, I look at two main factors: (1) the need being addressed; and (2) the ability of the team to deliver on that need. Because of this, I think this proposal is an obvious “yes” vote.

First, the need. Other than the Core team maintaining and improving the network, there is no work being done right now more important than expanding Dash’s reach in Venezuela. I’ve been involved in cryptocurrency for over five years, and from the beginning the biggest hurdle is mass adoption. Such adoption will not come overnight, and it will take a lot of work to happen. But in Venezuela we have (tragically) the best situation to push mass adoption, and we can’t miss this opportunity, both to help the people in Venezuela and to help Dash.

Second, the team. No team is better set up to push mass adoption in Venezuela than the Dash Merchant team. They have been at the grassroots of the most exciting news for Dash (and cryptocurrency) of the past year: its increasing adoption in socialist-run Venezuela. To be honest, we’d have little good Dash-related news in the past year if not for what’s happening in that country, partly because of Dash Merchant.

Therefore, I give this proposal a strong recommendation and urge other MNO’s to vote “yes”.

(Note: I have no financial or other attachment to the Dash Merchant team, other than my support.)

Hello ericsammons, thank you very much for your support.

We are very honored about your words. We will keep working very hard bring value to Dash and the whole world knows what Dash is capable of. We are achieving great things together.

AlejandroE

@everyone

Most of you guys really need to do some due dillegence when it comes to VZ 99% of MNO have never stepped foot in their country

Have not seen the despair, and how people are consistently looking for handouts.

The dream that many MNO have that VZ will one day be 'dash nation' could not be further from the truth.

I would urge MNO to really do some digging and see the level of despair in their country.

Having bunch of silly merchants is like putting the cart before the horse.

I cant wait to say 'i told you so'

You guys where all going Bananas when shrem came along offering us his card. Where did that go?

And i was the only individuals sounding the alarm bells then too.

I look forward to that day!

Dear MNOs and community members. If you please take a look through our proposal you will see the following users Ocenaman and RealMrHack are posting repeated overly negative comments in our proposal in an attempt to derail it. We welcome constructive feedback so that we can improve or projects however you will notice that these user's criticisms are not constructive comments. We have also already taken time to address their points. They are however repeating with overly negative attacking comments with the same conclusion of "Voting No" stated many times. Since we have already taken the time to fairly address their arguments we have therefore decided we will no longer be responding to them other than with this statement.

We have seen attacks of this nature on other DASH past proposals where a small group of users attack a proposal in a systematic way posting non constructive, overly negative feedback just as these users are doing. We will not jump to a conclusion as to who these people are however but ask yourself where have you seen this type of behaviour previously.

We ask that each community member please fairly assess for yourself our achievements in 2018 which you know from our frequent community feedback with links to evidence in all our proposals. I wish to emphasis again we welcome constructive feedback so please feel free to post your comments if they will help us to improve.

Thank you for your support on our project and we look forward to once again over delivering for DASH in 2019.

Alejandro Echeverria

I think it's clear at this point that the grassroots projects as a whole have largely been unsuccessful, and not because they failed to onboard merchants--clearly they did--and not because the team was unprofessional or inefficient--clearly they were very professional and worked very efficiently. These projects have been unsuccessful because they are only a piece of actual adoption and not the whole in and of themselves, and too many people expected that this is all it would take to lead to the fabled "mass adoption." Onboarding merchants is just a component of it, the other pieces also need to fall in to place. So personally, I applaud the work of Alejandro, Lorenzo, and their team. They did just about as well as anyone could be expected to do, but now I believe the focus needs to shift to filling in those other missing pieces.

I know that DMV has specific plans of their own to help fill these pieces in, and I believe that the "Dash Retail" project will constitute another enormous part of that puzzle, but personally, I would like to see merchant onboarding to scale back and for merchant support and work toward incentivizing use and reducing friction for consumers to both obtain and spend Dash to be the focus of the project moving forward until we can demonstrate that the huge number of merchants that you've so expertly onboarded are really seeing sustained, widespread Dash activity.

So I support your work and your efforts, but I'd like to see some things change and a reduced price that reflects those changes. Still, if there's room in this month's budget, I don't want to see your efforts go unfunded. You're doing good work--no doubts about that, and I'm dismayed at some of the needlessly aggressive, shortsighted comments by other MNOs--it just has to be the right work for the network at the right time if you want to secure funding.

Hello Arthyron. Thank you very much for your comment.

Rather than "unsuccessful" I would call it "not complete yet". You are right, Dash Merchant Venezuela is just 1 component of the whole thing, we were aware of this since the very beginning that is why we designed the "Strategy for Adoption" were the Getting the merchant is just the 1st stage.

When we first launch Dash Merchant Venezuela we didn't promise the transactions right away, we promise getting the merchants and then follow on with the next things. Now that we demostrated success in getting the merchants, it is now time to move forward to next steps and in this proposal we will focus on: get more merchants, support and monitor the existing ones (like you suggest) and incentivize the consumption.

Other piece that still left in the puzze is "Get Dash into people hands" which we are already working on it with a very interesting remittances project (coming soon).

We don't have the answer to all things but we are aware that our job is not complete yet and adoption is not a fast thing, we need to keep working on the strategy and improving it.

I know you are not skeptical but I want to people understand that no other crypto has done what Dash has done (in Venezuela and worldwide). Thousands of merchants, big brand names merchants (Subway, Papa John's, Church's Chicken, local franchises), videos of real use cases, exlusive POS for Dash, exclusive web payment processor, Dash Text, an exclusive support center for helping users and merchants. It is just amazing what we have done in just 1 year (+ fighting a bear market the whole time).

Thank you very much for yout suggestions, we always take them and try to apply the positive feedback from the community.

Alejandro Echeverria

Certainly, we could interpret it that way as well, but I think--perhaps apart from your team and its goals and expectations and thus unfairly and uncharitably reflecting on you--many people in the DAO put a lot more emphasis on and hope in simply onboarding merchants as the be-all, end-all, and clearly it's not, at least not by itself. That's what I would suggest you make an effort to emphasize. You recognized this early on, as did I, but I don't think a lot of the rest of the community were considering that. We've got a long way to go, but I'm confident that your team will keep doing whatever it needs to in order to achieve its goals.

Hello Arthyron, we will definitely take your advice into account. We will keep working very hard and do whatever it needs in order to achieve our goals, just as you mentioned.

Thank you very much again.

Alejandro

And here comes the next one of Alejandro's special Venezuela adventures... this time for the bargain of only 1.500 Dash... let's see what's in the grab bag this time:


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This proposal is FLAWED on several levels and will eventually be UNSUCCESSFUL - once more ! On the one hand for financial reasons as well as for conceptual misjudgments on the other. We MNOs should avoid dumping another vast amount of DAO funds into this project with a very foreseeable outcome: ZERO ACHIEVEMENTS .

Let's go it through:

1) FINANCES: The amount of DAO funds being asked for is excessive. The more if you see the value of 1.500 DASH in the context of the true Venezuelan price level. This proposal calculates everything on the basis of US prices... Tricky Alejandro doesn't feel inclined to hand in a calculation or the spendings in Bolivares Soberanos, no, no. These people want US dollars ! (That's what the DAO dash funds will be converted into asap...)

In Venezuela everything is being paid for in the local currency, the Bolivar Soberano (BsS). Obviously. No matter if Alejandro pays for the office rent, public transport, the electricity bill, the restaurant bill, his car, his beach vacation... it is in the local currency.

This month the average salary that 95% of the Venezuelan population receive is 8.000 BsS. With this amount of money people make a living, pay their bills, buy their food, pay their rent, etc...
It is not a lot of money, but together with the governmental food boxes (CLAPs) people can make ends meet.

Now Alejandro comes here, and tells us far-away gringos that he urgently needs 1.500 Dash - cash on the barrelhead ! Do you guys know how much money that is in Venezuela ???

With the exchange rate of today (1.890 BsS for 1 US-$) this amounts to unbelievable 226.800.000 BsS. Yes, you have heard it: 226 million Bolivares. Or in other words 28.350 MONTHLY SALARIES.
How uninformed do these people in Venezuela think we Dash MNOs are ???

WITH 1.500 DASH YOU CAN EMPLOY ONE THOUSAND PEOPLE FOR 28 MONTHS !!! Will this project bring about results worth the work of 1.000 workers ??? NO !!! At best, the work of half a dozen people. The same ones that are lining their pockets here !!!

HOW STUPID DO YOU GUYS THINK THE DASH COMMUNITY IS ???

These 1.500 Dash are equivalent to buying 20 apartments in Venezuela !!!

NO, NO, NO. THIS BUDGET IS NOT SET UP TO PROMOTE DASH IN THIS RUN-DOWN COUNTRY, IT IS TO LET A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE HAVE A NICE LIFESTYLE IN THE SUN !!!



2) FLAWED CONCEPT: Let's make it quick. The concept has already failed in the past and it will keep failing in the future -- despite all the excuses more time was needed (as long as the cash keeps flowing in from us...).

One of the core approaches of this proposal is to enter cooperation agreements with restaurants, fast-food chains, stores, etc. Potential customers should have the option to pay in Dash. OK, so far. Now, if that was in the US that would be great. Right ? The thing is, we are in third-world, socialist controlled Venezuela. It doesn't work there. Fast-food restaurants are empty ! Potential customers neither have the money, nor can they buy at such high prices ! Say a hamburger would cost you three days work, or more. Nobody will buy one. These fast-food chains are already dead companies. It is just a matter of time until they all close down. Busineses have been closing down for the last year and a half. So, it doesn't make any difference if Alejandro now signs worthless cooperation agreements with companies that won't exist anymore in a few months time !!!

THE COOPERATION AGGREEMENTS INTENDED BY THIS PROJECT ARE NOT EVEN WORTH THEIR PAPER AS THEY ARE DONE WITH ECONOMIC ZOMBIES !!!

NO WONDER, THERE IS ONLY A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF TRANSACTIONS IN DASH IN VZLA.

In the future they will rather be less then more. And Alejandro keeps dreaming of and promises us an economic recovery. The next years is going down the plughole - and our money with it !!!

Either this man lives in cloud cuckoo land or he thinks us Dash MNOs we are a bunch of gringo idiots. YOU DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS WITH YOUR MONEY.

VOTING NO.

.

Quote from oceanman: “This month the average salary that 95% of the Venezuelan population receive is 8.000 BsS. With this amount of money people make a living, pay their bills, buy their food, pay their rent, etc...”

Reading this I realize this person (or group of people) know NOTHING about Venezuela and its costs. Just a regular meal costs around 4000 BsS. So yes, the super salary you are talking about will last you for 2 meals.

I kindly invite you to buy 1 ticket to Venezuela, I will give you a special tour here and you will understand how this economy works.

PS: please find other source of information because the one you are using now is completely wrong.

Alejandro

To OceanMan, keep throwing the mud, and watch the approval votes keep zooming upward. I, for one, will not abandon Venezuela or Alejandro and his team.
solarguy

Dear MNOs and community members. If you please take a look through our proposal you will see the following users Oceanman and RealMrHack are posting repeated overly negative comments in our proposal in an attempt to derail it. We welcome constructive feedback so that we can improve or projects however you will notice that these user's criticisms are not constructive comments. We have also already taken time to address their points. They are however repeating with overly negative attacking comments with the same conclusion of "Voting No" stated many times. Since we have already taken the time to fairly address their arguments we have therefore decided we will no longer be responding to them other than with this statement.

We have seen attacks of this nature on other DASH past proposals where a small group of users attack a proposal in a systematic way posting non constructive, overly negative feedback just as these users are doing. We will not jump to a conclusion as to who these people are however but ask yourself where have you seen this type of behaviour previously.

We ask that each community member please fairly assess for yourself our achievements in 2018 which you know from our frequent community feedback with links to evidence in all our proposals. I wish to emphasis again we welcome constructive feedback so please feel free to post your comments if they will help us to improve.

Thank you for your support on our project and we look forward to once again over delivering for DASH in 2019.

Alejandro Echeverria

@alejandro lets be direct:

Are you part of omni marketting group or not?

@Realmrhack We are not part of any marketing group and we don’t know any company called Omni.

Alejandro

Tell me about it, alejandro and his whole vz ciricle of friends


Including eugenia from Omni marketting group have effectivly convinced the dao to waste funds on them

Voting NO

Too much for too little.
With all due respect but 200 txs by May 2019 is not a goal at all.

Hello Ichigo13. Thanks for your comment.

Please take into account that, in general, cryptos are not being used in almost any country for daily purchases, transactions in the blockchain for most of the cryptos are from trading. Venezuela (an Colombia) is the only country which has demostrated real use cases of Dash in real merchants thanks to our work. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoNrgFUS6JyhTrvRwVE1K65g7xrX9VEDX

This is a new way of payment and we are having success on our strategy, we need to keep the work going. No other country has done what we have achieved.

I hope we have changed your mind. Thanks a lot and let us know if you have more comments or questions.

AlejandroE

Love the defined goals as well as the summary of what you have completed so far. Excellent work and excellent proposal.

Thanks for your support name3. We will keep working hard!

Alejandro, Lorenzo and the Dash Merchant Venezuela team continue to deliver the goods with a strong work ethic. It's crucial we keep supporting this project as there is a lot of business development going on behind the scenes yet to be announced. I want to make sure these business integrations are completed and we do not miss out. 2018 was a great year for merchant adoption in Venezuela. Dash made a big impression and lessons were also learnt which has now lead the way to bigger opportunities for 2019. There are still many announcements to be made in the future and now Alejandro has mentioned it in another comment on this proposal, I can also confirm that thanks to their efforts and outreach there are "more big franchises to come". With the Discover Dash app now pushed out to all 66K+ KRIP phones we need to keep things moving forward as they're making solid progress and I'm excited to see them land some big fish for Dash. ;-)

Hello Mark thanks for your support and words!

We will keep working hard and as you say, many great things are coming soon.

Thanks again!

AlejandroE

Yes from me.

Thank you very much qwizzie!

@alejandro

1500 dash aka 120k USD

For roughly 200-400$ worth of tx per day

I would urge other MNO to read and interepret this data to meaningful decisions

Funneling further money for this particular project is not going tk yield actionable results until, we focus on further infrastructure

Majority of your budget 130~ dash is for paying HR.

I will repeat this one more time: this proposal is meant to affiliate merchants in the first place. We are now working in the transactions.

We are building an ecosystem and all the infrastructure first. If you don't have the merchants people won't have any place to spend their Dash, is as simple as that.

It is just unfair to keep talking about transactions here and even more when we clearly posted a "Strategy for adoption" which you clearly don't want to read or talk about it.

"Majority of your budget 130~ dash is for paying HR", yes people is the one who do the job of going out the streets, convince and teach merchants how to accept Dash. Real people is the biggest asset of Dash Merchant Venezuela. Just like the Dash community is the biggest asset of Dash.

You can have the best technology but without a good team of people it is just a software.

voting YES
Note: About 30,000 Krip phones sold to consumers, of the 66,000 distributed to retailers.

Controversy noted. Watching on.

Hello Criticalinput, thank you very much for your vote!

Regarding the numbers of Krip sales in the video. It was a mistake from our side, we already edited the video so nobody get confused. Thanks again!

AlejandroE

So 2000 merchants and onky 75-100 tx per day with a avg median value of 2$

1500 dash this proposal alone

Big waste of dash.

P.s you have been at this quite sometime maybe its suffice to say its no longer worth the dash.

Also you are intimately aware this is a big waste of funds why else would you be reluctant to provide the anecdotal data.


Voting NO

I respect your decision and I respect the fact that you maybe don't understand how real adoption of a total new way of payment works in a real country with real users and real businesses.

I did my best to explain you how things works and why is worth it to keep funding this project.

Thanks for your comments and the debate.

AlejandroE

@alejandro im confident I do understand, maybe your failing to understand how economics works.

And this project is not financially economical

As such i abhor the waste of dao funds.

We have been spending considerable funds on your various projects big waste!!

@alejandro do you have any idea how much funding you have received from the dao thus far?

Because I can tell you for 75-100 tx per day that your allegedly doing is very low. For the amount of funds poured into this project

And please also answer the median transaction value.

Atter you provide the two peices of info, i will give you a total number of dash/usd you have received thus far.

This project seems like a gravy train

Thank you

Hello Realmrhack, we know exactly the amount of founding we have received, and it has been the money needed to do what we have achieved.

The main goal of this proposal was to affiliate merchants and that is exactly what we are doing, it was not meant to have transactions right away. It is easy to judge our work just seeing the number of transactions, which we have stated that it is a low process. Now that we have demostrated we can affiliate merchants, the next step is to incentivize the consumption. This is clearly explained in the "Strategy for adoption" we designed.

Following is a list of our main achievements on this proposal:

1- Over 2000 merchants affiliated on DiscoverDash.com.
2- Not just 2000, inside of those we have affiliated important international and national franchises like: Subway, Papa Jonh's, Remax, Susy's Cookies, Juanchi's Burger, Rostizados, Chip-a-Cookie, Burger Shack, Yayus, etc. Besides, thanks to the influence of our work another big company trust in Dash and our friends from Dash Venezuela affiliated Church's Chicken.
3- Venezuela is the #1 country in terms of Dash adoption thanks to our work.
4- We have developed a unique POS solutions that is installed in almost all our merchants.
5- We just finished the development of our web payments processor.
6- Dash Core Group has stated that Venezuela is their 2nd most important country in its strategy due to the growth of the ecosystem here thanks to our work.
7- We have put the name of Dash in the mainstream media. Following are some of the portal news that have talked about our job: Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Investing.com, Bitcoin.com, Forbes, World Ethereum News, CCN, BusinessWire, BusinessInsider.
8- We have demostrated how regular users can pay with Dash in different of our merchants. Check #VenezuelaPaysWithDash on Youtube. This build social proof and create confidence around Dash.

And I can continue with the list with all the benefits we have brought to Dash with Dash Merchant Venezuela. We are very humble but we know this has been one of the most succesful projects in all Dash history, and this is just thanks to the hard work, transparency and honesty.

I invite you to not just compare the amount of money (acumulated) with the # of transactions, it is junt unfair. Please see the big picture and then tell us if it is worth it to keep funding us.

PS: I remind you that we are asking less money than before, please check that too.

Thanks

AlejandroE

Sorry I forgot: The avg amount of the tx is around 2-4 USD. Soon we will share our live tx tracker.

where can I learn more about the influencer campaign? If done right this seems like something that can push Dash awareness to the next level in Venezuela

Hello mikenewhouse, the influencer campaign was a marketing strategy we designed and executed on Instagram within October-December 2018, and we used 9 top Venezuelan influencers.

Why?
Instagram is the social network that Venezuelan use the most and the influencers are one of the best ways of doing publicity right now because they have millions of followers and people believe them very much, so the results are very positives for the brands (big companies like McDonalds, Pepsi, Wendys are also hiring influencers for their marketing campaigns)

The influencers:
We selected 2 types of influencers: a) Comedians, in order to create "coolness" around the Dash brand. b) Important journalist, in order to create confidence.
The influencers we selected are following:

- Sampins: 417k followers
- LuisAlamo: 273k followers
- AleOtero: 100k followers
- ManuelAngelR: 36,5k followers.
- OlavarrietaLuis: 1.3M followers.
- ShirlyVarnagy: 691k followers.
- Albacmujica: 191k followers
- Rodriguez_Gladys: 316k followers.
- DereckBlanco: 33,1k followers

The results:
- Views: over 700,000
- Likes: over 50,000
- Comments: over 1,000
- Followers: increased from 2,463 to 8,059 followers (+400%)

In conclusion the campaign was a total success and we want to keep doing it this year but with different influencers.

Let us know if you have any other question or comment. Thanks!

AlejandroE

That sounds good Alejandroe, but I think you should wait until DCG finally get the dash.org ready for it, hopefully it will be finished some the immense delay of it damaging the potential of you're campaigns

Alejandro is there a repository where I can quickly view the videos. This is an exciting development indeed. I'd like very much for us to start moving towards very subtle influencer marketing that normalizes purchasing with Dash. For example an influencer is making a video about there day and they happen to buy something during the video using Dash. They don't make a big deal about it, just keep moving along with their life. The more subtle the better.
Keep up the good work brother.

Hello mikenewhouse. Yes, here is a list of some of the videos of the campaign (some of them includes influencers paying stuff with Dash):

Shirly Varnagy: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpstR6yBrhA/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=b0xjdor9nak4

Dereck Blanco: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpF9UmcDS6s/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1vwhw7avxhutt

Alba Cecilia: https://www.instagram.com/p/BrGoYrAFSOZ/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1202cf4h6aub1

Gladys Rodriguez: https://www.instagram.com/p/BqagTXqln_G/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=16e5mpkekhy9t

Ale Otero: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpSpnWfHPwz/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=18h8mcwmhhdq9

Sampins: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpQCUFtBHTt/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=iv9w5lx8l0az

Luis Alamo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpXwBPFgjo8/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1uassg8ihyknh

I hope they work for you!

Best,
AlejandroE

The video has a very big feelgood vibe to it. I am interested in a list things which are not going as planned and a list of KPI's which you are using to measure the effects of your efforts. Business development and sales is my profession so I'm happy to give advice where I can.

Hello Undercurrent, thanks for your words and your offer to help us. We are always open to advices, new ideas and challenging questions so if you want to contact us more directly please email me at alejandro@dashmerchant.org.

We will be so happy to listen your ideas and suggestions.

Thanks!
AlejandroE

100% yes!

I know there has been some criticism of low transactions despite high merchant acceptance. But I would like to say that this is a step by step process and we can't expect immediate high results. We have a long road ahead of us. Dash is moving in the right direction with this.

Hello RobbyDash01, thanks for your support!

Regarding the transactions:
There are around 70-100 tx per day (sometimes the count spikes up to 150), this means that there are merchants who haven’t received their first transactions yet. But that is not a real problem, it is something we always thought possible, it is part of our hypothesys and what we need to understand is that ALL those 2500 merchants are willing to accept Dash as a payment method. That is just amazing revolutionary and exciting. It is now a happy problem to solve the consumption issue.

Thanks again for yout support!

AlejandroE

Depending on the PoS terminals in use I'm afraid that merchants will repurpose their hardware as there will be no/few transactions. We saw this happening in the RT video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tKvqj3U3O0).

Did you follow up with the particular store keeper?

Hello Undercurrent, thanks for your comment and questions. Regarding to the RT video, this was my response on Reddit (this is the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/a96i3y/dash_doesnt_actually_look_like_it_is_being/?st=JQK4IX87&sh=b531a1d7)

“Hello, here Alejandro Echeverria co founder of Dash Merchant, Dash Help and Dash Text.

What we are doing is the adoption of a totally new business concept with changing behaviours of consumers, and that is what some who see this ecosystem don’t understand, they just take one little detail and paint it as a whole thing just because they do not agree on how it “should” be done.

Venezuela has over 2500 merchants accepting Dash, there are around 100-150 tx per day, this means that there are merchants who haven’t received their first transactions yet. But that is not a real problem that is something we always thought possible, it is part of our hypothesys and what we need to understand is that ALL those 2500 merchants are willing to accept Dash (and maybe even other cryptos as well) as a payment method. That is just amazing revolutionary and exciting. It is now a happy problem to solve the consumption issue, and that is why we designed a “Strategy for adoption” which consists in: 1) Get the merchants. 2) Get Dash into people hands and 3) Incentivize the consumption.

Stage 1) is well advanced, now we are working on 2) and 3). This will take time but in 1 year we have achieved a LOT.

Regarding that video in Papa Jonh’s where they couldn’t pay with Dash because the manager wasn’t there, it is possible to have happened. No system is 100% perfect and that is why we out in place a Quality Control team who is in charge of supervising and monitoring the activity of the merchants and in that way we guarantee so that we can work hard to ensure the quality of our work.

We have found that internet connection sometimes could be bad, new employees could have receive a poor training, sometimes the manager is the only in charge of charging in crypto because that is the policy of that merchant. In the other hand there are merchants where ALL the employees are trained, any employee can charge in Dash, sometimes the owner is the only employee and he/she charges directly from the wallet. In summary: each merchant is different and they manage their finances like they want. We just provide the best information/training we can and then make follow ups and keep momentum growing.

In short, we are happy to be at the forefront of crypto adoption in the world, we understand it is an imperfect system as we are learning on the go, and it is something that has never been done before and are working hard to make it happen. We are excited and happy with the work we are doing and always ready to learn from our path…. Keep an eye in Venezuela, 2019 will be amazing.

PS: in this playlist we make a campaign of people paying with Dash in several merchants (Papa Jonh’s included). https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoNrgFUS6JyhTrvRwVE1K65g7xrX9VEDX

Best,
Alejandro Echeverria
Dash Merchant, Dash Help & Dash Text"

I hope that makes sense for you, pleqse let us know if you have other comment or question. Thanks again!

Best,
AlejandroE

@alejandro if you could kindly provide some information about current usage and median transaction values, for dash merchant vz. ( Merchants you currrntly have enrolled )

A) the number of merchants currently enrolled by dm vz
B) the current tx volume aggregate

And any other information you may feel is pertinent

Thank you

Hello again Realmrhack. Regarding to your questions:

- Dash Merchant Venzueka has enrolled 2057 to date. Including: Subway, Papa Jonhs, Juanchis Burger, Susys Cookies, EFE ice cream, Rostizados, Burger Shack, etc (more big franchises to come)
- We are having around 70-100 tx per day. Soon we will remease the Tx Tracker of our POS.

- You can check this campaign we are promoting on Youtube where regular Venezuelans show how they pay with Dash. #VenezuelaPaysWithDash
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoNrgFUS6JyhTrvRwVE1K65g7xrX9VEDX

I hope that works for you. Please let us know if you have other comment or question. Thanks!

AlejandroE

1500 dash over 5 months!!!

Im against any such proposal as it could put the treasury and the PO at unnecessary risk.

In the event dash drops lower in the coming 5 months, they will come back asking for more.

In the event dash goes up its a windfall for this team

Voting NO!

Hello Realmrhack.

As we have demostrated in the past, we have never asked for extra funds when the price drops. Neither in Dash Help, Dash Merchant nor Dash Text. We always adjust our costs and scopes, and in that way we don’t have to ask for more funds.

Also in the past, we have stated that if the price goes up we will increased our scope and goals.

We always work with transparency and efficiency.

Thanks for your comments and we really hope you change your votes to YES.

AlejandroE

Please come back with no more than 2-3 month proposals.

Thank you

Let us shorten the time frame of this project down to no more than three months.

t