Welcome!

The last thing we need is another comity to pontificate and make busy work for themselves and others. This is how governments get too big.

I didn't really want to touch on these issues publically before Evo is on mainnet but my real problem with this proposal is that it is against a backdrop of some serious structural problems that have emerged in recent years within the Dash ecosystem, and is likely to make them worse not better.

The issue and the reason why Dash has lost so much valuation, is due to a failure not of the governance system itself but weaknesses within at by allowing huge amounts of centralization to grow which has throttled the historical lifeblood of our growth, massively delayed our innovation, and pushed a lot of people away from the project.

This is in the form of DCG, which was originally conceived to just help Core development but has since grown into essentially an all encompassing government in Dash that's trying to do many things at once, with our innovation to make Dash usable always second place to strategies that consider Dash good enough today and to try to improve payment integrations and SOV.

As a closed-source DFO that's highly centralized internally and the people with the crypto expertise kept at the bottom of the hierarchy and often demotivated or wrapped up in layers of middle-management and having to seek permission for everything, it's exceedingly inneficient at development and people getting burned out, demotivated and leaving is a regular event.

The MNOs have one yes / no choice each month - allow DCG to continue to grow or a nuclear option to defund it. And that is with zero transparency and DCG going away from our original vision - for example for the price of several developers working on our key innovation (Platform) they are hiring a marketing manager when that innovation is years late.

The issue with our governance system isn't therefore that MNOs dont know which proposals to fund - its that the most important proposal is essentially removed from any choices by MNOs or market forces to correct problems when it doesn't perform well, whether that's by allowing decisions on what scope DCG should be taking on, how much of the budget should be allocated to development and not tertiary activities that could probably function much better in the open market, what is command structure and how much say devs have got in that, what vision is DCG following and how well are they doing on that.

My issue with this proposal is that the user proposing it is already close to DCG and hasn't raised any of these real issues and has in fact been highly critical of the solution (our long planned upgrade for usibility) and without any substantive explanation of why.

Instead, the centralization & loss of vision are elephant's in the room, this proposal is a essentially an argument to authority - its not the innovators with proven contributions to Dash who would gain this additional influence on strategy, but will likely be a think-tank of people with zero track record in Dash bolting on to the existing 'government' that is being constantly constructed (DCG, DIF, Trust etc etc) which is always sold as being democratic via elections etc but in reality all the same people following the same strategy which for me is against the vision of our founder and the vision me and a lot of the developers are trying to work to.

What we do need is a proposal to correct these real issues. We want the people with the actual track records of innovation in Dash to have the influence and the funding they need to continue to do that and accelerate and grow that. The Incubator I have been working on is supposed to be demonnstrating the kind of solutions we need to allow others to go ahead and create them, although we're only maybe 70% of putting all the parts for that in place.

Voting yes on this is going to make that harder I feel..we do need to give voices to the people who can improve Dash and restore our position and beyond, but we need radical change for that, not just supplementing the existing situation where we have government not governance, which is the breakdown of the governance system... that is what MNOs need to fix.

Now that we have the actual innovation and final piece of vision for Dash from our founder even with the suppression of that, we are going to need to fix this structure to be able to grow that in the market...we don't want random 'experts' because that is typical of the kind of failed strategies regularly being use in Dash right now... we need people with a proven track record in Dash of delivery and adherance to the vision that the network agreed to and has been funding all these years.

We should be working on a solution to the real problems by dismantling the 'government' in Dash which the longer and larger it grows the lower Dash valuation gets, not adding to it in my view.

This solution should be something like this:

- Core developers should control their own funding directly and their organization should be fully transparent and decentralized
- They work to a vision, and that vision is open for debate and agreed by the network, but their voices are the largest because their contributions that we can verify are the biggest. "Experts" are welcome to jon in, but when they just parachute in with zero history, their influence is tempered by that (Currently our vision *should* delivering and investing in the promotion and growth of our forthcoming ease-of-use features.)
- Any non-Core development parts of DCG should be moved to separate DFOs that are required to compete and earn funding based on actual performance
- We should avoid allowing 'government' bodies to be setup, outside of a single one - protocol development - because what Dash essentially is, is a protocol, and its the one thing needed centrally (and even then it should be transparent and internally decentralized as I mention)
- Restore the vibe in Dash of a smart project that innovates to succeed so that we attract people who like to create, innovate, try new things with free market principles, take risks - not join some virtual corporation where decentralization has become a bad word no matter how loud the wider market shouts that this is not what people want.

Andy Freer

I'm realizing DCG management never even believed in Evan's vision and had their own ideas for the direction for Dash. I feel they have mislead us, and I am angry with myself because I felt something was wrong with all this reliance on 3rd party integrations in my gut, but convinced myself that these were necessary. Now we're wrapping Dash and basically creating a new fractional reserve. It's everything I hate about the current monitory system. This wasn't the agreed upon vision for Dash.

I remember a lot of promises from Evan that never got anywhere, during the time he was active as lead developer. He introduced an overall vision for the Dash project, but left the actual implementation to others when he stepped back. Dash now has a lasersharp focus on developing Dash further as a decentralized secure fast transaction provider, while working on making Dash more user-friendly and providing more use cases through Dash Platform.

Frankly i don't care about Dash wrapping, or about linking Dash to Ethereum's network. I think Dash Platform should find its own identity and its own strength and work from there. But i also don't see much harm into experimenting with, maybe we get the attention of some Dapp developers that way that could strenghten our own Dapp eco-system, who knows.

I think what DCG has been doing over the years has strenghtened Dash primary use case (being a decentralized secure fast transaction provider, easily accessible to anyone from anywhere in the world), and i think that is the right way to go.

I see Dash Platform as supporting and enabling that primary use case.

Thanks for sharing this perspective as you raise some good points that should be considered. However overall it sounds like another engineer who thinks engineering is all that matters and is bothered that non-engineer don't agree with him.

You say engineering is primary (1st) and that other functions like marketing are "tertiary activities" (3rd) not even secondary. In fact for products to succeed they need good engineering and good marketing.

"strategies that consider Dash good enough today"

Thats absolutely the correct thing to do. Dash is good enough today and should be promoted. We cant endlessly wait for technical perfection that engineers eternally work towards but never attain.

"The MNOs have one yes / no choice each month"

This month there are 3 DCG proposals up, which is normal. Part of me would like to see more finer grain proposals for DGC as that would improve transparency and accountability per function, but they pretty much all always get semi-automatically approved anyway and all cost 5 dash. So a better approach to improve transparency would be for DCG to open up the books more.

"final piece of vision for Dash from our founder"

And you talk about a lack of vision in others... nothing should ever be considered the final piece of vision for dash. After platform and dashpay we should pursue things like best in class forced privacy and eth2 type things like sharding and non-PoW algos.

The founder and his vision are irrelevant. Thats appeal to authority.

After reflecting on this a while, I think I understand the the basis for my disagreement with Andy better. Andy sees the Dash protocol as a kind of "holy of holies" and the developers as high priests who must not be interfered with.

My view is that Dash is a business. We're here to create a product to serve a need in the marketplace. Evan handed DCG over to a business nerd, not a software nerd.

"DCG going away from our original vision."

No. Dash is moving forward and you are stuck in the past. You can think of yourself as a stegosaurus.

"for the price of several developers working on our key innovation (Platform) they are hiring a marketing manager"

And what about all the folks here clamoring for more marketing? At least in the case of DCG, they went through sixty candidates and hired the best one. They did not wait for some amazing person to be "attracted" to the project cause it's so awesome.

Makes sense

Dash is developing a controversial product (legally) in the midst of chaotic and fluid regulatory and competitive challenges. We need strong leadership. We need corporate structures, lawyers and managers and we need them to be working in a coordinated fashion.

We can't rip apart everything we've built so you can feel better about the project; so that it fits in better with your world-view. Your world-view is rather utopian and naive IMHO.

Ok, just starting from the top here, I count roughly 18 assertions in your comment. I'll go through all of them and leave my comments and thoughts and we'll see if we can come to an understanding. I would like to preface this by saying
that most of these assertions are unsourced and vague. There are no specifics, no specific names, failures, dates or even examples so responding to this comment was rather difficult. Thus, I intend this comment to serve as a jumping off point
so we can get on the same page and go farther from there.

On to the response, assertion by assertion:

1. some serious structural problems

What problems, specifically are these? Structurally? Reading your comment, you mainly seem to be of the opinion that DCG is not doing their job properly. But that is only 1 DAO, when I think of "structural problems", I think BCH, BTC, Monero and Nano,
etc. where they cannot fund development, adoption or marketing in a decentralized, consistent way AT ALL, as four big examples. What, specifically, is wrong with Dash's structure in your view?

2. is due to a failure not of the governance system itself but weaknesses within at by allowing huge amounts of centralization to grow which has throttled the historical lifeblood of our growth, massively delayed our innovation, and pushed a lot of people away from the project.

This is hard to understand. Dash has roughly 5000 masternodes, a vibrant mining community, as well as multiple decentralized teams pushing for adoption all around the globe. Where is the centralization you're alleging? Even if you look at DCG, there are no other coins that have "incubators" or "paid adoption teams", and in Dash, none of those are run by DCG. So my question here is, where is this centralization you're speaking of, specifically?

3.This is in the form of DCG

Ah, so as I thought, you are referring to DCG when you say we have a centralization issue. But, this doesn't make sense. How is DCG "centralized" in an undesirable way? DCG is just a DAO, what's more they are not in one central location, nor are they a single point of failure, if we lost them it would hurt, but we could bounce back. The code they release is open-source as well, so why do you call them centralized?

4. which was originally conceived to just help Core development

This assertion commits two errors; the first is that it doesn't cite this claim. This forces those reading to just "take your word for it". Respectfully, that is not something you should attempt to ask from us. Especially when you're alleging that Dash has serious structural issues. If that's truly the case, then you should make every effort to SPECIFICALLY identify those structural issues. That requires that you source all assertions like this, and you haven't done that. Could you please do so?

The second error this comment makes is assuming that DCG has assumed a role that is not in their mandate. So you're saying that DCG is violating the will of the masternodes. But DCG's proposals for funding have all passed (by MNO vote), so how can you say this?
Its clear that, no matter how you feel about DCG, that they have recieved the full support of the MNO community. Can you cite SPECIFICALLY where DCG has performed in a "centralized" role outside of the boundaries of their mission? Most MNOs seem to complain that DCG isn't doing ENOUGH, so this is quite a new a refreshing critique from you.

5. with our innovation to make Dash usable always second place to strategies that consider Dash good enough today and to try to improve payment integrations and SOV.

Now this is an argument I can respond to. I don't think this is true at all. Firstly, how can you say our "innovation to make Dash usable" is "second place" to other things? Dash is one of if not THE MOST USABLE proof of work cryptocurrencies. Have you ever tried to actually USE monero? BCH? CashFusion? Nano? In a decentralized way? It takes a week to sync the node if it doesn't crash for monero. BCH has really bad UI (miners gaming DAA for profit leaving wild swings in block times, up to several hours between blocks).

Have you noticed Nano was brought to a CRAWL with an estimated $10 /day spam/dust attack (unlike your comment, I have sources and links on-demand for any who would require them)? None of that is a problem in Dash. Dash's privacy is a click of a button. Dash is the only coin with instant transactions which is A HUGE part of usability. So again I'm forced to ask you to cite where this so-called lack of priorities is?

6. As a closed-source DFO

The code that DCG releases is open-source upon release. They use closed-source development methods to prevent our aggressive competition from copying them and planning attacks before/upon release, which your comment completely ignores and gives a free pass (not something you should want to do if you truly mean as you say). This is actually old fud from 2014-6. The monero community, fluffy pony specifically, used to FUD Dash for being "closed-source". They spent a year and a half LYING and saying Dash was closed source just because we were developing PRIVATELY, which is normal. What problem do you have with this process?

7. it's exceedingly inneficient at development and people getting burned out, demotivated and leaving is a regular event.

Two things,

1. people getting burned out, demotivated and leaving is a regular event EVERYWHERE, especially in SOFTWARE. In fact, this is not a BAD thing but a GOOD thing. You want a certain amount of churn to allow for the DAOs to solidify. Its like a football team. Every year the players change but the team name, vision and spirit all remain the same (with rare exceptions like a city-move). So long as people still want to work there, and judging by the funding requests this is still the case, having this churn rate is fine. You should see Teslas churn rate ;)

2. How can you say they're "inefficient at development"?? WHO ELSE has developed and deployed a vision to make cryptocurrencies usable for everyday people? Dash is the leader here, so who are you comparing us to in order to claim our development is "inefficient"? Dash has instant transactions, strong privateSend features on-chain, governance, decentralized DAO funding as well as other INNOVATIVE FIRSTS in the cryptocurrency world, all of this was pioneered, developed and released with little hiccup by DCG. So how can you claim they're "inefficient" at development??

8. And that is with zero transparency and DCG going away from our original vision

This comment is completely untrue imo. DCG is very transparent. DCG conducts detailed quarterly calls detailing finances, development and the like. Furthermore, the Evolution vision was solidified and certainly codified (both figuratively and literally) under the watch of DCG, so how can you say they have left our "original vision"? Evan's original vision, while certainly anticipating it, couldn't provide the user interface or usability we have even today, let alone with what's coming on platform. It took DCG's leadership and coding to bring it to where it is. I know you will respond with an appeal to your authority position (which is not an illegitimate response here); however, I contend that even if you worked at DCG during this period, your vision and perspective doesn't necessarily need to be the correct one. Its obvious to me that it is not, judging by the difference between the reality I see, and the allegations in your comment.

9. for example for the price of several developers working on our key innovation (Platform) they are hiring a marketing manager when that innovation is years late.

This is a terrible criticism imo. First of all, you should know better than anyone that as you add developers beyond a certain point, development time actually lengths. Too many cooks in the kitchen is a real problem in software. You can neither just throw money nor numbers at software problems, they have to be reasoned through and analyzed by people who know what they're doing. Less is more here. So this is a strange critique from you.

Take any one of your incubator projects and instantly add 12 developers to each task, do you really think that the task will get done 12x faster? Or will you be introducing more complexity and overhead? Think about it.

Secondly, Dash wasn't ready for marketing years ago. We were under a malicious hate fueled fud attack from the monero community. Can I ask you, what is your opinion of both Monero and the 6-7 years they spend lying about our coin online? I ask because any "marketing manager" would need to deal with our artificially and unfairly appointed perception in the market, and they would need to deal with those fake criticisms and attacks, so your answer to this question will be instrumental in understanding both your position and where you went wrong.

10. its that the most important proposal is essentially removed from any choices by MNOs or market forces to correct problems when it doesn't perform well

I don't believe this is true at all either. DCG has plenty of reports going back years allowing MNOs to compare their performance both specifically as a DAO (from spending to hiring) and more generically by providing comparative network stats and numbers. So I don't think there is any 'choice removal' here. We don't support DCG because we're idiots, we support them because we can see their track record and that they are moving fast towards the goal. Furthermore, can you cite times where DCG "hasn't performed well" and yet has been shielded from the consequences of this bad performance?

I.e. can you cite a time where MNOs have had issue with DCG's performance, cited it to them, AND WERE THEN REJECTED BY DCG? The MNOs have complained to DCG about many things, yet DCG has made many changes (like communicating more with the community). I can't think of a single time where MNOs were frustrated with DCG, but "had no recourse" due to "unspecific structural issues" that "insulated them from market or DAO forces". I don't think this is true at all. Can I ask, do you have an agenda that you're not being forthcoming with here?

11. Instead, the centralization & loss of vision are elephant's in the room

How specifically is Dash, and DCG "centralized" in a way that is not inline with the will of the MNOs? How has Dash "lost vision" when evolution is soon to be released?

12. its not the innovators with proven contributions to Dash who would gain this additional influence on strategy

I'm sorry but who has innovated on Dash more than DCG? I am genuinely asking as I don't follow git commits for this project. So if you know of some other developers not getting recognized for their contributions, please do name them!

13. What we do need is a proposal to correct these real issues

Before that, there must, MUST be the step of JUSTIFICATION. You must first SOURCE and CITE your claims and you haven't done that here. As far as I can see, MNOs, who are the majority stakeholders in Dash and are tasked with deciding these things, don't have a problem with DCG and the direction they're going. Concern trolling is the attempt to make disruptive, destructive changes to a community or protocol based on "concerns" that are not real or have limited prospect of happening.

I don't think you're doing that, but your comment here is WIDE OPEN to that accusation. I think you need to start from the beginning first and identify these 'issues' properly (responding to my criticisms of your comments here would be a good way to get going on that), so that we can identify which are problematic for the network as a whole. As you've had some dealings with DCG in the past, there may be a conflict of interest on your part and so we would need to verify that your concerns are correct before going further.

14. We want the people with the actual track records of innovation in Dash to have the influence and the funding they need to continue to do that and accelerate and grow that.

Is this not happening already? DCG has the longest, largest track record of innovation in Dash, right? They also have the most influence and funding they need to continue and accelerate and grow their operations. So, GOOD NEWS, what you seek ALREADY EXISTS!

15. The Incubator I have been working on is supposed to be demonnstrating the kind of solutions we need to allow others to go ahead and create them, although we're only maybe 70% of putting all the parts for that in place

The incubator is completely different from core development. DCG has overseen the deployment of evonet, many updates to prepare Dash for Platform and they've done so professionally and with aplomb. Developing apps ON a platform is a lot easier and different than developing THE PLATFORM ITSELF, so I find this criticism to be particularly hollow. This is my opinion as a voting MNO.

16. Now that we have the actual innovation and final piece of vision for Dash from our founder even with the suppression of that

"Now that"? We've had that for years Mr. Freer. What's changed recently?

17. we don't want random 'experts' because that is typical of the kind of failed strategies regularly being use in Dash right now

Another unsourced 'concern'. There are DAOs for which this is true, but they are not DCG. I can't see how you can say DCG has this issue since they literally wrote the core protocol, so this cannot be used in support of your argument above or anywhere really.

18. we need people with a proven track record in Dash of delivery and adherance to the vision that the network agreed to and has been funding all these years.

Again, this is already happening.

So to summarize, I find your comment to be lacking. This is inspite of the fact that I certainly won't vote for this proposal. Everyone has an opinion on what's 'wrong with Dash' so while I have you here I'll give you mine. The biggest problem in Dash is not DCG, its not phantom "centralization", its people with agendas being dishonest. When flenst came around, he pretended to be good-natured and congenial towards Dash, until it was exposed that he was seeking to infiltrate our community and subtly shift the narrative towards monero and against Dash, FROM WITHIN OUR OWN COMMUNITY.

That's a brazen and quite bold attack! Basically, he tried to gaslight us into supporting the very people who were attacking and trying to destroy Dash, using emotional manipulation (pretending to be a friend and "trusted voice" in the community while pushing subtle lies) Same thing with George Donnelly and Ed Stover. They pretended to have our best interests at heart, but their problem was they had AGENDAS. They didn't support the truth because the truth was iconvenient to their AGENDAS.

So the network has already been attacked this way THREE TIMES, at least. Which means it must be a good attack with a high success rate. So we MNOs have to constantly be on-guard against all potential infiltration attempts. They will bribe, coerce or attack prominent names in the community to get them to trick us into self-destructive behavior. I know this is not what people want to hear and read right now, but if they're going to be so bold as to do it, the least we could do to respond is call it out. Its not fair to win a cryptocurrency competition by manipulating your competition into self-destructive behavior.

I know I know, the world isn't fair. That's why I fight. There is ABSOLUTELY NO POINT to participating in a rigged cryptocurrency race. We might as well just keep fiat. Upgrade to an online centralized server, but stick with the "financial overlords". Because that's what they want to do when they want to lie to us and manipulate us into destroying ourselves (so the blame rests on us). That's not very nice at all, and we certainly don't have to be a party to it through our ignorance, fear and doubt.

We have to guard our minds against attempts to manipulate the narrative for self-serving (i.e. non-Dash-network) and selfish goals. I'd hate to accuse Andy Freer of such corruption, and so my comment here is meant to form a friendly and helpful consensus so that we can move forward together as a network. Beware those who condition their loyalty and goodwill on your demise.

There is no shame in admitting we don't know what we don't know when it comes to certain topics. Emphatic yes.

Wow, this is rare. An intelligent and very much needed proposal made by someone who is clearly interested in making Dash better! And a smart cookie by the looks of it.

FYI Andy Freer has no interest in any real change in Dash. He was fired by DCG for his incompetence, yet the network continues to fund his proposals...a body like this would likely defund him, therefore he cannot support an initiative like this.

An independent body that deeply assesses proposals for the network is neither in Andy Freer or DCG’s interest, so you may be attacked and discredited until you cannot be bothered to do anything anymore in Dash.

In any case I love your thinking here - it is similar to the Strategic Governance approach at Kuva and happy to bring you onto our team to develop things further if you get nowhere here, just shoot me a DM on Discord :)

Drako

If this entity were to be created, there would be a great temptation for board members to become corrupt and engage in influence peddling, that is: trading their influence with the DAO for favors or money from POs. You might think that this can't happen here, but IMHO the owners of both Dash Discords ultimately succumbed to this temptation, because I noticed that certain proposal owners in each Discord seemed to enjoy immunity from criticism.

Another term for this is "kingmaking" as in, "You want to get funded by the Dash treasury? You need to talk to ________."

Maybe that will happen, but we can't go on blindly stumbling through important decisions that we as a body are not equipped to make. Having an informed body to draw expertise from MIGHT introduce new problems, but is it worth staying in this ineffective state for fear of a possible outcome?

Right now, at this moment, we are terrible at making decisions (look at BTC to Dash value over the last few years as proof). We need to fix that. This isn't a silver bullet but it is a step in the right direction.

You are making the assumption that bad decisions in our governance are directly responsible for the downtrend of our DASH/BTC value. I think Dash (like many other altcoins) got caught in a very big Altcoins sell-off between 2018-2020. An Altcoins sell-off that left many altcoins in the very same position as Dash (Altcoins like BCH, XRP, EOS, NEO and many others).

Dash price already moved from $31 in March 2020 to $336 in Feb 2021 thanks to a changing market trend favoring altcoins. Introducing an advisory board will not fix anything with regards to our DASH/BTC value, nor is it a step in the right direction with the centralization risks it introduce and the possiblities of exploit.

I feel like you are ignoring the majority of what I'm saying and focusing on an inconsequential part. Yes, obviously market trends play a big role. However, if you compare Dash's value to most altcoins we slid farther and deeper down than they did.

https://coincodex.com/

Change the settings to change from all time high and you will see what I mean.

But regardless, This proposal stands by itself even without that.

Do you feel like the treasury system is working optimally? Or do you think it would be better if there were more incentives for skilled people to contribute and bring us proposals?

So in the TLDR you have identified MNO's are not the best at making decisions and need some assistance (agreed), but come to MNO's who are not the best at making decisions to give you their stamp of approval? hmmm. Similarly you say you would possibly use the Dash Watch election system to elect board members even though your motivation for this proposal is that MNO's need guidance making decisions - This seems very circular

Totally agree that MNO's (absolutely including myself here) need some guidance from professionals and with the general spirit of your proposal - but maybe it needs a re-think? I would actually like a board that could act as a representative for the network and engage other experts to conduct research or provide consultation, and I don't think it is at all necessary that everything that goes on internally to this board is as transparent as possible - as long as your conclusions are evidenced, the rest is just noise that the already confused MNO's don't need to see.

Build your team with our without MNO's approval - you don't really need it
Voting YES just so you get your dash back

Why would you want him to get his five Dash back? What he's proposing is a bad idea. It would be an enormous distraction and PITA. WE would have to not only review the proposals, but we would have to review the candidates for the advisory board, and then we would have to review how each candidate voted on each proposal.

Please. It's a good lesson for him to lose the five Dash.

geert - please take a break from commenting

Ok. But any shadowy anon who creates a decision proposal, who attempts to tinker with the DAO itself, must understand that they are walking into the lion's den.

I'm starting to realize that (unsurprisingly) dash has attracted mno's who have the desire to self govern and are delusional enough to think that they are qualified to do so. This makes it extremely difficult (nay impossible) to change in order to implement actual, talented, and effective governance. This is why dash continues to fall behind it's competitors. Delusional self entitled governance.

Part of the problem with MNOs decision making is that there are too many of them and they don't (or cannot work) get together in a regular fashion and discuss issues. I also hope that election process allows us to gather the best of us for that purpose. That's still not perfect but better than the current situation.
I hope that this proposal passes but if not I plan to ask MNOs to see who is willing to join the work. Right now I have a very hard time to find anyone who is willing to commit. I'm not willing to spend my time and effort just for small steps.

I don't think an election process will have a great outcome - mno's would be too detached from candidates and have too little info to make informed decisions.

I think for something like this to work, someone with some authentic leadership skills to needs to build out a team to work as an advisory board and just -start-

Over time, mno's may learn to trust or even delegate voting power to this board, and further still may even fund this board to carry out activities with some level of autonomy.

Because of constant attacks by andyfreer2020, I'm willing to reveal my identity to one individual (from trust protectors or DIF supervisors) who can confirm that what I said about myself, background and expertise was truth.

FWIW, quantumexplorer has verified my identity, background and expertise in #mno here: https://discord.com/channels/484546513507188745/523262303433523200/820157783353065472

I really appreciate his help! I hope this verification gives me more opportunities to contribute and have a larger impact on Dash as an MNO.

I confirm I did.

I am unable to get to that post. Is it possible for you to copy and paste the information here? What exactly did he verify and how?

It is in #mno in Dash Talk. Ask one of moderators to add you to the channel.

Erm, not likely Geert will ever be allowed back into Discord, much less #mno-only channel.

Correct, geert and demo are the only 2 members that have been permanently banned from the Dash Talk Discord after receiving multiple warnings for rules violations. That is 2 members out of around 3000 members.
Demo was allowed back in after xkcd petitioned for his reinstatement and mods voted yes to give him another chance, he unfortunately did not last long. Mods voted against giving geert a second chance IIRC.

So we have an anon who verified his identity to another anon* in a privately owned and operated Discord that is only accessible to "well-behaved" masternode owners.

* The only thing known about quantumexplorer is that he is a competent mobile developer under the employ of DCG who should spend more time on QA IMHO.

Why not simply reveal who you really are to all of us ? Is there a chance that many of us know you under perhaps a different name ? I find it strange that a newcomer like yourself, already spoke to Ryan Taylor, not many newcomers seem to do that or create decision proposals that easily.

This is an online community, I don't think its absurd that he wants to stay anonymous.

Fair point.

You can have anonymity OR you can have credentials. You can't have both.

That's not true. There are anonymous people in Dash with credentials. They were made by their efforts while assuming the anonymous avatar.

You're confusing reputation with credentials.

I repeat what I wrote below:
The main reasons for my anonymity:
* I may not be able to participate and contribute to Dash if I reveal my identity because of my current job restrictions.
* I'm not interested in becoming a public person for various reasons. One of them is my family safety.

I don't think anyone from the community knows me in person. However I spent a significant amount of time in the Dash Discord (1160+ messages). I became a Dash investor in late 2020.

You're going to reveal yourself (like God) to one special person (like Moses). This is getting good. I love drama. Sometimes I think that's why I love the Dash DAO so much. IT'S THE DRAMA!

It's not about you. Your proposal is the problem.

Well, some people attacked him personally.

Reading the comments on here is really disappointing. I now am pretty convinced that the OG mns, of which I'm one of, have no intentions for change. Its disheartening to read these comments to this PO's proposal. The vitriol on this forum for the last couple of years is utter rubbish. In the end...our community, or lack of will be our undoing. I don't agree with Macrochip's abrasive manner at times...but I found myself in agreement with his assessment today on the MNO Discord channel. Thankfully this is a small fish bowl that has a tiny audience...thank god.

You came here to disparage the freedom of speech we enjoy here at DashCentral? By the way, you did not make any kind of argument in favor of this proposal except to imply that it's good because "change."

Tell us why we should upvote this proposal.

The dash community is extremely hostile to new ideas, innovation, and change unless it comes down from our lord and savior Ryan Taylor.

Of all the negative emotions, envy is often described as the worst – a disease of the soul...

Joseph Epstein, who has written an entire book on envy, cunningly noted that “of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all”. He continues in a more serious tone: It is the one [sin] that people are least likely to want to own up to, for to do so is to admit that one is probably ungenerous, mean, small-hearted.

https://niklasrosenberg.com/blog/2020/5/31/envy-our-darkest-and-most-secret-deadly-sin

I think the more we centralize and bolt on these trusted pseudo-corporate structures onto the Network the more smart money / people we lose. This is a prime example. No serious investor in this space will take Dash governance seriously if we go back to the 2009 and setup a foundation with actual people we need to trust, it's ridiculous. Crypto Governance in 2021 needs to be trustless and that requires innovation. We started the whole process, now we have this - emabarassing. Lets get back to growing Dash through innovation that creates utility in a ***trustless*** way. These pump and dump types like this user (who already was caught pretending to be a tech expert on a brand new anon account) don't understand that everytime we get these trusted bolt-ons it lowers Dash value. Lets innovate instead...

I think having reactionary responses to new investors and pushing away their attempts to contribute in good faith is a greater risk to Dash than what you mentioned which is not even a fair characterization of what this proposal is. If you treat everyone like a pump and dump type then that's all you're going to get Andy, because no serious investor is going to want to have to deal with this kind of reception.

My response is not reactionary and this account has a history that shows empirically they are not acting in good faith. Check the DashDevs discord and the claims of serious vulnerabilities this user found in our devs work that they then failed to backup. People work hard on Dash code and to make serious accusations as a way to try to gain credibility and then be found to be unable to back that up or even be able to talk about basic concepts in Dash should not enable someone to remain in good standing.

Secondly my comment about this user being a pump and dump type is absolutely fair - quote "main incentive for their participation to be Dash extraordinary price appreciation (10x-100x) and long-term success" - this is the kind of language that can get us in front of the SEC pretty quickly and is frankly an insult to many of the talented devs we have who are top of this field to have people in the project with this kind idiotic (and short sited) mentality.

Lastly, you're comments about this being similar to DashWatch are naieve at best - DashWatch generates reports on DFOs the Network funds. This centralized group would be generating its own proposals and forming strategies for the whole of Dash not focused on proposals already passed.

In terms of 'responses to new investors' as I mentioned - this user has contributed nothing to Dash except post on forums and has vocally against our developers and our core strategy. Not sure how my comments would cause them to sell there Dash but personally if they did then there's more chance of someone else coming to Dash who actually supports our devs and our core strategy so I don't see a problem there.

Andy, you have no proof of your attacks on Awesomedash. I think tarnishing someone's reputation based on your gut feeling is wrong.

This proposal is not about centralization (or having trusted structure) ** at all ** but gathering the best of us next to each other to spend time and effort to provide insightful reports and request-for-proposals to MNOs.
If you use a fair comparison you see that the argument you make can be applied to the incubator effort too. There is a group of people who are making decisions about projects and assigned budgets.
The point is that there is good amount of work that needs to be done and structures and process are needed to achieve some efficiency and effectiveness. Decision making and planning is one the most critical work that needs to be done. It cannot be left to whatever that happens would be good. Also not that this board only provides information and doesn't make any decision about budget or final votes.

"Decision making and planning is one the most critical work that needs to be done. It cannot be left to whatever that happens would be good"

You're proposing to add a centralized body into a decentralized governance system on the implication that Dash's governance decisions are too important to be left to MNOs as a group. Then you're trying to sell that by claiming that is not about centralization and trust. Creating this within a decentralized system is literally the definition of centralization.

And it's also a massive security risk. What you're actually doing is creating a direct communication channel with MNOs where you can try to influence them with your 'experts' - instead of a free market system you're creating the first quazi-official entity that MNOs should listen to about the decisions they're making. Great attack vector and its a lot cheaper than buying up Masternodes.

As I mentioned below, it would be ridiculous if this passes, and I hope the MNOs can see through this in terms of the potential for manipulation and how cheap it is that you (an experienced systems designer with millions of users behind you) didnt actually innovate an improvement to our governance system but want to setup a committee trying to feed MNOs with information that's easy for you to influence.

You are straw-manning his argument. He isn't suggesting power be taken away from Masternodes and given to someone else. He is trying to set up a body that masternodes can draw on for technical advice.

Masternodes would still be the ones casting votes and making decisions.

Andy,
Members would be approved by the DAO, its not 'his' experts.
The function of this group would hardly be any different than what DashWatch does, except that they wouldn't even be paid up front like DashWatch is. Is Dashwatch a security risk because their reports can influence MNOs? The members don't vote on behalf of MNOs, there is no trust required.

Dashwatch acts pretty neutral, they don't set out to try to influence MNO's. They just provide information and leave it to MNO's to nalyze that information and draw their own conclusion from it.

The Dash Advisory Board will provide an opinion on how MNO's should vote on specific budget proposals, and thereby have a much larger influence over MNO's voting behavior, then DashWatch will ever have.

This shouldn't be necessarily the **only** body that provides useful information to MNOs and I'm pretty sure there will be more in the future when Dash network is much larger. But right now we need at least one and it requires smart, experienced and talented people and a lot of work to be done. This proposal is an attempt to make the first one happens.

If the Dash Advisory Board was just providing useful information, then i would have less a problem with it (although i don't think it needs a seal of approval from the DAO, through a decision proposal).

Instead the Dash Advisory Board would be providing an advice / recommendation to MNO's on how to vote on budget proposals from a very select group of people who may or may not be 'experts in the field', who may or may not have a conflict of interest that MNO's are not aware of and who may or may not receive bonusses, when they leave the Dash project.

I rather not expose our governance system to that.

"an experienced systems designer with millions of users behind you"

obviously being sarcastic there as that was shown to be an obvious fabrication on Discord already.

I agree 100% that where Dash currently is (in regards to governance) is embarrassing. I also agree that it needs to be trustless. I would love to see the Dash community and DCG commit to further innovation in the governance space.

''I agree 100% that where Dash currently is (in regards to governance) is embarrassing.''

I disagree with that statement 100%.

I wasn't saying the current governance system is embarrassing, far from it, I was referring to the 'addition' to the governance system (creating a Bitcoin foundation style board to try to guide strategy) as embarassing because there are a million ways to do this better trustlessly in code.

Dash was the first to implement decentralized governance, but they are far from a leader at this point. The extent that dash has fallen off is embarrassing, anyone who doesn't think so is in denial. All my friends and colleagues who are into crypto laugh at me for caring about this toxic cesspool of a community.

Although I would like to see Dash implement a much broader, formal, and ambitious restructuring of the governance system (like Cardano is doing), I think this proposal represents an ideological step in the right direction.

Surprisingly, I don't hate the idea. I like the thought of professional advisors helping MNOs with the process of deliberation and decision making. What worries me is that if MNOs choose these people won't they suck? The election will turn into a popularity contest within the Dash community.

I think a better version of this might forgo individual elections, and instead bring in qualified individuals from outside of the Dash ecosystem. Obviously the lack of pay makes this tricky.

I don't think I support this proposal in its current form but I'm open to being convinced.

Dash Town Hall (DTH) proposes a solution that involves delegates. MNO's would be able to change their delegate at any time. Further, these delegates will be paid through the DTH proposal.

Thanks for your valuable feedback.
These points came up in discussions. Actually the earlier version included external parties but after spending some time on how these individuals should be picked, approved and paid it seemed almost impossible given the realities. There are several problems but the most obvious one is that a valuable expert fees are gonna be high which is not be approved by MNOs. And then there is the problem of ensuring that the expert is providing enough value to Dash.
In this model an MNO can nominate a delegate who can be an expert. It is also possible that the board submit a proposal for hiring an external part for a given period time. In this case the board is responsible for finding the expert, convincing MNOs and monitoring the work.
I see the popularity contest concern but I'm not too much concerned about that. MNOs are heavily invested in and naturally through wisdom or pain they start acting more rational and elect the board members based on their resumes, plans and past performance.
Please let me know if you have other concerns or questions.

We already had a group of know-it-alls attempt to organize themselves in the "Dash Discord." They divided the community with an ill-conceived proposal designed [IMHO] to disrupt DCG's initiative, and as a result we lost an opportunity to improve the proposal system.

The only people who are going to be attracted to this entity will be community members who, out of envy or stupidity or malice, want to interfere with DCG's excellent leadership.

This proposal has not anything to do with DCG or interfering with their work. The goal of this proposal to assist MNOs, provide more insight and information to them and request for necessary proposals for major issues where they are not covered by DCG or other orgs.

I talked to Ryan about this idea and he not only supported the general idea but he think that there should be more Dash orgs (even competing). Currently the major issue is that there aren't enough forces to attack many problems that needs to be worked on. Dash growth can be accelerated significantly if we align the community forces with a clear gaol and vision.

I'd just drop the authoratitve tone like you spoke with Ryan and how you are in position to say that we need clear vision and goals and actually imply as if we don't have those clearly defined... you're a scam artist who initially masqueraded as a 'large scale system designer' but spends all your time trying to heard MNOs instead of doing anything relating to our actual systems.

The idea the Network would allow you to get a foot in the door on further trying to influence MNOs not through code or votes but through typing from an anon account on forums is I hope ridiculous.

Our vision and goals are to create the best Digital Cash in the market through innovating through the only barrier left... ***ease of use***

We've spent years working on the tech and we're about to launch it... the fact in your various activities you implicitly reject that notion means you are not aligned to any of the vision / goals we are actually doing and part of the problem and coming up with completely pointless ideas like this that have no baring on adding utility or further the goals the Network actually agreed to and has been funding for a long time.

Reddit Q&A:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/m2hj1a/dash_advisory_board_proposal/

''This board is not a DAO representative, delegated authority, legal entity and does not have any power over the Dash network. However the board's existence is approved by the community and serves as an advisory body.''

''The board is not paid from the Dash treasury, however the board can submit a reward proposal at the end of a member term to the community. The community can then approve or disapprove the reward based on the individual and overall board performance.''

In other words, a paid advisory body, with a stamp of approval by the Dash DAO.

''The goal of the board is to equip MNOs with valuable information and insight so MNOs can make informed decisions that lead to impactful actions.''

MNOs already make informed decisions that have impactful actions, we don't need some centralized paid advisory board for that. The way i see it our governance system is functioning just fine, the last thing Dash needs is to bring in a centralized (paid) advisory board, just because OP is not happy with how MNOs voted on budget proposals in the past or has a problem with how MNOs are voting these days.

My main concern is that Dash is not anywhere as competitive as it should be. The decision making process is slow and ineffective. Real issues aren't being identified and addressed quickly. The biggest indication of this problem is that the Dash network, given all Dash advantages to other coins, is not growing fast enough and the growth extrapolation is not promising. The crypto landscape has changed from last year and now anything that took 10 years to happen is going to happen in a year or less. Current dash competitive advantages could be gone in 6 months or 1 year as many strong competitors in all forms and shapes enter the market. The competition will become much more serious.

Moreover, I don't see any harm in this proposal. Where did you get the "paid" part, end-term rewards? (This was added based on several feedback I received.) The community would only approve the reward if they think that the board has done a fantastic job, which means something really good has happened. And honestly if we achieve electing qualified members, most of them won't care about rewards. Dash is suffering from lack of enough capable people who are willing to think about its high-level problems. The inefficiency and ineffectiveness of process has made this issue even worse. No qualified person whose time is super valuable is willing to waste hours and hours in various Dash forums to only scratch the surface of topics.

With regards to Dash competitiveness : according to DCG last Quarterly Call, Dash is showing growth figures on all fronts quarter after quarter after quarter (i am talking about an increase in Average Daily Active Addresses, Mobile Wallets Installs, Median Economic Transactions per day, Marketcap)

Source : https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/...8550659/DCG-Q4-2020-Quarterly-Call.pdf?api=v2

Also Dash is making good progress on Dash Platform on Testnet (v0.18 just got implemented).

Source : https://blog.dash.org/release-announcement-dash-platform-v0-18-on-testnet-45f421a6bc98

I think the Dash network is growing just fine and will grow exponentially, once Dash Platform gets released on Dash Mainnet. We just need some patience.

With regards to the ''paid'' part, i don't think adding a bonus system to reward individual members of an advisory board for their participation in the end and use our governance system to allocate those bonusses is a good use of our budget allocation or our governance system.

I don't see why the network should be polled for individual bonusses (5 Dash per polling).

Re 5 dash per polling, we can use the Dash Watch election system, which is currently used for the trust protectors and DIF.

Again, the reward is subject to the MNOs approval and is not really a key part of proposal. If that's your main concern we can consider removing that. That aside there is really no harm going through this process. If something good comes out of this board we would know it in two-three months. And if not the idea will die naturally because the only purpose of it is to provide value to the network.

1 - Shadowy anon (sock puppet?) proposal owner.
2 - Vague idea to ennoble certain members of the community.
3 - Developed in the privately owned and controlled "Dash Discord."

There is really is nothing to love about this proposal. You might say there is no harm in it, but it will constitute a distraction at the very least.

The DAO is not being asked to trust the PO to handle any funds, so I'm not sure why it's important that the PO is anonymous? The proposal does not really grant any form of power at all. It's basically just, let's assemble a group of volunteers who will try to do some good. If there is ever a proposal for compensation at some point down the road, then we could always debate at that time whether or not they actually did anything valuable.

I support the idea, I think we need more people working on strategic planning, so I'll be voting yes, although I do question the necessity of submitting a proposal to do this, as opposed to just doing it. I think the implication is that it would be easier to recruit better members or to motivate the members to do higher quality work if it is a project recognized by the DAO. (Awesomedash-if there is another reason, please advise)

"...I'm not sure why it's important that the PO is anonymous?"

Isn't this how the the DashCrypto fiasco began with JulioDash? An anon shows up who seems genuinely interested in improving Dash. Over time he ingratiates himself with various community members. Then he has an idea that seems innocent enough and wants the DAO's consent to move forward.

"I do question the necessity of submitting a proposal to do this,"

Yes it is necessary IMHO, because a vampire cannot enter a home unless invited.

I'm anonymous but:
* Several MNs owned by me registered here in Dash Central.
* I'm actively involved in Dash discussions and driving a few efforts.
The main reasons for my anonymity:
* I may not be able to participate and contribute to Dash if I reveal my identity because of my current job restrictions.
* I'm not interested in becoming a public person for various reasons. One of them is my family safety.

Also please note that the only reason we have this proposal is to increase the quality and impact of such board. And there will be an election for board members. So even if you think my anonymity is a problem you can choose to not vote for anonymous nominees.

Anons cannot be trusted to do anything here but debate -- not organize or create proposals, not receive DAO funds, not offer MN hosting services, not provide technical support, not volunteer to help other POs.

The safest thing to do is to assume any anon here is a potential con artist or worse.

As I said there is some data that can be verified as the fact that I'm heavily invested in Dash and had positive contribution in the past. I also had an audio meeting (90 minutes) with Ryan.
Having said that I wouldn't have started this work or any other effort if there were other people who are willing to start them. A big challenge with Dash right now that there are not just enough capable people in the community (outside DCG/DIF/etc.) to drive efforts and make an impact. This proposal aims to attract this scarce resource and also optimize the process for them so their valuable time is spent for a meaningful impact.

Yes, that's the main reason, more visibility, both for attracting bright people and have a general support from MNOs. We want to gather the best people (that we can), let them work together and their work be received by MNOs. MNOs would naturally be much more open to ideas/thoughts from a group of people who they reviewed their resumes and elected rather than an arbitrary group of people.

1. If you search my username in Forum, Reddit and "Dash Discord" you will find a lot of activity. I've started the the Dash issues (https://github.com/DashNetwork/dn-issues), weekly community tasks (see forum/reddit posts) and the recent DCG AMA was one of outcomes of my meeting to Ryan (To clarify he was thinking about doing so and our meeting accelerated that by increasing the priority).
2. It is not vague but ofc it can improved. What suggestions do you have? Or what alternative solution would you bring to the table? Dash suffers from lack of enough bright people working for it. This proposal is a way to help the situation to at least gather few bright individuals who are willing to work for Dash together and allow them to have more impact.
3. I don't know (and the history behind it) why there is so much negativity around "Dash Discord" but that's where I could have the most meaningful discussion in particular in the #mno channel. If there is any other place that exists please let me know so I can post there as well. BTW, I posted the pre-prosal in all forums/channels that we have.

I am not interested in any Dash advisory board, so i will be voting NO on this decision proposal. I strongly disagree with OP statement 'Governance fails at producing cohesive, strategic decision making and resource allocation'.

Also i find it strange that OP issue this decision proposal, after having received so little feedback on his pre-discussion proposal thread (https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/pre-proposal-dash-advisory-board.51390/#post-225745). Which makes me wonder if OP is perhaps misreading the sentiment among masternode operators with regards to this specific topic.

Hi qwizzie,

Please give me some time to update the proposal description. The proposal has been extensively in the #mno channel and the conclusion was that I move forward with submitting the proposal based on the feedback I received there. If anything, I'd like to submit the full description and have a meaningful discussion based on that.

Thanks!

* Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/lxv4ye/preproposal_dash_advisory_board/ : 0 comments
* Dash.org/forum : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/pre-proposal-dash-advisory-board.51390/ : comments from just 2 persons beside OP (1 negative, 1 positive)
* Discord #mno : not found on Tao's Dash Nation Discord (i checked), so i assume the extensive discussions once again took place mostly on the elusive DashTalk Discord (not a good sign for healthy decision proposal discussions)

OP's statement : ''Governance fails at producing cohesive, strategic decision making and resource allocation'' comes from the pre-proposal discussion and the created github issue (https://github.com/DashNetwork/dn-issues/issues/6).

I just hope the network does not get overwhelmed with decision proposals from all those Github created 'issues'.

In this specific case i think a decision proposal was created prematurely.

Is there any particular problem with DashTalk? AFAIK Dash Nation was merged with DashTalk. There are a large number of MNOs who are participating in the #mno channel.

I updated the proposal description. Please read it and I would be happy to answer your concerns or questions.

I am in the 'Dash Discord' right now, where exactly is that #mno channel ?

Please contact one of moderators for adding you to the channel.

That is exactly the problem, you are having discussions about decision proposals in an invite-only discord and you are relying on feedback from pretty much that place alone.

* That's not invite-only but requires verification. I don't have any power or control over that channel.
* I have also shared it in the #pre-proposal channel (in addition to the forum/reddit). However, the major discussions happened in #mno. That has been the case during pas months. The highest quality discussions usually happen in #mno.

Discussions about decision proposals should not end up getting concentrated in a closed-off discord section, where users first need to be verified to participate in the discussions. It is what i call behind closed door talks, you can only reach a select number of masternode operators that way (those MNO's that like to hang out in that specific channel).

If these talks have been going on for months in the #mno channel and you only created pre-discussion Reddit and Dash.org/forum threads 6 days ago, then those threads start to look like an afterthought.

Anyways, we will see how much support there really is for your decision proposal, and if that matches with the feedback you received from that #mno channel.

qwizzie,
My take on it is that if there was no feedback on the reddit or forum thread in 6 days, it's unlikely that any meaningful feedback was going to happen in those places if he waited another 6 days or another month. Were you planning on offering your feedback in any of those places? Discord was the only place where MNOs seemed to be willing to offer any kind of meaningful feedback. And ultimately, putting up the 5 dash fee for a real proposal is the best way to get MNOs, like yourself, to engage :)
There's still 15 days left for voting in this cycle, plenty of time for additional discussion with the PO.

As for the proposal itself, I don't see much of a risk. The DAO is not even being asked to put up any funding; it's basically just approving the formation of such a group that the network will only compensate later if that group actually did anything valuable.

I think getting feedback only in the #mno discord channel (a channel that is not open to public view, unless authorized for access by a moderator first), is a strong signal on itself. A signal that there is perhaps less interest by masternode operators in general with regards to this specific topic and a higher chance of this decision proposal failing and OP wasting 5 Dash in the process.

It also strengthens my dislike for the #mno channel, which should be a publicly-viewable channel in Discord, not a walled-off channel like it is now that need moderators approving access.

As FYI there was a long thread today about opening up the #mno channel. There is nothing private there, only the fact that some MNOs care about their privacy and therefore prefer a more closed channel. The topic is going to be discussed among the Dash Talk moderators.

Good, a step in the right direction.

As a delegate, who gets to use the mno-channel, I would like to see more transparency as well, it is OK if voters talk among themselves, but other stakeholders in Dash should know what is being discussed.

Agreed on involving more people in discussions but I don't think we have a good solution for that yet. Do we?
I'm also interested in your specific questions or concerns, and happy to answer them.