Proposal description
Dash Incubator 2023 Q1
3-month funding proposal to the Dash Network.
Summary
This proposal continues Dash Incubator's ongoing quarterly report and request. We are requesting 1,000 DASH/month this quarter, as planned in our previous 2022 Q4 proposal. See section 3 for budgeting details.
1 Incubator Updates
Figure 1a below shows Incubator's high-level funding rates. The blue series is our superblock requests, all of which have been funded so far. The red series shows rewards paid to incubator contributors, averaged into monthly rates for each quarter.
Figure 1a - Reward and request rates over time
2 Project Updates and Outlook
The incubator distributed 2,420 DASH in rewards to 21 different projects over the past quarter (2022 Q4). Figures 2a and 2b below show the breakdown of all rewarded projects. The proposal submission fee is included in order to fully account for all Dash spent.
Figure 2a - Reward allocation by project
Figure 2b - Reward list by strategist and project
2.1 Rion Gull
I want Dash to be the premier free-market money. For that, we need tools that make it easy for developers and end users to use Dash - both for spending and saving. Hence, of the 1462.6 DASH awarded in Q4 from my budget, the vast majority (72%) of that went towards our Payment Tools and Crowdnode Tools projects (see Figure 2d above). This was my strategic focus last quarter (Q4) and the quarter before (Q3), and it will continue to be a priority for me this coming quarter (Q1).
One of my concerns with Dash Platform development is the size and complexity of the project and its dependencies. The `dash` SDK package, which is the culmination of the past 6+ years of development for Dash Platform, weighs in at a hefty 1.7 MB after being minified and gzipped. This will likely take 2 to 36 seconds to download (depending on the user's internet speed) for the users of any apps that use it. That's a best case scenario for app response time since a) it doesn't account for network request latency, javascript parsing, and executing, and b) the `dash` SDK bundle doesn't include the developer's application code, nor any of its other dependencies. Bottom line: Dash web apps may be very slow if we don't reduce these bundle sizes significantly.
Our Payment Tools project aims to help with the above concern. We want to allow web apps to integrate Dash payments with small, fast, and secure dependencies, something most respectable developers demand. Once fully developed, we can possibly use these packages to replace some of the bloated dependencies in the `dash` SKD.
This past quarter we created an organization on npm.org (the main software package repository on the web). We have four packages so far and plan to add more this quarter. You can find them by searching for @dashincubator on npm.org's search page. Currently, all our published packages are from @coolaj86, but packages from other Incubator developers can be added if they meet quality standards. Our main purpose here is to create and host packages with few, if any, 3rd party dependencies. None of our existing packages have 3rd party dependencies and despite being very useful, all are very small (7.0 kB for secp256k1, 2.1 kB for base58check, 2.1 kB for blocktx and 1.6 kB for ripemd160).
The remaining 28% of allocated budget this quarter was awarded to seven relatively smaller projects (this quarter). Feel free to ask any questions you may have about them in the comments below.
2.2 Ash Francis
In Q4 2022 Ash funded the following Bounties:
In Q4 Tim funded the following bounties:
During the upcoming quarter Tim expects to fund progress across most of the bounties funded last quarter. He expects his top priorities to be:
3 Schedule and Budgeting
This proposal continues our typical 3-month funding proposal cadence.
Figure 3a shows the Incubator’s historical and current proposal submissions. We are requesting 1,000 DASH/month for 3 months, as planned in our previous Q4 proposal.
Figure 3a - Incubator budget requests
Figure 3b below breaks down this budget planning for the following quarter (3 months shown in the table). I'm including this table and a detailed explanation of it to help everyone understand our new budgeting and award system. This table can always be accessed in our Accounting spreadsheet (it may be omitted in future proposals).
Figure 3b - Strategist reserve planning
Some notes from the figure:
Terms and Closing
All operations of the Incubator funded by this proposal are subject to our current Rules. This proposal forms a part of our Network Contract with Dash. Our rules are always subject to and defer to MNO voting.
Thank you, masternode voters, for your support! As always, I'm very excited about this quarter and what we will accomplish.
Respectfully,
Rion
3-month funding proposal to the Dash Network.
Summary
This proposal continues Dash Incubator's ongoing quarterly report and request. We are requesting 1,000 DASH/month this quarter, as planned in our previous 2022 Q4 proposal. See section 3 for budgeting details.
1 Incubator Updates
Figure 1a below shows Incubator's high-level funding rates. The blue series is our superblock requests, all of which have been funded so far. The red series shows rewards paid to incubator contributors, averaged into monthly rates for each quarter.
Figure 1a - Reward and request rates over time
2 Project Updates and Outlook
The incubator distributed 2,420 DASH in rewards to 21 different projects over the past quarter (2022 Q4). Figures 2a and 2b below show the breakdown of all rewarded projects. The proposal submission fee is included in order to fully account for all Dash spent.
Figure 2a - Reward allocation by project
Figure 2b - Reward list by strategist and project
2.1 Rion Gull
I want Dash to be the premier free-market money. For that, we need tools that make it easy for developers and end users to use Dash - both for spending and saving. Hence, of the 1462.6 DASH awarded in Q4 from my budget, the vast majority (72%) of that went towards our Payment Tools and Crowdnode Tools projects (see Figure 2d above). This was my strategic focus last quarter (Q4) and the quarter before (Q3), and it will continue to be a priority for me this coming quarter (Q1).
One of my concerns with Dash Platform development is the size and complexity of the project and its dependencies. The `dash` SDK package, which is the culmination of the past 6+ years of development for Dash Platform, weighs in at a hefty 1.7 MB after being minified and gzipped. This will likely take 2 to 36 seconds to download (depending on the user's internet speed) for the users of any apps that use it. That's a best case scenario for app response time since a) it doesn't account for network request latency, javascript parsing, and executing, and b) the `dash` SDK bundle doesn't include the developer's application code, nor any of its other dependencies. Bottom line: Dash web apps may be very slow if we don't reduce these bundle sizes significantly.
Our Payment Tools project aims to help with the above concern. We want to allow web apps to integrate Dash payments with small, fast, and secure dependencies, something most respectable developers demand. Once fully developed, we can possibly use these packages to replace some of the bloated dependencies in the `dash` SKD.
This past quarter we created an organization on npm.org (the main software package repository on the web). We have four packages so far and plan to add more this quarter. You can find them by searching for @dashincubator on npm.org's search page. Currently, all our published packages are from @coolaj86, but packages from other Incubator developers can be added if they meet quality standards. Our main purpose here is to create and host packages with few, if any, 3rd party dependencies. None of our existing packages have 3rd party dependencies and despite being very useful, all are very small (7.0 kB for secp256k1, 2.1 kB for base58check, 2.1 kB for blocktx and 1.6 kB for ripemd160).
The remaining 28% of allocated budget this quarter was awarded to seven relatively smaller projects (this quarter). Feel free to ask any questions you may have about them in the comments below.
2.2 Ash Francis
In Q4 2022 Ash funded the following Bounties:
- Rust Dash RPC Client - Porting a Go based RPC client for L1 to Rust. This work remains ongoing.
- Summoners Dash Platform Game - A turn based strategy game that allows bets by players on outcome with data stored on platform and use of L1 for transactions. This project is progressing well with the game taking shape. A playable demo should be ready shortly.
- Reference Dash Platform Extension - A project to build a proof of concept extension to facilitate dapp onboarding. This project is going well with the extension & communication layer scaffolded and the beginnings of a dapp JS library.
- DashPay Wallet (Incubator) - A full wallet with chat features and more to be the production implementation of the reference extension above. The focus has been onboarding a new developer with this platform and building a toolset to compliment its development (Dash Chum).
- DashPay Core Extension Wallet - An extension wallet spun out from Dash core, focused on L1 features. This now has full transactional capability.
- Rust Dash RPC Client - Completion of this project
- Summoners Dash Platform Game - Release of a playable demo followed by a testnet betting based version (extension dependent)
- Reference Dash Platform Extension - Getting this to Proof of Concept stage which is a testnet implementation with a reference dapp handshake & transactions.
- DashPay Wallet - The UX for this being refactored into the latest ionic version (and React).
- DashPay Core Extension Wallet - Completion of this project as a full L1 extension wallet (and a useful reference project).
- Influencer Affiliate Site - A data site for influencers to earn money (and payouts in Dash). Tim intends to get this site to MVP and launch in this quarter.
- Governance Portal - Work is now recommencing on this project, Tim intends to work towards an MVP release this quarter.
- THORChain Integration - This core part of this work is completed, only maintenance is required to keep the PR up to date ready for merge.
In Q4 Tim funded the following bounties:
- Dashmate Bug Fixes, Improvements & Innovations - This is an ongoing bounty to support ongoing development, improvements, fixes, etc. for Dashmate. Status: ongoing The bulk of Q4 activity was the beginning of a project to migrate dash-deploy to dashmate - this is ~25% complete.Q1 2023 will see continued progress. There isn't a completion ETA.
- Local Money - This is a dash "onramp" designed to facilitate p2p Dash to fiat exchanges providing the ability to seek, find, and execute trades. Status: ~20% complete. In Q4 the MVP features, functions, and user flows were defined. Q1 2023 will see UX development, and depending on timing, initial code deployment as well.
- Read Investments Data from Blockchain - This will create a public facing place users can quickly search and reference the history of proposals to MNOs. This will include light data manipulation capabilities and include csv download of project and funding daa for further local analysis. Status: ~50% complete. In Q4 the progress toward complete was minimal consisting mostly of QA of and Spec work for next steps. Q1 2023 will see code development from UX design and the deployment of data extraction, manipulation, and visualization functionality.The biggest risk/difficulty is and has been that the primary contributors are located in Ukraine.
- Dash Core Contributions - This is an ongoing bounty that rewards Dash for merged PRs to the Dash Core repo on Github to any non-DCG developers. This bounty is administered by Pasta. Status: ongoing. In Q4 a couple medium sized PRs were awarded.
- Goal/Challenge Platform - This is a dapp utilizing Platform smart contract capabilities to create bet-on-yourself games or challenges. Users can create, find, join, and complete games wagering Dash on their individual success. Status: uncertain - development was recently restarted after the previous contributors withdrew from contributing to the incubator. Several components are now out of date with the current platform deployment. In Q4 development was restarted and progress has been fixing elements that had fallen out of date. Q1 2023 should see new progress and depending on pace, completion of the MVP in late Q1 or Q2.
- Interactive Dash Ecosystem Webpage - This was an inherited bounty, and is nearing completion. This is closely related to the infographic (above). It is the "presentation layer" presenting the infographic for easy display and navigation in a web browser across multiple languages. You can see the infographic, available interactions, and hosting environment here. Status: unknown - We have no response from the contributors yet about how complete this is. In Q4 was the QA of local language options and Specification for a function that "enables the creation of direct links to a specific infographic. It allows dash.org (among others) to forward a visitor to a specific infographic in a preferred language". Q1 2023 will see continued progress and development for the new functionality that was specified (in QA now)
- Influencer Affiliate Site - This was a concept Tim accepted on behalf of Ash and has since handed to him. Status: handed off
- Dash Incubator Getting Started - This ongoing bounty rewards various activities for introducing and onboarding new contributors. Status: ongoing. In Q4 the contribution was a referred contributor. This bounty might need reviewing. It is likely there are contributors eligible for rewards and unaware.
- Dash Ecosystem Infographic - This was an inherited bounty, and is nearing completion. This is a graphical representation of the entire Dash ecosystem for quick reference. Link to the current state is below. Status: ongoing as the ecosystem evolves. Q4 progress was the QA of local language updates (Russian)
During the upcoming quarter Tim expects to fund progress across most of the bounties funded last quarter. He expects his top priorities to be:
- Atomic Swaps - The MVP is near completion, needing some final QA and a functionality. The future state is uncertain, but my goals is get it across the line and decide "what next" later.
- Goal/Challenge Platform - This MVP has more development, depending on pace we hope we can have a release by early Q2. This should be an easy, socially shareable, means of introducing new user to Dash and even crypto in general.
- Decentralized Dynamic Application Infrastructure - Same status as the above. There should be tremendous opportunity with this bounty to give developers a quick means of building on Platform.
- Dashmate Bug Fixes, Improvements & Innovations - This caries the endorsement and priority from critical developers within the Dash ecosystem.
- Platform Console - This bounty has been picked up by emmanualeclipse. It is to create a Dash Platform wallet, identity, username, contract, and document all from a web browser with no coding required.
3 Schedule and Budgeting
This proposal continues our typical 3-month funding proposal cadence.
Figure 3a shows the Incubator’s historical and current proposal submissions. We are requesting 1,000 DASH/month for 3 months, as planned in our previous Q4 proposal.
Figure 3a - Incubator budget requests
Figure 3b below breaks down this budget planning for the following quarter (3 months shown in the table). I'm including this table and a detailed explanation of it to help everyone understand our new budgeting and award system. This table can always be accessed in our Accounting spreadsheet (it may be omitted in future proposals).
Figure 3b - Strategist reserve planning
Some notes from the figure:
- Columns A and B indicate the source and destination of external and internal budget requests.
- Column E shows the current reserves in each account. along with the current (as of this writing) total of 3,672 DASH in cell E3.
- Column F shows the Incubator request of 1,000 DASH/month along with each strategist's internal quarterly budget request.
- Column G shows proposal delegations (i.e. 900 DASH from the Incubator general to riongull, 400 DASH from riongull to other strategists).
- Column H shows each strategist's projected output (rewards paid to Incubator contributors).
- Column I shows delegation/oversight commissions (10%, and currently applicable only to the lead strategist, but potential for other strategists in the future).
- Column J shows strategist admin commissions (20%, applicable to all strategists and shared with admins if used for certain projects).
- Column K is the sum of I and J.
- Column L is the surplus or deficit of each account/fund, based on requests, delegations, and outputs.
- Column M is the sum of E and L, representing the projected end-of-month balance.
- Column N is the projected buffer for each account/fund (including overall total in rows 3, 13, and 23).
- 3.2 month buffer overall (up from 2.7 months from last quarter)
- 2+ month buffers for each strategist (up from less than 2 month buffers for each strategist last quarter)
Terms and Closing
All operations of the Incubator funded by this proposal are subject to our current Rules. This proposal forms a part of our Network Contract with Dash. Our rules are always subject to and defer to MNO voting.
Thank you, masternode voters, for your support! As always, I'm very excited about this quarter and what we will accomplish.
Respectfully,
Rion
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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
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And thanks to all of you MNOs who voted.
Either the DMH is over asking or this incubator is under-asking.
How was the 1000 dash/month decided on?
I subscribe to the "subjective theory of value" paradigm. I can't tell you what is valuable objectively - only what I value personally (subjectively). I think there's value in everything I have rewarded (otherwise it wouldn't have been rewarded). The nature of any Incubator is that some projects may be valuable to explore, but can later be paused or archived if we find that it's not valuable to continue pursuing. Many Incubator projects have met that fate. Others continue to get funding.
If you have concerns about specific projects, we can have the strategist responsible for that project help convey the value proposition. That's a primary purpose for our new strategist role. Please let me know if you want this for any specific project(s). We break down where every DASH is spend so that people can know how much each project is costing us, to help with value judgments.
Regarding our request. I chose 1,000 DASH for a few reasons:
1. Last quarter we averaged a reward rate of just over 800 DASH/month (see figure 1a above). By definition of subject value, Incubator strategists consider all of this to be valuable work (again, at least to explore). That's not to say everyone will agree obviously, hence my invitation above to drill down on a project basis if you'd like.
2. I'm trying to build reserve buffers of around 6 months. This helps us attract quality devs, which is crucial for our success - one great dev is more valuable than many average devs, at least for what I'm trying to achieve. I'm trying to retain at least a few great devs that can do focussed, long-term work for Incubator. Great devs are usually already employed, so you need to have enough funds in reserve that they can feel comfortable leaving other opportunities to focus on Dash. Currently we're working with an overall buffer of around 3 months - that's not enough security for most people to risk. We need to request more than what we're paying out as rewards to build our buffer.
3. The closer we get to platform landing, the more I plan to recruit additional developers. This will obviously require more funds to work with.
Hope that helps. Let me know if you have further questions.
DashPay Wallet - I consider this my most important project; its initially planned as an extension but we do intend to deploy it to mobile & desktop in time; the goal is to have a wallet that is analogous to Metamask for Dash & Dash Platform. This wallet will be used for:
- Dash Identities (registration management, account switching and such)
- Platform Interaction (writing to and reading data from Dash Platform)
- L1 Actions (transactions)
- Governance (voting, proposal submission)
- Chat (future iteration; a full chat experience with payments & payment requests)
You can see some of our design work here (desktop)
https://bit.ly/3VVNbGX
and here (mobile)
https://bit.ly/3QsY3em
This wallet becomes the nexus for how people interact with the greater Dash ecosystem, to give developers as much foundation as possible we'll be heavily documenting how to interact with it as well as creating libraries for web dApps to use that will remove a lot of the complexity around dApp development making it more accessible for more developers.
To ensure a healthy launch I'm working on the following dApps:
DashGov
A new governance site/platform where all proposal content and comments are stored on Dash Platform and attached to Dash Identities. You'll be able to vote on this site which will then send a message to the extension where you'll then authorize your vote (where you have previously registered your voting keys). POs will also be able to create proposals with markdown (again stored on platform) and via the same interaction with the extension create the governance object. Further to this we intend to expand this system with polling/voting functionality and other complementary features.
Summoners
Summoners will be a reference game built in Unity with an accompanying library that allows unity web games to integrate platform & Dash L1 relatively easily. This tile & turn-based strategy will allow users to stake Dash on the outcome of their duel. We'll have a low-fidelity non-dash version of this game live shortly for playtesting.
Coin Flip
A basic web game that allows you to flip a coin and win Dash based on the outcome using BLS signatures as entropy for the outcome; again a good reference project for future devs that need RNG + provable fairness.
Jembe
The Dash Platform equivalent of Twitter; a decentralized social networking for short-form content.
The end goal here is a reference ecosystem of dapps that are entertaining/useful and a great reference for other dapps developers to learn from along with all the tools necessary (a js library for devs to use, a unity implementation and an extension that is the nexus of Dash Platform & Dash L1 interactions)
Also i read some unconfirmed rumors about ThorChain being somewhat reluctant to integrate Dash, due to some internal debate of theirs about privacy coins and the unwanted attention it might bring to ThorChain ?
Not sure if there is truth in those rumors or not.
Are most dapp developers currently waiting on a more feature-complete Platform on Testnet or is there still considerable interest from developers, leading to recent development activity on Platform dapps ?
I welcome any developers who specifically want to work with Platform in a testing capacity. I will resume active recruiting when Platform is feature complete on testnet. Hope that answers your question.
Ash is your goto man regarding Thorchain.