Proposal "dash-masternode-tool-continuation-3"

Proposal “dash-masternode-tool-continuation-3“ (Completed)Back

Title:	DashMasternodeTool - February-March 2019
Owner:	Bertrand256
One-time payment:	183 DASH (4036 USD)
Completed payments:	1 totaling in 183 DASH (0 month remaining)
Payment start/end:	2019-03-17 / 2019-04-16 (added on 2019-03-08)
Final voting deadline:	in na
Votes:	17 Yes / 0 No / 0 Abstain

Proposal description

This proposal concerns the continuation of the development of Dash Masternode Tool (DMT) in the period February-March 2019.

Background
DashMasternodeTool is an application whose purpose is to help MNOs perform certain important operations related to Dash masternodes if their collateral is controlled by Trezor, KeepKey or Ledger Nano S hardware wallets. The most important of these operations are: activating the masternode in the network, status monitoring and transferring payouts without "touching" the collateal.

This proposal covers work done in the last two months, i.e. in February and March 2019. In my previous proposal, I explained the reasons why I first do the work and then I ask for funding.

The scope
In the period covered by this proposal, the distribution of my involvement was as follows:
- implementation of changes in DMT: 65% of the time
- implementation of the code in the server part required by some DMT features: 10% of the time
- user support: 25% of the time

Activities related to DMT:
- improvements of the Deterministic Masternode Migration wizard
- improvements of the DMT wallet feature, including support for handling of special transactions (DIP2) by hardware wallets

Link to the last release of the application: https://github.com/Bertrand256/dash-masternode-tool/releases/tag/v0.9.22

Work to be done in the near future
After the recent probles of the Trezor online wallet, that were related to not (yet) supported DIP2 transactions, some people use DMT wallet not only to send masternode earnings, but also for general payments. This results in high expectations regarding the quality of this functionality. On the other hand, the DMT wallet feature is still far from being perfect, so I would like to devote the nearest available time to make further improvements in this area.

Not everything I promised in the past has been delivered. The dynamics of changes in this environment is so great that in practice, I devote more than 50% of my time to do tasks that were not taken into account during the planning. I am therefore forced to postpone the implementation of some promised features, which is quite uncomfortable for me, but necessary. Anyway, I remember all of them and will try to implement them whenever possible.

Budget
- Compensation: 6500$ / month
- Dash price (10% margin for volatility): 73 $/Dash
- Months: 2
- Proposal cost reimbursement: 5 Dash

Amout: 6500 * 2 / 73 + 5 = 183 Dash
Cycles: 1

If the Dash price turns out to be higher than my estimates, I will expand the scope of the proposal for an additional time. If it is lower, the scope remains unchanged.

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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?

Submit comment

stillcantstop 1 point,6 years ago

The Dash Masternode Tool is a very handy piece of work. When Trezor recently had a problem with Dash, the DMT was just as easy or easier. Nobody wants to be tied to just one supplier/tool/resource.
Yes for me, solarguy

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Thanks @solarguy for your "Yes". "Failover" solutions for official clients of hardware wallets are in my opinion quite important, so after completing this proposal I'm going to work on further improvements in this area (this time outside the Dash treasury).

DashWatch 0 points,6 years ago

Dash Watch March 26th 2019 Report on
DashMasternodeTool - February-March 2019 by Bertrand256
https://dashwatchbeta.org/r/MAR19/DASH-MASTERNODE-TOOL-CONTINUATION-2A

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Thank you @jophus.
Our conversations were also valuable to me - thanks to them I have better knowledge what needs to be improved.

jophus 0 points,6 years ago

YES! The security that the DMT provides has been critical to my ability to keep a masternode. To boot, Bertrand has been incredibly generous with his time in helping me with issues I have had. A quality product from someone who knows how to deliver.

qwizzie 0 points,6 years ago

you have my support.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Thanks.

DeepBlue 1 point,6 years ago

@Betrand256 are you the only person that is working on this project? Have you contracted any 3rd party independent bug and security testing service to ensure that the software does not have any security risks or issues. If just one developer is working on the code it is a good idea to get it independently tested to ensure security is maintained, especially with something as important as software that is involved with administering the MN collateral. We can't afford for there to be any unexpected security issues with the DMT tool.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Yes, I am currently the only person working on this project. A security audit of the source code of the program (and the libraries used) would be very costly, which in the current situation would not be very reasonable. It's also not very necessary, because the funds are protected by a physical device that doesn't allow transactions without a confirmation with a physical button. The user's role is only to read messages carefully before confirming, regardless of whether the device is used in conjunction with DMT or with the official client app.

Aezel 1 point,6 years ago

I don't doubt the importance of DMT in the Dash ecosystem but I have some questions regarding spending resources on developing the wallet function of DMT, which seems to be a significant part of the development work of this proposal.

My concern is that, Dash treasury funds are limited thus funding the development of DMT will probably come at the cost of efforts in for example Venezuela. So why would Dash fund the improvement of wallet features in DMT. Is it necessary? Will it have additional features compared to other Dash wallets? Could users also use one of the alternative wallets that are already out there, to achieve the same results?

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Thanks for the legitimate questions.

Actually, most of the work covered by this proposal concerns not the wallet itself, but the support for registering DIP3 masternodes. As for the wallet, the three major hardware wallet manufacturers have so far not implemented Dash special transactions support (DIP2) either in their client libraries or in their official client apps. As a result, you can not make Dash transactions if there are DIP2 outputs among your account UTXOs, which are, for example, mn earnings received after Feb 27. (Trezor's online wallet disconects when he comes across such a transaction.) DMT wallet has a workaround for this, which will be quite important for some people before the manufacturers fix it on their part.

qwizzie 0 points,6 years ago

Will i also encounter this problem with DIP2 outputs, when my payout address is on a seperate Ledger Blue hardware address ?
I was planning to use Ledger Live to access my incoming mn payments on that Ledger Blue hardware wallet, once spork 15 activates.

Any information on how Ledger Live deals with DIP2 outputs ?
If necessary i guess i could import the seed of my Ledger Blue into a Ledger Nano S, so i have compatibility with your Dash Masternode Tool.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Information from people who have contacted me recently indicate, that Ledger Live really has problems with spending DIP2 UTXOs (more in our conversation on DashCentral). Fortunately, the solution does not require any changes to the firmware, which is confirmed by the workaround used in DMT.

Yes, a workaround with a Ledger Nano S will probably be necessary if you will need urgent access to your mn earnings.

qwizzie 0 points,6 years ago

I just got an answer through private conversation with Bertrand, we will know more about Ledger Live and possible problems with incoming masternode payments after spork 15 activation.

lysergic 2 points,6 years ago

The DMT had several bugs from the 13.x upgrade, one of which almost sunk two excellent proposals, all of this could have been avoided if the proper testing was done by the developer, which it was not. DMT raises more support issues than it resolves and MNOs need give it a level of trust because it stores some of your private keys. I tried to review the code and could not make heads or tails of it. So, I don't use DMT and would not recommend anyone to use it.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

The main purpose of DMT is to allow masternode start if the collateral is controlled by a hardware wallet and (unfortunately) there is no other viable option to achieve this. Every now and then we are witnessing collareal thefts because of keeping them in a hot wallet on a PC, so discouraging people to use hardware wallets for this purpose isn't really reasonable.

Regarding the issues related to some secondary features, it is often the case that the error message that the user sees is the result of an error in the external module which DMT uses (e.g., hw client library) and a DMT fix is actually a workaround to allow this to work. You start to be aware of such nuances only when you deal with them directly.

Does this mean that DMT is perfect? Absolutely not. There is a lot of code, especially from the origins of the project, which is illegible. It also has bugs, which is nothing unusual especially for apps being intensively developed, but most errors are fixed quickly.

lysergic 1 point,6 years ago

Yes, but now that we have the Deterministic Masternodes, we can manage our masternodes using the owner key and the operator key without touching the collateral key, that can stay in a paper wallet or a trezor, also we don't need the DMT because the payouts can go to a different address from the collateral, so we don't have worry about coin control as much anymore since there is no chance of spending the collateral, that will remain offline in cold storage.

qwizzie 0 points,6 years ago

i suspect the issue is not about coincontrol (specially not after spork 15 actives and we can indeed start using alternative payout addresses), but if the payout address supports DIP 2 outputs). If Trezor disconnects when it comes across such payment types, then you will still be forced to use this Dash Masternode Tool.

qwizzie 0 points,6 years ago

I do find it disturbing that we as a community are now totally relying on third party software, when either the collateral is controlled by a hardware wallet or when the payout address is located on a hardware wallet and mn payments are starting to flow in. Hopefully the manufacturers (Ledger, Trezor, Keepkey?) will issue a firmware update soon, so we can at least handle the mn payments ourselfs again.

A_node_to_a_Master 3 points,6 years ago

This is a pretty expensive proposal during this bearmarket, I would prefer masternode owners did the manual work instead if this is the ask for it.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

It's hard to disagree, but there is also a flip side of the coin. Seeing how many people may have major problems with manual DMN registration process, which would certainly delay the adoption rate but in extreme cases could cause costly mistakes, I decided to support this process on my part. However, it required my 100-percent involvement during the course of several months, but to make it possible, I had to apply for funding. The work has been done and seeing to how many people my solution helped to complete this process quickly and easily, I can say that it completed with success. Certainly it would not be possible with my "after hours" involvement.

As supporting of DML rollout was most important task from today's perspective and there are no other similar challanges on the horizon, it's quite natural to decide that this proposal would be my last one regarding DMT, unless other unknown factors appear or the budget situation improves substancially. I'm going to switch to work in a "voluntary/after hours" mode, where I will be providing as much support as possible in such a situation.

A_node_to_a_Master 0 points,6 years ago

Thank you for you're honest reply

Domchi 1 point,6 years ago

Thanks for quick DIP3 Ledger hotfix after not being able to collect MN payouts! Voting yes.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Thank you for your support.

Criticalinput 2 points,6 years ago

easy absolute YES. The DMT needs to evolve with the Dash ecosystem.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Thank you.

kevmate 2 points,6 years ago

Easy yes from me. I use the DMT and its an essential part of the dash ecosystem. As dash evolves the dmt needs work, everyone here has to be on board with it.

Bertrand256 (proposal owner) 0 points,6 years ago

Thank you!

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