Welcome!

*EDIT*
Thank you masternode owners for all your votes. I have to admit that the number of positive votes was a big surprise to me, so once again: thank you.

I would like to remind you that due to my mistake, instead of the amount of 33 Dash per month I've requested 66 Dash. Therefore, you can defund my proposal in the current voting round - then I'll work on this project exclusively by the end of November. If you don't do this, my 100% involvement will be extended until mid February 2018 (additional 2.5 months).

Background
Shortly after I've stumbled upon the Dash technology (of course, thanks to Amanda's videos), Dash began to surge in value and thus I became interested in the matter of masternode collateral security. Earlier, the collateral was usually controlled by the Dash-QT software wallet, but its value was now too high for the solution to be considered safe in an era of ubiquitous malware. There was already a great solution at the time (chaeplin's dashmnb) that made it possible to secure the collateral with a hardware wallet (e.g. Trezor), but some people put off migrating to it since it lacked a GUI, which may have been an obstacle to non-technical users. I decided to give chaeplin’s creation a graphical form – this is how DashMasternodeTool came to be.

Thanks to the knowledge within dashmnb, the basic version of the tool was created relatively quickly, with new functionalities added over the course of the next few months.

Here is the current feature list:

• starting a masternode using Trezor/Keepkey hardware wallets
• sending funds earned by the masternode in a way that keeps the 1000 Dash collateral secure
• voting on proposals
• signing messages with a hardware key, checking masternode status etc.

History of the project from its very beginning: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/gui-tool-for-running-masternode-with-trezor.13748/
The source code of the project is published on Github: https://github.com/Bertrand256/dash-masternode-tool

Current challenges
As the work was done after hours, the development time was severely limited. In consequence, the pace of releasing new functionalities was far from impressive, many trade-offs were made in the code and the documentation is a long way from professional.

Over the several months of working on the app, some users suggested a few interesting features, which I added to the list of ideas I had planned to implement myself. I believe these features are so interesting and needed that I have decided that there is no point stretching their development over a long period of time especially when the Dash ecosystem has a perfect solution for such a problem.

Proposal
This proposal is about covering costs of my switching from my current occupation to working exclusively on the DMT project for a period of 2 months, thereby accelerating the implementation of the following functionalities:

• Support for Ledger Nano S hardware wallets – this requires a significant amount of work considering the limited support from Ledger company.
• Changing the view in the main window of the app in order to see a full list of masternodes, which will allow the user to perform actions on multiple masternodes at once.
• Retrieving additional important information regarding masternodes and the machines they run on, e.g. free RAM and disk space, payment queue position etc and display them in the masternodes' list.
• Further development of the masternode funds-sending feature – the goal is to make it a full-fledged wallet that will ensure full control over transactions (UTXO) users want to send.
• Encryption of the app’s configuration file using a hardware wallet – the file contains sensitive information some users would prefer to hide in case their computer gets into the wrong hands.
• Adding a documentation chapter that describes the preparation of the development environment and the executable files compilation method as well as adding chapters related to new features.
• Having the entire project documentation proofread and corrected by a professional translation company in order to ensure that the project looks professional in that aspect as well (my English is far from perfect, so the documentation contains many errors).
• Doing the same to all messages displayed by the program.
• Adapting the program to work with the TESTNET.
• Eliminating many of the simplifications and trade-offs made in the app, which will improve its stability and user-friendliness.

The above list may change if more interesting/needed ideas appear in the meantime.

Future plans
Here are further plans (after the 2 months have passed):

• Analysis of possibilities and implementation of a feature allowing users to start a masternode using a paper wallet.
• Initializing the hardware wallet in a way that allows users to avoid using the web version (e.g. for Trezor). Some people would prefer to initialize their wallet in offline mode (without connecting to the Internet), which in the case of Trezor is not possible without an external app.
• SSH multi-terminal functionality in order to manage multiple servers at once.
• Porting the source code from interpreted Python to C++. Currently, the executable file is in fact a self-unpacking archive, which means it has to unpack every time it is run and therefore the program is rather slow to start. This, however, is a long-term plan.

Budget
The cost of my switching to working exclusively on the DMT:  8k$/month (29 Dash/month)
The cost of proofreading the current and translation of new documentation/app's messages:  900$ (3 Dash)
Proposal fee reimbursement:  5 Dash
Overall: 66 Dash (29 *2 + 3 + 5)

About me
I'm not a very social-media guy, but since I'm posting this proposal I have to reveal some information about myself.

I have been working as an IT expert in the telecommunications and energy industries for about 20 years, working with C++, Python, Oracle DB, JavaScript, HTML and other technologies. Besides cryptocurrencies, I am also interested in electronic circuit design, microcontrollers and IT security; however, I am not professionally active in these areas.

I've created an app (which I won't advertise here) that captures and reveals SQL communication (normally hidden) between Oracle databases and client applications. It is used by Oracle DB developers/administrators to track down various problems that occur in the application development process. This program uses legitimate mechanisms to hook up into Windows API calls (between an app and the OS), which in fact allows you to do everything. Similar mechanisms (but in bad intentions) are used by malware and it has shown me clearly how easy it is for a skilled developer to create a program that steals or manipulate user's sensitive data, especially on Windows OS. That's why I'm a big proponent of securing cryptocurrencies with hardware wallets, especially if using Windows and the funds are substantial as in the case of masternodes' collaterals.

During my professional career, I've also created several tools for managing parts of the IT infrastructure, I've designed a system for automated compilation and deployment of changes developed by programmers to several dozens of databases and Unix servers. Part of this experience I am going to put into DashMasternodeTool box.

My profiles:
Dash forum: https://www.dash.org/forum/members/bertrand256.10218/
Dashnation Slack: bertrand256
Github: https://github.com/Bertrand256
Keybase: https://keybase.io/bertrand256
E-mail: bertrand256[at]protonmail[dot]com

If you share the view that it is worth accelerating the development of the features outlined above for the stated costs, please vote YES. If you have other suggestions, I would be grateful for them. If the proposal is not accepted, the development will still continue at its current pace.