Proposal “internshipsDashThailand“ (Completed)Back
| Title: | Dash Internship Program and SE Asia Representative Office |
| Owner: | DashThailand |
| One-time payment: | 460 DASH (10587 USD) |
| Completed payments: | 1 totaling in 460 DASH (0 month remaining) |
| Payment start/end: | 2018-01-17 / 2018-02-16 (added on 2018-01-17) |
| Final voting deadline: | in na |
| Votes: | 0 Yes / 0 No / 0 Abstain |
Proposal description
Here is the link to the pre-proposal discussion : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-internships-representation-office-thailand.21813/
Summary : There are 2 parts to this proposal : an internship program for graduate students and a dash representation office for Thailand. The proposal has been well thought out and is being run in phases. At the height of this proposal, 19 people will be hired or interned from it with 8 of those being in computer science. At this time we are asking for the first 5 months to ramp up the project.
[UPDATE] Quantum Explorer has made a video for us explaining this project, here it is :
Internship Program
Overview
Due to the huge burden of work fulfilled by each Core team member, secondary tasks such as testnet tools, visualization helpers, stability testers, network attack tools, and focused blockchain research are set aside.
The idea is to hire approximately 8 interns on a 6 months internship program from around the world based on their qualifications to work on these tasks and to offer a support role to core team developers. Academic achievement and blockchain enthusiasm will be the main criteria for selection of individuals.
We would offer them a competitive intern package including a work visa and a flexible schedule, with travel expenses paid and compensation based on origin country/level of education. In exchange we would ask them to undertake projects of a more academic nature than we are used to. Things that would take a core team member maybe 6 months to come up with a benign answer. For example, at what message load would masternodes start failing, most likely it’s very high and we just don’t need to worry about it, but it’s a great project for interns. Even more, hopefully this will start a partnership between universities and Dash core as well. While we have some academics that have started being interested in Dash, we could do better.
Why Thailand?
Well foremost, because it’s doable. There are few countries in the world where immigration laws would allow this to be easy for most countries of the world. Business and living costs are pretty affordable, and it's also a dream place for interns to have their internship.
Thailand also has an strategic location and serves as a gateway into South East Asia, which is home to the largest growing economic market in the modern world.
Benefits
The best and most reliable interns could apply for a position in Dash Core at the end of their internship. They would already be formed and would enter our team much better prepared than current hires who need time to be onboarded.
Intern Compensation
Interns will be compensated based on their level of studies and value they bring to Dash. Minimum compensation will be set at 10$/hour and will increase per year of university studies past 3. So someone who has completed 4 years of university will get 12$ per hour. A doctoral candidate who is in year 8 would get 18$ per hour.
We can estimate an average cost of 2500$/intern/month.
Project Manager and Director roles
Arnaud Beaudat will undertake the project manager role in this endeavor. His tasks will include contacting universities and promotion of this program, identifying work items suited for the interns, managing time schedules, and dealing with local regulations.
Angela Zhang is also coming into the project as Director. Coming from one of the most prestigious Chinese Universities and having run HR divisions in medium and large size Chinese corporations, she already has a strong relationship with top Chinese universities which will be a great benefit to this project. Her tasks will include contacting universities and doing the promotion of this program, but she will also in charge of office's daily operation also supervise the marketing team. On top of this she will work with our legal representation to help cryptocurrency (and Dash in particular) in Thailand.
Legal representation
We have been in contact with Harvey Law Group. They were the only law firm in Thailand that we found that knew about cryptocurrency and we found that they were best suited for our needs.
Representative office
In order to open the internship program, we need a legal structure that can accomodate us. Harvey law group explained to us that Thai immigration would frown upon and possibly deny so many foreign students if we didn’t hire a few Thai nationals, and while we will consider thai nationals as normal interns the reality is that Thailand is way behind in the blockchain space and it would be doubtful to find quality computer science interns.
To remedy this problem we propose also creating a Thailand Office with the purpose of promoting Dash first in Thailand and then expanding to surrounding countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. In Malaysia for example a proposal passed to promote DASH, and now in the past 90 days Malaysia has by far the most downloads on Mobile ; 13 times the downloads of thailand and twice that of australia.
This really is a double win for us, at would solve 2 problems with 1 solution.
Roles in representative office:
Trademarking Dash in Thailand
From Harvey Law Group : “Thailand is not party to any international conventions or treaties providing reciprocal enforcement with regard to trademarks. Only by registering locally can a trademark owner be assured of his rights over the trademark within the Kingdom of Thailand.”
Costs here are about 2000$ per trademark, let’s start by trademarking Dash in both english and Thai, and then maybe trademark Instant Send and Digital Cash later.
Details of project in Phases
The project will now go in 3 phases for the next 11 months :
Phase 1 (2 Months):
- Start of Creation of Legal Entity in Thailand.
- Angela and Arnaud will contact universities and try to get top quality applicants.
Phase 2 (3 Months):
- Creation of Legal Entity in Thailand.
- Trademarking Dash in the Kingdom of Thailand.
- 4 Interns will start 3-6 month internships.
Phase 1 & 2 Budget:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UFV10eUHAiRtQVN-1TOKT8dsyjhQ1KnsKgUL_oNDVbk/edit?usp=sharing
Total Cost for Phase 1 & 2 : $286,595
Deliverables:
- Dash trademarked in Thailand.
- Creation of Legal Entity with BOI structure to allow future endeavors.
- Relationships created with universities.
- Explanation of internship projects, both those that started, and those for phase 2.
- Initial work provided by interns.
- Increase of testnet size by 20 Masternodes for 1 year. (We are requesting the prefunding to increase this to 100, but will only be able to deliver this once the legal entity is set up.)
Phase 3 (6 Months)
- Those 4 interns will be allowed into Thailand (if they aren't already in Thailand) and will be joined by 4 more.
- Writing of research papers.
- Creation of Dash Thailand Marketing Department as detailed above.
- Work on getting businesses to accept Dash and promoting Dash in thailand.
Phase 3 Budget:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XYMzEc1SDtFcZY-T7wuZQ3i_hWxx8R83wmg4Ksn7qhI/edit?usp=sharing
Deliverables:
- Finished work provided by interns.
- 6-8 reviewed blockchain research papers.
- Increase in Dash usage in Thailand verifiable by mobile download data.
- Business partnerships.
- Strong presence in Thailand.
- Increase of testnet size by 80 more Masternodes for 1 year.
Total Cost for Phase 3 : $298,943
Requested funding is as follows for the February 1st budget cycle:
Because of Thai law, the office will need to acquire sufficient initial funding to prove to the Thai government that we have funds. This means that at its start a certain amount will have to be initially deposited into the Thai bank account from overseas before we can start hiring people. Even though phase 1-2 costs far less than phase 3, we put some of the required capital of phase 3 into phase 2 for this purpose
This proposal is being made at a price of 630$/Dash and will be made for phase 1-2 only which will last 5 months. At that point we will make another proposal for phase 3. We decomposed this proposal in such a way that all funds from phase 1-2 (if the Dash price goes up) will automatically just be used for phase 3. No extra money will go in the pockets of either Angela or Arnaud, with Quantum Explorer having an eye on all finances. Because of volatility and possible unforeseen future events we have included a 10% margin in our calculations.
Every month we will submit a monthly expenditures report to the community.
Thank you for reading this proposal. We appreciate your support if you liked it.
Summary : There are 2 parts to this proposal : an internship program for graduate students and a dash representation office for Thailand. The proposal has been well thought out and is being run in phases. At the height of this proposal, 19 people will be hired or interned from it with 8 of those being in computer science. At this time we are asking for the first 5 months to ramp up the project.
[UPDATE] Quantum Explorer has made a video for us explaining this project, here it is :
Internship Program
Overview
Due to the huge burden of work fulfilled by each Core team member, secondary tasks such as testnet tools, visualization helpers, stability testers, network attack tools, and focused blockchain research are set aside.
The idea is to hire approximately 8 interns on a 6 months internship program from around the world based on their qualifications to work on these tasks and to offer a support role to core team developers. Academic achievement and blockchain enthusiasm will be the main criteria for selection of individuals.
We would offer them a competitive intern package including a work visa and a flexible schedule, with travel expenses paid and compensation based on origin country/level of education. In exchange we would ask them to undertake projects of a more academic nature than we are used to. Things that would take a core team member maybe 6 months to come up with a benign answer. For example, at what message load would masternodes start failing, most likely it’s very high and we just don’t need to worry about it, but it’s a great project for interns. Even more, hopefully this will start a partnership between universities and Dash core as well. While we have some academics that have started being interested in Dash, we could do better.
Why Thailand?
Well foremost, because it’s doable. There are few countries in the world where immigration laws would allow this to be easy for most countries of the world. Business and living costs are pretty affordable, and it's also a dream place for interns to have their internship.
Thailand also has an strategic location and serves as a gateway into South East Asia, which is home to the largest growing economic market in the modern world.
Benefits
The best and most reliable interns could apply for a position in Dash Core at the end of their internship. They would already be formed and would enter our team much better prepared than current hires who need time to be onboarded.
Intern Compensation
Interns will be compensated based on their level of studies and value they bring to Dash. Minimum compensation will be set at 10$/hour and will increase per year of university studies past 3. So someone who has completed 4 years of university will get 12$ per hour. A doctoral candidate who is in year 8 would get 18$ per hour.
We can estimate an average cost of 2500$/intern/month.
Project Manager and Director roles
Arnaud Beaudat will undertake the project manager role in this endeavor. His tasks will include contacting universities and promotion of this program, identifying work items suited for the interns, managing time schedules, and dealing with local regulations.
Angela Zhang is also coming into the project as Director. Coming from one of the most prestigious Chinese Universities and having run HR divisions in medium and large size Chinese corporations, she already has a strong relationship with top Chinese universities which will be a great benefit to this project. Her tasks will include contacting universities and doing the promotion of this program, but she will also in charge of office's daily operation also supervise the marketing team. On top of this she will work with our legal representation to help cryptocurrency (and Dash in particular) in Thailand.
Legal representation
We have been in contact with Harvey Law Group. They were the only law firm in Thailand that we found that knew about cryptocurrency and we found that they were best suited for our needs.
Representative office
In order to open the internship program, we need a legal structure that can accomodate us. Harvey law group explained to us that Thai immigration would frown upon and possibly deny so many foreign students if we didn’t hire a few Thai nationals, and while we will consider thai nationals as normal interns the reality is that Thailand is way behind in the blockchain space and it would be doubtful to find quality computer science interns.
To remedy this problem we propose also creating a Thailand Office with the purpose of promoting Dash first in Thailand and then expanding to surrounding countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. In Malaysia for example a proposal passed to promote DASH, and now in the past 90 days Malaysia has by far the most downloads on Mobile ; 13 times the downloads of thailand and twice that of australia.
This really is a double win for us, at would solve 2 problems with 1 solution.
Roles in representative office:
- Accountant/Assistant
- Senior Marketing Manager
- 2x Junior Marketing Researcher
- Event Planner / Organizer
- Event Assistant
- UI/UX Designer
- Website Developper
Trademarking Dash in Thailand
From Harvey Law Group : “Thailand is not party to any international conventions or treaties providing reciprocal enforcement with regard to trademarks. Only by registering locally can a trademark owner be assured of his rights over the trademark within the Kingdom of Thailand.”
Costs here are about 2000$ per trademark, let’s start by trademarking Dash in both english and Thai, and then maybe trademark Instant Send and Digital Cash later.
Details of project in Phases
The project will now go in 3 phases for the next 11 months :
Phase 1 (2 Months):
- Start of Creation of Legal Entity in Thailand.
- Angela and Arnaud will contact universities and try to get top quality applicants.
Phase 2 (3 Months):
- Creation of Legal Entity in Thailand.
- Trademarking Dash in the Kingdom of Thailand.
- 4 Interns will start 3-6 month internships.
Phase 1 & 2 Budget:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UFV10eUHAiRtQVN-1TOKT8dsyjhQ1KnsKgUL_oNDVbk/edit?usp=sharing
Total Cost for Phase 1 & 2 : $286,595
Deliverables:
- Dash trademarked in Thailand.
- Creation of Legal Entity with BOI structure to allow future endeavors.
- Relationships created with universities.
- Explanation of internship projects, both those that started, and those for phase 2.
- Initial work provided by interns.
- Increase of testnet size by 20 Masternodes for 1 year. (We are requesting the prefunding to increase this to 100, but will only be able to deliver this once the legal entity is set up.)
Phase 3 (6 Months)
- Those 4 interns will be allowed into Thailand (if they aren't already in Thailand) and will be joined by 4 more.
- Writing of research papers.
- Creation of Dash Thailand Marketing Department as detailed above.
- Work on getting businesses to accept Dash and promoting Dash in thailand.
Phase 3 Budget:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XYMzEc1SDtFcZY-T7wuZQ3i_hWxx8R83wmg4Ksn7qhI/edit?usp=sharing
Deliverables:
- Finished work provided by interns.
- 6-8 reviewed blockchain research papers.
- Increase in Dash usage in Thailand verifiable by mobile download data.
- Business partnerships.
- Strong presence in Thailand.
- Increase of testnet size by 80 more Masternodes for 1 year.
Total Cost for Phase 3 : $298,943
Requested funding is as follows for the February 1st budget cycle:
- 455 Dash for Phase 1-2 ($286,595 @ 630$ per Dash)
- 5 Dash for the proposal cost.
Because of Thai law, the office will need to acquire sufficient initial funding to prove to the Thai government that we have funds. This means that at its start a certain amount will have to be initially deposited into the Thai bank account from overseas before we can start hiring people. Even though phase 1-2 costs far less than phase 3, we put some of the required capital of phase 3 into phase 2 for this purpose
This proposal is being made at a price of 630$/Dash and will be made for phase 1-2 only which will last 5 months. At that point we will make another proposal for phase 3. We decomposed this proposal in such a way that all funds from phase 1-2 (if the Dash price goes up) will automatically just be used for phase 3. No extra money will go in the pockets of either Angela or Arnaud, with Quantum Explorer having an eye on all finances. Because of volatility and possible unforeseen future events we have included a 10% margin in our calculations.
Every month we will submit a monthly expenditures report to the community.
Thank you for reading this proposal. We appreciate your support if you liked it.
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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
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Yes given. But sceptical. Please give regular updates on what is being delivered.
I am not a fan of the Thailand angle I must admit but I think the initiative is too important to be voted down. I sincerely hope this doesnt get trapped in legal quagmire and I wish you all the best..
Suuuuuuure, bud ;)
Do MNOs get to visit?
My vote NO
As for Thailand I understand that what seems distant or foreign might seem impossible to you. I know my Thailand based team will prove you wrong. I can't be sure at this point that everything will work out 100% as we want, there are no guarantees when working with any government, but I can tell you the funds won't vanish and will be used for the goals of this project with no money going into my pockets. I have a good law firm hired, a good team on the ground, and things have been going extremely well so far. I'm repeating myself here but I would put the chances of success at around 90%. In the case of those other 10%, we will go to plan B and find a way to make this work for students this year. And in the worst case scenario where everything has failed the Dash/Fiat will be returned to the community, either by being sent to core or any solution the community decides.
All I ask of you is that when this succeeds you publicly admit you were wrong.
solarguy
https://twitter.com/dkoedijk (more to follow soon)
I hope the proposal gets a pass. The benefits to Dash, the community and the network will be huge. Also, for an intern to be able to work in Thailand is an amazing experience. Hard not to fall in love with the friendly people, the food, the culture, the respect for each other and even the climate.
If there is any way I can contribute something, don't hesitate to ask.
I have to agree with Beru on this. Marketing can only present and represent what our developers create. This proposal benefits development not only currently, but lays the path to future dev for dash.
Very well structured execution points and involvement from a well known Dash core member.
Beru wrote:
I dont understand MNOs sometimes. Complaining about too much marketing, not enough development...
Voting no to this actually hurts our future development potential..
I would like to make something extremely clear, these aren't interns in the sense of a an intern that brings you coffee or plans your meetings. These are graduate students, talented ones, looking for an opportunity to help build the future. Let's have them work for us instead of them going to work for NASA.
Better communication and presentation would have made this a lot simpler to support..
1. I think it fair to say that the majority (on Core, in the Masternode community, the larger Dash community, basically all the players ) believe that the Core team has their hands full at the moment working on Evolution. Because of the "all hands on deck/full speed ahead" condition, there are some "grunt work" things that would be great to make progress on, but there just are not enough (smart) warm bodies.
Lot's of folks have expressed the view, "Just hire more people, we're swimming in money. Go faster! Go faster!!!!"
2. There is now something of a shortage in the pool of developers/programmers that know about blockchain tech. This problem alone could be a huge factor in determining which projects succeed and advance, and which ones die on the vine. This shortage is about to become acutely worse in the next 18 months because of the ICO problem. The crypto ecosystem just started 100 new projects that will require actual developers to put their white paper into production.
3. In light of this impending talent shortage and expanded work load, Ryan put forward a prop. to go find more talent with crypto experience. That prop. is passing with flying colors, which is cool. It should. The Dash Internship proposal for Thailand is another method of attracting, hiring and training young talent. This would accomplish at least four things. Some of the grunt work that Core doesn't have time for right now could be accomplished. Wooo hooo. Also, we end with more talent, and they "grow up" and gain skills specifically for working on the Dash project. More wooo hoooo. The Dash community makes it even more apparent to the world that if you have skills and ambition, Dash might like to hire you (and we have actual money to pay you with.) And finally, Thailand is an enormous emerging market for crypto, and this effort gives us a foothold for future expansion and promotion in Thailand.
4. There were some questions/concerns about whether or not this prop. really originated with core members. After having chatted with Quantumexplorer (Core member) I am convinced this is exactly where this came from.
5. It looks a bit on the expensive side, and certainly, it is not a trivial amount of money. But, a substantial percent of the asking price is to get the initial groundwork done. This is like setting up a mini research center. There's just no cheap way to do that. But once accomplished, funding costs of the program per month should drop substantially.
For the above reasons, I am voting yes. But in the event that it does not pass, I would strongly recommend another prop., perhaps scaled back a little to get the ball rolling in Thailand and demonstrate some meaningful progress on the grunt work, and then scale it up from there as needed.
Or hey, just approve the thing and let's get on with winning.
Carry on, have fun, win! solarguy
https://www.coindesk.com/belarus-government-cuts-taxes-crypto-businesses/
Again, love the idea, just don't like Thailand, I think you're trying to swim upstream here and we have better options.
The point is that I have a team ready to start now that will make this ready for this summer internships and that I have faith in.
While Belarus might look good on paper, for regulations and crypto, I'm pretty sure telling interns to go to Belarus might be a hard sell, though I might be biased here. Also do we have anyone in Belarus the community could trust with doing this (obviously people don't even trust me, and I'm one of the first devs on the project)?
In my mind do both, set this up in as many countries as we can if we can find verifiable, honest community members who actually know what they are doing to manage the centers, the more we invest in students and the future the better off we will be.
To those who want a gist of why this is important :
*It creates relationships with universities.
*It gives students and recent graduates opportunities in the blockchain space.
*It gives Core a talent pool to hire from.
*It will double the size of Testnet for the students.
*It will create tools that Core could later use.
*It will (hopefully) publish research papers giving more credibility to our mission in the eyes of Academia.
*It will allow us to have a presence in a country where we have no presence and possibly help educate the interested Thai people about the power and benefits of the blockchain and the dash blockchain tech in particular. Thailand has no official position on Cryptocurrency yet, do we want them to get burned by ICOs?
Those are the reasons I started this proposal. I'm sorry if I did a really bad job of communicating this before.
Not convinced at this time.
The GDP of Thailand is 0.6% of the world GDP when we exclude countries that have banned crypto, 0.6% of our current budget is 33000$, which is line with the type of investment we should make into the country and what is being requested for the Thai part of this proposal.
These 19 people won't just be doing nothing either. 10 will be contributing to Dash in a dev/research capacity. And 9 will go to promoting Dash in Thailand. At Wonderfruit Music Festival near Pattaya one stage was supported by Ethereum this year with a lot of people talking about Ethereum there. It matters. We need more investment into countries that have no yet taken a negative stance on crypto.
We really do hope we can find a way to convince you that the ROI here is very high.
Six months later, there will be another request for big funds with the job 'nearly done' and a host of unforseen problems.
Forced hiring of locals to please immigration officials isnt something I support either.
Internships are good but without this whole Thailand-Immigration angle. Voting no..
About forced hiring of locals, well they will not just twiddle their thumbs, we have a plan to heavily promote Dash in Thailand with events and get businesses on board. Quantum has told us that Thailand is basically absent from the Dash usage map with ICOs being a dominant force on the ground instead. Our plan is to use that Thai work force to change this.
The Thai immigration angle has you voting no on this, while you support the Internship, Research and Academia aspect. We would love for our community to find a better solution than the one outlined here, do you have any ideas of how we could proceed? Quantum has said that from his discussions internal to core, legally speaking getting interns from around the world just wasn't possible, as it would be too much of a legal quagmire.
Here we propose a legal structure to accomplish these goals, with a small legal fee of around 6%, but are open to other suggestions from the community.