Dash Research Asia Funding

Project summary



Legal and organizational setup for Dash Research Asia in Bangkok, Thailand (approvals acquired!).

Research on probabilistic filters completed successfully. If integrated, we believe it would save the network cpu power worth multiple millions of dollars per year (done).

Publishing results in Journal of Future Generations Computer Systems (first research paper currently in peer review). Abstract can be found here.﻿

Combination of probabilistic filters for multipeer light clients (needs review).

Established and currently running one of 2 Devnets (used by Dash Mobile Team and DashPay Team).

Translated all Dash Core content into Thai, and continue providing such a service.

Currently creating the BIP39 passphrase dictionary words for Thai, very essential for people who don’t understand roman characters. (soon to be completed).

Successfully established a partnership with the Dash Embassy Thailand to synergize our efforts, with DRA providing technical expertise and development for SE Asia companies who will be wanting to integrate Dash or build Dapps in evolution (done).

Helped organize a meetup for Dash Core in Bangkok, with some interns presenting their work to the Dash Core Tech Leads (done).

Crypto-friendly government approach and open door policy.

Affordable office space, labor costs and lodging.

Incentive for foreign interns due to an energized and desirable working location.

Get a BOI (Board of Investment Thailand) license, this is only granted after many talks and interviews to projects that are deemed to bring value to Thailand - done

Setup full legal structure that enables full operational capability in Thailand - done

Being able to hire locals AND foreigners with legal working visas - done

Receiving the BOI approval allows Dash Research Asia to operate without corporate tax for 8 years - done

Will try to establish a self-sustaining Dapp creation entity, and create some of the first Dapps for it. Read about this later on.

Pays salaries to continue the program going: looking for students for 2019, hire a research coordinator, translation work, office rent, and day to day expenses.

Pays cloud costs for our devnet.

I will not be taking a duff (any compensation) from this proposal

Dash Research Asia - our success story



What’s next - Goals for 2019





Costs



This proposal follows up to our initial efforts with Dash Research Asia.The previous proposal had 5 goals that were successfully carried out:On top of that we also:We chose Bangkok, Thailand as our headquarters for this project for several reasons.In order to achieve these goals we had to establish a corporation that enabled us to:This current proposal:And as beforeThe first proposal has been a big success, especially considering the budget depreciation. We were able to establish the legal and business setup needed to grow a high quality research section for Dash. Since we now have that legal entity approved in Thailand we can hire foreigners. With this setup we were able to target and solve important research on the topics mentioned above, which we believe are not only needed for further development of Dash as a whole but also are able to save the network a substantial amount of funds in the future, if implemented.The main advancement that was made during the summer were advancements on probabilistic filters. We have shown that we can save a drastic amount of cpu power vs the inefficient bloom filters that are currently in use. One paper was written and it is currently being reviewed by a journal. After peer review we expect to have it published. This work will make masternodes more efficient and could potentially solve many scaling issues we might face. It’s hard to know exactly how much money this will save the masternode network without first knowing the usage that we will get in evolution, but I would say it could easily be between 1 Million and 5 Million dollars per year. The paper can not be made public until it is published, however an abstract can be found here ﻿. If you are a recognized community member I can share the full paper if you contact me on discord, but please only contact me if you are actually going to read it, as it may take me time to vet some people.We have also been able to establish a first partnership with Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, which is planning to cooperate on our research when we have a research coordinator (planned to hire when this proposal passes). This year we did not have the capacity to start a research project with the school, however that is planned for 2019.With a professional HR approach we were able to attract high quality interns from some of the best universities from around the world (notably in France and Thailand). We had a total of three highly qualified interns for a period of three month each. This internship program was a success. We received well over 100 applicants and already have applicants for 2019, just from word of mouth.Due to the sharp downtrend of Dash price from February, we were unfortunately not able to hire as many interns as we originally planned (3 instead of 6). We, therefore, were not able to complete as many research tasks as originally estimated. Moreover, acquiring the BOI license from the Thai government took much longer than expected and involved various interviews with our team members and me giving a presentation in front a government committee to prove we were bringing cutting-edge tech into the country. That presentation went very well and we received our BOI status.With the BOI approval out of the way, and the ability to officially hire (and have visas) our team will be focused on 2 main goals for 2019.This is a major goal for 2019, we aim to help the community and then partners create Dapps on evolution. Once this is setup, we hope to offset all of our administrative costs by selling this service to entities wanting to create Dapps. This is a tall order to achieve, and we hope to achieve it at least by the fall of 2019 at which point, we aim to reduce by about 50% our requests to the network.While I truly believe the value created by the internship program this year was worth the price tag as well as the effort put in, I also saw a lot of things that need to be improved in 2019. For 2018, while we received about 150 applications, a great deal of these were not from top universities, and in the end we only took 3 students, of which only 2 worked on research, and one coded. Through word of mouth and stronger ties to universities we will have more applicants from better universities already for 2019, which should translate to more achievements and a better ROI. We will also hire a dedicated research coordinator whose main goal will be to coordinate the research we do with Dash Core, Arizona State University and Dash Labs. This task fell onto my lap this year, however the obligations I had in Dash Core led to bandwidth issues for myself and essentially doing two jobs. We already have a few applicants for this position that I believe will be able to carry out the role in a much better capacity than me when overworked.Starting in January, and with the potential hires we want to make, we estimate our burn rate to be around 20k USD/month which will cover expenses for the office and salaries for 6 people. There will be an increase during the internship summer months to around 40k/month. Our goal with the self-sustaining Dapp entity, would be to eventually only request funding in the summer, and have Dash Research Asia be self sufficient on revenue from Dapp creation.We made this proposal for 146 Dash per month to give us a 10% margin in case of depreciation and unforeseen circumstances.I am here to answer any questions that anyone might have, either here or on discord.