Dash Core Maintenance (keeping up with existing code)

Dash Evolution Development

Other Core Architecture (servers, etc)

Fiat-to-Dash gateways (lamassu, home grown exchanges, etc)

Other Products (debit cards, etc)

It’s that time again, here are the core team budget proposals for this month. The next superblock is scheduled for block 448632, which should occur approximately the afternoon (UTC) of Wednesday, April 6th.Our project is maturing quickly and we’re having to make many modifications to the way we operate. One of the planned changes concerns the way the budget system has been used and for what purposes. Up until this point, the core team has not sponsored any projects which paid core team members for the work they were doing (aside from a token thanks provided from the core team budget). The system has been used primarily for expense reimbursements for plane tickets, conference fees, legal expenses, and other expenses incurred.While the budget system has been an amazing resource, there are a couple of issues with the manner in which we are using it. First, when opportunities arise which involve a cost - such as purchasing a domain name or attending a conference - team members incurring the expenses are forced to take on risk that the network may fail to reimburse them or other proposals might garner more support. Second, token payments are certainly appropriate for volunteers, but as the need for full-time developers expands we need to provide a living wage if we expect to make rapid progress.The next stage of our growth will be defined by rapid, paid development, executing across many fronts… simultaneously. This is going to move very quickly, so keep good track of your hat, lest it fly off your head when we begin.For the time being until the release of v12.1, we would discourage submitting additional multi-month commitments within the budget system. We first had problems a couple months ago and now we are again facing the same situation this month. We have a multi-month proposal which has gotten kicked out of the system and won’t be funded.Once v12.1 is out, contracts will be supported which are prioritized in the payment queue, then we won’t have this issue anymore.Dash Foundation PrioritiesBeginning this month, the Dash Foundation will begin issuing a list of funding priorities for the ecosystem. The core team invested significant effort developing a roadmap that will provide the highest probability of success over the next few years, but we’re going to have to be increasingly careful about how we spend money. In our judgment, for the time being it is best to focus on development and infrastructure, not advertising. Immediately, we intend to redirect all advertising funding from our budgeting system into infrastructure development.We are proud of the significant progress we have already made against our 2016 Strategy, and the market is clearly recognizing our achievements and promise. Masternode operators are encouraged to vote with our current development priorities, however, they are obviously free to vote as they wish. We certainly hope that we have earned your trust.Work has been accelerating on 12.1 and we’re presently finishing up an implementation of contracts and settings. Contracts are 3 to 12 month immutable proposals, which are prioritized in payouts. Settings are a new type of governance object, which are voted on by the network and enabled. They act like decentralized network variables that we can use to nimbly alter network attributes such as fee-per-kb for transactions.Due to this, the budget system will be “reset” when 12.1 is deployed and we will add each budget proposal back manually. This will be a great time to reposition ourselves for the next leg in our journey.Core Team Budget - 1,176 DASH (ongoing)Public Awareness Campaign - 2,156 DASH (ongoing)Dash.org domain acquisition - 2,100 DASH (missing 1 payment - see below)Liquidity Providers - 140 DASH (payment #5 of 12)Dash-Lamassu ATM Integration - 610 DASH (payment #4 of 12)Electrum Server Maintenance ContractThe light client software electrum allows users to access the network without having to download the entire blockchain, but this requires hosting servers that provide the service. We don’t have a very robust setup for this currently, and the infrastructure needs a good deal of work to improve redundancy. We’ve made a deal with Rob Nelson from mazaclub to help. For 45.80D per month, he will upkeep three redundant installations with the freshest software and keep our network humming.Evo SpecificationsTo aid in the speedy development of our platform, we’ve split the development team into two parts. I will continue to lead the core team. The second team, focusing on delivering Evolution, is being led by Andy Freer, a talented engineer from the UK who is working full-time on the project. In exchange for more of Andy’s time and dropping side projects, we’ve worked out a deal where the network will pay Andy 150D/mo. This is obviously a bargain rate for top-tier talent, and we owe Andy a great deal of gratitude for committing himself fully to the project.This deal expires in 3 months and is a temporary solution to allow Evolution development to continue. Once we have proper contracts capabilities with 12.1, we will move Andy and any other network contracts to the new budget system.The purchase of the Dash.org domain name was a previously approved project from late last year. It consisted of 2,100 Dash per month for four months. Unfortunately, there was an issue with the December budget which prevented all budgets from finalizing. As a consequence, the 2,100 Dash that should have been distributed at the beginning of December never occurred. This proposal will correct for the missed payment. Unfortunately, there isn’t a ton of space in this month’s budget, so we are proposing spreading the remaining amount over the next three months.Dashtalk.org has been a valuable resource for the Dash community and contains a great deal of our community's collective history, work, creativity, and ideas. However, Dashtalk was actually started by a community member at their own expense. However, because the core team didn't control this asset, whenever outages, expired certificates, or other issues have occurred, we have been dependent on the owner to fix the issues. If you use the forums as a resource, I'm sure you've noticed the many outages it has experienced lately. As the database continues to grow, the value of Dashtalk to the community - and our dependence on it - only increases, so it was critical for us to control it.So, we are pleased to share that the core team has negotiated the purchase of Dashtalk and the forum’s historical database and is working to transition / import the entire site to Dash control, while upgrading the versions of software it is running on. This is great news for the community that we were able to preserve the site in its entirety for a reasonable cost.Complete Budget (as of current voting rank):Note: USD conversion in the table assumes $6.96 as of March 30th, 2016 for new budgets and core team budgets with durations over 12 months. Existing fixed-duration budgets use the exchange rate at the time of creation / approval. Exchange rate risk is carried only by the proposer of these budget proposals and not by the network.