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Recently the Dash Core Group (DCG) held its quarterly recap conference call, which is included above. Here are my key takeaways from the call.

1: Dash Investment Fund Created

As recently announced, DCG has finalized the creation of the Dash Investment Fund based in the Cayman Islands, which will allow the Dash network to own an investment stake in companies, allowing funded projects/companies to give equity to the network in exchange for startup funds. The proceeds from these investments can be used to re-invest, or to buy Dash on the market and then destroy it similar to a stock buyback. Other ways of paying out will not work due to the anonymous nature of the masternode network.

2: Initial Evolution Design Documentation Released, New Evolution Questions Cleared Up

The original Dash Evolution initial design document has been released. All main Evolution repositories are open-source now, while some client ones aren’t yet. Public demos for Evolution devnets are coming soon.

Regarding historical developmental delays, the original Evolution timeline was extremely unrealistic, giving the community some anxiety about “Neverlution” and a mythical release. Ryan is now confident on its release, and after the upcoming 0.14 is on mainnet, they can commit to a hard testnet date for version 1.0. Open-sourcing Evolution repositories has made progress measurable, so the world can see how much real progress has been made.

Tokens on the Evolution platform are quite feasible, but not a developmental focus right now. Trust protector votes can indeed be stored on Dash Drive if desired. Finally, regarding Dash Drive potentially storing data with legal implications, masternodes aren’t liable for filtering every single piece of content or transaction due to feasibility (mens rea). Mostly, filtering will happen at the application layer, not the protocol layer. Filtering functionality will be considered in the future, but not in short order when the platform is new. Regarding regulation issues, the SEC Hinman test poses no issues to Dash, and legal arguments for why it does not apply to Dash have already been formulated.

3: DCG to Submit a Multi-Month Proposal for 50% of the Treasury, Prioritize ChainLocks

DCG is submitting a multi-month treasury proposal equaling 50% of the whole treasury, rather than the customary month-to-month proposal strategy. This is to build back some reserves that have been lost during Q4 2018 and Q1 2019.

DCG is prioritizing security and immutability in light of recent events, and is getting ChainLocks out of the door ASAP. With ChainLocks we can actually calculate how much an attack would cost, so that we can see just how secure Dash is compared to other coins, i.e. Bitcoin. Developers are working in parallel on version 0.14 and 1.0, so that delays in testnet for the former will not affect the release date of the latter.

Regarding recent PrivateSend concerns, issues with very basic, low-round, single-transaction based mixing are real, but still good enough for basic obfuscation purposes. For greater privacy, mix the highest amount of rounds possible, receive balance in multiple transactions, use fewer than 10 inputs when sending.

Uphold will be integrated into the iOS Dash wallet in the next quarter. The redesigned Dash.org website will continue to evolve over the next few months

4: Alt36 Launching June 1st With Extended Dash Exclusivity, Cryptobuyer Sees Heavy Dash Use, Fiat Onramps for Mexico

The Alt36 pre-pilot for point-of-sale purchases of cannabis with Dash is coming June 1st, with the new influx of capital from the $10 million funding round allowing them to apply for new money transmitter licenses in the US midwest. Regarding the Dash exclusivity countdown, it was officially triggered with commercial availability starting in May 2018, however Alt36 has voluntarily decided to start it in January of 2019, extending exclusivity through the end of 2022.

Cryptobuyer is used at 30 Traki stores currently, with overwhelming Dash payments. Dash is used more than Bitcoin and Litecoin combined, and anecdotal evidence says that Traki employees are recommending users to use Dash for purchases due to a better experience. Venezuela and the cannabis industry stand as the biggest traction points for Dash so far.

DCG is aggressively targeted exchanges for InstantSend integration in order to improve the value proposition for Dash for arbitrage and trading. DCG is also working on establishing fiat ramps in Mexico, a key barrier to this remittance corridor.

The quarterly call presentation slides, including some additional ones not used in the call, are included below