Hello Everyone,



I’m really happy to announce that the launch of v12 was a great success. As a result, we now have the capability of decentralized budgeting of expenses of the project! We’ve been planning a comprehensive strategy for utilizing these budget capabilities and have identified what we feel is the best plan possible for getting Dash to the next level.



As previously announced when launching v12, the next step is testing of the new system. During this testing phase only core team members will be able to submit proposals. Once the system is polished and tested enough to be opened to the public, we will do so. Below you can find the first three projects that we would like to discuss and introduce into the system for their approval by the masternodes. When we have the proposal website ready - probably near the release of v12.1 - we will conduct budget discussions there. In the meantime, as a temporary measure, we can simply debate these proposals in this thread.



Even more exciting is showing off what the budget system is capable of.



Off Exchange Trading - OTC



For some budget expenses, it will be required that we exchange Dash for fiat, because of pre-existing requirements for how we pay certain expenses. To protect the markets from excessive volatility we would like to create an OTC market for Dash. If we were to use an exchange like cryptsy to sell the Dash, we would create excessive volatility, from both of the buyers and sellers. To avoid this, we would like to start managing a list of buyers then arrange direct trades. This helps us by lowering the downward pressure on the coin and it will help buyers that would like large amounts of Dash without having to buy it from the ask side of the order book where there is often little available to purchase.



In many cases, core team members will front the USD to pay for specific services that Dash requires. We will refer to these transactions as “trusted buyers”, in this case no escrow is needed and they can pay for whatever is needed up front, then be paid back from the next budget.



In other cases we will be dealing with untrusted buyers. To be completely transparent and fair, we will publish the date and time of when we do trades and the price at which they were done. All trades will be done within 2% of the current market price (averaged between all exchanges) utilizing a fiat to crypto service called CryptoCapital that we have partnered with.



Core Team



While v12 enabled budgeting and removed the reference node, our donation system was rendered inoperable by the latest version. The donation feature was supporting many of our developers, so we would like to replace that income stream with a more permanent solution that does not rely on altruism.



Working on Dash should come with some incentive, like receiving some money from the blockchain every month. However, we don’t want to micromanage an open source project and we feel we have a highly trustworthy team. The way we plan on using the core team budget is to simply split it between all team members.



To be a paid team member, one simply needs to agree to our pledge. The pledge is “To work on Dash each and every day to expand and improve the ecosystem to the best of my ability”. Whatever someone feels they can contribute to the project is fine, as long as they meet that minimum amount of work. This includes anyone, with any skillset (software, q&a, automation, admin, marketing, legal, etc). Beyond this obligation, it’s up to the person how much they work on Dash and how much they are able to earn from the project.



We will be 100% transparent about who on our team is paid and how much they are paid. As defined, a core team member is someone that has made the above pledge to work on Dash everyday. That person then has the freedom to work on Dash as much as they wish to expand their earning potential. We believe in transparency when it comes to the administration of a decentralized product such as Dash, so we will make this data available on one of the websites for the community.



I’d like to stress that this compensation is by no means meant to provide a “full-time salary” for contributors. Compensation will be modest. At current market prices, the compensation would fall in the category of “token appreciation”.



It should also be known that our team structure is highly organized. We have professional project managers onboard which are helping monitor and optimize our process. These project managers have pledged to act as objective observers, hold each team member accountable for what they say they will do, and will recommend if some team members are underperforming or for other reasons need to be removed from a paid spot on the team.



Some of us will work really hard on Dash (often for 10+ hours a day), because we believe in it and we’re willing to put in the time to make Dash a critical part of the future economy. We believe it’s worth the time to do this.



Others have full time jobs, but they like to contribute during mornings, nights, and weekends. This is all great, the more people we can get putting effort into the project the better off we’ll be in the long run.



We intend to have 2 kinds of slots for paid team members depending on the amount of time they are willing to commit - part-time and full-time. Full-time slots will offer payment of 2-4x (TBD by the project management team, maybe even a monthly contest?) that of a part-time slot. Team members can switch between the two depending on how much they feel they can offer to the project. This should give us flexibility to provide incentive for development and show appreciation for the work that is being done.



We will also encourage team members to hold their Dash they are paid long term. We believe in this project and want all those getting compensated to benefit when we finally succeed, this will help spread the benefit out to those that contribute the most to make it happen.



Having lots of people involved with Dash is what makes this successful! If you want to contribute, feel free to ping any of us to join the team.