Evan Duffield is expanding the Dash Labs team to grow the third major organization in the Dash network.

Dash’s founder, Duffield stepped away from the Core team earlier this year, handing off leadership to current CEO Ryan Taylor and shutting down his masternodes in order to focus less on the day-to-day of the coin’s operations. In order to help “future-proof” Dash, Duffield now heads up Dash Labs, which will include custom open-source hardware creation for the long-term scaling of the network.

“I myself will be heading up the new office in Hong Kong, called “Dash Labs.” We will immediately begin building proof-of-concepts of custom masternode hardware. Our existing offices in Arizona will be used for academic research. This research will be aimed at proving our ideas work and proactively searching for any problems before they crop up.”

Dash Labs will create open-source hardware for long-term scaling

A main goal of Dash Labs will be to both advance and decentralize the production of cryptocurrency-specific hardware, benefiting not only Dash but the entire cryptocurrency space, according to Duffield:

“Dash Labs aims to create the first open-source versions of many different types of hardware. Our goal is to help the digital currency space to remain open and transparent, while reducing the economic advantages of closed-source proprietary technology. For example, advanced open-source ASICs would eliminate most of the advantages of privately-developed ASICs. As a result, mining centralization could be significantly reduced. All economic actors will have a level playing field, at least with respect to hardware solutions.”

Duffield has been seen on Reddit recruiting for additional staff positions for Dash Labs. Late last week, he put out a call for an unpaid intern, who will assist in the creation of a new website to host network data on Dash for easy access by researchers. This week, Duffield put out a call for an engineer familiar with Trezor hardware wallets in order to develop some custom firmware.

Three separate prominent organizations now operating under the Dash network

With the addition of the newly-operating Dash Labs, there are now three major organizations operating under Dash’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO): Dash Core, Dash Force, and Dash Labs. Dash Core is the original, and by far the largest, of these groups, and takes care of the creation, maintenance, and dissemination of the main Dash code, the “now” of Dash. The relatively new Dash Force deals with community-level engagement, including media, community contests and giveaways, international outreach, main street adoption, and defensive messaging. Dash Labs will work on the future of Dash’s technology to ensure the network remains competitive beyond the present-day market.