What are the documented expectations of the Dash Masternode owners for Dash Treasury projects? What are the reporting responsibilities of Dash Treasury project owners? In a DFN article I wrote on the treasury system I discussed these topics and no one commented. It now seems to be a treading topic on the Dashnation slack and much of the latest 3 amigos podcast.
I will weigh in and say that I think as part of the proposal submission process there should be an agreement that the proposer agrees to provide regular updates on the project. I think it is also very important that status updates all be done on the same website in some format that provides a minimum level of information. Interested masternode owners should not have to try to search across any number of different places where updates are currently provided: dash forum, dashcentral, slack, reddit, dashtreasury or some personal or business blog / news-site.
If one main site were “anointed” for proposal status then it would be much easier to keep up. Right now the majority of pre-proposals are entered in the dash.org forum, most proposals are entered and voted (not sure about the voting part) on in dashcentral with the help of dashvotetracker. While I think the whole process would be easier to “manage” all in one site let’s at least endorse a site for each function.
There are other “improvements” to the Treasury system that seem to routinely surface such as escrow services, pre-proposal review teams and owner identity verification, they seem more complex to find any agreement on. Agreeing that if you take the Dash you should report on your project “here” seems to not be asking much.
Open Project Status Search
Looking back at proposals in Previously Reviewed Project Proposals and other articles about late projects I looked for current status updates.
DashPay POS – The proposal was paid out on Feb 3, 2017 – there is a Sept 26th status in the pre-proposal tread on the Dash.org forum. – Waiting on InstantSend to be turned back on.
ATM in South Jersey the proposal was paid out on April 4th 2017 – The only update I found was in a new project proposal. Not done yet.
ATM France the proposal was paid out on April 4th 2017. The latest update I found was from July on the pre-proposal thread. Not done yet.
Ripple GateHub proposal was paid out June 4th. The latest update from today is on the pre-proposal thread it was entered by me. They have added Dash but not really announced it yet.
Ripple open source gateway was also paid out on June 4th. Latest update on pre-proposal thread from Aug 30th. Should be ready by end of year.
Buy-Sell Dash Directly within the WALLET proposal was funded on June 5th. Latest update on pre-proposal thread entered my me on Aug 10th. Still waiting.
DASHPayCard – DASH Branded Debit Card + Fiat/Dash Integration – funded April 4th. Very poor communication – latest update may be an email discussed on the 3 amigos podcast. Still waiting.
TenX Dash Debit Card ready by Mid-April funded April 4th. There is a card in limited distribution that can use Dash. As far as I know there is no schedule for when it might be available in the US. – Latest status is from a TenX video maybe. Owner did answer individual issues as late as Oct 6th in pre-proposal thread.
Dash / Bitcoin improvement protocols funded April 4th. Latest update I can find is from March 30th.
Dash Branding for Sydney Harbour Racing Yacht funded in July – original schedule said it would be ready mid-Sept. Latest update was in pre-proposal on Sept 8th. – should be ready by early Nov.
Conclusion
In the above list of 10 “late” projects only 2 had anything close to a “current status” based on the reporting date. Both were a response to someone asking what the status was. I can understand that there is no change to the status of several of these project for an extended time but there should still be a monthly update.
I won’t attempt to guess (here) if any of these projects will be a “total failure” and never be completed but if someone won’t even report on the status it is easy to assume that is the case.
It is great that Dash has a number of “concerned citizens” that will regularly review open projects and ask for a status report. I think to make their job easier the Masternodes should support a project reporting solution before there are too many projects for anyone to follow.
Essentially everybody recognizes that we need a better way to hold Proposal Owners accountable. There have been a few attempts, some more comprehensive than others, some more successful than others. I don’t think we have hit the magic combination that gets the results we want yet.
A huge leap forward in accountability would be an escrow service so we don’t have to just hand over the Dash and cross our fingers that we’re not getting scammed, and that the work will be done in a timely manner. Some months ago, there was discussion on the Slack channel about a way to do escrow services at the protocol level so that it would be decentralized and would not require a trusted third party.
As I recall, the consensus was that trustless escrow services might be possible in the future, but it is a tough nut to crack.
So…given that real estate deals and construction loans have successfully used trusted 3rd party escrow solutions for 100 years, I’d rather try that than have nothing. If that eventually leads to a trustless protocol solution, so much the better. But hey, walk before you run.
I think another important part of the long term solution is to analyze unsuccessful proposals to find out if there are certain common elements or issues that increase the risk for a bad outcome. That might be a longer term goal to do all the leg work.
Just getting some kind of escrow service running is my biggest want.
p.s. Oh yeah, and one place to see what’s up with proposals, that would be awesome. If the info is posted to the other 5 or 6 places, that’s fine too, but if the expectation was for Proposal Owners to use one site, that would also add a lot.
“one place to see what’s up with proposals, that would be awesome.”
Something like that is in the works and being headed up by paragon with input from several community members and masternode owners including myself.
I’ll have to check it out. Is there a publicly available description/discussion going on yet?
I 100% agree with you based on my own professional experience and knowledge. What you are saying here connects very well with what i am saying in post below this article:
http://dashnews.org/dashs-governance-growing-pains/
I am actually tempted to put up a proposal myself, but I am only one part of the puzzle, there also needs to be legal expert and can make the processes I would like to setup legally binding.
Looks like this article really took some time to put together, thanks for all the updates Joe!