Welcome!

Joint statement by Bitcart and Dash Core Group. I posted in the forums in the closed thread because I think we need to focus on solving things between us and avoid further discussion through forums and comments, but Graham and Darren can confirm that this statement is agreed by both parties:

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/biz-dev-joint-statement-by-bitcart-and-dash-core-group.17653/

Thanks for your continued assistance with this matter Fernando. We continue to serve the dash community and as it stands we honour our original agreement and will continue accepting dash throughout the process of signing a new agreement.

It is encouraging that the matter appears to have been resolved. I don't think it's productive any more to be pointing fingers, but I hope all of the parties involved learn from this, because I am sure that this could have been resolved confidentially without unnecessarily stinking up the entire building with the smell of dirty laundry. That stuff's rank. Wish everyone the best going forward

Glad to hear that both parties are happy and willing to move forward together. I am sure you will have much better luck with future proposals to the MNOs.

Great to have the air cleared here. Looking forward to a new proposal taking into account the events and feedback here.

Great to see some resolution to this. Hoping we can use this energy to move things forward now ☺

That's about as exciting as the drama gets around here. Miscommunications and misunderstandings have been ironed out. Let's get on with taking over the world.

Carry on.
solarguy

Biz Dev - Joint Statement by Bitcart and Dash Core Group

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/biz-dev-joint-statement-by-bitcart-and-dash-core-group.17653/

Although welcome, This is just a holding statement. When will more news be forthcoming? Thanks.

I rarely weigh in on proposals, but in this particular case I would strongly urge the community to vote against until BitCart returns to the negotiating table in good faith. I do my best to refrain from disparaging any partner publicly, but in this case the Bitcart CEO is making blatantly false claims, excluding critical information, and casting accusations against me personally in public that are simply not true. I suggest the community vote NO until we can properly determine whether this was a breakdown of communication, misunderstanding, or some form of unprofessional behavior.

1) Back on September 15th, Bitcart forwarded an invoice for a phase of work for which no formal MoU or contract existed with Dash Core Group - to be clear, ALL SIGNED MOUs HAVE BEEN FULLY PAID
2) Between September 20th and 23rd, Graham and I exchanged a series of emails clarifying the situation, and agreed to commit all future phases of work to a formal contract. Shortly after I assumed the CEO role, all agreements started following a much more formal process, to which Graham agreed and would "formalize the work after London".
3) Between then and today, my assistant has been attempting to schedule a meeting with the CEO of BitCart to discuss and formalize any necessary agreements. Despite being provided several meeting slots each week, Graham failed to confirm his availability for any of the provided times for the past month.
4) Graham appears to have provided one side of the story to the community, leveraging Dash Force News as his outlet, disparaging the core team and accusing us of being unavailable. To the contrary, it is Graham that has been unavailable and unresponsive. In addition, Graham has my direct phone number and Fernando's direct phone number, yet neither of us have been contacted or received a voice message from Graham over the past month.
5) Shortly after the Dash Force News article was released, BitCart posted this proposal, which is over 8x the cost of the next phase of work.
6) "The amount was specified as anything upwards of $250k and we requested $100,000 as detailed in our roadmap which was part of the MoU signed." - This is false... no such MoU exists committing to anywhere near $100,000. There were exactly two MoUs signed, and neither of them covered the scope of work discussed here nor the scope of work they attempted to invoice. Both of the previous MoUs have been paid in full.
7) "I wouldn't hold your breath from an update from your CEO Tao. You must have a lot of blind faith which I'm frankly surprised. Critical thinking and reflection of one's own team might give you a different perspective, instead of hanging on every word of the one person who has been silent among all of this." - This is simply unprofessional personal attack on me.
8) "Why is Ryan waiting to reply? Surely the time to reply from your CEO would have been when the article came out, no?" - First, it's the weekend, and I have many family members in town to celebrate my grandmother's 99th birthday. More importantly, we have been gathering our facts ahead of any statement on the matter, facts that have been in short supply in this discussion.
9) On Friday - before any of these accusations started - Graham confirmed a meeting with me at 10am PT on Monday, so I find it surprising that when he already had a meeting on the calendar with me, he is simultaneously claiming through Dash Force News and here that I'm unavailable to him. This is simply not the case.

The current facts available to me indicate that it is possible Bitcart is attempting to manipulate the MNs into paying many times the actual development cost for its own gain, and at the expense of the core team's reputation.

I remain open and willing to negotiate in good faith with Graham and recommend a path forward to the community. It is my sincere hope that this breakdown is salvageable and has a logical explanation, as the Bitcart / Dash partnership has been fruitful for both sides until now. I would love nothing more than to find out that my assistant's emails were all being sent to Graham's junk mail folder. I don't believe that would excuse the public disparaging that occurred this weekend from a partner, but it would provide a basis to begin rebuilding trust.

As for the Dash Force News article, I received confirmation from our PR agency that because of Money2020 last week, the author had agreed with one of the PR team members (Casey) to give us through Monday the 30th to reply to their questions. That obviously wasn't honored, and I'm uncertain as to the reason why they published the article anyway. Contrary to the author's claims, myself nor any other member of Dash Core Group leadership team was contacted with these questions directly.

"As for the Dash Force News article, I received confirmation from our PR agency that because of Money2020 last week, the author had agreed with one of the PR team members (Casey) to give us through Monday the 30th to reply to their questions. That obviously wasn't honored, and I'm uncertain as to the reason why they published the article anyway. Contrary to the author's claims, myself nor any other member of Dash Core Group leadership team was contacted with these questions directly."

That was regarding another set of questions, not Bitcart. You should have been contacted and given time to respond to the bitcart article. I don't know if that was done or not, for some reason I was not even given the full details until the article came out. From what I have been told Dash force news has to go through a 3rd party (Wachsman PR) to communicate with you and that slows down all communications. Mark and joel might not have bothered to contact you on this knowing it would be too late and voting would have been over by the time they got a response. I don't know if that is the case or not but in that situation they should have reached out to tungfa or someone who is in the know and has authority to speak on such things. I don't know if that person exist but from what Fernando has said that maybe him.
Going forward I will personally make sure the Dash Core team has a fair amount of time to respond to any allegations involving them that is published by Dash Force News.

I just received copy of the questions that were sent from Dash Force News to Wachsman PR. Indeed, those questions were not regarding Bitcart, so it seems that neither our PR firm nor any member of Dash Core Group was provided the opportunity to comment before the article was published. We have checked with the entire leadership team and no one was contacted, including Philipp.

Thank you for investigating the issue on your end and committing to providing us an opportunity to respond to allegations in the future.

Another reason why news shouldn't be funded from the Dash DAO. It should be used for advertising, not informing its current users. There will always be bias in any type of article in favor of or against; that can sway the tide of votes to a certain party. No organization should have had the power to do this in the first place.

Informing current users and advertising are sometimes the same thing. Dash users are not the only people exposed to the articles. Also if DashForceNews did not exist then there would be even more pressure on the core team to provide news, which is unnecessary when some of this can be offloaded to a separate organization.

Maybe it's just me but I have yet to learn any valuable information from Dash force news that I didn't know already. If they focused on advertising articles then obviously this article would not have existed because it paints a bad image for Dash. This could be completely avoided.

The majority of MNO's disagree but that's the beauty of the Dash DAO budget system, you can create your own proposal if you think DFN is not doing it right and does not add value to the community. Go for it!

Thanks for breaking your “silence” on this. It’s true, until now I didn’t know how to respond to Graham’s comment. I hope that the air will be cleared in this, and we can move forward in a manner that benefits Dash. I will not be changing my NO votes.

Thanks for this Ryan. So there is no currently outstanding agreement or MOU, formal or otherwise between dash core and operaincubator? Could you confirm please?

Thanks

Walter

The only agreements that exist are fully paid and Dash Core Group has no further obligations - including financial obligations - under the existing agreements. They are "outstanding agreements" only with respect that we are still within the term / duration of the initial agreement. Dash Core Group has not breached any of the terms of the agreements in place, and therefore Graham's claim that "the contract between Bitcart and Dash Core is void" is simply untrue.

Thanks for the clarification Ryan. It may sounds trivial for me to be asking for clarification on things like this but it's very important from a trust point of view. I'm sure we're all agreed that Opera are doing great things in the space and that we'd love for the relationship to develop and grow, but this whole saga is leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of the masternode holders..

Walter

Hi Ryan,

It has become abundantly clear over the past few weeks that you only seem to discuss matters relating to business development with your partners when you're absolutely pushed to do so. You claim to have been 'available' for meetings with Graham and I can assure you this is the first time myself and the team are hearing about this - we have all read the correspondence in full and all Graham received from you re a meeting he was incessantly trying to arrange was an email asking him to go through your assistant as you now get 200 emails per day. This is not good enough. And no, this isn't a 'personal attack'. This is one professional challenging another and as far as I know this is not a dictatorship - you are not above being subject to criticism or questioning. Your partners should have a direct line of communication to you or a business development lead and ought to be frequently communicating.

The fact that Graham and Fernando contact each other regularly is of little relevance in this situation. Fernando is a legal expert, not a business development lead. This all stemmed from the sudden departure of Daniel Diaz, Director of Business Development for Dash, for which there has yet been no explanation we are aware of. As far as I can see you naively thought you could fill his shoes as well as your own and it is not surprising that problems arose. It is your duty and responsibility as the CEO of a company with so much at stake and on the cusp of grasping your goals to immediately hire a replacement for a director who is of such integral importance to your partners and to the progression of the entire ecosystem. Without business expansion you have a nifty idea that will never reach farther than the minuscule amount of people currently using Dash and a truck load of Dash that has increased in value due to the masses gradually becoming more interested and receptive to cryptocurrency (variables that have occurred due mainly to the continued rise in Bitcoin price and the hype that comes with it), nothing more. Personally, I don't have a truck load of Dash - but maybe when one does, complacency sets in.

I represent a hungry start-up that are trying to change the world in the way that we can by offering the global network of business owners that trust and know us the financial freedom they deserve. When our passion for making this change is delayed, we are compelled to act. You seem to be extremely sensitive to questioning and forgive me, but that is reminiscent of the CEOs and executives of the old paradigm that has been the ruination of our societies - the epicenter of corporatocracy. Are we trying to break the mold here and truly creating a decentralised governance model or are we still trusting the word of one or two people? Last time I checked there was 57 Yes votes to go - now there's more than 300. You conveniently 'weigh' in just hours before the voting deadline which I can only conclude is an effort to undermine our efforts to move forward. Why would you throw your weight around like that? Surely your job is to rise above all of this and act professionally instead of resorting to and appealing to sentimental events like your grandmother's birthday as an excuse for the lack of contact. I'm not saying that's not true, it probably is and I wish her all the best. But it should not be brought into an argument.

Before I conclude, I feel it is imperative for clarity's sake to dismantle a few straw man arguments.
The first is in response to statement 6) in relation to the amount agreed upon initially:

Yes Ryan, of course neither of the MOUs covered the scope of work discussed here in this proposal or the scope of work Graham attempted to invoice you for because 5 months have elapsed since then and a plethora of new developments have taken place including multiple festival client requests as well as thousands of retail client requests for Festy. The bulk of the funding required here is for Festy, so don't confuse people.

The second is in response to statement 7) in relation to Graham's alleged 'personal attacks' on you:

All Graham was trying to do here is highlight the fact that you have been generally unresponsive and dismissive of him. His statement was an act of frustration which I'm sure you would understand if you were in his shoes.

The third is a retort to your horrendous accusations that Graham is somehow trying to manipulate MNs into voting for this proposal at the expense of the core team's reputation:

Ryan, this is an outrageous remark. I simply cannot believe you would say something as rash and impulsive as this. Usually people only respond like this when they know they're wrong, I'm not saying you are totally wrong here I'm just stating a psychological fact. How could you possibly deduce from Joel's article that this is the case? The community deserve to know about what happened to Daniel, what exactly the entire team are working on every day and all details of any business partnerships in the making or that have been made. Otherwise it's business as usual and we can all wait another lifetime before the human ego is displaced as the main source of failure in leadership.

Just so there is no uncertainty here, the team at Opera Incubator just want to be able to pay their developers and not scrounge for money anymore. Daniel Diaz as a representative of Dash core assured us we would not need to seek any other funding from external sources due to this partnership. Once we became aware of his absence, we waited patiently for word to be given to us from Core as to what happened, whether he would be coming back and if not, who his replacement would be. We concede that Opera could have been more assertive in seeking answers but we felt it was more professional to give Core time to get it together; that time has been and gone.

We are fully willing to discuss an exclusivity agreement once again with Dash Core and to work on an agreement for Festy also.

Ryan, I have the utmost respect for you. I am just trying to clear the air here.

To you, the core team and the rest of the Dash community: we want to work together for the betterment of the Dash ecosystem as a whole, of which Opera is an essential organism.

Finally, just to reiterate: you need to find someone to fill Daniel's shoes.

Please give me a call, I'd be happy to help.

After all, we are both Double Ds.

Best Regards,
Darren Dineen
Opera Incubator

If you are seeking to ask MNO's to weigh up who has more of Dash's interests in view, you or Ryan, that is a bad wager on your part. Seems to me you would be better off working a path of persuasion, not compulsion.

If I am understanding this correctly, you invoiced the core team for work which had no signed agreement, and the basis is Daniel Diaz's previous assurance that you would not need to seek outside funding?

Could you please explain why you did not bring up this issue in London when you met with the team. Thanks

Darren,
Do you or do you not have a signed MoU from the core team which has not been paid in full?

Hello Troy,
Yes, we have a signed MoU from Core stating that our development roadmap would be funded which to date has not been funded. Do you have any more questions?

I didn't feel like I would have to publish sensitive documents but if people are doubting the credibility of Joel and all of us at bitcart when we way the contract has been breached then I will have to publish the MoU.

Warm wishes,
Graham

Then I don't know what to make of this because Ryan has stated above that no MoU covering the scope of this work exists, and you yourself also said earlier that "of course neither of the MOUs covered the scope of work discussed here in this proposal or the scope of work Graham attempted to invoice you for"

The scope of this proposal is for Festy and Bitcart, and so Festy is to be treated separately. I think part of the confusion was combining the two proposals.

That might explain the price difference / expectations, but wouldn't explain the conflicting info we are getting about whether the core team has an unresolved financial obligation / violated a contract. I can understand about being frustrated because of Daniel being MIA -- I don't doubt that happened, but that is different from claiming that the core team signed off on a funding contract covering development past stage 1 and did not deliver.

Maybe you could sent a copy of that specific MoU to Fernando for both legal verification and to make sure its absolutely clear to both parties which MoU is being referred here.

operaincubator (proposal owner) 1 point,51 minutes ago

"When we say*"

Hopefully this post is incomplete because it was interrupted by a phone call from Core.

When we say*

Thank you for responding to this situation. Ask you can see by the vote spring the masternode owners greatly appreciate your time and effort to communicate when needed.

thanks for all info voting no

Hi Ryan,

It has become abundantly clear over the past few weeks that you only seem to discuss matters relating to business development with your partners when you're absolutely pushed to do so. You claim to have been 'available' for meetings with Graham and I can assure you this is the first time myself and the team are hearing about this - we have all read the correspondence in full and all Graham received from you re a meeting he was incessantly trying to arrange was an email asking him to go through your assistant as you now get 200 emails per day. This is not good enough. And no, this isn't a 'personal attack'. This is one professional challenging another and as far as I know this is not a dictatorship - you are not above being subject to criticism or questioning. Your partners should have a direct line of communication to you or a business development lead and ought to be frequently communicating.

The fact that Graham and Fernando contact each other regularly is of little relevance in this situation. Fernando is a legal expert, not a business development lead. This all stemmed from the sudden departure of Daniel Diaz, Director of Business Development for Dash, for which there has yet been no explanation we are aware of. As far as I can see you naively thought you could fill his shoes as well as your own and it is not surprising that problems arose. It is your duty and responsibility as the CEO of a company with so much at stake and on the cusp of grasping your goals to immediately hire a replacement for a director who is of such integral importance to your partners and to the progression of the entire ecosystem. Without business expansion you have a nifty idea that will never reach farther than the minuscule amount of people currently using Dash and a truck load of Dash that has increased in value due to the masses gradually becoming more interested and receptive to cryptocurrency (variables that have occurred due mainly to the continued rise in Bitcoin price and the hype that comes with it), nothing more. Personally, I don't have a truck load of Dash - but maybe when one does, complacency sets in.

I represent a hungry start-up that are trying to change the world in the way that we can by offering the global network of business owners that trust and know us the financial freedom they deserve. When our passion for making this change is delayed, we are compelled to act. You seem to be extremely sensitive to questioning and forgive me, but that is reminiscent of the CEOs and executives of the old paradigm that has been the ruination of our societies - the epicenter of corporatocracy. Are we trying to break the mold here and truly creating a decentralised governance model or are we still trusting the word of one or two people? Last time I checked there was 57 Yes votes to go - now there's more than 300. You conveniently 'weigh' in just hours before the voting deadline which I can only conclude is an effort to undermine our efforts to move forward. Why would you throw your weight around like that? Surely your job is to rise above all of this and act professionally instead of resorting to and appealing to sentimental events like your grandmother's birthday as an excuse for the lack of contact. I'm not saying that's not true, it probably is and I wish her all the best. But it should not be brought into an argument.

Before I conclude, I feel it is imperative for clarity's sake to dismantle a few straw man arguments.
The first is in response to statement 6) in relation to the amount agreed upon initially:

Yes Ryan, of course neither of the MOUs covered the scope of work discussed here in this proposal or the scope of work Graham attempted to invoice you for because 5 months have elapsed since then and a plethora of new developments have taken place including multiple festival client requests as well as thousands of retail client requests for Festy. The bulk of the funding required here is for Festy, so don't confuse people.

The second is in response to statement 7) in relation to Graham's alleged 'personal attacks' on you:

All Graham was trying to do here is highlight the fact that you have been generally unresponsive and dismissive of him. His statement was an act of frustration which I'm sure you would understand if you were in his shoes.

The third is a retort to your horrendous accusations that Graham is somehow trying to manipulate MNs into voting for this proposal at the expense of the core team's reputation:

Ryan, this is an outrageous remark. I simply cannot believe you would say something as rash and impulsive as this. Usually people only respond like this when they know they're wrong, I'm not saying you are totally wrong here I'm just stating a psychological fact. How could you possibly deduce from Joel's article that this is the case? The community deserve to know about what happened to Daniel, what exactly the entire team are working on every day and all details of any business partnerships in the making or that have been made. Otherwise it's business as usual and we can all wait another lifetime before the human ego is displaced as the main source of failure in leadership.

Just so there is no uncertainty here, the team at Opera Incubator just want to be able to pay their developers and not scrounge for money anymore. Daniel Diaz as a representative of Dash core assured us we would not need to seek any other funding from external sources due to this partnership. Once we became aware of his absence, we waited patiently for word to be given to us from Core as to what happened, whether he would be coming back and if not, who his replacement would be. We concede that Opera could have been more assertive in seeking answers but we felt it was more professional to give Core time to get it together; that time has been and gone.

We are fully willing to discuss an exclusivity agreement once again with Dash Core and to work on an agreement for Festy also.

Ryan, I have the utmost respect for you. I am just trying to clear the air here.

To you, the core team and the rest of the Dash community: we want to work together for the betterment of the Dash ecosystem as a whole, of which Opera is an essential organism.

Finally, just to reiterate: you need to find someone to fill Daniel's shoes.

Please give me a call, I'd be happy to help.

After all, we are both Double Ds.

Best Regards,
Darren Dineen
Opera Incubator

Wow this thing is a mess. But since I have been frustrated with the communication coming from core myself it's not a big leap to imagine that Core also messed up the communication with Opera Incubator. That's not to say that this is solely cores fault but it's enough for me to stick with my Yes votes.

Both sides on this acted extremely unprofessional and even disrespectful and it shakes my confidence in both parties. I support Dash as being the only coin I see that is making a real effort to become a digital cash. I also support bitcart for working with Dash users and giving us a place to hang our hats on as a great place to use Dash.

You guys need to stop arguing in public. Pick up the phone and have a conversation.

I voted no! We need money for important things, not to drive external companies. They use Dash because it's better than Bitcoin, I feel like we're wasting money on things that don't really help.

I hope both Core and Opera go away and reflect on this. I'm hopeful we can all move past these recent days and words said but this, gentlemen, has been a clusterfuck

What the hell is wrong with you people!!! All of this could have been avoided if Ryan or Darren had just picked up a damn phone and called the other. You should both be talking to each other right now on the phone getting this issue sorted out instead of posting mean messages about each other on this site. I am sick and tired of Ryan and the rest of Core's chronic inability to effectively communicate. "Pick Up a Damn Phone One of You" its not rocket science.

In the Discord chat Ryan stated that he has call with Graham today. I suspect the reason he responded in these comments was because Graham called him out. People tend not to respond well to such provocations.

Lets hope the phone call straightens things out going forward.

Thank you for your constructive sitting at a table again! This story has shown that there is a need to improve the hierarchy, responsibilities and structure of a future large, global company or perhaps existing responsibilities should be clarified. These issues need to be dealt on a higher management level not in DC

OK, this is getting pretty heated in here. May I suggest that Core and Bitcart take this elsewhere and straighten it out before more is said in public that can't easily be taken back? That would be best for everyone involved, and best for Dash. Thanks :)

Personally I think this little spat is great for the DASH ecosystem, it will cause self reflection.

For those involved, please don't let your egos cause your position to become rigid. These things invariably arise from miscommunication which is usually not one person's fault.

Let's learn from this and move on quickly

(I believe Bitcart can do a lot for DASH)

Absolutely, self-reflection and ego dissolution is needed more in the blockchain industry :)

Did you call Ryan? If not, pick up the phone.

We did speak today for about 2 hours and went through a lot of issues which I have summed up as systematic errors and not human errors. It was very productive. Ryan and I will be issuing a joint statement shortly.

Great! Looking forward to it. It will be good to have a resolution to this situation. Good on you guys to resolve this privately.

Huzzah! Fingers crossed..

Walter

I am glad to hear that.

Wow, this is really tough to make a decision. Finally the rough and tumble of 'dirty' politics has reached the previously calm and still shores of Dashland. Hmmm.. what to do? From my perspective a can see merit in both cases. I trust both CEOs and I want the best for Dash. I want to see the ongoing development of bitcart and festy, but I am troubled by the manner in which some of the communication has played out.

It is refreshing that Graham has used the option of reaching out to the community directly without the need of 'centralized' approval from dashcore as this protects the network from over reliance on approval from a small group of people.

Graham has definately communicated effectively with the community, but at the same it would seem that communication with Dash core has broken down.

I still want to know why Graham talks for several minutes about festy being available to other Blockchains and not exclusive to Dash at around 12.20 here https://youtu.be/pVDjoMxtaHc

But even despite how troubling this appears to be, I'm still willing to back this proposal, for now, as ultimately the work needs to be done, and Dash can do without the negative PR.

I hope both parties can come together and reconcile and Ryan appears to be reaching out in a positive way, so well done Ryan.

Good luck guys.


Let's get this sorted out please!

Thank you Darren and Graham for your responses. I'm confident that the answers to these questions will have helped the Masternodes in their decision making process. I am now satisfied that this funding should be granted on condition that the previous agreement(s) between yourselves and Dash Core are rendered null and void (if the proposal passes). If you could confirm your position on this then you have my votes.

Thanks

Walter

Hi Walters, thank you for your support. Should the proposal pass we would be happy to continue with the agreement to keep Dash exclusive on Bitcart. We are satisfied with Dash being the only payment and we really like the community here.

Should it not pass, we may have to look for funding elsewhere. Either way, the contract between Bitcart and Dash Core is void.

Thank you again and I am glad we have reassured you to vote yes. This kind of dialogue has been very productive and proof that decentralised governance works in startup companies!

Warm wishes,
Graham

Graham, you personally acknowledged in your email dated September 22nd that the existing contracts did not cover any work except your phase 1 scope. So there is no contract to "void". No agreements have been breached by Dash Core Group. Your statement misleads the MNOs into believing that they are making Bitcart whole for an agreement that we breached, which is untrue.

Ok Graham, thanks for the clarification. Voted yes in good faith. Will follow with interest. Good luck!

Walter

Just to be clear, myself - and I suspect many MN owners - are going to give Operaincubator 'the benefit of the doubt' as things stand. However, getting the funding is one thing, keeping it is another.. The Masternodes have been put into a very difficult position over this due to the alleged issues between opera and dash core, and I really hope that all concerned have been playing with a straight bat here.

All the best,

Walter

I respect your view quite often on things, but I'm not sure I'm with you here (which is OK). 'Benefit of the doubt' goes to the one who works tirelessly and daily for Dash's overall interest...that would be Ryan. Just me. The burden of proof is on the disinterested party (however well-intended).

Fair comment :) To be fair the above was posted prior to Ryan weighing in with Core's interpretation of events, and in the absence of anything from core my view was that it's in Dash's interests for operaincubator not to go to be taken to the brink over this, give them a lifeline and we can always defund them next month. In any case I take the position that it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. I have a lot of respect for Core and their work ethic/professionalism as a whole, but we all know that communication is their Achilles heal and it's almost certainly played a part in all this.

Makes sense. Love all your contributions around the community, btw!

Thanks dude! :)

Please watch our video response to the feedback we have received thus far, and why this is the most important proposal we will ever make to the Dash community.

https://youtu.be/EFy3ZRUFaTo

Grams, thanks for the video. I decided to vote yes. Communication is good.

Bitcart is an asset for the Dash ecosystem and is currently the only real use-case for on-boarding new people.
Festy has huge potential and is an exciting new technology.
After reading Joel's article, I'm going to say "yes" to fund this proposal and take a wait and see approach with the fallout from Core.

You have my full support

Just a friendly reminder. Bitcart totally wants this to work out nicely and get on with helping us take over the world. And likewise, Core totally wants this to work out nicely and get on with helping us take over the world. And ditto with the Masternodes. And ditto with the larger Dash community.

It is a false dichotomy to think that party A or party B has to be wrong here. Hey, weird shit happens. Everybody keep an open mind. I think what sets our community apart is what we do afterwards.

I am confident that everybody that has a stake in this is going to do the honorable thing. Can we get that all done in the next 24 hours? I don't know.

We, all of us, want to get all the pertinent details sorted out, down to the last comma. And then do the right thing. If something really needs fixing, we have plenty of resources to fix stuff. Everybody relax a couple notches. We got this.

'We, all of us, want to get all the pertinent details sorted out, down to the last comma.'

You just had to mention that damn comma eh??!

Sincerely, solarguy

Someone, somewhere has dropped the ball here. Who and where is yet to be determined and is probably not overly critical. From time to time we have all dropped the ball, its part of being human and in business.

Aside from that, I like this proposal, it has huge potential for the DASH network. It is also important that DASH's partners deliver a good service that the network is proud of. This proposal will help everyone achieve DASH's goals.

For me this is an easy yes..... now.

Agreed that somewhere someone dropped the ball, and it's not entirely clear who. My sense is that possibly both parties could have taken additional action that could have led to a resolution without needing to take it public. Regardless of whether or not this proposal is funded, it is not acceptable to have a situation where Bitcart feels they have a basis for claiming that they are rightfully/legally owed money from the core team. This issue needs to be rectified.

Yea... a ball was dropped. It is strange that funding to Core was being used to fund BitCart. It seems to me that this type of funding ought to come via from the Treasury process. Think Alt36: a deal was worked with Core but the main funding came via the treasury process.

We have funds available through the general business development fund. We leverage the fund for businesses unwilling to publicly disclose their integration to Dash publicly until the integration is ready. We have not requested any additional funding for business development since the spring and have relied on savings (due to the recent increase in price) to fund most of the recent BD activity.

you have my votes

Long term, maybe? Much work to do but yes in the meantime : )

It's a yes from me. The past dosen't really matter at this moment. We can resolve the issue of the communication errors between Core and Opera later. At the moment we need to give this funding so Bitcart and Festy can scale up and be ready along with the other releases from Core (Evo) and Alt36. These are the projects that will push transactions on the Dash network to new highs.

I agree with the sentiment in your proposal, let's put what's happened in the past and look objectively at how the Dash treasury can help Bitcart & Festy achieve the overall goal of growing the Dash network. With that in mind I have some questions with regards to these scaling plans:

Bitcart

1. By your best estimates (or figures if you have them!) how big is the second hand market for unwanted/surplus gift cards?
2. How do you plan to ramp up the supply of these gift cards whilst maintaining your margins? i.e. Exponentially higher demand for surplus gift cards without an exponential increase in readily available supply could create cost inflation, thus squeezing margins. How is that going to affect you?
3. Is the 15% discount on Dash purchases sustainable as you scale up?
4. Are you likely to require further funding from the dash treasury in order to reach profitability/sustainability? if so, are we talking 6 figures or 7 figures next time?

Festy

1. Is a quarter of a million Euros really going to touch the sides with this project? The list of festivals and their capacities is impressive but, frankly, it seems like a tall order, are you being a tad optimistic on the cost of ramping up and fulfilling on this? Or are you confident that the funding request is adequate?
2. Without going into business sensitive details, in a nutshell, how do you make money with festy? What's the model?

And finally, a more general question.. Would it be better to have split this proposal into two? One for Bitcart and one for Festy? You would at the very least have increased your chances of at least one being funded ;)

I really love the work you guys are doing and I really want the Dash Treasury to assist you where possible and viable to do so, but it's got to make financial sense for both partners. If you could provide answers to these questions I think it would help a lot of MN voters in the decision making process.

Thank you for listening.

Walter

Hi Walter,

Thank you for taking the time to formulate such excellent questions and constructive feedback.

Let's unpack this piece by piece:

Bitcart

1. The unwanted Amazon gift card market is a multi-million dollar marketplace. According to a Forbes article that was published in January of this year the entire gift card reselling market is approximately $1billion in value (https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2017/01/10/gift-cards-cash/amp/)

2. We are working on a sell function to radically increase our supply. We have made contact and obtained first hand information from some of the biggest suppliers on the market that if a sell function was available on Bitcart they would direct their business towards us.

3. Yes the 15% discount is sustainable, however, there will be a new model introduced soon where users will get a lower discount when the order is fulfilled within a certain time frame. The details of this are still being finalised.

4. This funding will bring us up to date as far as our development roadmap is concerned and probably take us much further down the line. We cannot say for certain whether Bitcart will need more funding in the future - this will depend on a multiplicity of variables which are not as yet known.

Festy

1. We are confident that this three month installment of the budget requested will adequately bring us to a market ready position for the retail market. The reason for stating the client requests we have gotten from the festival market is to outline the gravity of the overall situation for us. Readying ourselves for servicing festivals of that magnitude will require more funding in the future. For example, as pointed out by another MN voter 1 ATM will not be sufficient to fulfill the needs of 60,000 people looking to top up their Festys in the same 30 minutes.

2. As you noted, I can it divulge sensitive information pertaining to the business model but I can put it very simply to give you a basic understanding.

Our revenue within the retail market is secured from business to business sales. Merchants pay an annual fee licensing fee to acquire our bespoke POS system and payment processor in conjunction with paying a transaction fee that cuts Visa fees by 50% minimum.

In the festival market, the revenue is generated from the consumers by paying a topup fee when transferring funds to their wallet.

That's all I can say on that matter for now!

Regarding your final remarks, thank you for your supportive comments. We are delighted to have forged such a strong relationship with the Dash community and are committed to fulfilling our role as partners in this industry.

Kind Regards,
Darren

Hello Walter,
You have every right to ask these questions and we owe it to the community to answer them, so thanks for asking :)

Bitcart:
1. We can only go on competitors and the 2-and-a-half years we are in operation. From this market research we can see the potential for millions of dollars worth of unwanted gift cards within the crypto domain. With our current service we could expect $1,000,000 per year and with our automated system we could compete with Purse and claim the market from bitcoin into dash which we are very excited about.

2. We are putting our sell function live on the website, which will allow people to seamlessly sell us gift cards and instantly get paid. This will allow us to be the fastest gift card exchange in the world. Traditional fiat requires about 1 week for websites to pay customers for their unwanted gift cards and even Purse can take 2-5 days. This will give us the purchasing power to grow our supply.

3. We are splitting into two categories of discounts: instant and small discount and 24-hour and 15% discount. This will allow us the room to scale without overpromising.

4. This is all the development funding we need, as agreed in the contract with Core back in May.

Festy:
1. We already have launched our beta in the largest music festival in Ireland with a small budget. We have always worked with very little and gotten very far. We can achieve great things with some consistent funding. If we do not deliver then you can simply change your vote in the next budget cycle. We want to be paid by performance because it keeps us hungry, which is why we have not done an ICO or sought VC funding.

2. We charge a nominal fee for transactions on the merchant side, which is competitive with VISA and other cards out there such as TenX and Spectro (50% cheaper).

We have not split this funding into two because we are the same company (Opera Incubator). We wouldn't like for half of our developer's to get a wage. It would set a horrible example for the others. We equally distribute funds among the staff in the two company's and we see Bitcart and Festy growing together under the one umbrella of shit-hot developers. Therefore there is no need to split them. Thanks for the advice though!

Warm wishes,
Graham

I understand your position on splitting the funding, I can genuinely see from an internal point of view how it is easier for you guys, but in the nicest sense the Masternodes will not take operational matters into consideration. So by giving Masternodes a binary call on funding 'all or nothing' you guys you've significantly increased the chances of receiving no funding.

As a businessman myself I would have taken the view that 30% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Sure, it would put the breaks on festy for now but you live to fight another day..

Hopefully you can patch things up with core and get the whole funding that way, because if you want the network to fund you directly then you're going to have to have a major rethink and reconsider my suggestion of splitting the proposals.

The network has made it very clear in voting that the all or nothing approach isn't going to work.

This isn't the end though and I do hope that we can find some way of funding these great projects in a sustainable and acceptable manner to the dash network going forward.

Best wishes,

Walter

Bitcart is an important part of the Dash ecosystem so we can either leave them as they are unable to fund the required scaling or help them do what is needed. I think the second option is clearly better for dash.

Really hope they will get enough votes even though the timeline is so short.

Yes, one could frame the question like you have put it:

If you would like Bitcart to continue with the Dash exclusivity then pay our developers. If not, we will have no choice to seek funding elsewhere and be accountable to new shareholders. We prefer MNs than regular shareholders though so this option is also better for us.

Thank you for your comment.

Graham

Much better time frame!
Glad to see y'all got your posting issue resolved. I too had a similar issue on DC with a Dash Force proposal that had the same name as the previous cycle.
Being so late now, if this does not pass you should definitely resubmit it next cycle and ask for a few extra Dash back because of the submission issues.

Thank you for your continued support and as a regular customer of our service, Mastermined. It means a lot to have you speak in our favour with your direct experience of our service, rather than mere speculation.

Please spread the word!

See you on 3 amigo's again soon hopefully! It's been a blast serving you and other MNs up to now.

Warm wishes,
Graham

I'm in. But wil only 2 days, it'll be tough. I'll be I again next month for the retry if needed. Good luck.

Hi IronVape,

Thank you for your support and having the vision to see what we're striving towards.

Warm Regards,
Darren Dineen
COO of Opera Incubator

i am very surprised to see this proposal go live today - 2 days before closing + the recent allegations against core as published from DFN have to be cleared up 1st before the community can have a real opinion on this proposal (300k US$ +) !

i suggest to abstain until all facts are on the table !

I am very surprised this budget proposal arrived so late, technical problems were indicated by the budget proposal owner some time ago and assistance could have been provided much earlier to this critical partner of ours.
I'm really not amused by the current turn of events and complete downfall of communication between core-team and this partner.

I'm starting to think the budget proposal to created last wedneysday and which got confirmations (400+),
may have been the budget proposal that crashed Sentinel due to a comma in the decimal.

mnarley, last thursday :
"Masternode Owners: Today a proposal was submitted which our system didn't catch (comma in the decimal) and this broke Sentinel"

where is the edit mode when you need it :)

to created --> that was created

This is a rush job, and I'm not biting. I would like to know (from your perspective) what the previous agreement with Core entailed, and what payments were received, and why it fell through. And yes, this information *does* have bearing on this proposal. You see, as an outsider, in the absence of information, it seems to me that BitCart is not being well managed, and as such, is not deserving of more funds. But, I invite you to communicate with us to dispel this notion.

Hi zwolf,

Thank you for your comment.

I must counter your remarks by stating emphatically that this is NOT a rushed job. We had complications uploading this proposal as aforementioned by other MNs so it would have been online much sooner.

Secondly, if you read the article by DFN in full rather than skim reading you will see that all of your questions regarding the issues that arose out of our initial agreement with core are answered clearly.

Finally, to say that Bitcart is not well managed is simply false. We decided to take the professional approach of drawing upon our own limited resources to solve the technical and customer support issues that were upon us because we sympathised with the complex situation the Dash core team experienced with the sudden absence of the lead business developer that was directly dealing with us.

This information came to light and was made public because an overwhelming portion of the Dash community felt that the negative opinion of Bitcart was unfair due to the root cause of the issue not stemming from internal management problems but rather with an inability of our partners in Dash to re-establish our agreement and development funding that was entailed by it.

Best Regards,
Darren Dineen
COO of Opera Incubator

I wouldn't assume that zwolf had only skimmed through the article...

You said the reason for making the information public was that the "overwhelming portion of the Dash community felt that the negative opinion of Bitcart was unfair". How would the overwhelming portion of the Dash community feel that way before the information was made public?

Although we do not have an "official" response from the core team at this point, could you please respond to Fernando's comment on the article? Specifically, this section:

@Fernando:
"Graham and I communicate frequently and when he was not getting responses somewhere I've helped him. All this silent core thing while things fell apart is false.

On Sep 24th we were all at the Dash Conference and Graham de Barra was in South Korea. All the rest of the Bitcart team was in the Conference. All comms those days were about who was gonna come to the Conference. We even organized they had a slot so they could update the attendance about their development (Darren, COO, did the update). No desperate call was made at any time and we all had a great time together."

Hi Troy,
As these questions were directed at me personally, I will take this one.

Fernando and I do call monthly and he is our biggest advocate within Core. However talk is not enough. We need to pay our devs with Dash not words. So this is not sufficient.

We sent 10 of our team mates to London and Darren gave a keynote speech. None of my team were approached by Ryan. I have to this day not spoken to Ryan. Why would a CEO not feel it important to talk to it's strategic partner and keynote speaker? My team expected a sit down meeting with Core which did not happen.

My attendance in South Korea supports my last proposal, which we are delivering on. I can't say the same about Core's delivery of funding since July. Why have we not been paid? A contract was signed. We see this as a violation and it is not in our power to fix this. The ball is in Core's court and comments like this should really be qualified with a disclaimer by Fernando that we have not been paid. The rest is not relevant when taken in the context of our developer's not being paid and our team facing irrevocable consequences as a result.

Are you happy that your CEO has not paid our developer's and violated a signed and dated contract from May?

reg London :
- did you reach out to ryan and team and asked for a sit-down about "open issues " ? (unpaid contracts ?)
obviously ryan and team were super busy as this was the 1st Dash conference.
- why did it take so long for you to bring these issues on the table ?
- we hung out with your team in london multiple times - nobody mentioned any "violated contracts" ! why not ? (if u guys need the money so desperate - why didn't anybody talk to core ??)
- why are you not answering any phone calls of ryan and fernando ? the team is hustling all weekend to clean this up and understand the possible misunderstandings here but with ignoring core this will not help !

Thanks for the prompt response --
If there was a violation of a contract then yes I think that would be a problem. However I do not have knowledge of exactly what the nature of this contract was, and short of actually releasing the contract (which probably is not appropriate to do) I don't think I can take a position on this yet.
The part that has me confused is that so far the feedback we have been getting back from the core team is that they are surprised by this development which could indicate that the Bitcart team may not have actually raised any red flags prior to this (either that or the core team members who have weighed in so far have not been fully informed). Did the Bitcart team communicate to Fernando that Bitcart felt there was a contract violation and that this was an urgent matter? If so, when, and was this acknowledged?

Darren,
Thanks for the reply. I did read the article carefully, and based on your response, I gather that Opera Incubator stands by that article and views it as an accurate representation of what happened. Okay, just to summarize. From your point of view, Core funded BitCart a certain (unspecified) amount, and then Core basically refused to provide additional funds later. The reasons for this are, well, the reasons, and there does seem to be some conflicting statements as to what was communicated when.

But for me, that is not as important as this: Why weren't you looking to your business, like how to improve it because it needs improving. Toward this end, I ask that you don't sympathize with Core's "complex situation", and I ask that you don't do this for the Dash community. I would be more comfortable with business-centric motivations. IMO, a strong, profitable, BitCart and Festy product is the best thing you can do for the Dash community. Right now, anyone who uses the BitCart product comes away with a bad impression, and this has gone on for months. Was it wise to not come to the treasury sooner? Was that good judgement? No need to answer, but please just think about it.

The reason I'm so passionate about BitCart is that, if it were to work as promised, it would be an absolute killer product. It would be (almost) as if Amazon accepted Dash directly (even better, given the 15% discount). How cool would that be? A functioning BitCart product is a bridge the links two worlds, one dominated by fiat, to one where you can really live unbanked.

Hello zwolf,
"Core funded BitCart a certain (unspecified) amount"

The amount was specified as anything upwards of $250k and we requested $100,000 as detailed in our roadmap which was part of the MoU signed.

"Why weren't you looking to your business, like how to improve it because it needs improving"

It was always clear that we needed the money in order to improve the service. Honestly, no developer's will work for free. So we can't improve without the investment and if this doesn't pass we may have to go outside of Dash so we can pay our developers.

"Was it wise to not come to the treasury sooner?"

We were expecting $100,000 throughout the development roadmap so we did not dare ask the community for more money outside of my agreement with Core. I am a man of my word and I would not try and sneak additional funds like this. When it became apparent that Core had communication issues and were 2 months late paying, and people were blaming us for the poor service, then we decided to come to the community for assistance.

I am on your side and I appreciate your questions. I hope we can be funded so we can show you what we are capable of :)

Warm wishes,
Graham

Well, this proposal was already submitted before the DFN article. There was just an issue with it showing up on dashcentral cause it had the same name as the first proposal.

Agreed.

I wouldn't hold your breath from an update from your CEO Tao. You must have a lot of blind faith which I'm frankly surprised. Critical thinking and reflection of one's own team might give you a different perspective, instead of hanging on every word of the one person who has been silent among all of this.

Why is Ryan waiting to reply? Surely the time to reply from your CEO would have been when the article came out, no?

hey grams
please take it easy on the personal attacks !!
ryan and fernando reach out to you multiple times over the weekend and they still did NOT get you on the phone for clarifications of the accusations you put out there !
Can u tell me why you never ever mentioned any problems to core before going public + putting on the time pressure (as u posted above 'ether dash pays or you have to look for funding from other projects') ?
we were all in london together, at that bar all night long , u and your team with me and fernando - why didn't you mention anything about this please ?
The team is collecting all the facts (it seems you are not interested in communicating to Core) and will comment on this hopefully soon

There is still 1,000 dash left in the Treasury fund. Are MNs happy that this money will be burned, while my developer's family's are wondering why they aren't being paid?

Consider strongly your answer to this question and please put yourself in our shoes. To watch so much money be burned will crush our spirit and will not lead a good example for potential future partners of Dash who are watching.

It would be better as a company executive if you limited your case to the merit of an agreement, not crushed spirits and a presumptive view about Dash's 'burned money.'

This argument weakens your position.

there are many unanswered questions out there - for you and bitcard and for Core
this has to be cleared up first of all
there is NO time pressure (no need to pressure the MNO's) - u can always resubmit next month when all facts are on the table

if the coins are 'burned' (not created) so be it , that is what the system is build for !
the network is not paying only for the sake of paying (as the budget is there) , and that is what other "potential partners of Dash" appreciate as well - the system is doing what it is supposed to do !

timepressure is NEVER a good bargaining point

I am voting for this proposal but I really don't think trying to guilt trip the MNs is a good path forward.

To be frank, it's not fair that my developer's haven't been paid. I am diplomatic and professional in my tone. At least I'm replying as a CEO of my company, where is the CEO of Dash?

Did Dash fail to meet any agreement obligations? I am unaware of such a case. If not, there is clearly a different problem here regarding the payment of your developers.

that your developers are supposedly not paid - is your responsibility - not Dash
where is that sudden time pressure coming from ?

ryan has not replied as he and team are collecting the data to have their facts straight ! there was no warning , no reaching out or asking about 'whatever' funding , it seems you preferred to go straight to community, put the time pressure on with an extra "seek funding elsewhere" line.
how did it get to this ?
we are trying to communicate here but it seems you prefer to stick to allegations and calling out people
please pick up your phone and talk to ryan + fernando (he has been to your office many times , is in direct contact with you direct on a weekly bases - why are you ignoring him now ??)

I've already voted yes and the can understand some of your frustration, but surely Graham you can see that trying to guilt trip MNOs or calling out Ryan who is one of Core's most respected members will only make people less likely to vote for this proposal.

There is still time left and many people vote on the final day. Pushing hard for a vote is fine, but would be a shame if comments made in the heat of the moment irreparably burn bridges.

Hi thesingleton,

Again thanks for your comment.

If this proposal passes for the first month at least, then we can pay our developers and we will publish a joint statement with Ryan in support of Core and we will work with Core to ensure communication channels are not obstructed for us or other partners in the future.
We understand the problems of scaling and staff shortages. It's how we deal with these problems when they arise that count. We will put this behind us if a resolution can be found.

Thank you,
Darren Dineen
COO of Opera Incubator

I thought the money isn't burned, rather just not created