Welcome!

Definitely and absolutely yes!
ps: imho - anyone who voted against is compromised in terms of laundering the budget.

Vote YES

So lets say this proposal passes in about 5 months (its is a multi-month proposal consisisting of 6 months after all), how do you expect to actually enforce the following on every newly created budget proposal from every participant that request funding or will be requesting future funding from the Dash DAO :

* All proposals should begin with a description of the expected performance
* Identify the proposed key performance indicators (KPIs)
* Each proposal should include a link to a forum where the proposer should report what was and wasn't accomplished
* Each proposal must focus on one specific product

I will give you 5 months to explain to me the practical execution of this proposal.
How do you plan to enforce this on MNO's and Proposal Owners ?

What do you think will happen if this proposal passes and a proposal owner comes along that does not provide a description of the expected performance or is not providing missing KPIs or does not include a link to a forum for reporting or the proposal contains multiple products ?

I hope you are not naieve enough to think MNO's will just downvote those budget proposals en masse based solely on this proposal. Proposal owners most likely dont even know these stringent requirements exist before creating their budget proposal and MNO's will never downvote a budget proposal merely because of what you state in this specific proposal.

I hope you also understand that failure to comply with the requirements in the form of reports on the forum will lead to a lot of questions for the contractor and, as a result, trust in this contractor will decrease.

This proposal is being implemented for five months to allow Mn-owners and developers to get used to the new system of requesting funds from the treasury and adjust.

There's no need to punish non-compliance; this proposal will help identify which community members are the most effective. this system Identify those with the highest results and the lowest prices (price/quality ratio), so the community has a clear understanding of how much money has been spent and for what purposes.

This is a very useful tool that will clearly show who is doing what and how much it costs. The introduction of this system will eliminate speculation that some people are doing a lot while others are doing nothing and are simply taking money.

This mechanism (in the long term) will increase trust in those who are most effective and decrease trust in those who receive too much for their work.

qwizzie thank you for your question!

You write : "DCG is a black hole. Publishing reports on YouTube doesn't give a clear picture of where the huge sums of money are going. There's a list of team members on the website https://www.dash.org/ru/dcg/. There are about 30 of them. What do all these people do? Based on GitHub activity and YouTube reports, I can tell that about 7 people are involved in development. What do the rest of them do? Do they work like an iOS app developer, writing a few lines of code a month for a few thousand dollars? Do you know? I don't know either."

Here is our proposal: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/DCG-Operations-Sep-Dec-25

Here is what I say people do:

Technology:

CTO Samuel Westrich - quantumexplorer (making this proposal)

Core:
Lead C++ Software Engineer
Lead C++ Software Engineer
Senior C++ Software Engineer

Mobile
Lead Android Software Engineer and Principal Developer

Platform Team (no change):
Senior Rust Software Engineer
Rust Software Engineer
(CTO is heavily working on Platform)

Technology Support:

Communication / Business Development / Marketing:
Business Development Manager (very part time (1h/week) )
Documentation:
Lead Technical Content Developer
Human Resources:
HR Specialist

Infrastructure (no change):
Lead Infrastructure Engineer
Infrastructure Engineer
Web Developer

Project Management:
Lead SM / Project Manager

Product (no change):
Head of Product

Quality Assurance (no change):
QA Engineer

Tech Support (no change):
Lead Support Engineer
Support Engineer

Since I published that there were 2 additional people that have joined DCG (Ivan and Dustinface rejoined).

As much as I hate having to be pulled away from dev. I will do it. You said you only see 7 people developing.

Sam (me): https://github.com/quantumexplorer
Shumkov: https://github.com/shumkov
Lukazs: https://github.com/lklimek
Paul: https://github.com/pauldelucia
Pasta: https://github.com/PastaPastaPasta
UdjinM6: https://github.com/UdjinM6
Konstantine: https://github.com/knst
HashEngineering: https://github.com/hashengineering
Kittywhiskers (paid outside DCG): https://github.com/kwvg

Non devs:
Brian: https://github.com/bfoss765
Latte: https://github.com/ktechmidas
Vivek: https://github.com/vivekgsharma

We lost 2 mobile devs recently that I did not add to the list. And are backfilling those roles.

Why don't you ask Chat-GPT to give you an expected run-rate? Then compare that with what we get in. Post your findings here.

What sucks... is that most of our devs and myself took way under market compensation. And yes we lost some devs because they were offered over double to go somewhere else. But the ones that remain are getting attacked like this.

In this day and age it's so easy to just make up accusations without basis.

I also forgot:
Thephez: https://github.com/thephez

I agree, the OP is just spewing FUD without doing the slightest bit of research, he has earned my NO votes on every proposal he issues.

Sam, I have great respect for your work and what you do. However, my gripe is that I don't know how much each of your products costs.
I know how much dashcentral.org support and development costs,
I know how much browser support and development costs (for platform),
I know how much products from other artists cost....

But I don't know how much support and development Dash Core, Dash Pay (Android), Dash Pay (iOS), Platform, DET, etc.

You work hard as a developer, but I have a feeling you don't have time to supervise the rest of the team. This opinion is not unfounded.

I have some understanding of how business processes work (I have many years of experience managing a group of companies with more than 300 employees).

And I believe that to be more effective, you need to become more transparent, because the community will immediately spot weaknesses and take action (you won't have to spend thousands of dollars on ineffective products, for example - DashPay iOS). DCG is a black hole because the community can't see what's happening beyond the "event horizon" or where the money is going.

How do I do this without revealing salaries of employees? For European employees this is illegal (GDPR). For people outside Europe well... I believe very few would consent with me divulging their compensation.

I will say though that there isn't anyone making significantly more than others.

Maybe come up with a list of exact things you want to know and I will find out if I can answer them.

I agree that disclosing salaries is illegal in many countries. I wrote above that the existence of a registered company, Dash Corp Group, is precisely the point of failure, the maintenance of which is very expensive, both literally and figuratively.
I'm not advocating abandoning the company at this stage and disclosing employee salaries.

I'm advocating requesting the funds you need in different (targeted) installments and reporting on these installments.
For example:
1,000 Dash for platform development in January 2026
500 Dash for legal issues in Q1 2026
1,500 Dash for server infrastructure in 2026 (no need to disclose how much you pay the system administrator or hosters).

Then we'll understand where and how much money is going. And there won't be any more such discussions.

From there, we can think about how to improve the efficiency of processes. If we see that a lot of money is being spent on infrastructure, perhaps someone will be willing to provide infrastructure and administration for less. This way, we can save 100 Dash on one project and 150 Dash on another.
It's better to work with evangelists and those who care about the project than with those who are just working for the money and who aren't interested in the Dash project. I've been in the community since 2016 and I spend a lot of effort on developing the community without asking for public money. And such people exist.

The 2 people in infra are latte and vivek, both who accepted a 20% pay cut when things were bad and stuck with things in our worst hour, and then decided to be paid in a Dash denominated amount. Then the price of Dash went down and they still stuck around.

For infra costs we prepay 3 years at a time with AWS for our infra (testnet + a few other servers), this gets us a discounted rate. Yes we most likely could find an even better deal, but would need to spend quite a lot of time on migration, and often those better deals are not as reliable. We also get 5% off on top of the reduction because we use an amazon credit card. We went from spending about 15k/month when I wasn't CTO about 4 years ago to spending about 3k/month now (outside of salaries). We do care about spending less :)

I feel like your belief that there is a lot of money to save or that we are wasteful is unfounded.

In terms of where money is being spent... I just checked: Core is costing us about 28%, Mobile 27%, Platform 29% and Infra 16%. These are based on a price of Dash at 70$. (We have a few $ denominated contracts, but many Dash denominated ones).

1. Is it possible to transfer contracts paid in Dash to direct financing from the treasury (bypassing DCG)?
2. What's stopping you from publishing a separate proposal for infrastructure funding for three years in advance?
3. What's stopping you from requesting split funding on Dash Core, Platform, and Mobile Wallets?
4. Why don't you publish a list of the features you plan to implement for the requested amount? Then there will be no speculation or conjecture. You clearly stated that 100 Dash is needed to implement certain features. After you receive the money, if the features aren't implemented within the specified period, the community will immediately notice and point the finger at the ineffective developer, and we won't have to support them for six months (Dash Pay iOS)

1. Yes it's possible, but then devs are accountable to the whole network and not to someone that actually knows if they are doing a good job. The network is not made of computer scientists. If a dev goes in the wrong direction there is no manager to tell them they are wrong, and to correct path or not get paid. It's like having an orchestra with each musician doing their own thing. In the end it would just be noise.

2. Generally there's no point in making proposals if the result of a no vote on the proposal is that we can't work. Not having a testnet would be very detrimental to DCG's and other DFOs' ability to work.

3. It's overhead, and if one didn't get funding then the others often can not work. If core stopped being funded how could Platform work? If Platform stopped getting funding I would step down, because that's what I want to work on. If mobile stopped getting funding, well, we wouldn't be able to bring mobile products to market that used our features. I would be very unhappy about things. DCG is a cohesive unit, breaking things up will not increase productivity.

4. Yes Dashpay iOS was a mess up. There are much more success stories in DCG than mess ups. And those success stories sometimes took longer than originally anticipated. I don't think most MNOs really want to micromanage DCG.

I'm glad we're starting to develop a constructive dialogue. Thank you!
1. As the most understanding and responsible person, you should reserve the right to shape the roadmap, oversee the implementation of all necessary functions within that roadmap, and control all processes. I've noticed more than once that you sometimes work like a bad orchestra. For example, I've seen situations more than once (on GitHub) where mobile wallet developers can't work because the platform developers haven't added the necessary features. There's also a lack of synchronization within the platform developers, which leads to code rewrites. It feels like you're constantly trying different options during development, and if something goes wrong, all the other developers, including third-party teams, suffer. If you clearly documented all the functionality of each node and the principles of interaction between them, things would be much simpler.

2. I'm not suggesting you abandon the testnet. There are many sensible people in the Dash community who won't allow the current processes to be interrupted. Even despite my criticism, I continue to support you and your proposals. In fact, I even continue to support the_desert_lynx (though my patience with Joel is at its limit).

3. It's wrong to cover one working product with another broken product. If Dash Core is working well, don't use it to protect other products. For example, the platform is a second layer. Splitting the block reward between Dash Core and the Platform, with the goal of popularizing the platform, was a big mistake. But now that CreditPool is already working, I don't want to discuss it. The point is that all DCG divisions should interact with each other according to a documented scenario. However, while you're developing the platform, other developers are sitting idle or doing unnecessary work that will later need to be redone, and redoing it costs money again. The solution is very simple: Create a proper roadmap for each division, describe the API for interaction between nodes. And the whole orchestra will start working properly. Adopting a roadmap describing all APIs should be presented in a separate proposal with a budget that will allow you (as the leader) to monitor the implementation process. If someone doesn't follow the roadmap or writes code incorrectly, everyone will see it, including you. I've worked on large projects with many departments, and I know what I'm talking about.

4. Most masternode operators genuinely don't want or can't control all processes, but we'll fix that over time. I'm working towards that. As for successes, there are indeed many, but they could be much greater if good practices for interdepartmental collaboration are implemented. And these can only be realized when all mechanisms are transparent.

I'm confident that a smooth transition to a transparency and accountability model will be beneficial in the long run.

I don't agree with the criticism of DCG; Platform and other improvements have increased Dash's value proposition by A LOT and I believe that is money well-spent.

However, for other proposals like "DashGrowth" which do not show any effect nor transparency (basically all of Joel's proposals), I wholeheartedly agree.

We had something called "DashWatch" that POs would report KPI metrics to EVERY MONTH and we could see who was doing what, for what cost. We should get that back again.

therealDashman21 used to be an MNO, but he/she does not take the challenge to prove that he still owns an MNO.

Therefore his/her opinion should not be considered in this discussion.

Dash.Growth is completely transparent, drop this witch hunt, will you?

Not its not and NO I WON'T. What has 'Dash Growth' given to the network??? 40k a month and WHAT DO WE RECEIVE in return?!?

Vote YES. I support this proposal.

For a very long time, funds in the Dash community have been spent opaquely. For example, no one in the Dash community can accurately answer the question of how much money was spent on the Dash Android mobile wallet in September 2025.

The Dash community website dash.org doesn't have a permanent link to view all reports in plain text. Searching for reports in various places, such as forums and YouTube, is not the right approach.

I believe there are many red flags and sure as hell there is reason to be concerned about how DCG regularly spends funds or outright disappears funds to build a clandestine DCG-operated masternode fleet for the purpose to completely dominate the voting process.

On many occasions, we have witnessed those 200-300 votes incoming, in most cases 2-3 days before the voting deadline.
Very suspicious voting behavior indeed.
Always in favor of keeping the status-quo intact.

Sam has two options now:

1) Sam either answering to the MNO why people in DCG are continuously being paid, WITHOUT DOING ANY WORK AT ALL or very little work ??

OR

2) Sam being silent as usual, which just escalates the already existing suspicions of potentially mishandled funds and confirms that there is something very wrong with how DCG is run since the absence of a CEO, CFO and CMO.

It shows also gross negligence and is very unreasonable, not to spend half of the DAO funds on marketing efforts.
Dash price reflects exactly how budget funds are being spent and are poorly prioritized, just as the other PO accurately observed.

The entirety of budget funds always being spent in such a way, it doesn't make Dash the talking point in the crypto industry, will forever keep Dash price extremely low. We could be down to a price of $20 when the next huge correction happens.

"1) Sam either answering to the MNO why people in DCG are continuously being paid, WITHOUT DOING ANY WORK AT ALL or very little work ??" -> Can you find instances of this? Our Github is public, and we try to be as transparent as possible within the confines of respect of our employees.

So go on Github and show me people who are not doing work. We have routinely pushed out releases for both Core and Platform. Right now our mobile team has just 1 developer, but I just hired another than will start later this month.

I will answer as many questions as I can without telling you what each person is making.

At a price of 20$ which we were at until 2 months ago, we were getting roughly 115k USD per month. When you have about 15 paid staff, plus infrastructure it doesn't go far. As a CTO I was making much less than a normal software engineer on the west cost of the USA.

As the price has risen we have added a considerable amount to our reserves. We are expanding smartly and looking to backfill a few more roles. We have a lot in store for the next year, and with the current price and our reserves things have not looked this bright since 2017.

I also don't understand why you think I'm silent, is there an instance where I have been silent in the past? Can you point it to me?

Thanks for chiming in.
Please don't confound critique with ingratitude.
The overwhelming majority of MNO (including myself) is thankful to all the effort and sacrifice you put in over the last years.
We know, where you are coming from, what your background and expertise is, and it seems to be blessing and curse alike.

First of all, outside of Discord, the silence is way too often deafening loud on other communication channels,
including here on DC when important or potentially course-changing proposals are up for voting.
And silence is only one side of the communication deficit we experience with DCG, the other issue is secrecy, in terms of salaries, reserves, prioritization of funds, which employees work on what, how many hours, etc.

We trusting MNOs who still support DCG proposals would really like to believe, that waste of funds is minimized and that DCG employees are compensated based on their measurable contributions by applying principle of proportionality.
Who doesn't contribute or no longer contributes anything of value, shouldn't be paid any longer.
Who contributes little, should be paid little.
Who contributes a lot, should be paid a lot.
This PO is not the only one, frankly almost everyone gets the impression that only 7-8 people in DCG are really working, but the other remaining 20 people in DCG, nobody really knows whether they even work.

Price has risen significantly (tripled), will this suffice to pay KittyWhiskers, for example, from the DCG budget?
Or will that require at least a ten-fold higher price? I think you get my point.
Freeing up resources in the budget would potentially allow to spend them on marketing instead.

It is time, we get past the notion that Dash price is somehow coupled to pure randomness.
Or that Dash price is coupled to development efforts. Because it is not.
If anything, we should have learned that. We tried this for 8 long years now.
We already launched Platform/EVO with almost no effect at all to price performance.
Price is roughly the same as it was before the 2017 bullrun.
While many other coins stabilized their price 10fold or even 20fold above the pre-2017 price levels.
If price is coupled to anything, then it is effective marketing efforts.

Nobody can understand, why in the past there was never a legal issue with DCG doing some marketing.
And now all of a sudden, marketing is a huge legal or regulatory issue for DCG. What a nonsense.

Building up reserves should not be too important. Their usefulness shouldn't be overestimated.
Because reserves will be of very limited use, when price crashes back down to $20 or even below.
Rather than saving up for reserves, we should instead spend on effective marketing efforts now.
A higher price will not just grow the monthly budget, but make any reserves and the need for them obsolete.

For almost a decade we have blown like 70% of the budget on development efforts, 20% on ineffective proposals and perhaps 10% on marketing with mediocre results so far.
Of course we could continue doing just that, to the detriment of every MNO and Dash holder.
But there is really no good reason, not to change and try something else, for a couple of months at least.
Not necessarily with Joel, but trying new, innovative approaches with marketing.

If we did the exact opposite, spending 90% on effective marketing efforts, and only 10% on development, we may not have instantX, we may not have LLMQs, we may not have ChainLocks, we may not have Platform out and running.
But price would be $2,000 right now.
DCG totally underestimates how quickly price could be at $200 - $300, if we only spend 30%-50% of the monthly budget on effective marketing for a couple of months.

This cycle three promising marketing proposals by POs who were considered outsiders, have been downvoted,
And i certainly don't blame DCG for it, but there seems to be no outreach to cooperate, no willingness to evaluate their effectiveness at least, or to pick up their proposed approach by DCG or someone else.
This is sad stuff man.
There are Dash holders who are already suicidal or struggle with starvation, homelessness and misery, because of low Dash price. Not everyone is a MNO, let alone a multi-MNO.

We could have a $10 billion market-cap in no time, corresponding to a $400 price, that is to say in less than a year, if we started spending 50% of the budget on effective marketing.
Why would it be crazy or insane to do just that? It is only the lack of will, which keeps us down.
Or the fear of changing and trying something else after so much time.
But if we do not even acknowledge that there is a need to drastically change something, then everything will remain and continue the way it is, including Dash price.

But i don't delude myself. Nothing will change. Because DCG never sees any reason to ever change.
Since the absence of a CEO, CFO and CMO you Sam are the most trusted and most influential person in DCG.
As long as you enjoy the support of the vast majority of MNO, it is your decisions and the way you prioritize the spending of funds, which will either make or break Dash.

Spending 50% of the budget on effective marketing is the furtive shortcut to a $10 billion market-cap.
Please be open-minded and courageous to try something 'crazy'.
AT THIS POINT WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE ANYMORE, BUT EVERYTHING TO GAIN.

By keeping everything the way it is, the coming next 8 years will the exact same, like the last 8 years have been.

Reading a lot here: you are very price focused.

My goal is improve the lives of people using our products. Have our chain reduce bureaucracy, nepotism, mismanagement and corruption. Build systems where people no longer have a central authority that they need to trust with their life earnings.

My main goal is building a better future, it is not increasing the Dash price. I do believe that an increase in the Dash price will follow once we get the vision I have completely working and in the hands of people.

In terms of why the price went up, you believe it isn't tech at all... Which might be true. There were a few new whales in Dash that started all of this started. Maybe it was marketing, maybe it was tech. But it snowballed as more and more people started to see the price go up. And few people willing to sell their Dash.

I personally do not think marketing alone will increase the Dash price, while it might just based on speculation I would prefer a much more organic increase based on tech improvements and people liking these improvements. I think the token marketplace will be game changing in this regard once it's out.

DCG don't control any nodes, some of their staff own a few nodes, but not in the numbers to state, you can refer to MNOwatch.org for more details on voting and patterns.

"All proposals should begin with a description of the expected performance."

Not all of them. The implementation proposals.

The governance proposals should have a different format, they should be numbered with a unique number and mention the numbers of the prerequired laws.

For example.

4_DAO-treasury_prerequired_2,3

Be aware, this user is NOT a MNO and therefore their opinion should not be considered in this discussion.

I have an MNO vote! BUZZ OFF!

therealDashman21 used to be an MNO, but he/she does not take the challenge to prove that he still owns an MNO.

Therefore his/her opinion should not be considered in this discussion.

It won't be perfect, we need to at least start somewhere. If even 50% of marketing and development proposals adhere to these principles, efficiency will increase.

Looks like for the next 6 months people can discuss this discussion proposal at length. Should we make changes to the Dash DAO Treasury at some point or should we keep it as is ?

Personally i would like to see a more distinct seperation between budget proposals, network polling proposals and discussion proposals, clearly defined within the Dash budget system structure. With budget proposals and network polling proposals each having their own treshold requirements and discussion proposals not needing any treshold and just used to enable discussion on certain (hopefully interesting) topics during a long time period.

So in other words : i would like to see some structural changes to the Dash budget system in the future. I am sure that is not exactly what proposal owner had in mind, when he created this proposal. But a discussion proposal like this is also opens up the door to discuss the topic Dash DAO Treasury in general, which i find far more interesting to playing blame games on one specific person or group of persons.

Edit button where art thou ? grrrr..

I'm not attacking anyone, I'm trying to explain where the problems are using specific cases as examples.