Dash Core Group September 26th Funding Proposals:
DCG is submitting 3 funding proposals for the budget cycle that pays out on September 26th:
1) DCG Compensation: 2,296 Dash per month (currently in month 1/3)
2) DCG Infrastructure: 459 Dash (currently in month 1/2)
3) DCG Supplemental: A supplemental proposal for any unclaimed proposal funding most likely will be submitted a week before the end of the budget cycle.
What does this specific proposal fund?
This multi-month proposal funds Dash Core Group's ongoing infrastructure and corporate software costs. We detail these costs in the following “Infrastructure Cost Details” section.
Infrastructure Cost Details
The tools and services to be covered by this proposal are critical for the DCG developers and other staff to work productively. It also includes hosting for externally-facing services including the website, forum, testnet, devnets, etc.
Our current infrastructure costs average $18,000/month - this includes infrastructure, software licenses, tools, and applications used by DCG. At the current exchange rate of $45 / Dash, all of our non-compensation funding needs to be used for infrastructure purposes. This means that if the price stays at current levels, we will only be submitting infrastructure proposals. Luckily, we have a small reserve in our legal, business development and marketing budgets, sufficient to “keep the lights on” in those units.
Funds requested for the following:
- Cloud computing services (for hosting ~155 testnet and devnet servers, insight API, dash.org website, forum, etc.) with AWS and DigitalOcean. This has been lowered from around 200 servers needed to better test the v18 upgrade.
- Software development tools, licenses, and applications (including continuous integration builds).
- Google Workspace (includes email hosting, calendar, document management, video conferencing, and a number of other productivity tools).
- Security applications (password managers, VPN services, and custodial wallets)
- Infrastructure monitoring tools.
- Service desk licenses.
- Accounting, finance, and expense reimbursement software subscriptions.
- Video-conferencing services (Zoom).
- Collaboration tools such as Atlassian and Slack that collectively constitute the DCG “workspace”.
- HR systems, recruitment and interview tracking/feedback/collaboration tools, and recruitment sites (this has increased the monthly cost of operations, but will be reduced in the coming months).
- Forum upgrades and maintenance done by third party freelancers.
The expenses for cloud computing instances constitute the largest portion of our infrastructure costs, at approximately $10,000 per month. This includes cloud computing services for Dash Platform’s presence on testnet and devnets for the platform and mobile team environments.
We continually review all of our infrastructure costs with the goal of only paying for what we need. Over the last 6 months, our infrastructure costs increased but more recently decreased:
- Increased and then decreased demand from Platform and Core teams for testnet and devnet servers (fluctuating demand until Platform mainnet)
- Expansion of the number of staff leads to an increase in tools and licensing costs (permanent increase)
- Implementation of recruitment tools and recruitment website subscriptions (temporary increase in costs)
Overall, we anticipate our infrastructure costs to continue to average in the $15,000 to $20,000 monthly range. Infrastructure team have recently undertaken cost reduction efforts as follows:
- Downgrade Google Workspace account tier from Enterprise to Business to save on license costs
- Implement ARM support for operating devnets and testnet, facilitating AWS cost savings
- Audit accounts and licenses to ensure only active users are paid for
- Shut down infrastructure related to deprecated services such as Dash Electrum and Dash Radar
If you have any questions, please direct them to @strophy or @quantumexplorer in this Dashcentral post to ensure we are notified of your request.
Requested funding is as follows for the August and September budget cycles:
- 458.5 Dash for core team infrastructure ($20,630 USD @ $45 per Dash / month)
- 0.5 Dash proposal reimbursement (per month)
Total: 459 Dash
Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future infrastructure expenses and related taxes.
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