Welcome!

Core is busting their ass to get stuff done while they are short staffed. The trust protectors are working hard to fill those gaps ASAP. Perhaps not everyone was aware that prior to the controversy between Ryan and Mark, Ryan had already informed the Trust Protectors that he was resigning as CEO for personal reasons.

Ok, let's have a nice uncontroversial budget cycle and keep core funded while they reorganize.

solarguy

Following a meeting this morning, the Trust Protectors want to announce to the network that Ryan has stepped down from his position as CEO and as a board member of Dash Core Group. He wishes to encourage the DAO to support DCG's compensation proposal so it can continue without negatively impacting their ability to execute.

The Trust Protectors are working with DCG to determine the next steps and will release a further statement in due course.

As a Dash Trust Protector, I can confirm that this statement is true.

you are still stepping down, right? Your earlier post didn't make it sound like an ultimatum but a good bye.

I confirm this is legitimate and comes from the Trust Protectors.

Walter

As a DTP, I verify that this statement is accurate.

Just confirming this statement by the DTPs.

I confirm this is legitimate and comes from the Trust Protectors.

I want to thank Ryan Taylor for his commitment and dedication over his years as acting CEO of Dash Core Group and i want toconvey that i have a deep respect for Ryan Taylor for making this decision in order to keep the DCG Compensation budget proposal funded and putting the best interest of the Dash network above himself.

With the resignation of Ryan Taylor as CEO of Dash Core Group and the subsequent operational knowledge and personal information about DCG inner workings flying out of the window this way, i just see a lot of turbulence and pressure on individual Dash Core Group members ahead, in a time that the focus should have been on getting Dash Platform out and Dash Core Group marketing under way.

I wish the Dash Core Group good luck for the times ahead.

A sad day for Dash. We've officially fallen victim to a successful decapitation attack.

I have changed my vote to Yes based on the recent news that Ryan is stepping down.

I also have changed my vote in favor of funding the compensation proposal. Much respect to Ryan and the Trust Protectors in a difficult situation.

solarguy

Shouldn’t we be looking at a replacement recipient for funding (ie. DCG v2) before we just completely stop the current funding and development?

(To me, it’s like quitting a job before you’ve found a new one and then trying to live without any income)

I have changed my votes to YES upon recent developments. Hopefully the DAO will find success in finding a successor to Ryan that will confidently lead DCG into our new chapter.

This document has been posted as my response to address the recent AMA video interview with Dash Core Group CEO Ryan Taylor.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oA2A_6dK-yOYhNMLmoNGNjzpL-_M4mTR94Grq_c8X2c/edit?usp=sharing

I don't get it, why are we allowing someone from one DAO to defund and browbeat another DAO? Mark Mason shouldn't have any ability to hire/fire CEOs of a different DAO that's not his, and certainly not DCG. That is corruption and represents a conflict of interest.

This is gaslighting. Normal coins wouldn't dare ruin their chances at the gold right at the finish line like this. But our enemies seek to prevent us from smoothly sailing to the finish line and they use dishonest tactics to accomplish their goal. You can tell this is an attack because there's no contingency plan. No other admin team to lead DCG in the DCG admin's absence.

If you really cared about the network and wanted the best for Dash, that would be the least you would do if you were going through with something like this. Mark Mason and his acolytes are an attack on the Dash network.

For the first time ever, I am voting no for the Core compensation prop. I think there was both wrongdoing and incompetence going on in Blackballgate. But let's set that aside for a moment. Ryan's not a bad guy, but by any objective measure (Evo progress, Dash Price, Engagement all across social media, rank on CMC, public profile, relationship with community) it has been stagnant at best. Yes, he has made important contributions in the past, but we can't just coast on previous work.

Dash is at a critical crossroads. We used to think it was terrible when we slipped out of the top 10. At the moment we are in real danger of slipping out of the top 100. If that happens, we have effectively lost the battle.
Dash has the best tech in the cryptosphere. Ryan is the CEO of Dash Core. The buck stops with Ryan. Some have called for drastically changing the structure of core. I don't think that is necessary.

Let's appoint somebody competent as interim CEO and find somebody with better skills and more motivated and understands that core and the CEO works for the MN community, not the other way around. Ryan admits he is "extremely time constrained" right now. We have hardly seen him for the last 6 months. No explanation as to why, or what he is going to do about it.

I'm sorry, but being really busy (with something....?) is not a good reason or excuse to continue to ruin Dash by inaction. If you care about Dash being relevant a year from now, vote NO. And if Ryan convinces a few Dash whales to get this prop into the green, that is not a stamp of approval for Ryan to continue as an ineffective leader. We must get a new CEO and better communication to further assess Core. The problem is not the dev team. Let's support them by fixing the leadership problem.

I was out of the loop for more than a year because my wife had cancer. That's over and we won. I'm back and it feels great. I was almost nostalgic to see realdashman and nam3 hard at it again. Almost. Ignore them, they are wrong. We have the most powerful, robust, innovative monetary cryptocurrency in the world. Period, full stop. If we crank up the marketing and get some real leadership going, it won't be that hard to turn this around.

Vote no and let's get some shit done around here.

Solarguy

Congrats on beating cancer! Happy for you and hope she stays in remission! I second everything else you said.

I appreciate that very much. solarguy

Well that was unnecessarily rude, especially considering I still don't know where I fall on whether Ryan should be replaced.

You lost your credibility and "burned your social capital" when you exposed yourself as being a censoring moderator who stood up for an infiltrator from the Monero community by banning me from reddit's dashpay multiple times. You had NO RIGHT to do that and you abused your power in doing so.

Luckily for me, by doing that you exposed the fact that you had sold our community out (there's no reason for a supposedly pro-Dash moderator to ban posters who are attacking our competition, doing so heavily implies a conflict of interest). So, your comment here has to be taken in that light. You are not here for the best interests of the Dash network, you are here for your own personal agenda which doesn't benefit the rest of us. If it did, you would tell us and include us in it.

To address your post, Dash has the most performant and capable core team out of any cryptocurrency. Indeed this is most likely the reason the infiltrator party-line has always been "Core sucks!" and "we have to fire Ryan Taylor!" Why? Because you are trying to take out your most powerful competition's leadership while pretending and gaslighting the the network that its for our best interests.

The only "legitimate" complaint you can muster is the delay in Platform's release. And that's not really legitimate either because NOBODY'S EVER DONE THIS BEFORE. So you don't know how long it would, should or could take. Which means you have NO MEANS by which to judge if Core is moving too fast or too slow. And since no other coin is even capable of this functionality, you appear to be attempting a "perfection attack".

A "perfection attack" is an attack that weak people have to use to get rid of stronger competition. When you can't compete on a level playing field as your competition, you get them to DESTROY THEMSELVES by comparing them to a perfect version of themselves and pointing out failures and flaws. So nobody is perfect, this works on even the best of competitors.

However, the "attack" part is that you deliberately IGNORE the fact that NOBODY ELSE IS EVEN CLOSE to that competitor, and certainly not you so you have no place to make judgments. Monero doesn't even have a "core team". Nor does BCH, really. They have people that lay claim to that title, BUT NONE OF THEM are beholden to their very networks. They all have messy, volunteer-based funding efforts, which prevents them from truly being decentralized.

Your comment and line of reasoning ignores this. You are a bad actor. You have no right to critique Dash or our Core Team. You sold the network out years ago and are just cashing in on your "influence" to try and do harm and damage to our coin so our competition doesn't have to feel insecure about not being properly developed. I can comfortably make this accusation because you engaged in censorship, and other actions that indicate a conflict of interest, which means you are not being honest or forthcoming with your commentary.

Your wife getting cancer would've been a good excuse for you to never show your face again, because you don't deserve to be here. Until you can point out another coin that is doing better than Dash in terms of leadership, or hell is even CLOSE to Dash in terms of deliverables, transparency in finance and accounting as well as transparency in development (i.e. a coin that matches our quarterly calls) you have NO RIGHT to criticize DCG.

Yeah.....no. You were warned repeatedly not to call people liars and other assorted personal attacks. I told you repeatedly that you could attack _their argument_ all you wanted. But no personal attacks. The terms of service on Reddit Dashpay are very clear about that. I consider it a badge of honor to be the one that banned you.

solarguy

Yeah, yeah. First of all you don't have the right to "warn me" for calling some WHO IS LYING a liar. That was not against the rules. Calling names like "idiot etc" was against the rules. If you're lying THAT IS AN ATTACK. You didn't have a defense then and you don't have one now so I'd quit while I'm behing if I were you.

You didn't have the right to limit my speech, the rules you claimed to enforce CAME FROM ME. Even still you didn't actually cite the rule I broke when you banned me, and permanently banning a Masternode Owner from a main communication channel is completely inappropriate. You were like a janitor, you have NO BUSINESS censoring MNOs.

Furthermore you're being a hypocrite, you never banned ANYONE ELSE for that kind of language. In fact dashpay clearly forgot about those rules as people call others a lot worse things than liars there, including swearing. So you're just transparently dishonest.

You only applied that standard to me because you had an agenda. You consider it a badge of honor because you're paid to destroy Dash, so enacting censorship, especially on someone who fights Dash's enemies, would be considered good to you. But that's only because you're a bad actor, thank you for admitting that.

"You consider it a badge of honor because you're paid to destroy Dash, "
Not even remotely close. Ok, we're done here. Have a nice day.
solarguy

That's the most logical conclusion. Unless you want to explain why you banned a masternode owner permanently from a major communication channel for calling an admitted liar a liar, which again was not against the rules?

Good on you to run with your trail between your legs...again. You just prove that the only thing you guys have is gumption. I admit that you have balls to lie and censor the way you did while pretending you're still on the side of the network.

Can't believe people are still supporting this dumpster fire of a team, and it comes right from the top.
But we're just a few months away from releasing evolution! We've been told this lie over and over. Eventually, DCG will release something, but here's how it will go. No one except the most hard-core loyalists will care when it drops. No one will use it. Anyone who does use it won't like it. Evo has no privatesend. No desktop client. No hardware support. The performance will crack at the first whiff of load testing. How many times are we going to need to completely wipe and reset mainnet because of bugs? We should have abandoned evo years ago and found a different direction. The resignation of our previous CTO was him knowing that this project is a sinking ship that can't be salvaged. That might be hard to hear, but it's the truth.

DCG as an organization is an abysmal failure. Ryan Taylor keeps repeatedly hiring the wrong people. Doesn't understand what appeals to people in the market today. No effort on social media. No enthusiasm about Dash anymore. You know it's going south when our biggest fan Joel Valenzuela and Mark Mason aren't even enthused anymore. You can hear it in the voices of everyone in DCG's quarterly update. Our firebrand reddit moderator Basilpop who spent years abusing his powers to defend Dash isn't interested anymore. Is there a single content creator making Dash content? No one new is submitting budget proposals. And of course, our market performance smells of dead tuna compared to all our peers. This nothingness is a consequence of lack of vision, lack of execution, lack of accountability and transparency. If DCG stopped all development work today, no one would notice and it wouldn't even affect anything. That's how pointless this has become.

Many of you are saying replace Ryan Taylor. That's only one part of the problem. Dash needs to stop going through the motions, do a major reset, do some soul-searching and practice self-care. We can start by shaking up DCG, using a bulldozer instead of window cleaning a building that is structurally unsound.

I agree with everything you just said.

I have identified you several times in the past as someone who lies and manipulates the narrative to attack Dash's DAOs in the third world while supporting rinky dink nowhere'sville proposals instead. This indicates that nothing you say should be taken seriously and anything you "agree with" should cause the opposite stance to be the most attractive.

I have identified you several times in the past as someone who does personal attacks, generally because you don't have a better argument. This indicates that nothing you say should be taken seriously and anything you "agree with" should cause the opposite stance to be the most attractive.

How many times did I warn you (prior to the ban) on reddit about calling people liars and engaging in personal attacks? Come on now, don't wiggle out of the question.

solarguy

Man, I forgot how much fun this is.

>I have identified you several times in the past as someone who does personal attacks,

I have never been known to make personal attacks on r/dashpay, which is where the majority (>95%) of our interaction has taken place so this is false

>generally because you don't have a better argument.

This is DEFINITELY FALSE. I have defeated YOU PERSONALLY at least 4 times in direct argumentation where you were silenced and had no response, so this just you projecting.

> This indicates that nothing you say should be taken seriously and anything you "agree with" should cause the opposite stance to be the most attractive.

Not at all. See, this is the problem with shills, for shills. Just repeating my argument back at me isn't going to work. My argument works because IT IS VALID and based on logical premises. You just returning my argument to me when that's not true isn't going to work. But you're a shill so you deliberately behave irrationally to throw your opponent off.

>How many times did I warn you (prior to the ban) on reddit about calling people liars and engaging in personal attacks?

You don't have the right to warn me about calling a LIAR a LIAR! Flenst was LYING TO THE COMMUNITY and deleted his account when he was exposed!! YOU LOST THAT ARGUMENT AND WERE PROVEN WRONG! You don't have the right to use that as evidence that you were correct, YOU WERE PROVEN WRONG!

>Man, I forgot how much fun this is.

Because you never knew in the first place

> Our firebrand reddit moderator Basilpop who spent years abusing his powers to defend Dash isn't interested anymore

Basilpop being allowed to ban everyone on the reddit may well be why the Dash community is so low energy.

Yes, Basilpop was a very bad figurehead for Dash. Hard to count, but he may easily have done more damage than good. He was one of my first contacts with Dash and, boy, was I turned off. I ended up sticking around, I'm sure many others didn't. Happy he's gone.

The community isn't low energy, but the subreddit and discords are. This is what happens when you allow censorship. Basilpop and Joel should've never been allowed to become "moderators". They abuse their power for selfish reasons and use censorship ala theymos and just expect you to accept it. Which is why nobody participates in the subreddit anymore. Censorship without participation is useless, so they got what they deserve for sure.

My Statement on Blackball Gate

GM Dash Family,

I have thought a great deal about whether or not I should make a public statement regarding "Blackball Gate" and ultimately I have decided to speak up and do it publicly rather then anonymously. In my opinion, the situation and how it has been handled in regards to Mark Mason is not a one-off accusation but rather something that has happened to others as well, myself included.

For those of you who don't remember I used to run "Green Candle" which acted as an escrow entity for the network during some of our most successful years. This entity was self-formed and funded by myself personally to fill a void the network needed (escrow) and to provide accountability to the network. At our peak, we were escrowing large amounts of funds, in addition to signing MOU's on behalf of the network to hold contractors accountable, and I wanted the network to feel safe knowing that there was a legal entity they could hold accountable rather than just some words on a website and a handle.

Prior to starting Green Candle I had also started working as a Network Engineer for Dash Core Group. I originally was brought on to help with a large email migration moving all of the DGC tech stack into new cloud based services that would allow further interoperability with our teams geographically spread out over the entire world. Later this morphed into a full-time job helping to keep the network's infrastructure running. Prior to starting Green Candle my relationship with DGC CEO Ryan Taylor was good. We shared one-on-one lunch and we built a rapport where he would ask me questions directly, even sometimes late at night or in the evenings via a direct message to my cell phone. To me, it felt very much like I was providing value to the entire Dash Network by making sure that I supported its CEO in any way possible.

Then strange things started to happen behind the scenes. Things that at the time I didn't have the ability to understand. Responses that at one time had been cordial suddenly became much more scarce. As a result, tasks started to take longer to accomplish because it became hard to do our job for the network. Whether it was information we needed to disseminate or questions we needed answered, it became harder and harder to complete. Now at this time I was still a contracted employee of DGC as well as the Director of Green Candle, which was working directly for the Dash DAO but not funded by it. I was wearing many hats but so were others inside of our constantly changing and growing DAO.

Being a contracted employee for DGC allowed me to have a special perspective because for years I was behind this curtain of secrecy that the community actively wonders about. I was present at the first Dash Open House, BTC Miami, the first Dash Conference in London, Money 2020, I got to travel the world and promote Dash and along the way accomplished a lot of firsts in industries that are still being targeted today.

After reading all the dialogue and following Dash from afar for the last few years it is my opinion that Mark isn't the first person to be given this blackball treatment. Rather I think he comes as the last in a line of people that have suffered this fate after working inside of Dash Core Group and not staying quiet and following the status quo. It is my opinion that similar things happened to people before me. It is my believe that myself, Andy Freer, and now Mark Mason have all suffered from a blackball gate event.

I'm sure there are others out there and it is my hope that as more people speak up this barrier of secrecy that DGC has kept up since the days of Daniel Diaz will finally be torn down. It is also my hope that by speaking out and drawing a line in the sand both as a masternode owner and as a former employee of Dash Core Group that together we will make the Dash network stronger and more robust.

Situations like these are hard. Removing emotions from your decisions and statements is even harder, but my choice to speak out was one of providing due dilligence to the MNOs that have supported all of my efforts towards making Dash better. The more stories they hear, the more information they can be given, the better decisions they can make for the network.

To Ryan - if you are reading this, thank you for everything you have done at Dash. Working for the network is an overwhelming experience filled with firsts and Dash wouldn't be what it is today without your efforts and guidance. Thank you for everything you have done for Dash. This discussion isn't about one person. This discussion is about the health of Dash and the power and simplicity of our DAO. I hope these discussions bring the Dash community together and make it even stronger then it ever was.

There will be two sides to every discussion and if you agree with me, that the current structure of Dash Core Group allows for this type of blackball gate to happen then I ask that you stand along side me in my request that DGC address their lack of accountability, transparency, and respect for the communities requests by proving to us that if we all want a change in the CEO or any of the DGC employees that they will make this happen promptly.

I have remained quiet in the community for a long time since my exit from Dash. Watching what is unfolding with Mark Mason has compelled me to speak up. It has forced me to ask myself the question whether some of the actions behind the scenes from this culture that has been festering during this period of Ryan leading Dash isn't more to do with our severe under performance than us being so obviously rejected by the market. The person Dash needs leading the way is one that should have qualities of building up and making stronger the brilliant minds around him, the minds that want to build and evolve the technology. Rather than a history of brilliant minds moving on from Dash due to frustration we should have a history of brilliant minds rising up through their partnerships and choices to work alongside Dash. These visionaries like Mark Mason, and before him Andy Freer, and before them all the other frustrated DFO members that have tried to work with the DAO only to leave frustrated, overwelmed, and under appreciated should be helped and supported in their tasks. This culture of exclusion doesn't mix with our decentralized focus. We need to all support each other and use these mediums to have open and transparent discussions for the better of Dash. The Dash DAO history shouldn't be one filled with holes left from frustrated projects, it should be one that shows a culture of inclusion, growth, and support for all participants.

If you made it to the bottom thank you sincerely for reading and if you have any comments on this please make sure you @ me so I can follow along.

Thank you,

@coingun

https://blog.coingun.com/posts/blackball-gate

two things on this:

1) DCG needs to communicate better. Even when Evan was in charge their communication was always hot garbage and while it hasn't gotten that much worse under Ryan, it hasn't gotten better either. In the absence of communication from DCG anyone can come in and set up a narrative as we are seeing above and with Mark Mason. DCG needs to change and I am all for that.

2) What exactly are you accusing Ryan of here? You say you were black balled but don't even offer an instance of Ryan or DCG doing anything to you. It seems from this that really what happened is Ryan didn't want DCG to be associated with Green Candle, a company that (IMO) brought some really really bad proposals to the network (logo on boxing shorts, Airplane decals, a show on Russia Today no one watched, etc.), and as a result severed ties with you so that the two wouldn't be linked together. How is that blackballing? That seems like Ryan looking out for his organization within the Dash ecosystem.

I am not opposed to replacing Ryan with a new CEO, but what I am seeing is a series grifter or grifter adjacent people from Dash's past seeing a moment of weakness and making their move to get back on the inside.

I don't think its fair to say it hasn't gotten better. That's objectively not true. Quarterly calls weren't happening under Evan (IIRC, correct me if I'm wrong), and if they were, the level of detail on operations and development definitely were not.

I remember people being upset to know even what the devs were building. Some complained that privateSend development was closed source and they couldn't tell what was happening. Now we have sprints as well as detailed quarter-by-quarter info about not only financials but also technical developments and adoption efforts under DCG.

So it is objectively FALSE imo to say that it "hasn't gotten better either". It has.

Its not even a moment of weakness. How can people justify firing Ryan Taylor because he didn't want to work with Mark Mason? Why does Mark Mason have any sort of importance at all? What benefit does he bring to the network that's worth removing our CEO over?

These are the questions that if you don't answer, you won't be able to protect yourself from the accusation of being a shill and an infiltrator.

You are very abrasive but you are right, it has gotten better. It appears I dropped a much, what I meant to type is that it hasn't gotten much better.

And since I know your going to argue with me on that, to be very precise what I mean is that I think they still have a long way to go to get to a level of communication that masternodes seem to want, and clearly it wasn't enough in this specific instance.

I have to be abrasive. When people are saying things that are not true and trying to get others to believe it, that is wrong behavior. I'm never abrasive unless I feel the need to be in order to correct bad behavior.

Its perfectly fine to think that Core could do better in communication. But its not fine, at least imo, to ignore the fact that DCG is the best core team with regards to communication than any other cryptocurrency. No other core team even does quarterly calls that I'm aware of.

Perfection is the enemy of the good.

how are you going to write so much, accuse Ryan of blackballing you and then not give any explanation of how or what specifically happened to you?
Everyone in here are sounding like politicians. It is getting ridiculous.

I'm voting no in protest at DCG leadership specifically the CEO for abuse of power to blackball the newsroom DFO in secrecy behind closed doors via centralized censorship. I'm a big fan of Sam as CTO and the development team. However, recent revelations have now been confirmed by two DIF Supervisor statements.

Michael's statement that the "heavy briefing" Ryan gave DIF Supervisors was "bizarre", "out of character" and that "no evidence" was provided. Most importantly Michael stated that Ryan "is NOT a fan of Mark at all".

It was clearly more personal than professional.

Michael went on to say: "If the DIF is being briefed in that way then I can only imagine what was being said internally at DCG. Regardless, it seems like a personal issue between them that has spilled over to directly affect and damage the network; which we all agree is unacceptable."

The DIF newsroom censorship also perfectly aligns time-wise with why there have been no DCG Biz Dev partnership announcements or details published in the newsroom or anywhere for the last 6 months.

I expect honesty and transparency from DCG. These actions taken by Ryan were sabotage. My position in Dash became untenable due to Ryan's actions which were intentional by his design. Ryan did not think I would ever discover that he was the culprit that orchestrated this move based on no evidence and only his word. I'm extremely grateful and give my thanks to the few brave DIF Supervisors who have now validated this to be true and this has now been exposed for all to see.

From the statements we have, as it currently stands Ryan's actions for censoring the newsroom were personal and not work-related reasons unless proven otherwise with hard evidence. I was clearly not supposed to ever find out that it was Ryan who instigated the censorship. I was never notified of any allegations. I would have been informed if a serious formal complaint had actually been made against me. That didn't happen. I was not notified by Ryan or the DIF that I had been blackballed. I was intentionally left in the dark by design in a move to force me out of the network.

How can I or the network ever trust Ryan to act in good faith now? I have lost all respect for Ryan and have no confidence in his leadership.

Ryan is guilty of unethical conduct which is a fireable offense in the corporate world. Ryan's actions were inappropriate, dishonest and his personal conduct is responsible for preventing a network-funded initiative from doing its job. This disrupted and reduced productivity and external media exposure for the Dash network as a direct result. If that isn't a terminatable offense I don't know what is?

DCG is a network-funded DFO like everyone else. These actions taken went way beyond the line of duty.

Ryan has hidden behind a protected group shrouded in secrecy and evidently created a pervasive work environment by abusing the power of his position of influence and trust to intentionally sabotage others. Plain and simple.

Censorship, secrecy, and workplace sabotage are not the actions of a professional leader I can actively support. Intentionally trying to mislead, deceive and harm the network prioritizing a personal grudge over the best interest of the network should not be tolerated by any organization.

Ryan has been caught red-handed and exposed for deliberately sabotaging others abusing his position of power to influence and shut down those he takes personal issue with. That is not what the DAO I joined was about. I'm disgusted by the lack of transparency and dishonesty from Ryan and those DCG employees that have blindly defended him despite the evidence presented to date. This is a firable HR issue. I echo the sentiments of other masternode operators that Ryan needs to go. The DAO has no place for Ryan's dirty politics to brute-force a personal agenda.

The network expects DCG to tell the truth and be honest. This is not acceptable.

DIF Supervisor Statements -
Ash Francis - https://i.imgur.com/1you0Th.png
Michael Lewis - https://i.imgur.com/Q9DZKpM.png and https://i.imgur.com/WTMQT8D.png

This was a very difficult position for Michael and Ash to be in, but at the end of the day, their dedication to the network came first. The truth matters.

I have been the victim of foul play and censorship. I respect the masternode network and I do not wish to harm Dash. I did not do this to Ryan, Ryan did this to himself.

Ryan has the option to deny it, but that outcome will only result in him losing more credibility to those closest to him who knows this to be true.

If Ryan had been able to contain his strong dislike for me in a professional manner, then this revelation would have never been leaked. Ryan only has himself to blame. My conscience is clear.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to direct a message to DCG employees. If you are a DCG employee and were incorrectly informed by DCG leadership that I was the sole individual mastermind behind the Decision Proposal: Improve Dash Core Group Accountability and Transparency. You have been misled and intentionally lied to as part of an internal smear campaign against me designed to create a divide.

The Trust Protectors discussed feedback from verified masternodes operators for a few weeks internally prior to submitting the governance proposal to the masternode network. This was confirmed by an official statement from all 6 Dash Trust Protectors that was posted on the proposal.

It's Walter (Michael) here.

I just want to make clear that I've not accused Ryan of any wrongdoing in my statements. There is clearly a lot more to this issue on both sides. I can only speak as I find though and my comment that it "seems like a personal issue between them" is only based on my observations thus far. Without more information and evidence I can only put it down to a clash. I believe Ryan will be doing an AMA later this week and I'm sure he'll present his case and respond to the allegations in full.

Walter

Thank you, Michael. I totally understand your position. I can't begin to thank you enough for your bravery in stepping forward. That must have been incredibly difficult for you to make the statement you did. I admire your courage and I'm very grateful. What sounded like a wacky conspiracy, now isn't so funny and is not being laughed at anymore. It's not nice being the victim of oppression. I'm going to stand my ground and defend my name and the newsroom team. I want the network to know the lack of coverage is no fault of my own. I was never made aware of any formal complaints made by partners against me. If it exists, let's see the evidence. I'm sure I would have been informed about it if it was very serious. I'm eager to see what Ryan presents as hard evidence on the AMA to justify his actions to the network.

Mark, at this point, I have not seen any hard material evidence of misconduct or "serious allegations". To me, so far, this is all hearsay / personal corroboration. If we can establish the facts of misconduct then I will support all calls for Ryan to go, but we have to get there first with hard evidence, I'm not concerned with he-said-she-said.

But I also think, for a long time really, that you should of been absorbed into DCG and onto their payroll. Obviously I don't know about their NDAs but it seems to me, you are in fact an independent contractor and no one can make DCG work with you or anyone else. It probably isn't fair but that's the way it is. So I think, really, you should of pivoted and taken a different path than go through all this heartache. One thing that is really not good for you as an individual is to fight when you don't want to fight at all. I know exactly what that feels like and it's just not right.

Good luck.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Why should I care if DCG did not want to work with you? I want the team funded and working towards Evolution. If you dont want to be a part of the project just leave.

While I hear you, I want to make a distinction with what you are saying outside of the context of this dispute.

Before I go any further I need to make one thing perfectly clear: I think Mark Mason should have never been re-hired by the network after Dash Force News. They obscured data for months and months even when it became clear their strategy wasn't working, because it was easier to keep collecting Dash from MNOs than actually figure out a way to correctly market Dash or have any positive impact at all.

Now that being said, if a DFO, in this case DCG, doesn't want to work with someone else that has been hired by the network to do a job, that DFO needs to communicate that to the network. The Masternodes hired Mark to do a job which is not possible without co-operation from DCG. If DCG doesn't want to work with him that's fine, but that needs to be communicated to the decision makers so they can take that information into account.

"Dash Force News. They obscured data for months and months even when it became clear their strategy wasn't working"

What are you talking about

Go look at that last DFN proposal that failed to pass if you need a refresher

I agree with your first point, rehiring Mark and Joel after the Dash Force News fiasco was in hindsight a terrible move.

I disagree with your second comment, for a simple reason. Mark and Joel are not regular DFO members. They are not acting in good faith and haven't for years now. Splitting the discord, preventing DashBoost from working, wasting treasury funds. These are not the behaviors of good actors.

So it stands to reason that DCG was hesitant to make their reluctance to the network known because they KNEW that Mark and Joel commanded shill armies and didn't want the drama/unnecessary attacking. Proof?

Why, just look at these very comments here and on dashpay. Xkcd, solarguy2003 (dashpay moderator), Bigrcanada, and quite a few other "OGs" are attacking DCG because of some perceived slight in not giving Mark the treatment he expected. Mark is not professional and DCG was put between a rock and a hard place when the MNOs rehired him under bad judgment.

The buck stops with us, we were remiss in our duty as MNOs when we rehired an unprofessional to do a professionals job. We had already seen their lackluster results with years of DFN at that point. We can't blame DCG for our failure. Blame must be laid at the feet of those responsible and rectified from there or you can't grow and will self destruct.

I agree, Mark and Joel suck, they have always sucked. But that isn't really the point. WE hired Mark to do a job. If they are unwilling to work with our unprofessional amateurish hire then they need to tell us that.

I get that it would have caused a shitstorm from Marks supporters, but that is besides the point. DCG needed to let us know that they were unwilling to work with Mark.

I forgot to add: Some people are unaware that re-hiring mark was a bad move. By not disclosing their own trepidation and the anxiety of their partners those people remain in the dark that Mark isn't particularly good at what we hired him to do.

Sure the buck stops with us, but we need to have a full stack of information to even attempt to make good decisions.

curious how that would make a difference at this point in time? Does Mark have a live proposal right now? Wouldn't it make sense to do a disclosure during his next proposal? Seems premature to criticize now

Well it would certainly make a difference because it would show that his comments come from a place of considerable conflict of interest. Mark is allied against DCG, so him commenting on their funding proposal is a conflict of interest and represents a form of corruption.

If we allow corruption to exist in any form, it will grow like a cancer until the network is dead. This is the end goal of shills and infiltrators so it definitely needs to be considered if you're serious about Dash.

Bullshit! The problem here starts and ends with Mark. Without him we wouldn't be having this discussion. Without Joel we wouldn't have had a lot of problems either. THEY ARE THE PROBLEM and you ARE DEFLECTING AND MOVING THE GOAL POSTS by trying to punish Core because of MARK AND JOEL'S behavior.

This is illogical and the fact that you deliberately make an illogical argument is STRONG EVIDENCE that you actually SUPPORT mark and joel (because it will be Core decapitated in the end and not them by this line of reasoning)! Doing that is DECEPTIVE BEHAVIOR AND YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO ENGAGE IN IT, SO STOP IT!!

you have a bad habit of assuming people's intentions. Sometimes people will just genuinely disagree with you. It doesn't necessarily make them a foreign agent. Doesn't it make more sense to assume random internet strangers are just plain stupid rather than malicious?

It does seem obvious to me though that Joel and Mark are the problem and are deflecting. So I do find myself agreeing with you, but you make it hard by looking like a crazy person.

I'm not assuming anyone's intentions and have NO PROBLEM with people genuinely disagreeing with me. I have disagreed with over 200 people in my short career and have only accused a small fraction of those people of infiltration, so you should check who you're talking to and my body of work before jumping to that conclusion.

I don't care if I "look crazy" to someone who can't see. Your estimation is worth 0 until you get your eyes checked. I'm "the crazy person" but we have at least two community members making absurb arguments to decapitate our core group for NO LEGITIMATE REASON.

Not showing favortism to Mark is NOT A LEGITIMATE REASON to fire Ryan and if you don't agree with that then YOU'RE THE CRAZY ONE!

You routinely accuse nearly everyone who disagrees with you of being a bad actor. It seems everyone knows this except you.

Also speaking for everyone is not fair, you don't have the right to do that. I DARE YOU to find and source an instance of me calling someone a bad actor for the simple act of disagreeing with me.

Here are a few of the many reasons why you have called people "bad actors" or "malicious"
- because you thought someone had the burden of proof wrong and didn't agree that DCG would be able to handle the replacement of the CEO
- because they didn't have a MNO tag on DC
- because they didn't agree with you that people opposing kuva were supposedly monero infiltrators (you've since reversed your position on this)
- because they didn't agree with you that a voting delegate shouldn't be allowed to comment on DC

I was easily able to find over 50 times here on DC that you have called people bad actors or malicious. Including but not limited to:
Myself
Mark Mason
Joel Valenzuela
name3
nerdmoney
bigrcanada
Tao Of Satoshi
lysergic
xkcd
GrandMasterDash
bchamz
AshFrancis

Please have some self-reflection and realize that Socrates is correct that "you have a bad habit of assuming people's intentions"

> because you thought someone had the burden of proof wrong and didn't agree that DCG would be able to handle the replacement of the CEO

You saying "You thought" they had the burden of proof wrong is subjective; If they did not fulfill the burden of proof and made an argument as if they had, that is gaslighting and a form of bad acting. Calling someone a bad actor is justified in that situation. That is basically lying.

>- because they didn't have a MNO tag on DC

Only Masternode owners and proposal owners are meant to comment here. Furthermore, there have been AND STILL ARE (!!!) Non-MNOs commenting as if they were a MNO. Agnewpickens SHOULD NOT be commenting on proposals. Its a conflict of interest for POs to comment on the proposals of other teams.

This is bad acting and it is justified to call someone out for that. We had a whole period where Non-MNOs were deliberately posting fud and lies about teams so this isn't some "pet rule", it is very important and you expose yourself in using that as a slight against me.

> because they didn't agree with you that people opposing kuva were supposedly monero infiltrators (you've since reversed your position on this)

This is not true and I request you provide the quote that lead you to draw this conclusion.

>because they didn't agree with you that a voting delegate shouldn't be allowed to comment on DC

This isn't true. Its not because "they didn't agree with me" but because non-MNOs are not supposed to comment here. You are being deliberately biased by trying to make it seem like I just call people who disagree with me bad actors when the real reason is subtly couched in the second half of your statement. ALLOWING NON-MNOS TO COMMENT ON PROPOSALS OPENS US UP TO TROLLS AND FUDSTERS!

>I was easily able to find over 50 times here on DC that you have called people bad actors or malicious.

I never said I didn't call people bad actors so this is a strawman, I said I don't call them that JUST FOR DISAGREEING WITH ME. And this is true. I didn't call Socrates or you a bad actor just for disagreeing with me here, and all the "evidence" you provided (with no quotes) backs that up as well.

Mark Mason and Joel Valenzuela are DEFINITELY bad actors.

Those two actively engage in censorship of the main Dash discourse channels along with their supporters (I've been permabanned from r/dashpay for years and the discords for nearly a year in a massive conflict of interest), bigrcanada, name3 and nerdmoney are going against the Core team of the protocol with very little if any justifiable reason.

TaoOfSatoshi routinely supports movements like that for no justifiable reason (like his support of this proposal), lysergic REPEATEDLY LIES AND FUDS AGAINST PROPOSALS IN THE THIRD WORLD WHERE WE HAVE SEEN THE MAJORITY OF OUR GROWTH.

XKCD lies against the core team and supports defunding good proposals with no good reason. I don't believe that xkcd is a masternode owner (I could be wrong about that).

GrandMasterDash DELIBERATELY ADMITTED TO TROLLING ME, A FELLOW MNO, OUT OF SPITE! That is the definition of being a bad actor. He deliberately refused to admit whether or not he had a masternode just so he could provide cover for someone like Agnewpickens who was commenting on proposals without being a MNO. That is a conflict of interest and is bad acting.

Bchamz is not a MNO and routinely tries to scam the network with bad proposals that are limited in their growth.

I don't remember having anything bad to say about AshFrancis, can you provide quotes for that one?

>Please have some self-reflection

No. You did not prove your claim nor did you prove socrates. The VAST MAJORITY of the people on your list have provably and definitively engaged in bad acting and you are being misleading by taking their side in our conflicts now when you couldn't do so when I defeated them. If they couldn't stand up for themselves then, then what right do you have to do so now??

I have NEVER LOST an argument here, and that includes any argument of calling someone a bad actor without cause. If I were remiss in that name THEY WOULD'VE PROVED IT WHEN I CALLED THEM THAT. You're coming out of the woodworks now to hide the fact that they were unable to defend themselves from that charge means IT IS YOU that lacks selfreflection.

I request that you stop supporting bad actors and stop trying to silence my commentary by agreeing with people whom I've defeated in argument just so you can hide their bad behavior.

Well, you went on about monero and kuvacash for hours, but here are a few samples:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/441788100667244568/944752703660232754/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/441788100667244568/944754683153625138/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/441788100667244568/944755819797422190/unknown.png

None of these screenshots is proof of your accusation. I clearly stated in the last screenshot that it was a theory. Furthermore, QuantumExplorer backed up the charge by claiming that he had heard that Max was a sleeper agent himself.

So the idea wasn't new, didn't come from me alone and both sides had it. But you only attack me for even bringing the subject up. That is not an honest argument. There is NOTHING wrong with considering potential subversive behavior from our VERY LOUD AND AGGRESSIVE competition.

These screenshots do not prove anything.

* TaoOfSatoshi routinely supports movements like that for no justifiable reason (like his support of the MOVEMENT AGAINST this proposal),

Just install the TrollHide script:
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/430562-trollhide-dashcentral-org
Makes life easier :-)

Add me to the list apparently.

Walter

That's completely false. The fact that you rely on a false argument tells me all I need to know about you. I only accuse people of being bad actors when they act in bad faith, never for simply disagreeing with me. Using any dishonest debating tactics qualifies, but that's not simply disagreeing. You are wrong in your characterization of my posts.

Perfect example in my defense: I didn't call Socrates a bad actor in this debate even though he disagreed with me (and I didn't call you a bad actor for misrepresenting my posting history, either so two examples already). Disagreement is perfectly fine to me and I have absolutely no problem with it. Everyone is susceptible to feedback, positive or negative, and I welcome all of it.

Just the fact that I can retort to Socrates and fiercely return his "you're crazy" accusation without calling him a bad actor is strong evidence that you're wrong here. Even when I'm being attacked mentally (questioning my sanity and basically calling me paranoid and delusional) and in an off-topic way, I still found no reason to call that poster a bad actor. This is because I always assume a state of neutrality at the start of every debate, so I'm not holding grudges or even personal biases.

Even despite the fact that he's also completely disregarding my history of successful and accurate predictions, both in the short term (predicted Cointext would shut down 5 hours before it was announced they were shutting down), and in the long term (predicted in 2017 that Venezuela would become a large growth zone for Dash before Eugenia Alcala applied). As well as predicting ACCURATELY that certain users would be infiltrators like Flenst.

I successfully called him out and eventually made him delete his account for being a monero troll trying to infiltrate our network. This was months before he showed his true colors. Solarguy and basilpop also defended him, even though it was clear he was a bad actor.

So where is your censure for them, huh? Why are you so silent against community members who HAVE BEEN PROVEN to help a known infiltrator and bad actor, but only have these strong wordrs for me? If you really care about Dash, you would have the same critical and skeptical viewpoint towards those users and would express this in your comments here, as you have towards me (inspite of my successful history of calling out infiltrators and other good predictions).

>So where is your censure for them, huh? Why are you so silent against community members who HAVE BEEN PROVEN to help a known infiltrator and bad actor, but only have these strong wordrs for me?

@TroyDash, still waiting for an answer to this question. It is dishonest to attack others and not respond to their replies to your attacks. You have all this energy to censure me for trying to protect the network from bad actors, but where is your censure of those who are provably acting badly? This is not a rhetorical question.

I'm not going to go back and forth with you endlessly. Every time I respond to you, you come back demanding answers to 3 times as many questions. I hope my screenshots serve as a nice reminder to you that you once said (to Sam no less) that "the Monero community are the only ones who could orchestrate something like this," referring to the kuva opposition.
Bye

>I'm not going to go back and forth with you endlessly.

I never asked you to. I asked you to source your accusation. If you refuse to do so I will refuse your censure and your charge that I "call almost everyone who disagrees with me a bad actor". I will also accept this as your admission that that charge was false.

>Every time I respond to you, you come back demanding answers to 3 times as many questions.

Again, this is most likely not true. You seem to want to paint my debating style as dishonest without actually saying so. I HAVE NEVER LOST AN ARGUMENT ON HERE, THAT IS A FACT! So unless you have any sources or proof YOU HAVE NO RIGHT to impugn my integrity. STOP IT.

>"the Monero community are the only ones who could orchestrate something like this," referring to the kuva opposition.

How is that wrong? The monero community literally spent the majority of the last decade LYING ABOUT DASH, ATTEMPTING TO MANIPULATE OUR COMMUNITY, AND ATTEMPTING TO INFILTRATE IT. You are IGNORING THIS HISTORY, why?

>Bye

Good bye

>But that isn't really the point.

That IS the point. Why are you listening to criticisms from people who you OPENLY ADMIT SUCK?! That's backwards! You guys are trying the "give an ich take a mile" technique of dishonest debating, i.e. where you "concede" that Mark and Joel suck but STILL TRY TO REMOVE OUR CORE CEO!

This exposes your motivations as malicious and you as a bad actor.

THERE IS NO OBLIGATION TO WORK WITH ANY OTHER DAO NOR IS THERE ANY OBLIGATION FOR DCG TO LET THAT BE KNOWN! MARK IS A BIG BOY AND HE SHOULD SINK OR SWIM ON HIS OWN!!! THE MNOS DID NOT TASK DCG WITH WORKING WITH OR REPORTING TO MARK MASON SO STOP PRETENDING LIKE NOT DOING SO IS WRONG! THAT IS BACKWARDS AND MALICIOUS BEHAVIOR!!!

oh honey

I'm not your honey, don't be disrespectful

So the logical conclusion is to just ignore the MNO votes when it suits?

The MNOs may have been "remiss" in their duty to rehire Mark, the vote is the vote though.. and best efforts must be made for DFOs to engage and collaberate with each other professionally at all times. If thats not possible then there is an obligation on the complainant DFO report that to the network?

This is just common sense, right?

Walter

No, the logical thing is for MNOs to get our shit together. If we're screwing up it will have consequences down the road for the entire network. And there was never a direct vote from MNOs for DCG to work with Mark. That's up to each individual DFO.

There will be many DFOs and some will compete against each other to provide the best service of the network. That necessarily means that your statement above that "best efforts must be made..." is false.

There is no requirement that DFOs even communicate, let alone give other DFOs privileged access. It was on Mark whether or not to sink or swim. Artificially tying his proposal to DCG so he "fails or succeeds with them" is parasitism and has no place in the network.

Its not common sense at all. That would be like me suggesting that Dash Nigeria should be an official part of DCG. That wouldn't be met well at all for good reason. We don't want to enshrine proposals by tying them to DCG unnecessarily.

Heavily disagree.

DFOs should be encouraged to compete without being anticompetetive. There may be no formal obligation for DFOs to communicate with each other, but where it is in the interests of the DAO best efforts should be made to do so. I don't MNOs should encourage DFOs to work in silos or vacuums. That's bad for the DAO.

If MNOs think its acceptable for competing DFOs to take protectionist measures to monopolise their services to the DAO then they're going to end up beholden to a DFO monopoly or oligopoly. That's not in the best interests of the DAO.

Walter

I don't see how Ryan not giving Mark favored position is "anticompetitive". DCG has NO OBLIGATION to provide cover for any pet projects or personal proposals. If Mark can't swim on his own then it is in the best interests of the DAO that he sinks. Every proposals is subject to this and you guys trying to make Joel and Mark's proposals "special" is a form of corruption and should not be allowed.

If Ryan spoke against Mark getting another position then that is ALSO A GOOD THING. We see what happens when Joel and Mark are allowed to build "cozy nests" for themselves like the Dash discord and the subreddit.

Now we have to deal with CENSORSHIP in our official venues. I have been permanently banned from the discords for almost a year, and from the main subreddit for 2 or 3 years (for calling flenst a liar; a person who was a non-community member of the monero community attempting to infiltrate our community). It is COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE that Proposal Owners are also the leaders of the main community communication venues and a conflict of interest that they moderate them. Banning masternode owners from these forums of discussion is ALSO AGAINST THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE DAO.

Both Mark and Joel participate in these anticompetitive behaviors so your post above seems hollow and hypocritical. How do you respond?

1. I've not mentioned Joel or Mark once, they have nothing to do with my point.
2. I've not once suggested that some proposals are "special" and deserve different treatment, they should all stand on their own merit.
3. It appears to be somewhat ironic that your complaints regarding Mark and Joel are not too dissimilar to Mark's complaints against DCG. The only difference is that Mark has presented evidence to back up his claims, whereas you haven't.

Walter

1. This line of commenting is about DCG not working with Mark is it not? If not why are you bringing up "anticompetitiveness"? If it is why are you pretending like your comment #1 isn't deflection?

2. If you agree about that then you must also agree that DCG has no obligation to work with any other proposals either and if you're not talking about Mark's proposal then what the hell are you talking about?

3. Its not ironic, Mark and Joel are using projection and gaslighting techniques which RELY on throwing your opponents arguments at them before they can make them so as to remove their weight.

4. So you ARE supporting Mark, you're just doing that deceptive thing where you pretend like you're not while making points and arguments that do support them. That's called shilling. You're trying to hide your affiliation with him while also influencing the network towarrds his position. That is disingenuous behavior and you are working against the network by engaging in it.

1. My line of commenting directly from your post is on the broader issue of interdependencies between DFOs and what DFOs should do if they're unable to cooperate. Your parent post was in response to name3's point that: "Now that being said, if a DFO, in this case DCG, doesn't want to work with someone else that has been hired by the network to do a job, that DFO needs to communicate that to the network.". So stop trying to shoehorn me into your pro dcg/anti mark/joel narrative please!
2. DCG has no general obligation to work with any proposals and each proposal should stand on its own merit, I agree, however, in instances where collaboration has been formally agreed between DFOs then the network - as Name3 pointed out - should be made aware by either party should there be subsequent difficulties in that relationship.
4. Non sequitur.

Walter

> My line of commenting directly from your post is on the broader issue of interdependencies

Your original post was in support of Mark in response to me. That is not some broad and general directive. Stay on topic.

> So stop trying to shoehorn me into your pro dcg/anti mark/joel narrative please!

Name3 said that in response to DashVoice's comment here: "Why should I care if DCG did not want to work with you?"

Which WAS A REPLY TO MARK MASON ACCUSING DCG OF NOT WORKING WITH HIM.

Please pay attention to the discussion that you're in and stop trying to strawman with unrelated topics!

> DFOs then the network - as Name3 pointed out - should be made aware by either party should there be subsequent difficulties in that relationship.

This is your opinion and is neither here nor there. The fact is DCG has the freedom to work with or NOT WORK WITH whomever they choose and you have NO RIGHT to fault them for that.

>non sequitur.

It is NOT a non sequitur. Your original comment WAS in support of Mark. You're being deceptive by trying to hide your motivations in support of him with some generic off topic general discussion. This is not the place for that. We are discussing DCG not working with Mark Mason. PAY ATTENTION PLEASE!

You are not listening. DCG has the right to work or not work with or not work with whomever the choose, however, it is their responsibility to report to the network if they no longer wish to continue with a partnership that they committed to:

QUOTE:

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/official-dash-newsroom-communications--p

“Bringing PR in-house is a long-desired goal, and I can't think of a better way to do it than with a cross-DFO collaboration with Mark Mason. I am sure that we'll get increased exposure for Dash in the media, and serve our international communities much better than we are now.”

Statement from Fernando Gutierrez Dash Core Group Chief Marketing Officer.

------------------

My comment is not in support of Mark or anything to do with Mark or Joel directly, stop trying to push that narrative. It's about accountability, due process and professionalism at DCG.

DCG should have been transparent about the breakdown of this relationship to the network and reported the difficulties of collaborating with Dash Press. Ryan even admitted as much himself on the AMA. So YES I DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO FAULT THEM FOR THAT. RYAN HAS EVEN ADMITTED THE FAULT HIMSELF.

Walter

I am listening you commented on favor of mark above and then lied and said "I haven't mentioned mark once". Are you going to admit you lied or will you just keep pretending that didn't happen and disqualify your argument?

> it is their responsibility to report to the network if they no longer wish

No there is NO SUCH RESPONSIBILITY. DAOS have met been micromanaged to this degree. If you as a mno ASK THEM DELIBERATELY why then maybe you'd have a case.

But they don't have to report not wanting to work with Mark Mason. He is not their boss and he's not anything special there is NO REQUIREMENT that for core notify us about that, you're being completely absurd!

>
My comment is not in support of Mark or anything to do with Mark or Joel directly, stop trying to push that narrative.

You're lying!! Your original shipment was DIRECTLY IN SUPPORT OF MARK! So stop trying to push the narrative that it wasn't!

DCG had no obligation to be transparent about anything related to this partnership at all. You're just making that up.

Or doesn't matter what Ryan admits the Dao doesn't work that way!

DAOS *have not been micromanaged

Oh and you definitely did mention Mark in this opening comment above:

>"The MNOs may have been "remiss" in their duty to rehire **Mark**, the vote is the vote though.. and best efforts must be made for DFOs to engage and collaberate with each other professionally at all times. "

So not only did you mention Mark just a few comments ago, but you also did so in support of his position which means you are LYING in your comment above.

That is being a bad actor and you expose your motivations by engaging in that behavior.

That's me quoting YOUR comment mentioning Mark. You use this to accuse me of mentioning Mark directly...? Then use that to accuse me of lying and branding me a bad actor?

How about we stick to the merits of the discussion rather than try and jockey me into your narrative?

Walter

>You use this to accuse me of mentioning Mark directly...?

YES! You are arguing against me when I am arguing against Mark's point so YOU ARE supporting Mark. That's how this works! If you don't know how to argue THEN DON'T ARGUE!

>You use this to accuse me of mentioning Mark directly...?

Right back at you! How about you pay attention to the discussion that you're in for Pete's sake!?

This is the correct attitude. Mark Mason and Joel are not central to the growth of Dash. Indeed, I would even say they've been a net negative since they were funded. DCG on the other hand, ALL OF IT, without regard for the divide and conquer tactic of "We're against the Admin not the devs" has been instrumental in getting Dash where it is.

Further proof that you're a bad actor is how you manipulate discussion here by using downvotes instead of responding to the argument in question. Those are the tactics of censorship and heavily indicate that you and all who support you are compromised and working in the worst interests of the DAO.

You're a bad actor Mark.

There are a lot of people working on this project. Many of those people I have never had a chance to meet. Some DCG members I work with on a weekly basis. I would like to thank those coders/developers and workers who have their nose to the grindstone and are turning out an amazing product.

Pasta buddy: I was so happy to see your name in my inbox last week with the v 0.18 beta-2. Thank you!

Quantum: I remember our time in Hong Kong talking about Merkle trees. I cherish that memory. Thanks for stepping up!

I'm sure there have been many hires since my departure from DCG. To those hires: please accept a heartfelt thank you from me, Darren, a peer-to-peer cash fan. Thank you.

Darren, I remember those memories really fondly. You know in the end our storage solution GroveDB is basically a collection of hierarchal Merkleized AVL trees. It's pretty cool.

Are you voting yes or no?

Voting No. Not necessarily because of the scandal. I'm actually in favor of legally unincorporating DCG all together.
However, if we are going to keep Dash Core Group, Inc. around (and unnecessarily pay state and federal taxes), we should at least have regular elections for the CEO. It's the only real way to hold the existing CEO accountable. I'd prefer to let the DIF board members elect a CEO than have a direct MNO election, but either way it's probably time we start having CEO elections.

I disagree completely, for a couple reasons.

1. Hold them accountable for what? DCG is an independent DAO with the network. So if they've done something wrong, you should so be able to point it out.
Removing the CEO, voting down compensation while we're trying to release Platform is just bad judgment. How can you justify such large changes, now at this critical time?

2. I don't believe we should micromanage DCG. DCG has been heading the network successfully for 8 years now in various incarnations. They have always acted in the best interest of the network (whether they've succeeded or not always is a different story).

Without any actual failures to fall back on there really is no justification for messing with the official structure.

The Dash network is the only customer of DCG and DCG is employing most of the network developers, so I wouldn't exactly say that the network and DCG are completely independent. Currently, there is a very strong codependent relationship between the two.

I think the problem that I have is that there is nobody holding Ryan specifically accountable. Most corporations have board of directors that hire and fire upper-tier executive staff, but I don't believe DCG does. If Ryan specifically is causing problems with services that DCG is providing to the network, the network should not have to defund all of DCG to protest issues he causing. I like to see developers get paid for their contributions to the network and I don't want see their pay be impacted by the actions of one man.

Holding an election for the CEO position is not the same as firing Ryan. I would expect Ryan would be one of the candidates for the CEO role. And if he is elected great. But at least now, with elections, he can be held directly accountable instead of having all of DCG suffer for his actions.

I don't know there is ever a good time to replace a CEO, but I've worked for large corporations for the past 25 years and went through at least 10 CEO replacements and not once did the company have issues afterwards. But either way, if a successful role out of Platform hinges on the employment of one man then we should rethink our decentralized model.

>The Dash network is the only customer

Technically false. "The Dash network" is not a singular entity and comprises EVERYONE who uses Dash and is invested in it so your comment is misleading. EVERYONE who uses Dash depends on DCG and MNO meddling at this critical juncture will likely prevent them from doing their job and ruin the evolution upgrade prematurely.

>Currently, there is a very strong codependent relationship between the two.

Codependency implies that there are only two participants in consideration. This is false as the Dash network is comprised of many different and disconnected groups, individuals and DAOs. ALL OF WHOM are reliant on DCG's performance. So this comment is also misleading. You are not giving due weight to the possibility of removing the Core CEO (for no reason mind you) during a critical upgrade time period.

>I think the problem that I have is that there is nobody holding Ryan specifically accountable.

Actually its the opposite, so you're projecting. The real problem is that nobody is holding you MNOs accountable. Like Walters said above "The vote is the vote", yet you guys are trying to decapitate DCG at a critical time period. So its YOU who need to be reigned in.

>f Ryan specifically is causing problems with services that DCG is providing to the network

Get out of here, this is absurd. Mark's NEWS DESK DOESN'T DO ANYTHING!!! We don't need a bunch of kids playing reporter in the network man! GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF MARK'S ASS!

DCG is the main development team behind Dash, WITHOUT THEM WE DON'T HAVE CORE TEAM TO FINISH THE NETWORK! Witholding their compensation because you have a conflict of interest (you, mark and joel are colluding together to use your influence to change the network in self serving ways) is WRONG! STOP IT!

>I like to see developers get paid for their contributions to the network and I don't want see their pay be impacted by the actions of one man.

Then stop pretending like Ryan has done anything wrong here! There is NO OBLIGATION for him to cosign any other proposals and if as CEO of the Core Development Team he doesn't recommend you for MULTIPLE POSITIONS IN THE NETWORK, then that's his perogative. It is EXTREMELY UNETHICAL for Mark to have a proposal while also trying to weasel his way onto governance structures so he can't be removed from the network!

Just like its corruption and unethical for Joel to moderate the discords with his cronies as censorship thugs, while also getting paid for "the marketing hub."

You have the burden of proof BACKWARDS and this is a form of irrationality that strongly leads me to conclude that you have sold out the network and have become a bad actor.

Your final argument is also preposterous and shows you don't have good motivations. No critical update can handle multiple replacements of heads of function! Too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the soup and that's a real problem here.

You're trying to micromanage a DAO because Ryan Taylor didn't give your friend a prominent position. THAT'S CALLED CORRUPTION! STOP IT!!

I'm will, for the first time, be voting no. There are a number of ongoing issues that continue to not be addressed including lack of Transparency, accountability and the complete lack of respect for requests from the community for far more effective communication.

I will, also for the first time, be voting no.

I already commented, but I wanted to be a part of this Canadians voting no for the first time thread. Third!

Mark Mason and Joel Valenzuela are NOBODIES! They should NOT have the power in the community that they do and this is clear from the fact that they are constantly abusing it to attack Dash's growth and prevent us from moving forward. Trumped up charges, witch-hunts and other gaslighting behaviors (i.e. attacking the network while pretending to be members in good standing) are all the behaviors of bad actors.

Manipulating the Discord, utilizing censorship on Dash's subreddit and discord channels, these are also actions that indicate a serious conflict of interest with these individuals. We never should've paid them. Especially not the second time. They're using the funds we give them to destroy the network out of spite.

I no longer think of DCG as a DFO of a DAO. I think DCG has become a self-serving protectionist corporation that puts its own interests over the network prioritizing self-preservation and has evidently been involved with centralized censorship. DCG suffers from a severe lack of transparency by choice, has created a permissioned development network acting as the gate-keepers of an open-source project that insists the community must trust them to operate while having zero accountability.

None of the above (Centralization, Censorship, No Transparency, Permission, Trusted) are compatible with the decentralization ideals of blockchain technology. We've become the very thing that we protested about in the first place.

The creation of DCG as a corporation was the start of when Dash started to go downhill. We need structural reform that pivots away from one-man rule dependency and a single point of failure.

Rather than purely focus on the dirty politics of recent revelations. I want to echo the frustration that many MNOs are simply fed up with poor leadership. Other community initiatives being discussed in the comment section only serve as a distraction from the root issue that MNOs are upset with.

The pattern is clear:

When Evan was project lead for Dash Core between 2014 to 2017 - the price went up, the community expanded.
When Evan left and Ryan became CEO in 2017 to present-day - the price went down, the community stagnated.

You can accept it or ignore it.

As indicated by others. 5 years of poor performance due to poor leadership would not be tolerated in the real working world. Any other billion-dollar market cap tech organization would not tolerate this level of failure for this long without making serious changes at the top level. Dash will continue to sink lower in the CMC ranking position if we continue to bury our heads in the sand ignoring the primary cause behind the poor performance.

I don't believe Dash will survive another 2-5 years under this leadership by keeping the status quo. This industry is just moving too fast and we are falling further behind. We need DCG leadership to have more get up and go. Right now DCG leadership chooses to hide behind new hires in order to mask the failure of their responsibilities.

Ultimately. Dash is going to need to take some pain, in order for the network to get the medicine it requires to achieve true positive change. We've had 5 years of doing it Ryan's way and we continue to lose relevance. It's not personal. The Dash network isn't a charity. We would not tolerate this performance from other DFO's without taking action. DCG should be no different. I'd rather take that pain sooner (while DCG has a reserve to indicate MNO dissatisfaction) rather than later if Dash is to have a fighting chance of staying competitive. This has been already priced into the market.

Many things you write here are just not true.

For one we are an open source project, all our work is on visible on Github. We have also made newsletters explaining what devs are working on, as well as now open sprint reviews on Platform. I am not sure what measures we could take to be more transparent dev-wise. We certainly have not created a permissioned development network. Can you point to any comprehensive pull request to any code-base that was rejected? We actively welcome contributions, in fact I would be overjoyed if we had more, but we don't. Right now pretty much all PRs (pull requests - aka the way open source projects operate to insert new code) on platform codebase comes from DCG, and PRs to the core payment chain repo comes from DCG and incubator devs.

I think the above is mainly because developers don't want to do things for free - in general. So if a dev wants to contribute and knows the Core codebase, maybe from working with Bitcoin or another UTXO based project before, when they ask how they can do it, they get pointed to incubator and/or DCG. Which is what we see. When a dev wants to contribute to Platform things become a little more tricky. Platform devs have years of experience on a product that doesn't exist elsewhere and it can be very daunting to make PRs without deep knowledge. So if a dev wanted to contribute the logical step I think they would take is that they would just ask DCG if they could come aboard and work for us. The other option would be contributing more on the Dapp side through incubator.

Also for the price... When Evan left Dash was at around 5-15$ iirc. Ryan was either CEO or CEO in waiting (while org was being set up) when the Dash price shot up.

Definitely voting YES! I knew this day would come and had hoped it wouldn't. But my battles with the pernicious monero community and their infiltration shills here and in other venues led me to conclude that yes, eventually they would come for Dash Core Group as well.

As we can see, I was also correct when I said that Mark Mason and Joel Valenzuela were BAD NEWS for the network and it looks like that has also come to pass. They are intent on destroying our coin while GASLIGHTING the rest of us. Pretending that they're acting in good faith while they steadily dismantle our DAOs and prevent our competition from being railroaded by Dash's superior system.

"Well if your system is so superior you should be able to withstand our attacks *grin*". This is their likely response and its completely backwards. No other coin could withstand this attack either and the fact that you have to use it on Dash while ignoring other coins proves that Dash's design is superior.

This is not paranoia, there is no logical reason for people with Masternodes and prominent positions in the community to attempt to defund our Core Team and fire Ryan Taylor. This is an attack from our competition plain and simple.

Dash is the best cryptocurrency there is, and it became that way under the leadership of Ryan Taylor and Dash Core Group. So why are "long time members" like bigrcananda, coingun, Taoofsatoshi etc. attacking them? Collusion, bribery, and infiltration.

As many may know, I was working with Dash Haiti and Dash Nigeria to try and expand Dash's reach and growth in those regions, to really give us a foothold in future growth zones for cryptocurrency. As a precursor to todays' events, wouldn't you know that these same individuals infiltrated and bribed my team members and attempted to get me to lose money on bad investments?

They pretended like they were still working together with me for growth, meanwhile they were actively sabotaging my efforts, trying to get me to invest in scams, and generally trying to dismantle my support for Dash. So I know from personal experience that these tactics are the ones they're using. Its because their coins are so ineffectual and poorly-built that they must rely on these low infiltration techniques.

As a reminder, we have been infiltrated and attack from within several times.

1 and 2. George Donnelly twice. Once when he was funded and dismantling efforts in Venezuela (thank God that he failed there), and once again after defunded, he spent years using his "inside information" to spread FUD about Dash in r/btc, until he was unceremoniously kicked from that community as well.

3. Ed stover ran a website to get Dash adoption but was actually working to defund and dismantle our growth in Venezuela and prevent our community from servicing that country

4. Joel Valenzuela and Mark Mason split the discord, destroyed DashBoost (Joel hogged funds from there preventing proposals in Haiti and other countries from getting it even though he already had a 320 Dash proposal in the main network), and spent YEARS wasting funds on lackluster "adoption" efforts that we have nothing to show for. If you were to ask what has Joel/Mark produced over the years, could you really say anything of worth? Waffling on on his podcast, pretending like he's some important figure while bringing nothing to the table.

These people are not good people. They are motivated by negativity and destruction. As long as they have deflective cover they will continue attacking the network, spreading fud about our DAOs and trying to dismantle us until we resemble BTC, which is coopted and in service to banks and not the dream of Satoshi. Recently, I tried to get Dash accepted on Signal. I posted a forum topic on the official requesting a Signal Dash integration:

https://community.signalusers.org/t/potential-dash-signal-integration/41334

The only thing that needed to be done was to tweet at the CEO and ask him to adopt Dash. Joel said he would do this over a week ago and still, nothing. These people do not want to see Dash adopted, they want to PRETEND like they do while you sit back and "feel good" about their NON-EFFORTS while Dash is slowly transformed from greatness into the same mediocrity as other coins

5. Henry Georgist, TanteStefana, TaoOfSatoshi and other MNO infiltrators pretending to vote for the benefit of the network while openly attacking Dash on youtube and reddit, calling us a scam, and voting to defund our promising proposals in third world nations

6. Agnewpickens WHO DOES NOT HAVE A MASTERNODE commenting on proposals in a clear conflict of interest and the colluding MNOs that support him

7. KuvaCash and that two-sided debacle

Etc. etc. So you can see we have an infiltrated masternode problem and its only gotten worse since I first pointed it out 5 years ago. The problem is these people have sold out the network for personal gain and refuse to tell us about it. So they lie to us and pretend that they are still aligned with the network's growth while they're taking up DELIBERATELY FALSE POSITIONS to attack and destroy our teams and growth.

Why hasn't DashWatch been updated for over 5 months? Why has DashNexus stopped functioning? Because these services clearly expose the growth and power of the Dash system and making them defunct makes it look like we've stopped growing. These are "orders from on high".

People with agendas who don't want to see this cryptocurrency competition play out naturally. Like Joel and Mark, they think they have the right to play "King Maker" and decide who gets funding and who doesn't. In this way they have dismantled the DAO and made it impossible to get new proposals passed unless they're part of the same efforts to provide maximum promises with minimum gain.

As a network we need a truth and reconciliation where we finally purge these elements from our midst. Its not fair that we have to keep dealing with these assholes who won't leave our coin alone. We have the means to defeat them, we can ban their masternodes, defund their proposals and do to them what they're seeking to do to our Core team and what they have already done to our other DAOs.

Join me in voting YES! for DCG's infrastructure as a first step in retaliating against these aggressive and lying assholes.

wow...so much to unpack here, i'm not even going to bother!

The fact that you refuse but still feel the need to reply heavily implies that I'm correct. You can't reply because I'm correct, but you want to pretend like I'm not to manipulate the narrative and continue attacking our DAOs. You're a bad actor.

Ok, I’ll bite. Where exactly did I openly attack Dash on YouTube and Reddit, and where, pray tell, did I ever call it a scam? Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I said: "...openly attacking Dash on youtube and reddit, calling us a scam, and voting to defund our promising proposals"

While naming multiple individuals, all of the individuals named have done at least one of these things and not necessarily all of them.

You have continuously voted against/to defund promising proposals like this very core team proposal for absolutely no good reason, while pretending to have one. This is gaslighting and the behavior of a bad actor.

You didn't have to wait long.

Ok. This is a more nuanced answer. Thanks for walking that back a bit.

I didn't walk it back at all. You misunderstood the original meaning. It is not honest behavior to pass your misunderstandings off onto others.

Strangely, I do find a little bit of truth in this, if somewhat outrageously overblown. There is definitely some cronyism among old timers and mods. I really don't mind what Joel says or does with his own time or money, but not particularly happy with him paying himself from the marketing hub. I'm sure in his head it's justified but yeah, just not good. That interview with Chris was so cringe worthy, like you say, handing out words of "wisdom" to someone who clearly talks with much bigger ambitions. I agree, lackluster.

There's nothing overblown, let alone "outrageously" so. Everything I wrote actually happened. The only thing overblown is the action of these actors. It is completely preposterous to think that someone who wants Dash to succeed would ever dream to act this way against it. This is gaslighting.

At least we can agree on Joel. Total waste of money and he's gotta go.

You guys are not subtle with your vote brigading of my comments to make them look less popular than they are. The monero community did the same thing on reddit and its how I know you're aligned with their efforts. Downvoting without an argument is AN ABUSE OF THIS VENUE and proves that you rely on censorship instead of argumentation, which is bad acting.

Voting no until there is a resignation from Ryan Taylor. This is the only way for the community to show dissatisfaction that will make a real difference.

Here are some screenshots of the latest inexcusable scandal that has hurt Dash as a result of the DCG CEO. This is the so-called "Blackball Scandal":

Solarguy's summary of recent events (Part 1):
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/942609238289698826/Screen_Shot_2022-02-13_at_9.30.33_PM.png?width=2156&height=1698

Solarguy's summary of recent events (Part 2)
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/942609266513162257/Screen_Shot_2022-02-13_at_9.31.40_PM.png?width=2156&height=1545

Tao asking a direct question to DIF supervisors about the "blackball" allegation and Ash's response as a DIF supervisor:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/942601892125618246/Screen_Shot_2022-02-13_at_8.52.39_PM.png?width=1630&height=1698

Walter's response to Tao's question as a DIF supervisor:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/942603000789225532/Screen_Shot_2022-02-13_at_9.07.02_PM.png?width=1613&height=1698

Andy's response and proposed solution (Part 1):
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/942611214884798494/Screen_Shot_2022-02-13_at_9.39.56_PM.png?width=1714&height=1703

Andy's response and proposed solution (Part 2):
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/942612020174422046/Screen_Shot_2022-02-13_at_9.42.43_PM.png

Joel's proposed solution:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/942612020174422046/Screen_Shot_2022-02-13_at_9.42.43_PM.png

Ryan Taylor purposely tanked the media presence of key Dash announcements like Valkyrie Trust and the upcoming DashDirect Mastercard product launch because of his personal dislike of Mark Mason.

He personally lobbied DIF supervisors to blackball Mark from making press releases through newsroom.dash.org and blackballed him from working with DCG BizDev & DCG Marketing. This clearly shows that Ryan is not fit to lead this network because of a mere dislike of a productive and high-performing member of the Dash community.

To top it off, all this started on Friday, February 10th and Ryan has been non-respondent. His Discord handle shows that he has regularly logged onto the Dash Discord server and his COO Robert has been exhaustively running cover for him.

Is this how a DCG CEO leads while his team's compensation proposal is at a crossroads? Hiding in a corner waiting for it to blow over? He is derelict in performing his CEO duties which is the promotion of the vision of the network outwardly (his own words) and he has chosen to act on his personal vendetta over the good of the Dash network, both "fireable" offenses.

If Ryan Taylor was to resign, we should give him a dignified and honorable red carpet treatment for his positive contributions. The longer this goes on, the less likely that becomes.

Looks like the link for "Joel's proposed solution" is the same as the link for "Andy's response and proposed solution (Part 2)".

Thanks for letting me know. Here it is.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745109295833677875/944089825206743130/unknown.png?width=1846&height=1148

Thursday, February 10th, not Friday

I will also be voting no in order to signal my dissatisfaction with DCG leadership. Ryan needs to step down as DCG CEO immediately if Dash is to prosper again. Rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic does not change the final outcome. New DCG hires only serve as a distraction that masks the root problem. No more kicking the can down the road. If Ryan does not step down I'll be selling my masternodes. I can no longer tolerate this poor performance. My investment is 99% down. Ryan, if you truly care about Dash, please do the right thing and step down before you are forced out by the network. You have done good things in the past for Dash but enough is enough. Dash needs new leadership if Dash is going to survive in this fast-paced industry. Your past 5-year performance as CEO simply would not be tolerated in the real working world. Don't delay the inevitable. The sooner this happens the sooner we can all move forward.

Voting NO until the issues are resolved.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/srdcwq/why_i_will_be_voting_no_on_the_dcg_comp_proposal/

I was correct when I called you out before for being a bad actor and an infiltrated masternode owner who has the worst interests for the network at heart.

The details of internal struggles and issues is not of high priority to me. The issue for the last few years has been the lack of outputs from DCG and just failing to deliver in a timely fashion.
The confidence with which DCG comes to the masternodes, needs to be revisited by them and some serious introspection is required. The days of promising are coming to an end...as the voting is showing...

I will also be voting no in order to signal dissatisfaction with DCG leadership. In particular, repairing the relationship between DCG and Mark Mason with the Dash Pressroom needs to be urgently addressed. How this situation has been handled thus far is totally unacceptable in my view.

From what I've see, a few influential dash communities members / mods are mud slinging to protect their buddies. It seems to be working and, frankly, I'd rather not see this kind of propaganda. It's bad enough watching MSM do this shit, and so with great irony I will vote Yes.

I could barely believe that DCG actually hired someone that was the opposite to themselves. By accident or not, I believe this is the single smartest move to come out of DCG in a very long time. If you want change at DCG then I believe Chris could very well be the catalyst. Someone willing to make bold moves and take dash to a whole new level.

Watching Joel impart "advice" to Chris made was just so cringe worthy. Really, after all these years siphoning money from the treasury, paying himself from the Dash Marketing Hub and so on, he actually believes he moved the needle? Outside of the treasury, I really don't give a shit what he does and good for him for doing what he loves most. But ffs, he was born with two ears and one mouth, shut the fuck up and try listening to your guests more. Let them talk more and be a little humble that they might actually be smarter than you.

De-fund Dash Marketing Hub and get behind someone with a fresh new outlook. Drop the old guard and don't look back.

As for Mark, he's an independent and DCG is subject to NDAs. If DCGs partners are not happy with Mark then so be it. Client confidentiality is paramount, respect it. Now it's down to Mark to pivot and ask himself whether creating 3D renders and GIFs is the best use of his time (and perhaps release the source files to the community that they have templates to work from). And yes, the Dash Newsroom front page is ugly and uninviting. But just for the record, I think Mark is a good Trust Protector.

Despite my vote, I would like to see a re-org. Clearly, Ryan is a valuable asset to the team but I think he should step down as CEO and move into a completely alien role, that he may advance his personal development skills. My observation is that he can sometimes be too controlling, as witnessed in the latest quarterly call where he interrupted and corrected his peers.

Ernesto would be a good interim CEO so long as he could keep his focus and maintain commitments to the LatAm program.

why would Ernesto be a good interim CEO?

I like your first observations. They seem spot on. It is interesting how hypocritical and unprincipled people are when it involves their friends. This isn't a social club ffs. We need to professionalize the entire DAO.

Ernesto is very articulate and self-aware. He has good knowledge of this space and and the inner workings of DCG. As an interim position I think he's quite capable of working with and coordinating with all parties.

Yeah, he wouldn't get my vote, he hasn't behaved well and honestly apart from the bybit hookup, which he didn't engage Mark's help with, Ernesto hasn't done much for the network either.

Perhaps people have this idea because they are from English speaking countries and they do not fully understand the significance our LatAm teams.

Do you seriously believe Ryan is more suitable as dash's leader and public face? If not, then how can Ernesto be any worse? I mean, the alternative is to take someone from outside of DCG and wait 6 months for them to integrate properly. Is that the kind of CEO you want?

Masternodes have long asked for better granularity in the proposals for Core. At the moment, there are strong feelings floating around about how things are going on the admin side of core. If the dev team and the admin team had separate props, MN would not be forced to slam the faucet shut on everybody to get some attention. But we have asked nicely and repeatedly and not made much headway. So now we are asking more forcefully. We would like to have discussions with Core Leadership about meaningful changes in how that Leadership is structured.

In the event that this does not pass, I would strongly recommend that this prop be replaced with two separate props, one for admin and one for the dev team. The Dev team is doing great. Our beef is not with the dev team.

I certainly do not speak for all masternodes, but that is my sense of our current situation. I would encourage everyone to read up on the Dash-Core-Group channel and the MNO channel and the general channel to get informed of the latest developments.

solarguy

It will be interesting to see if the under-utilization of Dash Newsroom and the mud slingering towards Ryan Taylor that has erupted on certain Dash channels (Discord, Reddit), will have a profound impact on this DCG budget proposal's support or not. If emotional / political / non-topic voting on DCG budget proposals (all in an attempt to signal disapproval to DCG) will overrule objective and on topic voting and possible undermine what is actually best for the Dash network.

The previous Dash Core Group Compensation Dec 2021 - Feb 2022 budget proposal got 844 yes votes, 115 no votes and 8 Abstains. It will be interesting to see how the voting will go on this new Dash Core Group Compensation budget proposal. I want to thank Glenn for providing these very detailed budget proposals each time, i know its his job.. but still.

Personally i don't use the Dash Newsroom, the lack of date stamps in the press releases and in the dash blog there i found confusing (makes it cumbersome to check when a press release was issued exactly, as you need to delve into each press release / blog article to see a date) and it became very clear to me early on that the Dash Newsroom was merely a DCG supporting PR outlet with Mark Mason as independent subcontractor, with little focus on Dash marketing.

If DCG is more comfortable using other PR channels then i don't have a problem with that, specially if Mark Mason was harming relations with Dash partners, as Ryan Taylor seems to have stated during a DIF meeting, causing the DIF to distance itself from the Dash Newsroom. That is something i would like to see further clarified by Ryan Taylor.

See : https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dcg-discussion-regarding-allegations.52709/#post-229784

I think that Dash PR is not really Dash largest problem right now. During the under-utilization of the Dash Newsroom these last 6 months, Dash PR pretty much kept flowing from other Dash PR channels.

I think Dash has a far larger problem with Dash marketing right now, specially with Arden leaving Dash. I understand that DCG plans to subcontract a marketing company, to initiate a new direction with regards to Dash Core Group marketing efforts. I think that is a good start, although the timing could be better with the Dash Platform scheduled to be released to Dash Mainnet within 5 months.

Voting no pending the results of the current inquiry into impropriety at the highest levels of DCG.

what are you referecing?

Ryan told the DIF and BizDev to shut out Mark Mason from all PR without giving reason and tried to keep the MNO's in the dark about this directive. Since Mark's Newsrwoom is a network approved agency, Ryan has put his personal grudge ahead of the network. These accusations have been confirmed by two members of the DIF. In my opinion, Ryan needs to be terminated immediately.

Actually according to Walter in the Dash Core Group channel of Discord a reason was provided by Ryan Taylor. I will quote Walter here :

''What I will confirm is that the narrative was of grave concern that Mark was damaging relations with various Dash partners. None of it was backed up with any evidence, his words were taken on trust I think it's fair to say. That's not to say there isn't any evidence, but you would have to go to Ryan for that.''

This was apparently discussed during a DIF meeting and used to distance the DIF from Mark Mason. I have no idea if this also caused the under-utilization of the Dash Newsroom or if other reasons are behind that specific under-utilization.

For transparency. Here is the full statement from Michael Lewis AKA Walter (DIF Supervisor) taken from the Dash Core Group channel on the Dash Discord:

Further to Ash’s responses @Tao of Satoshi - I share Ash’s position on the matter. I really don’t want to get dragged into this as I like Ryan, he’s been a valuable mentor during my first year at the DIF and I have a huge amount of respect for him as a colleague.

Something has clearly leaked from a DIF meeting that I attend last year, and this has prompted a discussion and some very direct questions to me, which I feel obliged to answer honestly given my duty to the MNOs who voted me into my roles as DTP and DIF Supervisor.

It is a matter of fact amongst DIF Supervisors and I’m not going to deny that Ryan heavily briefed us (the DIF) against using Mark around the time Arden was hired. I didn’t really understand it at the time, it came out of the blue, and I considered it a little 'out of character’ for someone I’ve gotten to know fairly well over the years and found to be very professional, thorough and matter-of-fact in the way he operates. Logically it didn’t make sense, I’ve also gotten to know Mark and always seen him as a very valuable contributor to the network, so hearing a lot of SAF about Mark from Ryan without any evidence to back up what was being said came as a bit of a surprise to me.

However, in light of multiple allegations about Mark from an individual as credible as Ryan the DIF chose to distance itself from the Dash Press Newsroom. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it (and I suspect Ash wasn’t either, given his reply) but I accepted that this was the consensus the DIF reached. The whole thing seemed a bit bizarre to be honest.

Was Mark “blackballed”? Based on what I’ve seen at the DIF it does lend credence to Mark's claims, and it’s hard to dispute that - at the very least - Ryan is NOT a fan of Mark at all. If the DIF is being briefed in that way then I can only imagine what was being said internally at DCG. Regardless, it seems like a personal issue between them that has spilled over to directly affect and damage the network; which we all agree is unacceptable.

Anyway, I've always been straight up with the MNOs and community and I’m not going to box myself into a situation where I cannot continue to act independently in my roles at the DIF and the DAO Trust. It’s unfortunate that this whole unsavoury discussion is being had in a public channel like this, I write this with a heavy heart to be honest, but I’ve been pinged and asked some very specific questions on some pretty serious allegations. That is my take, I have nothing further to add.

Wait, why is Mark being given kid-glove treatment, to the point where people would rather have him than Ryan Taylor? I don't get it, what has Mark Mason done for the network to warrant this kind of preferential treatment?

Ryan Taylor as CEO has overseen the deployment of chainlocks, instantSend by default, much LaTam growth, as well as other partnerships and additions to the network. As someone else pointed out, Dash's price has also risen quite a lot since Ryan started as CEO. What has Mark done that compares to this?

Voting no until there is a change of leadership at DCG.

I am not interested in supporting any powerplays against Dash Core Group. I am interested in supporting this compensation proposal from DCG, that is intended to compensate 45 paid staff that in my eyes simply did their job and deserve compensation for that.

I don't consider it in the best interest of the Dash network to deny developers, administrative employees, business development employees, marketing employees and support staff members their well deserved compensation.

DCG has a reserve. This would not affect anyone's compensation. According to Walter, a trust protector:

"DCG's balance sheet is healthier than its ever been (see Q4 financial report). I don't think a small disruption to treasury funding would put DCG at risk operationally, should the MNOs decide to signal. If anyone begs to differ on that then they're basically arguing that DCG is being financially mismanaged man_shrugging The whole point of the buffer is to protect DCG operationally should the treasury not provide in any scenario. I'm not advocating for a no vote, I'm just stating that MNOs can 'protest' without fear of disrupting DCG operationally."

I see that DCG core budget ask has been raised from 47% of treasury back to 50%, is this on account of the drop in Dash market price, or some other reason?

@Agnewpickens. You are correct, this is on account of the drop in Dash market price. Here is the reference to the detailed explanation in the text above:
"With the previous compensation proposal, we reduced our compensation funding request from 49% of available monthly funding to 47% of funding in order to increase our allocation request toward other expense categories. This was made possible by the relatively higher Dash price, and we were able to increase our compensation reserve even while requesting 47% of total proposal funding. With the recent Dash price decline, we now need to revert the percentage requested for compensation back to 50% of total proposal funding. Note that if the price of Dash increases above $130 by the time we need to submit our next compensation proposal, we will look to accordingly reduce the percent requested from the network for compensation purposes."

Just so you know, Agnewpickens does NOT have a masternode and therefore should not be commenting here. The reddit, official forum and discord are the appropriate places for community members without MNs to comment on proposals. The comments here are INTENDED ONLY for proposal owners and Masternode owners.

I notice that this ask is for 4 cycles, I thought DCG Core normally submitted for 3 cycles. Am I mistaken?

@agnrewpickens. You are correct. I'm quoting from the first paragraph of the proposal:
"Please note that in the past, most of our compensation proposals covered a 3 month period. This proposal is for a 4 month period. The need for this exception arises from timing differences between a forthcoming Dash block reward reduction (in early June) and the network’s monthly budget cycle. Typically, block reward reductions occur every 12 budget cycles, but this block reward cycle happens to have 13 superblocks due to the timing differences. If Dash Core Group were to stick to our normal 3 month proposal now and again in May (covering the May, June, and July superblocks), the amount of our June and July proposal requests would exceed the self-imposed 60% limit DCG seeks to remain below. This proposal will expire at the end of May, allowing us to submit a new proposal starting in June for a reduced amount."

OK, makes sense. So DCG will revert back to 3 cycle asks after June? Until the next reduction?

Exactly.