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Dash Incubator Rion 2023 Q4

Proposal to fund the Dash Incubator reserve administered by Rion Gull, Dash Incubator Lead Strategist.

Summary

Dash Incubator is submitting two proposals this quarter:

1.  This proposal requesting 500 DASH/month (down 300 DASH/month from my 2023 Q3 proposal)
2.  Mikhail's proposal requesting 200 DASH/month (up 200 DASH/month - new this quarter)

• Ash is not requesting funds this quarter (Ash's 2023 Q3 proposal was withdrawn shortly after being submitted)
• Tim is not requesting funds this quarter (Tim's 2023 Q3 proposal was withdrawn shortly after being submitted)

As mentioned last quarter, Incubator proposals are now split up to allow more granular voting.  Each strategist (or prospective strategist) now submits their own proposals for funding.  All payout addresses, and hence Incubator funds are still controlled by the lead strategist, who is tasked to ensure all transactions follow Incubator rules.

1 Incubator Updates

Our Incubator WEEKLY video series continues to air every Monday.  The show highlights projects we're working on in the Incubator, and as of this writing includes 35 shows.  Our 2023 Q3 Quarterly Report aired October 16th and is a good supplement to this written text.

Figure 1 below shows Incubator's high-level funding rates.  The blue series shows funds received from Incubator treasury proposals (such as this proposal and those of other Incubator strategists).  The red series shows rewards paid to incubator contributors from all strategist budgets, averaged into monthly rates for each quarter.


Figure 1 - Incubator funds received and paid

2 Project Updates and Outlook

The incubator distributed 2,851 DASH in rewards to 26 different projects over the past quarter (2023 Q3). 

Now that we are submitting separate proposals for each strategist, this section will highlight only my own (Rion's) projects.


Figure 2 - Reward allocation

A brief update on each project I funded this quarter:

• Merchant Tools - This was work done by AJ in July.  These are tools for websites to be able to accept Dash with xPub addresses and be notified through webhooks.  They are modern, lightweight, secure JavaScript libraries with few or no external dependencies.  AJ plans to use these tools to accept Dash for cloud services in the future, so they will be used in the real world and kept up to date (as opposed to most of Dash's other existing tools we inherited from BitPay and others).  Work here also included several UX-geared DIPs which were featured on Incubator Weekly (for payment and privacy, and accessibility and security).  
• Payment Tools - This was also work done by AJ in July.  These are lower level tools that are dependencies in the merchant tooling but can also be used outside of a merchant setting, such as for seed phrases, wallets, etc.  These tools were mostly completed in past quarters, but we needed to make some updates to support memos for Maya integrations (which can also be used just for general OP_RETURN transactions).  El Dorado uses these transaction tools under the hood.
  
• Incubator Updates - This is our ongoing weekly show that features updates from Incubator projects, as well as other important Dash-related topics.  This quarter many of our episodes dealt with the important reallocation proposal and other economic issues, which are all available in the Incubator Weekly YouTube playlist.
  
• Modern Vanilla Web Wallet - This was work done by jojobyte through the quarter.  It's a web/mobile/desktop-compatible wallet UI which uses our payment tool libraries under the hood.  We plan for this wallet to integrate all of the features the Dash community wants, for example mixing in web/mobile, Maya swaps, gift card integrations, as well as a simplified contact list feature that we've been working on (which can be update to support DashPay usernames once platform is complete).  Once we've reached MVP it should be relatively easy to add requested features, but getting to MVP has been a long road since we built all the dependencies in-house for security and overall UX/DX (user/developer experience) reasons.
• Strategy - This is for overall strategic research and planning.  It covers everything not explicitly itemized otherwise, such as recruiting, task documentation, payment transactions, communications with devs and community, engagement and research of the wider crypto space and the macro-economic environment that makes a market for crypto in the first place.
• Dash Economics Research and Development - This is a project spearheaded by AgnewPickens and worked on mostly by me up until this point. Initial work has focussed around data compilation (bountied) and economic research (a lot of work, but not bountied).  Several Incubator Weekly shows covered this topic. 
• Dash Platform Contributions - This is a project started and worked on by pshenmic.  His extensive work on dashmate, platform, Electrum, and several other projects prompted me to invite him to become an Incubator strategist.  If his proposal passes he will take over the projects he has been working on.
• Dash Incubator Org - Misc work internal to the Incubator, such as our website, our accounting sheets, etc.
• Anypay Assistance - Another project that pshenmic is mostly working on.  Anypay is an Important tool for crypto/Dash acceptance, and they have needed help with bug fixes and new features for their product.  Without Anypay many merchants would no longer be able to accept Dash.  I consider them an important strategic partner.
• DFO Kickstarter -Community member and Incubator contributor Doeke is working through this project/bounty to help him kickstart his own DFO.  For various reasons (including but not exclusively low treasury funding) we have held off formally submitting his independent DFO, but it's in the works, possibly for later when the treasury is less restricted.  

In the coming quarter I plan to do the following:

• Testing to help to get platform delivered. 
• Continued work on payment and merchant tooling.
• Continued work on our web Wallet SDK and UI.
• Continued work on our JavaScript CoinJoin SDK.
  
• Continued work on platform and Electrum (under my budget if pshenmic's doesn't pass)
• Continued work on Dash economics Research and Development 

3 Schedule and Budgeting

This proposal continues our typical 3-month funding proposal cadence, now with one proposal for each of our Incubator strategists.

Figure 3 below breaks down this budget planning for the following quarter (3 months shown in the table).  I'm including a detailed explanation to help everyone understand what each value means.  This table can always be accessed in our Accounting spreadsheet.


Figure 3 - Strategist reserve planning (last updated Oct 11th) 

Detailed explanation of each value:

• Column A indicates the strategist and month for the upcoming three months of budget requests.
• Column B shows the current reserves in each strategist reserve, along with the total as of the screenshot in cell B5.
• Column C shows each strategist's budget request, along with the total in rows 5, 11, and 17.
• Column D shows each strategist's projected output (rewards paid to Incubator contributors).
• Column E shows the maximum base commission that strategists can claim (10% of the MNO-approved budget).
• Column F shows the maximum output commission that strategists can claim (20% of strategist-approved tasks, shared with admins if used for certain projects).
• Column G is the sum of E and F, representing the total commission strategists can earn (25% of MNO-approved budget maximum over time).
• Column H is column C less columns D and G, representing the surplus or deficit of each reserve.
• Column I is the sum of B and H, representing the projected end-of-month balance.
• Column J is the projected buffer for each reserve assuming subsequent funding continues.
• Column K is the projected buffer for each reserve assuming no continued funding.

According to the above assumptions and calculations, by the end of the quarter the following buffers are expected:

• 0.2 month buffer for the Incubator overall (down from 0.9 months from last quarter)
• 0.1 month buffer for my strategic reserve (down from 1.2 months from last quarter)

I'd like to raise my buffer next quarter, which will hopefully be possible with the increased superblock that recently passed (but still needs to be activated).  If Dash does not appreciate in value I'll need to curtail development or explore alternatives for Incubator funding.

Terms and Closing

All operations of the Incubator funded by this proposal are subject to our current Rules.  This proposal forms a part of our Network Contract with Dash.  Our rules are always subject to and defer to MNO voting. 

Thank you, masternode voters, for your support!  As always, I'm very excited about this quarter and what we will accomplish.

Respectfully,

Rion