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I voted yes. I don't follow up on people's argument that voting yes will cause a precedent of any kind. The people of this community are few and smart, they can decide for themselves if future 3rd party proposals are in any way worth voting for, without regards to a precedent. Besides, there's only so many 3rd party service you can provide that could be in any way useful here. I for one can't think of needing anything else besides this. Everything else is handled by the core team anyway

I second that.

Valid argumentation, ciupenhauer. Thank you very much!

anyone else getting "proposal not found" when trying to vote on this ?

It would be nice if proposals were discussed before putting them up for a vote, because you end up with a ticking clock, and hard-coded decisions. If a project were hashed out first, then it would be more likely that consensus would be better when voting time came around. Just a thought :)

@TanteStefana

Putting up some kind of prediscussion suits many projects, but not really this one. Here, there is no real room for adjustments. Lower monthly amount to get approval? If you take some DASH from blockchain funding, you have to inform masternode owners and discuss. That consumes 1-X hours of work a month. A lower monthly amount (80 DASH) does not even cover work to do "investor relations" and does not cover operating costs. So doing such kind of low budget proposal would not lead to any coverage of costs but somehows brings some "depencency of others".

This proposal had a quite positive effect. It ultimatively proved that Dashwhale is a suitable platform to handle proposal description and discussion in one place. 47 comments so far and some side strikes on BCT. Dashwhale made it's way to so many new minds in the community. You can not get much more ROI for the invested fee and time :)

Really receiving the funding would be the "cherry on the cake". Most people voted no think "funding a 3rd party website like this is a precedent which should be avoided". This judgement is only scratches the surface. And i admit, i was not able to get the vision of this project into everybodys minds so far. Dashwhale is not compareable to any other 3rd party sites.

Proposal discussion and judgement is important for every DASH owner. High quality school education should be accessible for everybody for free. If you charge for it, this leads to a negative impact and disbalance for the whole society. It's exactly the same with Dashwhale funding. Besides, this was the reason for me to choose dashwhale.org and NOT dashwhale.com as the domain name for this project.

Voted yes. Dashwhale provides a great place to discuss/propose/vote on budget proposals. It's not JUST a site for MN owners to monitor their nodes.

This site doesn't only provide easy Masternode monitoring and voting, it provides a central clear and easy forum for all interested people, to discuss proposals. Currently it is indeed centralized. But I can see a future where the forum part, where proposals are posted and threads are hosted could be distributed to any website that runs it. It could be a full duplicate that updates whenever a person posts. All websites that host it could be a gateway to post, and it will "feel" as if it's centralized, but actually be decentralized, so that if something happens to one site, or even this site, it will continue to survive on other web servers. If this could be done, or if this could be promised, I can see it as benefiting without a doubt, the Dash Project fully.

In the mean time, I still think it benefits the Dash project as a whole, as it's not only for Masternode owners, but anyone who wishes to participate.

Why you all say that this site is centralized???
Yes the centralize some information.
Butthe site don't have any power on DASH, the site is not centralized!!! Can't make modification on DASH network or anything like this.

The pas nly question we have to ask to ourself is : this site help DASh as a whole? Is part of DASH, help DASH in any meaning?

That's true. Not everything has to be decentralized, I agree. I would simply like to see the forum, where budget proposals are discussed, somehow be decentralized so that if a host loses interest and closes up shop, we don't lose our forum. I don't think such a thing exists yet, but it would be really cool because you could count on a "central" hub that's decentralized to be there forever, and it could also never be censored as in pulled down off the internet entirely. But, I don't think there is a danger like that at the moment, and if someone with a hell of a lot more talent than I can do this, maybe they will. But I'm in agreement with you, and I have already voted yes to what we have so far :)

I think it's clear that the problem isn't with the merits of the service here - it's with the principle of using blockchain budget for funding private ventures.

I've got 2 masternodes. I kind of feel like voting once each way - obviously a ridiculous thing to do. The site is fantastic and I would not want to loose it. The other thing about this proposal, however, is that it's going to set a precedent because it's the first one of this type - where the beneficiary has been the one making the proposal.

All I can say is - thank god we've got another 26 days to think about it.

Some of this seems like a private venture, some of it is definitely a service to dash. I mean, they're making life a lot easier on the Masternode owners, which is a benefit to Dash because more MN owners will participate in the voting, etc... when they can see the information, see the points of view, and ultimately easily hit the button, or whatever they do here to vote. They've made a reality of the vision Evan had for how all this would work. They obviously worked along side Evan to make this a reality. Here, anyone can clearly argue, just as we're doing, for a yes or a no vote. It's central, and therefore efficient. when a MN owner is convinced, it's easy for them to cast their vote right here, where they already are. This should increase participation which increases the mix for the "wisdom of the crowd".

If you look at the big picture, DASH will grow to a point where it will have all the funding it needs for internal development and marketing. At that point the only thing it will fund will be private ventures. As long as this isn't a forever vote, I don't see anything wrong with promoting some private funding to make voting and owning masternodes easier.

The vote should be about whether this proposal adds more value for the masternode owners and DASH network than the amount asked.

P.S. If the vote is ultimately No, I strongly feel the community should work to identify some alternative way rango can be helped with funding.

If MN owners are helped by this site, then just a Dash or two (or 1.23) in donation per month will help keep it going.

P.P.S. I like the idea that the site runs on high-end, high up time servers. Rango is right to want to maximise quality and serviceability at every level and I'm pleased to hear the back end is consistent with the great looking front end in that regard.

I'm on the fence with this too. I don't think funding private, commercial, closed source projects are the right use of funds. So I decided to vote no and then donate some Dash directly to Dashwhale of their great service. I would gladly pay a monthly subscription fee if I'm using the site if that's the way it goes in the future.

Thank you for your kind donation, italeffect. We appreciate it. By the way: 3 Fins are very sexy :)

I went through all your ideas condensing everything to the following central issue:

---
How to allow an active and easy democratic process for budget decisions with raising amount of proposals?
---

The issues:
1. We will have 10-20 proposals per month in the near future
2. With high amounts of proposals it's illusional to do the discussion in multiple threads of the Dashtalk forum (untructured, unprofessional information process)
3. Information get lost. To cope with this we need one central place to be.
4. Budget review, discussion and voting has to be easy for high voting participation
5. From finance and technical perspective it's not possible to do proposal presentation & discussion on a "decentralized platform" within reasonable time and money

Possible solutions:
1. Core team puts up a +10k USD proposal to create a new platform (compareable to Dashwhale)
2. Core team looses focus and implements a "decentralized" proposal presentation and discussion feature. To my opinion technically challenging if not impossible within reasonable time. Somebody external will charge about 50-500k USD
3. Sit and wait. Ignoring the issues outlined above decreases quality of the democratic process, leading to a) malallocation of funds b) loss of ideas c) loss of central discussion issues by time => hurting DASH investor value
4. Monetize Dashwhale like any other website. Monetizing Dashwhale a regular way hurts open access to the platform and impairs democratic process (ads, highlighted proposals)
5. Invest 2% of the total budget for 6 month to see, if Dashwhale can solve these issues relevant for every masternode owner and every DASH owner.

I'm not so worried about it being centralized now. I'm just wondering if we could decentralize it a bit for the future. Only the forum part. The masternode services are, well, services that DashWhale is providing. I think it's great, but it is harder to fund "that" part for Dash as a whole. The forum, though, is definitely what is needed for the entire serious Dash community. We need it like you made it here, to discuss and improve proposals. BTW, I'm voting yes on this. I think you made something very useful and important regardless.

Another interesting idea: http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ Decentralized facebook ;P

Hey Rango, I had to start an account, and just read what you wrote. Do you think we could somehow create multiple portals into the forum only section of this site, one that updates all sites at the same time, that anyone could log in from and be on the same threads? Is that what you're saying would cost a fortune to implement?

I'm curious if maybe http://www.quelsolaar.com/verse/ could be used to make this happen? It's used for interactive collaboration, but I'm thinking it could be modified for this type of idea?

This service is fantastic. Not only does it make the Mastenode Tier2 Network more transparent to the public but it also gives MNOs a platform to discuss proposals openly.

This service will become only more necessary and utilized as time goes on.

Voted.

Here is a point to consider... What if no one made a site like this? This is a user friendly (easy for the masses) interface that will only further Dash acceptance. If the only way to make or vote on proposals was to read the wiki on dashtalk, then it would certainly feel like a niche, closed circle that is hard to join. Dash Whale makes it easy.
I feel that this site promotes Dash as a whole even if only a portion of the masternodes use it. There is no other site like it. Now, if Rango gets lazy over time, or someone else comes out with a kick-butt improvement, then I would switch my support to that one. The point is... let's reward those who push Dash forward.
I actually like this better than the pay-first / show-later approach of the marketing, and other dev-sponsered projects. Rango built it first and then when he had something to show, asked for support. Bravo!
I like the 6-month approach. Not a big deal to support for 6 months. That much better than asking for 5 years support that we MUST downvote to get it off the books. This one clears itselft and must be reimplemented if found worthy.
Finally, for those big masternode owners out there that do not use the site... please keep in mind that this site promotes Dash even if you don't use it. It makes Dash look (and actually does make it) easier to get involved. How will it look if Dash Whale whithered away and nothing replaced it? It would look like Dash itself is dying... think about it!

this ^^^ I will be voting for this

Agreed, services like DashWhale and Node40 demystify and simplify the process of MN ownership/voting, which can only increase investment and adoption of Dash going forward.

@Rango. What is your roadmap for the future if this proposal goes through?

Will you be adding a random delayed vote option so it isn't possible to tell masternodes that vote together?

Maybe partner with providers to offer discounts on masternode hosting? Or even offer integrated hosting?

Just thinking out of the box, if you could offer hosting for test nodes, maybe that would gain more support by those not currently using your service.

Vote scrambling is already in progress. Should be finished in 2-3 days. We also love this feature.

We don't have plans to go for masternode hosting. We already received some requests to partner with already existing masternode hosters. Doing some kind of structured recommendation for hosting services might be a future funding source which does not put pain on anybody. There are some more ideas how to move forward :)

Thanks Rango. BTW, you did get yes votes from me.

Interesting discussion :

* are we willing to use a central tool to vote with our decentralised masternodes ?
* are we spending our funds wisely as not everyone uses this site to vote?
* if we as cryptocurrency want to achieve mainstream adoption there has to be an easy and simple way to vote
without having to rely on accessing either our cold or hot wallet...

After carefully thinking these points through i decided that i will give this site a trial period of 6 months which means you will have my yes vote .. for now.

I think a subscription model is much more suitable for this site - a couple reasons I voted "No" (btw I really do like this site and would pay for the service).

1) It feels like a clear conflict of interest for Masternode owners to vote "yes" on something that only benefits them.

2) Complimentary to #1, as Masternode owners it is our responsibility to ensure that funds are used for the improvement of the currency/network as a whole. I don't feel that this budget proposal fulfills that requirement.

I would be happy to pay a small fee to use this site, however I don't think that DGBB funding would be put to optimum use this way.

I think there should be full disclosure on the costs any proposal is supposed to be covering (especially those looking for reimbursement) by third parties, especially after the fact like this one....just like if you were applying for a university research grant to study the rare pink snails of the Galapagos. Just saying to "cover operational costs" doesn't sit well with most. Some of us know what it takes/costs to run a site and you aren't asking for a small fee.

I DO think you have talent, are smart and an all around good guy. You've built an attractive and useful site. I also believe you should be compensated, but only by the people who want to use your services. If it were one of my sites, I would deem features "premium" like notifications and voting, even the chat. I'd put a few ads up as well.

Good luck on your proposal.

Yes, transparency is a must for non-core proposals, showing a clear outline of how funds are used. The fee could presumably be lowered to have a better chance of passing. I'm glad people here know what these things should cost. And why no ads, DW?

@Jeztah @loktrrr

Thank you for your kind words and valid concerns.

If you want to hire an agency in regular business life to build a website like this, you have to write a book of specifications. Roughly 30-50 pages. This takes you some manweeks. When this is done, you have to hire an agency to do the graphics design and the software implementation. They will charge you 10-20k USD for the current Dashwhale implementation. If you want them to do the monthly maintenance with 24/7 uptime guarantee they charge you a fixed sum of 500-1000 USD per month. Because they assume at least 5 manhours of work per month (60-120 USD per hour) and enterprise dedicated server incl. DDoS protection and dedicated firewall 100-300 USD a month.

If you want somebody in real life to build a tiny iOS or android app, you pay 1000-3000 USD.

I just ask for a valid 360 USD per month to cover basic operations to keep this site open for everybody, as long as it provides enough benefit. If you want to give 200 USD a month for this, that would simply not be a real life price for this kind of quality service. I am not going to run a data sensitive service like this on a quality level lower than described above.

I'm sure you feel attacked by me, and I am sorry for that. I still am not seeing what I need to see to feel good about giving you part of the blockchain for 6 months and beyond.

This will set a precedent because once you get funded, you and anyone with a website that was not commissioned will post proposals and expect them to be approved each time.

My point is that you made this site on your own. Even though there are fantastic services offered, the foundation/community did not commission this and hence should not be responsible for YOUR costs. You should be recouping them just like every other site does by charging a fee, managing your overhead and only upgrading when necessary.

This site does not need a dedicated server with a 24/7 sla, nor does it need $100-$300 DDOS protection (which is it by the way, 100 or 300?). If you are paying for these items, you should disclose the bills so we don't feel taken advantage of.

Data sensitive. Did you mean data intensive like every other database driven site on the planet? I run a few larger websites myself with many millions of pageviews each month and I believe you could be managing your costs better.

Is it truly a dedicated server or is it just a virtual machine? What are the specs? Are you running the database in the same VM as the web server?

I'm sorry but you failed to convince me that you are even going to pay the bills with the DASH. It's oddly very close to the amount needed for an MN.

Other than your time, what REALLY are the costs? Prove them to us please.

2 VMs running ESXI6 on one dedicated server with a monthly fee of 199,6 USD (there is annother project running on this server, so lets generously half the relevant hosting cost to 99,8 USD) + 5 manhours a 60 USD = 399,8 USD per month costs.

You aim to distract people from the relevant central problem "How to allow an easy democratic process for budget voting with raising amount of proposals". To focus on this, i opened a new thread. What is your solution to this problem?

I agree with Jeztah that this site doesn't require such a high spec server in the first place. I'm founder and owner of an IT MSP and webdesign business in the UK. We have hosted VPS servers for £40 a month with the best provider in the UK - memset.com - and each VPS hosts around 50 websites (database driven too) and it does it with ease. I can't see how dashwhale currently generates any more traffic on a monthly basis than your average masternode.

Hosting these days is cheap, even for high availability, redundant, DDoS protected VPS solutions.

What I do agree with Rango on is that the labour costs for creating a site like this would be upwards of £40 per hour in the UK, if not more to be honest.. So in that regard I can understand how the $60 an hour figure has been worked out.

As for the pros/cons of the funding? I'm really caught in two minds about it! Ultimately, I admire greatly what Rango has achieved, however, I see it as a commercial venture and one for which Rango needs to find a commercial business model with which to fund, should he wish to develop it further. I don't doubt that the site is beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole, but it does set a dangerous precedent should this commercial venture gain blockchain funding.

I haven't made a decision which way to vote yet. I'm going to wait and see, hopefully we'll have some more discussion on the matter :)

I am not trying to distract from anything. Looking closer at the issue, it's not really a problem either. They should add a forum for proposals on DT.org and have a different topic going for each proposal. Simple.

I saw a potential abuse (even if that was not your intent) and I am shining a light on it. This could have been hosted on a much cheaper plan somewhere, period. I'm sorry but $375/mo for something that would be used by at most 3k-ish members is simply way over priced. Red flags left and right there. This is a privately owned un-commissioned site. I have a problem funding it from the blockchain without full disclosure, (which we never got). We should have seen invoices for the hosting, DDOS protection and the man hours that you are paying for. What they are really doing for 5 hours each month. I'm a little confused on that point because I know my web servers and DB servers don't require that much work each month and I have quite a few more than you.

I don't use this site to vote on aside of the one time at first to try it. I didn't feel overly comfortable with it, I may end up re-initialising my MN because of it. I don't have a problem pasting a line of code into my MN and hitting enter to vote, but I CAN see where others may want your service. They are the ones that should pay for the convenience and I am willing to bet that you will do just fine.

im pretty sure there are adds on the IOS app, either that or my phone has some malware :)

The iOS app has not been officially released yet. It's in in the appstore, but there is a severe bug and displayed information still has to be optimized. We'll post when the final version has been released.

iOS and Android dev's developed their apps without charging anything. So they are free to put up ads, to get at least a tiny amount back.

Hey @rango im fine with a couple of these adds. (its a free app) I was asking because I was wondering if my phone was infected.

Let me see, 160*6 = 960.
You already own 40 DASH.
O.O, one MN. Lol
After 6 month what you'll do? No more funding or you'll find it elsewhere? Or you didn't put too long to not afraid voter?

Can you give a little more detail about those 160 dash needed.
And last question did some DASh will go to dev of the android mobile app?

Thank you Lebubar for raising these important questions.

6 month a clear timeframe, that everybody can oversee and is able to commit to. After that 6 month, we can all evaluate again and check, if this site provides enough benefit to our community to justify funding or if there there is even a business model for this site to survive without a proposal and without subscriptions.

The 160 DASH cover hosting (dedicated server with DDoS protection), geographical independent backup, external website monitoring service and at least 5 manhours per month, to keep this site up and running safely. Not relevant for this proposal, but just for information: 3 manmonths of devtime have been put into making this site what it is today. And that was great fun so far. Further work is ongoing.

The android and iOS apps have been released by the devs, because they really like this project. Further improvements of the apps (budget integration) will require some "love" to encourage them. These funds will be taken from my own pockets and hopefully beefed up a bit by personal donations of masternode owners.

Please let me know, if there are further questions.

Tks for the answer, as I use a lot your site I'll vote tes ;)

Yes.

I thought we had a vote option, to cast our vote here?
I'm not seeing it...?

MangledBlue, please go to "My Account" => "Edit masternodes". Then enter your masternode privkeys (result from genkey command) with our trustless storage solution. After you entered the keys, the voting buttons will appear right above the proposal description.

oh-k - nvm - I found it - voted - all goo:-D
Very nice...

I am happy to answer your questions!