Welcome!

Disclaimer: This proposal is individual in nature and is not brought forward by Dash Core Group

I'm Kittywhiskers Van Gogh (kwvg on GitHub, kittywhiskers on Keybase), I've been contributing to Dash Core since Dec, 2020 (my first pull request!), contributed through the Dash Incubator program since Jan, 2021 (pull request, Incubator claim) before transitioning to a role within Dash Core Group effective Apr, 2022.

Since then, except for a brief period, I have contributed to Dash Core in full-time capacity for 5 years.

What did I do?

I filled the role of C++ Software Engineer in the Core team. My responsibility was, beyond routine backports, implementing features needed in Dash Core sooner than sequential backports would allow.

This proposal seems familiar...

Because it is. Below are my past proposals.

Proposal Name	Funding Period	Work Period
kwvg-core-dev-nov24	Nov, 2024 - Jan, 2025 (3 months)	Dec, 2024 - Feb, 2025 (3 months)
kwvg-core-dev-apr25	Apr, 2025 (1 month)	Apr, 2025 (1 month)
kwvg-core-dev-may25	May, 2025 (1 month)	May, 2025 (1 month)
kwvg-core-dev-jun25	Jun, 2025 (1 month)	Jun, 2025 (1 month)
kwvg-core-dev-jul25	Jul, 2025 - Sep, 2025 (3 months)	Jul, 2025 - Sep, 2025 (3 months)   
kwvg-core-dev-oct25	Oct, 2025 - Dec, 2025 (3 months)	Oct, 2025 - Dec, 2025 (3 months)   
kwvg-core-dev-jan26	Jan, 2026 - Mar, 2026 (3 months)	Jan, 2026 - Mar, 2026 (3 months)
kwvg-dev-apr26	Apr, 2026 - Jun, 2026 (3 months)	Apr, 2026 - Jul, 2026 (4 months)

What have I done since last time?

Contributed 23 merged pull requests between Apr 6th, 2026 and Aug 5th, 2026 at dashpay/base-sdk and dashpay/dash totalling ~310 commits[1][2].

• API
  • base-sdk#20 (implement Fr,Fp{,2}, G{1,2}{,Affine} wrappers, use draft-03 keygen, improve conformance with bls-signatures)
  • base-sdk#21 (consolidate corpus logic, JSON and hex helpers to dash-dev, define BlsScheme trait to supersede old layout)
• Backports
  • dash#6888[3] (backport: bitcoin#23508, #24187, #24528, #24579, #25412, #27853)
• Binds
  • bls-signatures#125[4] (revive Python binds requiring Python 3.10 or higher, rename to dashbls, repair setup.py to work on Windows, update authorship, drop unmaintained parallel impl, shave down README, add build and publish script)
• Build/CI
  • base-sdk#5 (introduce CodeQL and semgrep linters, add shim, derivation, disambiguation rules, resolve violations, add common helper for lint infra)
  • base-sdk#15 (add git filter helper script, introduce new semgrep rules, port secret-holding Debug restriction, unknown value preservation rule from CodeQL)
  • base-sdk#19 (add semgrep rules for attributes, update nightly matrix to test std and minimal cases, isolate blst FFI use, consolidate {ietf,chia} features, run default CodeQL query set)
• Documentation
  • base-sdk#10 (introduce Zensical-based documentation site, WASM-based demos, GitHub Pages workflow)
• Codec
  • base-sdk#1 (add serde awareness to crates, move newtype definitions to new crate dash-types, drop bincode support)
  • base-sdk#4 (introduce trait BaseCodec and helper macros to reduce boilerplate, enforce create::prelude use, drop premature limits)
  • base-sdk#7 (add Checkable trait, move inherent validate() functions to it, drop DeploymentContext, trim down checks to be stateless)
  • base-sdk#11 (consolidate exports, types, add utf8 serde codec to process domain names, preserve unknown values, drop legacy macro)
  • base-sdk#12 (implement {Addr,Service,NetInfo}{V1,V2}, define surrounding traits (Net{Addr,Info}), define Checkable, add synthetic vectors, correct impl. errors)
  • base-sdk#16 (define Hashable trait, impl_hash helper for typical cases, Codec to validate impl of subtraits, TypeId for name-stable u32 identifier with uniqueness test)
  • base-sdk#17 (add new RFC predicates and use in is_reachable(), sync is_routable() with consensus definition)
  • base-sdk#22 (add fixed-length buffers for secret-holding types, enforce subtle and zeroize use with CodeQL, implement ungated byte bags for BLS and ECDSA types, add enum_map helper macro)
  • base-sdk#23 (implement recoverable signatures API, Ecdsa{Pk,Sk,RecSig}Bytes as canonical types, EcdsaSigBytes as raw type, split KeyId into {PubKey,Script}Hash and use bitcoin_primitives::script)

This proposal seems a month late, what gives?

Due to price volatility in the past quarter favoring higher prices, there was enough funds over from the Apr 2026 - Jun 2026 cycle to fund another month of development, which allowed me to defer my proposal by a month, effectively stretching the work period for the same amount of Dash issued. I'm grateful for the support lent to my proposals thus far.

So, uh. Where's Hyphen?

Work on Hyphen is ongoing. There has been some updates to the deployment scripts for Hyphen over at kwvg/hyphen_deploy but for the most part, time has been invested into a family of crates that make Hyphen possible, base-sdk. The original demo for Hyphen was built on a one-shot write of the (now) primitives crate, sufficient to parse blocks and develop a semantic understanding that allows Hyphen to develop a relational understanding of chain events, not enough to deal with adversarial input; clearly growing in shape, it was untenable for it to stay as a monolithic crate sitting within Hyphen's source tree when it was a critical component in its own right.

This lead to splitting of the primitives crate into scoped and more strictly defined smaller crates and the release of this collection as the Base SDK. Since then, the majority of my work has been to streamline the code to graduate beyond a semantic parser relying on trusted input. Currently the version of Hyphen hosted on https://hyphen.dash.org (and its testnet equivalent hosted at https://ts.kw.vg) is based on tag 2026-05-05 though there's been significant development since then upon the next tag release Hyphen will be re-adjusted against the newest public API surface.

More documentation for Base SDK will be made available at https://dashpay.github.io/base-sdk as the desired public API starts taking shape.

Why am I asking?

Due to external factors, current DCG funding would be insufficient to allow retaining me as a contractor. This proposal will allow me to continue work, while retaining my reporting structure and maintaining work output.

How much am I asking for?

200 DASH per month for the duration of the proposal period. The amount disbursed will be paid to DCG's compensation fund for conversion and payment to me and shall be treated as proposal income and compensation expense for DCG.

Verification

The below message can be verified using Keybase (source)

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Notes

[1] - Calculated for dashpay/dash using 'git shortlog 79788223..f1dde51e --summary --numbered --no-merges | grep "Kittywhiskers Van Gogh"', 7 commits.

[2] - Calculated for dashpay/base-sdk using 'git shortlog a7b3a783..efd83327 --summary --numbered --no-merges | grep "Kittywhiskers Van Gogh"', 309 commits.

[3] - Mentioned in previous proposal (i.e. Q4 CY2025) but included here as merged in development cycle

[4] - Not merged as of Aug 5th, 2026, included as most work for it was done during Q3 CY2026. It is not counted towards merged pull requests or commit count.