Proposal - Dash Community

An open platform that incentivizes collaborative content and projects

Overview

Summary

This proposal is to fund the creation and maintenance of what I'm calling "Dash Community". Dash Community is an open platform that incentivizes collaborative projects and content, using a transparent, powerful, and relatively easy-to-use hosting service, i.e. Github.

Specifically, it is a github organization separate from, and complementary to, the main dashpay organization. The dashcommunity organization hosts repositories for various purposes - something for everyone. I'm proposing it in order to increase community contribution and continue the general decentralization of Dash. It will achieve this by lowering the barrier to entry and raising the financial incentive for software developers, writers, marketers, and anyone else to use and contribute to Dash.

I'm requesting one single payment of 250 DASH for this project. This covers primarily my own time, but 20% of the total will be redistributed back to community members who participate in the project.

Motivation

"Having lots of people involved with Dash is what makes it successful!" - Evan Duffield

The primary motivation for this project is to increase the value of Dash. As Evan's sentiment above suggests, I believe this is best achieved through sustainable community growth. For growth to be sustainable, two things are required:

• increase community contribution
• decrease project centralization

The two go hand in hand; Dash becomes more decentralized as independent community members contribute to it. This is obvious to some, but it bears repeating and expounding upon. I have begun to make the case more explicit in this blog post about decentralization.

Many people are eager to contribute to Dash, but many are not sure where or how to begin. Or, they know where and how, but they cannot financially justify altruistically contributing to the project. To increase community contribution, two things are required:

• lower the barrier to entry
• raise the incentive to enter

There are many useful tools and resources in the Dash ecosystem:

• Dash.org and the accompanying forum
• The official project documentation
• The main dashpay Github repository
• Community-produced sites
  • dash central
  • dash vote tracker
• The dashpay subreddit
• Slack teams
• The official Youtube channel
• and more

These resources are very helpful for reference and use, but are somewhat restricted in terms of accessibility and contribution. The community cannot directly help build on and improve these resources. An open platform would provide opportunities for individuals and teams to build products and services that anyone else can easily contribute to and integrate with. Dash new-comers will benefit from the additional learning resources produced (guides, blog posts, etc). This lowers the barrier to entry for both experienced content creators and interested new-comers.

A portion of the funds requested for this project will be distributed to people who join and contribute to Dash Community. This raises the incentive to enter as a Dash contributor. The lowered barrier and raised incentive increase participation, which yields a more decentralized project, which sustainably raises the value of Dash.

Scope

Part of the Dash Community infrastructure (the Github organization and repositories within) has already been built. Part is planned, but not yet built, and much more is possible. This proposal is a request for reimbursement for the cost incurred (time spent) bringing it to the present state, as well as a request for further funding to improve it and support the community in using it.

The following sub-sections will list what I've accomplished, what I plan to do throughout the month (during voting), and what I plan to do contingent on project funding. This document (the proposal) may remain unedited once submitted, but I will be continually updating the project management board throughout this and next month. My requested budget is fixed, but the effort and deliverables you can expect from me will likely increase if there is interest. Stop by occassionally, or watch the repo for updates.

Deliverables

Completed Deliverables (D1.x)

1. Dash Community organization (Github)
2. Dash Community landing page
3. Guides
   1. Create a proposal from a template
   2. Create a proposal template
   3. Set up a masternode
   4. Set up a virtual private server
   5. Submit a proposal to the dash network
4. Proposal templates
   1. Simple
   2. Detailed
5. Proposals
6. Blog
7. Sample project management board

October Deliverables (D2.x)

1. Expanded community (support)
2. Updated landing page for Dash Community)
3. Landing pages for guides and blog
4. Status report template
5. Status report every two weeks showing progress and any required re-scoping and/or re-scheduling

November Deliverables (D3.x)

1. Expanded community (support)
2. Proposal with re-scoped project (according to community and masternode operator feedback/desires)
3. Status reports every two weeks showing progress and any required re-scoping and/or re-scheduling
4. Payments to people who join and make at least one meaningful commit to the organization

Schedule

Table 1 below lists the key deliverables with anticipated completion dates.

Milestones

Table 1 - Project Milestones

Budget

Total proposed project costs are summarized in Table 2.

The costs to perform the deliverables and milestones above are based on expected (and expended) time required to perform the item, along with a given billable rate. All of this work is exclusively my own, and is billed at 5 DASH/hr. Details are shown in Table 3.

In addition to my time, I would like to compensate community members. I propose paying all community members who join and contribute at least one meaningful commit to the organization. Proposed rates are shown in Table 4.

Itemized Costs

Table 2 - Cost Summary

Table 3 - Compensation for Deliverables

Table 4 - Compensation for Community Participation

Terms

I am requesting one single payment of 250 DASH to cover the following:

• the preceeding month's work (September)
• deliverables and support through this month (October)
• deliverables and support through next month if the proposal passes (November)
• community participation compensation (November)

Closing

If the project is funded I will develop another separate proposal to continue supporting the project into future months. The scope, schedule, and budget for that revision will be based on community feedback.

This project can grow as large as we wish. The more financial incentive we can offer the more expansive the platform will become, which will lead to a healthier, more decentralized ecosystem. The platform is ideal for

• developers (projects that need to host code)
• writers (of blogs, guides, etc.)
• marketers or anyone who wishes to host community funded files and content on a powerful, transparent platform

"Anyone, with any skill set (software, quality assurance, automation, admin, marketing, legal, etc) is needed." - Evan Duffield