A proposal that hit the Dash system recently has just been voted down by a large margin. The proposal was a highly controversial one that was asking for the removal of Ryan Taylor as CEO of Dash Core Group, and demoting him to an “advisory role”. The measure failed to pass with an almost 10-to-1 ratio of masternode owners voting no on the proposal. The main reason for the proposal, according to its description, is that Taylor brought asset prices down and failed to meet important deadlines, among other things.
Digging into Dash
Dash is unlike cryptocurrency projects such as bitcoin or Litecoin. That’s because Dash is a self-funded cryptocurrency project that pays for its own operations and expansion by allocating a portion of each block reward into a highly auditable fund. That fund goes to hiring employees such as developers, marketing, and so on. It also allows Dash to sponsor various blockchain events such as conferences, and secure some of the most talented people in cryptocurrency today.
Read also: Beginners Guide to Dash
Until recently, Dash was led by Evan Duffield. Before stepping down from his role, Duffield led the charge on a plan called Evolution. The highly detailed and ambitious plan is designed to put Dash at the forefront of cryptocurrency adoption. It aims to do this by enhancing the technology both on the front end for the average user, and on the backend. Enhancements on the backend include changes to masternodes, reduction of transaction fees, and an increase to the block size, just to name a few.
Duffield wrote a blog post a few months back detailing some of these changes. One of his suggestions is that in the future, proof-of-work mining should become obsolete, and the network should be completely powered by masternodes. In the short-term, the Evolution roadmap suggested that the group might want to invest in creating an open source ASIC device so as to level the mining playing field and reduce centralization due to a limited supply of Dash-compatible ASIC mining devices like the AntMiner D3.
The Charge to Unseat Taylor
The proposal cites seven reasons why Taylor should be replaced. Here they are in summary.
- Taylor “destroyed the markets confidence” by missing deadlines, and Dash asset prices have dropped noticeably especially when comparing to bitcoin.
- Taylor has “grown his company responsibly”, and is not making good use of his budget. The proposal author suggests that if the price of Dash goes below $80, that there “not only won’t be funds for any other community projects, but also not enough to pay the salaries of DCG employees.”
- Taylor, despite having access to $30 million in funding, “didn’t create a safety net for DCG.”
- A number of promises about Dash development were made, but apparently have not been delivered. The author says that the project’s anonymous Private Send feature is still far too slow (in some cases taking days to complete), and that the project’s wallet is still unchanged from two years ago.
- The proposal’s author criticizes Taylor for the promotion of Fernando Gutierrez to the position of chief marketing officer back in January of this year. They claim that this individual is a lawyer with “no experience, creativity, or talent for marketing” and that they have an “impressive track record of zero results in eight months”.
- Next the proposal author says that Taylor “made the mistake of hiring Bradley Zastrow” for business development. In the proposal, the claim is that Zastrow is “allowed to underperform and under deliver without consequences, in spite of the disproportional salary he receives.”
- Finally, the proposal claims that Taylor is “not a leader”, and that the Dash Core Group has been “a stale and boring company that does not innovate” since the departure of Evan Duffield.
Dash Community Says “No”
In response to this proposal, a number of commenters have come forward in defense of Ryan Taylor and his accomplishments since taking over. One individual with the username Macrochip said that Taylor has “not broken a single promise or missed a deadline by any unreasonable amount”
Another user claimed that the proposal put “way more blame on Ryan Taylor than is warranted”.
And of course, the most important point of this proposal is the votes cast by masternode operators. The ending score for the proposal was 156 in favor, 1057 against, and 22 abstain. This suggests that only a minority of masternode holders are unsatisfied with Taylor to the point that they would consider having him removed from his post and replaced with someone else. The vast majority of masternode holders, on the other hand, seemed to be content or happy with Taylor’s performance thus far.
