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Supervisor Election Results

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After a long delay, the DIF Supervisor election finally concluded at the end of February. We had four candidates running for (re)election. We used the DAO proposal system for the election, so each candidate had an application page on Dash Central:

The voting cycle ended with superblock 1827760, the voting deadline for which was on Feb 21. The deadline is important because Dash Central keeps tallying votes even after the deadline passed. Some votes did come in late and show up on DashCentral, but didn’t affect the results as mined in the superblock. MNOwatch is a better source for the results: https://mnowatch.org/leaderboard/analysis/?20230221223001

All four candidates had a net-positive vote count and were therefore confirmed as supervisors:

Sven446
Jared375
Justin271
Rodrigo234
Vote results of 2023 supervisor election

As explained in our Call for Applications, Michael had a two-year term and and will remain on the supervisor board for another year. The top three candidates – Sven, Jared and Justin – won a two-year term this time around, while Michael and Rodrigo will stand for re-election next year if they choose to run again.

In the run-up to the election there was apparently some controversy regarding our request for 2 Dash fee reimbursement. I already addressed it in the Dash Forum at the time and as it turns out, my reasoning applied. Even though it looks on Dash Central, due to late-vote counting, as if two candidates broke the 10% threshold, in reality only one candidate did and triggered a payment, as can be seen on any block explorer. The treasury payout transaction ID is f8690dfa5f5ee5fa98a50e750a9833fa583fdb4dc49ebb4e7a818cf93de75077, here it is in block 1827760: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dash/tx.dws?47264970.htm. The DIF payout address is Xvwp4u7CRZpzoU7ryk2Q66Jgo92ejCvb3K. So we paid 4 Dash in proposal fees and received 2 Dash in reimbursements for a net loss of 2 Dash. I don’t think anyone can complain about the DIF trying to profit from the decision proposals this way.

Congratulations to the new supervisors and welcome on board!

Election, Take 2

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I know many of you have been wondering what we’ve been up to lately. You probably noticed we haven’t posted a funding request in a long time. And in August, we called for supervisor applications, but as of today, no new supervisors have been added to the board. What happened?

Funding Requests

We decided to suspend funding requests after the Dash price dropped to the $50 range last year. We felt at that price it would simply take too long to accumulate a significant investment fund. We also don’t want to add additional sell pressure to the Dash market. Since we’re holding our liquid funds typically roughly in a 70:30 split, we would have to sell a large amount of Dash into the bear market.

We realize that in reality the sell pressure is not much reduced due to our stepping back because the budget is typically taken up and mostly sold to fiat by other proposals. DCG is standing out among those and as far as the DIF is concerned, that’s fine. Before DCG started posting supplemental proposals, I had a call with Quantumexplorer to discuss the DIF leaving more room in the budget for DCG. We didn’t need much convincing. There are a few voices who say DCG should cut more, even stop work on Platform. To say it with Steve Jobs: “The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.” Just swap Apple for Dash. Having funds left for investments is a luxury that we can’t currently afford. We want to see Platform released. We want to see the developers work full steam ahead. We don’t want to see more layoffs mere yards from the finish line.

Supervisor Election

Unfortunately, our call for applications in didn’t yield enough candidates. We extended the deadline in September, but even so, we had to figure out how to deal with a situation where the number of candidates does not exceed the number of available slots. An election wouldn’t make much sense if every candidate is guaranteed a slot.

At the same time, without fresh funds to invest, we reduced our meeting schedule to once per month, which means slower decision-making.

Ash and Glenn also chose not to extend their terms beyond the original election time frame. Both resigned in October. Glenn took on a new job where he had a potential conflict of interest and Ash needed more focus on his own company CTX. We parted on very good terms, but the added workload on the remaining supervisors (Sven, Rodrigo, Michael), who all already have other external priorities and commitments, and then the holiday season led to more delay.

However, we still want to fill the open supervisor slots and so we’re having a second go at it and decided to change the election method. We plan to hold a DAO proposal-based election counting both Yes and No votes. The treasury 10% threshold rule for funding proposals will not apply. The simple balance of Yes minus No votes determines the election result for each candidate. Candidates with negative balance are not elected and the slot will remain vacant for the time being. This adds transparency and gives the community a say over which candidates become supervisors (basically a veto right) and gives us a vote ranking to determine next year’s two-year vs. one-year terms.

You will see these proposals, one for each candidate, posted to the DAO in the next few days. As it looks, we will have two existing supervisors standing for re-election and two new candidates. Michael was elected for a two-year term, so he will extend automatically.

Funds are Safu

Some people were asking about our assets, since you haven’t heard from us for a while. We will publish an annual report for 2022 in a separate post. For now, I’ll just say that almost all of our funds are invested in equity, so we have only limited exposure to the whims of the crypto market. At least two of our investments have developed very well and our portfolio looks strong. More to come.

DIF Supervisor Election 2022 – Call for Applications

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With a little bit of delay, the 2022 election is finally underway! We encourage anyone interested in running as DIF Supervisor to apply here:

https://forms.gle/ut8MetXHJfDhPTPo9

Some background:

Supervisor Terms

In June last year, before the 2021 election, the previous set of supervisors agreed to change the term rules stipulated in the DIF constitution to apply to the 2021 incoming and all future supervisors.

Since the DIF handles a portfolio of significant investments, it is important to have a certain continuity in its management. Previous election rules allowed for a complete turnover of all supervisors at once. That such a situation isn’t too far-fetched was shown months later by the recent Trust Protector election with a nearly complete replacement of all previous TPs. For the DIF, such a cut would have severe detrimental consequences. Established communications with portfolio companies, knowledge of the history and background of previous pitches and decisions, up to the managing of our tech infrastructure would be affected.

To mitigate this risk, the DIF decided that the three supervisors who received the most approval votes will be appointed for two-year terms. All other successful candidates would be appointed for one-year terms as before.

The original vote tally of the 2021 election happened on the Dash Watch website, which unfortunately is no longer in operation. However, the results can still be confirmed on various other sites that reported on it, e.g. here. They were:

Candidate Results
Darren Tapp 217
Michael Lewis 203
Glenn Austin 195
Rodrigo Ambrissi 194
Sven Rossbach 155
Ash Francis 151
Hytham Abdel-Karim 109
name3 49
2021 DIF Supervisor election results

That means Darren, Michael and Glenn would automatically have their term extended for another year and their seats would not be up for re-election. Why “would”?

Darren Tapp Not Extending

Darren informed the other supervisors that he does not intend to continue his supervisor role and therefore the election should fill his seat. Due to his upcoming wedding and a shift of personal priorities, he feels he wouldn’t be able to contribute to the DIF anymore in the way this position requires.

As anyone who followed the DIF would know, Darren has been instrumental in shaping the DIF from early on. For much of his term, he acted as the chairman of the supervisor board – organizing meetings and being our spokesperson in public. Darren relinquished this responsibility a few months ago already, so his decision isn’t coming entirely out of the blue.

We thank him for his work and hope he will remain a valuable member of the Dash community for many years to come.

That means four seats are now available to be filled in the upcoming election – those of Darren, Rodrigo, Sven and Ash.

Election Platform and Process

In the wake of the Dash Watch closure, we also had to find a new way to conduct this election. The choice was between getting our hands on the software that Dash Watch had been using and setting up our own site for voting with it, and using the DAO treasury system.

We discussed the pros and cons in the Dash Forum and, also based on community feedback on Telegram and Discord, decided to use DAO proposals as a new tool.

No “No” Votes

While DAO proposals allow for a new feature – voting “No” and “Abstain” – we decided against using it for three reasons:

  1. Our constitution clearly calls for an “approval-style election”.
  2. Allowing “No” votes is likely to lead to an awkward situation where the election winners all have negative votes. Imagine three candidates, A, B and C, and 100 voters. 60% prefer A, 30% prefer B, and 10% prefer C. Every voter votes Yes on their preferred candidate and No on the other two. Clearly, A should win with an absolute majority. But if “No” votes were allowed, A received 60 Yes and 2×40 = 80 No for a final tally of -20 votes. The other candidates look even worse. Winning an election with a negative vote count didn’t seem right to us.
  3. We wanted to change the tool, not the process. Previous elections have always been based on Yes votes only, just like any other major election in the world, and that process seemed agreeable to everyone.

Therefore, please do not vote “No” or “Abstain”! Your vote would be wasted. The four candidates with the most “Yes” votes will be elected.

Schedule

We’re aiming to conduct the election at the next budget cycle ending with superblock 1,744,680 near the end of September 2022. Candidate proposals will be posted on Dash Central as soon as the current budget cycle ends around Aug 27 (depending on your time zone). While we can post additional candidate profiles for voting during the budget cycle, we encourage you to submit your application early to maximize your chances.

  • 2022-08-27 Soft deadline for application submissions
  • 2022-08-29 Candidate profiles posted as treasury proposals, vote collection opens
  • 2022-09-26 (approx.) Voting ends

If you have any further questions about the role or the election process, please comment here or on the election thread in the forum. We’re looking forward to your applications and wish all candidates the best of success!