Monero’s Riccardo Vs Dash’s George: Proposal by ‘SavingPrivateDash’ sets off a debate

On 22nd August, Riccardo Spagni, a member of Monero’s core team took to Twitter to post about a proposal published on the Dash Central proposal blog.

Riccardo’s tweet said:

“lol Dash’s burn rate is so high that it’s at jeopardy of not being able to continue if the price drops lower, so now some people want to fire the Dash CEO for mismanagement.”

The proposal titled ‘DEMOTE RYAN TAYLOR to an Advisory Role and INSTRUCT HR TO HIRE A NEW CEO’ had been posted on Dash’s official proposal blog. The proposal owned by ‘SavingPrivateDash’ elaborates in a long post, why CEO Ryan Taylor is not ideal to be the CEO of Dash.

The post starts off by threatening two members Fernando and Bradley, stating that if the proposal does not yield results, ‘SavingPrivateDash’ will be writing two more proposals to fire them.

The owner went so far as to say that if the first proposal was not a success, there will be a second proposal issued on January 1st, 2019 in favor of demoting Ryan Taylor. Moreover, the owner skeptically mentions that he/she would wait until next year, and watch how many of them would change their minds and said:

“Let’s see how many of you change your mind after realizing Evolution was not delivered, and deadlines from the roadmap were missed yet again. “

‘SavingPrivateDash’ lists 7 long points as to why Taylor must be demoted.

In the first point, the owner says, the CEO is responsible for destroying the market confidence. The proposal states:

“Dash was once valued at 0.09BTC and it is now 0.02, in spite of millions of dollars available to him.”

Moreover, ‘SavingPrivateDash’ accuses Ryan of missing deliverables, citing examples of promises like Vault accounts, usernames, friends lists, easy to use mobile wallets, marketplace made in 2016 and stating that they are still not delivered.

In the second point, ‘SavingPrivateDash’ raises an important question about employee salary. The owner claims that under the present CEO, the company has grown irresponsibly, explaining that the monthly expense of the company  [$500,000] is more than the available budget of ‘6176 DASH’.

‘SavingPrivateDash’ states $500,000 / 6176 = $80.95, pointing out that if DASH slips below $80, no community projects can be funded and moreover, it would not be enough for paying employee salaries.

The next point accuses Taylor of jeopardizing the financial stability of the entire company. In the owner’s opinion, the CEO’s unforgivable mistake has raised the risk of community projects being defunded. The proposal stated:

“Ryan had access to more than $30,000,000 USD in funding and didn’t create a safety net for DCG.”

The next few points elaborate on how big promises were made and unreasonable deliverable time was set. The owner points to the fact that DASH is not the only available cryptocurrency in the world and if timely updates and changes were not met, it could be difficult for Dash.

The later parts of the proposal explained further in detail why the owner did not see Taylor as a right fit for the position of CEO. Lastly, the owner concluded by emphasizing the need for a new CEO and said:

“We need a dependable, energetic, and passionate CEO. One that would care deeply about our brand, that would be involved in important community projects, that would have a say on important proposals, that would DELIVER and KEEP HIS PROMISES.”

The proposal has received a lot of negative comments on Dash’s page recently.

malarchuck, a Twitter user commented:

“No votes from me. I find Ryan to be a very impressive person. “

Another Twitter user, TroyDASH said:

“Well you did spend $1000 to submit this, so I at least took the time to read the full proposal text and consider it. After careful consideration, my decision is no. You are putting way more blame on Ryan Taylor than is warranted. I don’t agree with every decision that DCG makes, but IMO right now DCG is better off with Ryan as the CEO.”

Riccardo’s comment set off a Twitter debate between him and George Donnelly, Coordinator of Dash, Colombia.

Donnelly said:

“Does XMR even have a governance process? Do you guys even governance??”

Riccardo shot back by saying:

“Yes we do – it’s called “if you disagree with the community’s broad consensus you can kindly fork off”.”

The argument continued further when Donnelly tweeted:

“Yeah, we have that too at Dash. But we also have an actual governance system that heads off forks and enables us to build a cohesive community.”

Another Twitter user commented:

“When you don’t understand decentralized governance, you use words like “actual governance” to avoid learning and understanding it in the first place. Then when someone exposes your obliviousness, you state that they’re attacking your character, not your knowledge. SMH”