Once you transfer funds into the wallet, click on the backup tab.   It then allows you to set a password.

You can take the step of the exchange out.  There are wallets with shapeshift integration that can convert Dash to BTC easily.  Personally, I like a mobile wallet like Coinomi (android) so I can trade when prices change.  Plus you can scan a QR code when sending to a btc to fiat processor instead of copying and pasting.  The Exodus wallet is available for your desktop and is really easy to use.  Jaxx also has the exchange option.  It will be adding dash soon and could be the first iphone dash wallet on the app store.

You can also use bitsquare which is a decentralized exchange.  You can exchange dash to btc and to fiat in small amounts.  The exchange rates don't look very good, but it is an option.

I agree.   Writing is a talent that should be offered to the community.  It can also be split up into parts with different requirements.  Graphs, Flowcharts, Standard Layout, and Writing.

Icebucket, you are on the right track with Bounties.   The Public Dash has basically been able to get a few things done from donations using this approach.  I will list a few successful activities.

• Exodus Wallet skin - 10 Dash went to the winner.  We had three very cool designs.  Check out the wallet released as a 1.0 today.  https://www.exodus.io/
• Articles in Dashpaymazine.com are all community efforts.  Most of the personally written articles were better than the paid articles from Vanbex.
• Mining Channel - We helped many of the PinIdea customers fix miners. It is also a great way to optimize and try different settings.  This real time discussion is helpful when solving problems.
• Dashstore - We started talks to create a dashstore to sell shirts and merchandise.
• Iphone wallet on App store - current bounty is 300 Dash - this is all from pledges.  We have 2 developers discussion how to make a wallet that might get accepted.  (Yes they are talking with Quantum Explorer, and waiting on existing wallet gets approved/rejected)
• 2FA - Again we had a user looking into how to make this work.

We also created the site http://www.dashnation.com/gigs/ to list current bounties.

These are discussions happening on Slack - this doesn't happen on the forums because it isn't real time.  We have asked for a small amount of funding from this proposal to expand the actions that can help Dash:
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/slack-tipbot-com-eng

A proposal was submitted to recognize hitting our 500th member in the public slack, the Dash Chat Slack.  I would like to encourage everyone to think about this slack as a community engagement tool and a great way to get the community fired up about Dash.  Vote as many times as you want as long as it is within about 5 days.

Dashwhale: https://www.dashwhale.org/p/slack-tipbot-com-eng
Vote: dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 553c44e64d57972c5e05fb68aa4467da330715ef0dea8599d19296d6170ae1b0 yes

The public slack is now picking up members and becoming the face of the Dash community.  We are over 500 members with 25 new members added each week.  We have 12 technical support contacts acting as an around the clock help desk.  We typically have over 15,000 messages each week. Slack is available on iphone, android, and browser which make communicating fast and easy in a chat like atmosphere.  Slack also supports easy file uploads and integrations with twitter and reddit to put news all in one place.

A few unique aspects of our slack is that there are dedicated channels to budget proposals to help answer questions directly from the proposal owner.  We have also had live podcasts where members could ask questions in real time.  Many discussions have started projects like Canadash which will be a Dash accepting pop machine located in Canada.  We offer a great way for miners and masternode owners to talk about pools or hardware settings and configurations.
 
After the community made suggestions from other successful sites that attracted users, it was determined that a bot that could tip and rain funds was key.  Naruby created a tipbot for Dash with a little help from Moocowmoo on security.  The tipbot can tip users, deposit, withdraw, provide Dash price in multiple currencies, and has a function to rain dash on all active users once it hits a certain amount. Recently, rain has been updated to sun for the summer.  The tipbot is getting used with over 50 Dash per month getting tipped out.  The plan is to add some security and features to make this bot work with other slacks and promote Dash further.
 
One of the Dash Detailed episodes talked about a Dash jobs section on the forum, and it is still blank.  A few members have asked for certain features and have even pledged their own funds to make it happen.  Effectively, the community has offered to create jobs for some smaller projects.  We think the value of this slack to the community is growing and would like to offer incentives to members that contribute.
 
Tipbot – 25 Dash
Add key features to enable the Dashbot to be used on other slacks as a promotional tool.
·        Add cold wallet storage with hot wallet online with minimal funds.
·        Add multiple slack usage form the same wallet.
·        Server rental and maintenance.
 
Community Engagement – 200 Dash
·        A portion will be used for activities to gain community participation.  Bounties will be used for innovate ideas and  prizes will be provided for contests to engage community activity.
·        A small portion will go to the tipbot to encourage new contributors and welcome people.
·        Donations will be given to support members answering questions on mining, masternodes, wallets, and general questions on slack, reddit, or other feeds in the support channel.
 
Total amount requested is 225 Dash per month for a 3 month duration.

Anyone that wants to check out the Dash Chat Slack, just click the link in my signature for an automatic invite.

You can put the updater in your home directory.  It doesn't need any special permissions to run.  The config file is json I believe.  So you can't use any ' " , / \ in the dash.conf password.  Be careful to keep all the formatting right(don't add any symbols or text other than what you need to change) in the config files and you should be good.  Test running before you put in the crontab and it will tell you if it is working or what might be wrong.  If it can't connect make sure you have ssl installed.

Yes, you can run your nodes with IPV6.  You may have trouble starting your nodes if your internet service is only IPV4 or doesn't tunnel properly.  Put your IP in [] in the config files and start with a windows machine and you will probably have no issues.  If you are trying to start from linux you may need to make a tunnel.

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/ipv6-addresses.6061/  

As for keeping your nodes running, dashwhale.org has a notifier with a remote connection that can restart if stalled or node crashes.  Biggest thing is to make sure you have 750MB of RAM or more per node and to zero the debug log every few days.

We will see how the hashrate changes in 3 days when Bitcoin halves.  We should be able to draw a line before the halving and after the having and see a significant drop in hashrate.  It might take a month to make all the changes, but it should happen.  Yes, the correlation between $ spent on mining is a direct ratio to hashrate.  So (relative to market cap) security is lost when some of the reward goes to other uses.  But how much is needed to secure the network?  Maybe we only need 1%.   And adding masternodes and a budget is a far better use and adds security in other ways.  $9000/day is related to how much is spent on electricity for miners....not based on how much ASICs will cost to get 51% of the hashrate needed actually perform the attack.

See this thread with some numbers behind it.
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/amanda-b-johnson-bitcoinuncensored.9652/#post-98872

Check this article out from this random person.

http://dashpaymagazine.com/index.php/2016/04/19/setup-instructions-mining-controller-usb-miner-p2pool-node-raspberry-pi/

The easiest way to explain it is to have you look at the website.  Keep in mind this isn't finished. www.dashngo.com

Tomasc and Hashengineering deserve credit for building the app and wallet we are using.

Thanks UdjinM6.  I am humbled by your presence once again.

As for this question,
You say it locks the input for the next 6 24 blocks, is that the input of the transaction that's just been broadcast to the network?

The input is the address(or addresses) that holds the funds before you hit send.  For example, you received a transaction that was sent to your deposit address Xyzpdq.  If you IX to someone else and use the Xyzpdq input, no other transactions on the network can use Xyzpdq until the lock is released.  In reality, once the transaction is sent the Xyzpdq will get converted to the sent address and a change address(if extra).  The change address will be available to spend with normal tx, or after 6 blocks for an InstanTX.

I can't really answer the questions the way you are asking them.  I will give some details that might give you the answers you are looking for.

1,2,3. An InstanTX is a transaction that locks the input for the next 6 blocks.  So it doesn't allow any transactions that would use that same input during those 6 blocks.  This is all done in the masternode memory pool before it gets to the miners.  The other part of this is that you can't initiate an InstanTX transaction until the input you want to spend has 6 confirmations.

4. Masternodes are paid 45% of the block reward which comes out to about 2 dash once a week.

FYI, InstanTX will be changed to InstantSend in Version 12.1

That link is pretty old.  This post from August has the best info.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg12254611#msg12254611

UdjinM6 started the top commands and moocowmoo added the way to enable and disable easily.

Dashwhale also has a restart script and checks if they daemon is on the right block.  It will restart and email you if there is a problem.

Let's get this in the store before the d10e show.  Not only would it make Dash more usable, but it would make for a buying a soda that much more fun.

The latest (and first) Dash Podcast covered details about the Lamassu ATMs.  Here is a link.

https://youtu.be/qzgUGU_RMGI?t=11m44s

Yep, works no problem.  So does P2Pool.

I want to make a comment about Dash needing to act like a "real" company.  This isn't the goal that we want.

A "real" company has a structure that is typically centralized and managed from the top down.  This requires trust from all parties.  You trust the CEO won't run away with the company earnings, the middle manager won't spend expenses on a new sports car, and an employee won't send that secret design to another company.  This is controlled somewhat by laws(stealing funds, company secrets) etc. The threat of losing a paycheck is also very real for the employees or middle managers.  The top managers usually own part of the company and don't want it to fail or they loose their investment.

So now we try to fit this into a dash budget system.  It doesn't work.  Dash is decentralized - not centralized and top dog owned.  So if we assign project managers with decision making ability onto a class of people that don't have an investment nor have specific knowledge for doing that project - we lose the incentive and skills to be efficient.  The only risk they have is losing their position and not getting paid next payroll.  This is a bad interpretation of fitting a decentralized organization into a centralized model.  The 'control' that the core has now, will probably not last in this model either.  If a bad decision gets made, it is very likely masternodes will vote out the entire core team.  The new team that replaces them could be much worse.

The interesting thing about decentralization is that it isn't controlled.  There are a lot of what seem to be random events that happen.  Sometimes there is waste from duplicate effort.  Sometimes there is quick idea generation and execution.  That doesn't mean that it is bad, it is actually much better than centralized for new ideas.  Evan suggested that developing 2 Android wallets was a bad thing - Bitcoin has many mobile wallets and it is great to have options.  At some point, when we have 2 or 3 wallets(or even one wallet with all the feature people want) then maybe masternodes will consider not voting for new ones.  But just because 2 similar things are developed it is not necessarily wasteful.  Many companies develop 2 versions of a product to see which one does better.  Then they only release the better one.  Right now we have some big core and awareness proposals that don't really have any specific goals.  If we can tie all proposals to actual activities, then voting each activity won't be a guessing game in assumptions for what the 'big bucket' budgets will be covering.  And duplication and priority of activities will be easily decided by the masternodes voting.

Let's keep this decentralized budget model going with maybe a few tweaks to make voting out a contract a little harder and I think we have what we need.

Evan,

We are already at the next stage with the elected board.  The board members are the masternodes.  They have a stake in the company(investment in Dash) so they make the best decision for Dash.  I see the only way this works efficiently is to keep the masternodes in control of voting for how funds are allocated to which projects, which is really the only driver to make people work anyway.

There is no need to worry about expansion.  We pay a company/person directly to do a job - they internally manage themselves.  They know that if they are not productive they will not be paid.  And if any of their employees fail they can be replaced as an internal decision.  I suggested that we could add the option to split this payment up into several dash addresses with a ratio determined by the proposal owner.   This would allow the funds to go directly to all company personnel at once without needing additional involvement from the proposal owner.

A typical company will have a board of directors, but many are inside directors with stock options or a share in the company. This encourages them to act in the best interest of the company.  If we have the employers/project managers/elected board the only worry they have is not getting their salary.  If there are 10 members of this proxy voting party, each one would have the equivalent to the vote of 360 masternodes(total risk of $2.3 Million) - their risk is only losing future income.

I also see an issue with the concept of a consensus with a management decision to determine if an expense is covered.  The entire premise of this cool voting system that we have now is that the masternodes vote on what we fund.  If managers start making decisions, no doubt the 'budget' they need to pay these expenses will keep increasing and expenses will always be paid...because managers don't have any collateral on the line.  And who would make the decision to buy something in advance if the expense could be rejected.  All potential expenses and projects should be voted in upfront so there is no question about if they will be paid or not.  The entire reason we vote is because some projects or expenses will not be paid.

And the last point, if you have set of managers/employers hiring all the 'employees' what traits do we look for in these people?  Isn't this a total guess?  If we fund a solar farm powering X11 ASICs to donate to the foundation, would any of them have a clue where to start.  Do we now need to hire a manager expert to manage that project?  It seems crazy right?  It would make more sense to take bids from several companies - they all submit projects to the budget system.  Look at the past history, pricing, and products they propose installing.  Then masternodes vote on the best option and leave the micromanaging to the company experts that are paid for doing the work.

Let me try to get a stab at why this is cool.
#1 This is a contract  ... this is where most coins would start jumping up and down spewing Ether and Gas and sending out press releases....Evan says not good enough
#2 This is a contract tied to an identity(user)
#3 Since an identity is verified by name/address/city/state it opens the door for a loan against that identity.

Now we are closer to what Toknormal is pushing for, flowscripts, like what is described in the "proof of labor" proposal.  Basically, this allows a future contract tied to an identity.  Or a way to start production with funds now payable in labor in the future.  (I barely grasp this myself, but it is the start of something very big.)

See how it is cool now?

Isn't it interesting that the disease doctors are treating is always an SSRI(depression), Statin(blood pressure), Claritin(Allergies), Corticosteroid(Asthma), or xyz deficiency, but in reality diet, exercise, lifestyle changes are more effective but never suggested.

I still haven't found the cure for masternode addiction.  Main symptoms are a constant desire to hoard Dash and put into masternodes along with mood swings of grumpyness when the Dash price falls and euphoria when the Dash price rises.