I think adding a fixed contract for 3 months is a good idea.  I would even suggest 25% or 30% for approval.  This would be locked after the initial vote so a higher % is good.  I also like the idea of limited contracts to 30% of the budget.  With the volatility and possible growth we are seeing, I suggest we don't look at the 6 month or 12 month contracts until we don't change value by more than 25% in 6 months.

The suggestion for paying Dash out in the equivalent of fiat and varying the duration of the contract is interesting.  The key is picking a reliable fiat/dash and maybe that needs to be a manual adjustment every month as we have seen exchanges come and go.

We should also consider using a 3rd party to 'bet' on the future price of Dash.  There are a few options for smart contracts based on the blockchain and there could be a few big players that would want to take the risk.  My opinion is that if there is a sizable exchange needed with fiat/dash that it goes out to bid and the best option is taken.  Maybe the vender gives the best deal, but more likely a crypto investor is going to value a future price higher.

We also need to be aware that Dash has a nearly fixed total supply where Fiat is nearly exponentially created....until this debt deflation implosion we are having.  When all the fiat debt is finally valued at 0, anything other than Fiat will explode in price.  There is a real possibility of some exciting price jumps to the positive and proposal owners should keep that in mind when creating contracts.  I would expect any 3rd party that works with us to bet on the fiat forward price of Dash, would anticipate a price rise.  And likewise masternode owners should anticipate some price appreciation with Dash and vote on proposals accordingly.  (not giving financial advice just going by past performance.  Past performance does not necessarily guaranty future results....blah blah blah.)

I also disagree with a general slush fund to use for future proposals.  This exposes the fund to misuse and theft.  Any funds taken from the budget should be used or saved for a specific purpose now or in the future.

I have heard a lot of requests to keep working on something for vendor adoption.  Well, now that there are some open budget funds, I would rather get started on the first building block.

Budget Proposal: Wifi-Portal for Retail Instore Purchasing
One of the ideas with the Vendor Experience was to create a wifi portal to order products. A web portal is a device that you can connect to with a wifi device(a phone for example).  When you connect to the portal it forces you to go to a single webpage.  Technically, this is called a Captive Web Portal.  This is the webpage we will use for ordering.

The web portal will run on a single board computer for our testing.  I have picked an Odroid-XU4.  I envision this as the first step to the final product which is being able to pay with Dash via the wifi portal at a retail store or even a vending machine directly with a mobile phone.

I have negotiated with a web developer that has a good track record of making websites to help create a website for this project.  I expect this to look like a professional ordering website tailored to mobile phone ordering.

The funds will be used for:

• Odroid-XU4, antenna, relay board(future projects), and shifter board to convert the Odroid-XU4 outputs to be relay compatible.
• Paying for web design services
• Engineering required to put all this together

The result and what the community will be delivered to the community is:

• A step by step guide to build the portal,
• Website and it's content
• An overview of what it does and how it works.

This project completes the first building block.  The next phases will implement paying with Dash and interfacing with the mobile wallets to send payments.  The final goal will be to use in a retail store with phone UPC scanning and checkout via the Dash Fast Lane.

The amount for this proposal is 200 Dash and is only 1 payment(ending in 2 days).

Vote or comment on dashwhale.org here.
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/Wifi-Portal
Vote with:
dash-cli mnbudget vote-many d660ea698ebca4012d554347473bc0453dcfcefb1aa366ce2439f895aa97b7be yes

Minotaur,

I understand you are trying to work with a 'contract' with Transform PR.  The network can't give priority to proposals under a contract vs not in a contract.  The network doesn't have any commitment to a future contract, it only pays budgets that have enough votes each pay cycle.

For future contracts, the actual business should be submitting a proposal and accept the Dash volatility and be subject to yes/no votes.  This isn't really a contract though, and they should be clear that funding is pulled if they don't gain and maintain voter interest.  Otherwise, an amount should be saved in advance from a trusted proposal owner and Dash/fiat exchanged for the services under a firm contract.

www.dashwhale.org has a mobile app for Android.  It shows budgets, node status, etc.  You can click on a budget in the app and it will send you to the dashwhale.org site where you can vote.  You do need to setup your nodes on dashwhale.org first.

No problem.  Just making it clear that it wasn't my intent to bump a project.  I think Dashwhale puts new proposals on the top, which makes sense when you think about it.

A longer discussion period may make more sense.  This should be something that is forced with the budget system when submitting not a discussion point to prove the validity of a project.  I actually can see reasons for shorter or longer discussion periods and don't really have a preference either way.

Qwizzie,

Actually, when the Vendor-Experience was submitted it had no competition for the amount funds requested.  The roundtable proposal from Evan was added later and created the competitive budget situation.

Well, I think your effort to make a Dash plugin is great.  And that may gain some adoption.  I don't see web purchasing as a clear advantage for Dash.  Bitcoin or any other bitclone can do this.  The 10+ block time isn't a big deal, since you only ship once a day.  If you did this and required InstantX for movies or something that people want for instant download, then you have something.  Micropayments would also be a huge win for dash with the low fees.

I already approached a software company to design a payment terminal that would accept Dash for a gas station.  They couldn't do it.  They had no place to start.  InstantX?  what is that?  I detect it by what now?  dashd - huh?  Even if I could give them the Dash 101 and Dash 201 class, they still couldn't do it.  Even someone working in the Bitcoin space couldn't do InstantX detection.  This is cutting edge technology that isn't even possible without the developers in Dash helping us.  Once we build out the tools then other parties can deploy.

Now think about your payment plugin.  What if that could be used on a wifi portal that is in a retail store?  Now you can deploy to any store with just wifi and our smart box.  Using your phone you would scan each item and it adds it to your web portal shopping cart page and when done hit pay with your plugin.  The advantage with point of sale is huge!

The plan is to start with a vending machine just so we can implement new core features and do real world testing, then we move to gas pumps, and merchants(food, rent, clothing...).  The goal is to improve the experience vendors/merchants will have adopting dash.

We are adding features on this first product - multiple product selection, inventory control, serial connection software, better single board computer(Odroid-XU4).  We are also customizing the daemon so it can work faster with slow CPUs, along with finding ways to limit data usage.  More advanced wallets with multiple product selection ability.  It would be too much of a leap to go to a retail store until we can test IX and the software and wallets in a limited risk environment.

I think we can take advantage of the coin changer as a way to do a Dash purchase ATM, but I don't have all the details and am not promising anything.  Only that if it is legal we will figure out how to make it work.  The principle of an ATM is really a stop gap solution.  Bitcoin and it's slow confirmation time can only work if it has ATMs to do point of sale.  Bitcoin won't have point of sale adoption because the merchant won't take the risk of double spend 0 confirmation transactions.  Dash has InstantX so it doesn't need ATMs to get to point of sale.  Do we need a Dash to Fiat exchange, yes.  How much easier do you think it would be to get an investor if we had some concrete examples of Dash products in use?

There are a few ways to look at why any merchant would switch to Dash.
#1  Use a 3rd party like bitpay to instantly convert Dash to fiat at the merchant.  Sounds easy right?  There is little advantage to this scenario.  The fees(now or future) will still be high.  The user experience is now pushed on to Bitpay and how fast their system is.
#2  Use a debit card preloaded with Dash.  There is no advantage to this scenario.  It would be simpler to just use the debit card with Fiat.  The fees are hidden in converting fiat to Dash or with non use fees.
#3  Accept Dash directly.  This gives the most advantages.  ~0 fees.  Fast transactions.  No charge backs.  Unless we actually make this easy, #1 or #2 will get rolled out and the advantages to using Dash start to be limited.  Sure this is a big leap, but the benefits are huge.  Plus it opens the options for new features.

Now what if we add these features they don't have today?
#3a Dash Fast Gas.  You would pay via wifi through your phone.  Pay with your phone, pump and your change is returned.  The advantage here is we bypass all of the credit card payment stuff.  The merchant doesn't have to deal with charge backs, drive-offs, or fees.  The user advantage is that they can use their phone to pay without getting out of their vehicle(like if is 10 below outside).

#3b Dash Fast Lane.  No registers, no space for lanes, all product scanning and paying done with your phone.  Now any merchant can accept dash without even using a complicated POS system.  This is what we want.  This is the type of product that users will choose for faster checkouts and merchants will want because they don't need to waste space with register lanes or pay credit card fees.

There are many more products(including some 'interesting' ones) than just these, but this should give you and idea of what is possible and where we want to go.  We are creating the technology, not focusing on specific products.

The other item that I am maybe not making clear, the goal of Dash shouldn't just be to make a computer to computer transfer system.  We need it to be used outside of an office.  We were able to implement mobile IX sending because we made something that needed it.  I see similar advances here.  If we focus on merchant usage, the Dash features and functionality will come up to speed much faster.

Ah...I have liquidityprovider=1.  Not the same function as it only mixes when others demand, but why I am mixing without the enabledarksend.

That is only needed if you want to send mixed coins by default.  If you only want to mix, you don't need it.

If you have a password you will need to unlock your wallet for mixing.  1000000 is time in seconds.  The true indicates unlock for mixing only.

dash-cli walletpassphrase password 100000 true

For #1.  Don't know.

For #2, you mix coins by putting these items in your dash.conf before you start dashd.  The mixing is automatic.
darksendrounds=2
anonymizedashamount=100   

For #3.  We are working on instant detection. (Well, Moocowmoo is)  The instant detecting of an IX is not simple.  We still have a few bugs, but it is pretty close.
If you just want to see if a transaction is an IX or not from the command line use listtransactions and you will see confirmations=5 and bcconfirmation=0 when an IX is sent/received.  A non-IX will have both start at 0.
Or in the QT wallet, double click on the transaction and the first line will say this for an IX.
Status: 5/confirmed (verified via instantx), broadcast through 10 nodes

We have had a lot of interest in the Vender-Experience Budget Proposal.  We appreciate the constructive questions.  I have updated the proposal to add an FAQ to help everyone understand this proposal.  For more details or to vote, here are the links and voting command.
https://www.dashwhale.org/p/Vendor-Experience
https://dashtalk.org/threads/budget-proposal-vendor-experience-updated.7863/
dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 1cfc2525f33d8dee81640f6860fc85751acea552724ec58d6619f7fcee694ea1 yes

The Vendor-Experience Budget Proposal
We believe the best way to grow Dash is to give users a place to spend their Dash.  Dash has an advantage over any other crypto with InstantX that can enable point of sale purchases without risk.  We plan to utilize this advantage to show projects in the real world.

The initial project we implemented was the Dash N Drink soda machine.  The key to making this project was to implement InstantX detection and trigger a machine credit.  This has now opened the door for the next phase.  The next projects we will work on will include more sophisticated interfaces that will take engineering and software to connect to properly.  We will be updating mobile wallets so they work quickly and easily. We expect to deploy actual products in actual stores.

The core team members coordinating this project are Camosoul and Solarminer.

We view this proposal as a core requirement for Dash adoption, not something that is for a single merchant application or single product.  If anyone would rather only support this proposal for 1 month/3 months just vote it down when you want.  We plan to deliver and keep pushing the envelope of possibilities so there is no reason to think about ending this project.

The Plan
We plan to initially target easier devices and as we learn get to more complicated infrastructure projects.  This is the plan as we have it
now, but that could change based on vendor participation or types of products available.  We expect to complete each of these projects in about 3 months.

Vending machine with multiple products that uses a custom interface.
    Upgrade software for Raspberry PI or Odroid-XU4 as needed to make this all work.
    Design software to communicate with serial interface or more complicated multiple item vending controller
    Implement multiple product selection within the dash wallet along with a more stable interface.
    Implement multiple product selection and inventory tracking with QR codes and addresses

Gas pumps
    Design software and hardware to communicate with the pump controller
    Implement a wifi captive portal checkout with one product.
    Enable prepay with return change

Dash Sky Store Checkout
    Design a wifi captive portal with multiple products.
    Enable shopping cart functionality on phone or portal.
    Implement the Dash Fast Lane - start wifi cart on entry and pay when you leave without a checkout line
    Enable phone to store product scanning (skipping the need for registers)

We will be getting assistance from inside and outside the Dash space.  Each application will win press releases and additional status as a
leading crypto similar to how we won publicity with the Dash N Drink.

As for the questions about what happens to the products after we are done, we expect them to be in the hands of a merchant who will actually use them.  This will bring ongoing publicity along with proof of concept for other merchants to adopt and a base for testing.  The valuable part of all these projects is the software, publicity and to gain adoption. The software will be open source as much as possible.  The intent is not to make a business to sell products but to show how products can be used in real world scenarios.

FAQs
Can we have some more information about the project, the vending machine and how you’re planning
on operating this?
The goal is to create the software and hardware to easily interface with a wide variety of products.  We have outlined a multiple item vending machine to add software features as the initial product.  The vending machine or future devices will be operated by a merchant similar to before our upgrades.  The idea isn't to be in the vending business but to adopt a real product for Dash.

We don’t know what’s happening to the vending machine that was already made(Dash N Drink), who owns this vending machine and what’s the plan for it?
The Dash N Drink is being stored at Camosoul’s.  Anyone is welcome to offer it a home.  We still have some bugs in instantX detection to fix before it can be in an unattended location.  Of course, the reason for building the Dash N Drink was to build a demo to test and use InstantX.  It was a success at the Miami show, which was our primary goal.

What are you goingto be purchasing with the $3000?
A portion of the funds will go to the developers for coding enhancement to the software and wallets.  There may also be a portion for outside support with gas pump controller software or point of sale devices.  A large amount will go to modifying customer machines or buying hardware to interface with pumps/registers?

Can you give us an itemized breakdown?
We are looking at this as a development project.  We don’t know what the breakdown of expenses will be.  There will be some on-going costs like 4g internet and server space. Otherwise, we are putting the remaining funds into hardware and software.

Can you give us a plan on how you aim to use these funds each month?
The first few months will be sourcing a vending machine along with a merchant that wants to display it.  We may also be able to find a merchant willing to let us convert their machine. We will begin to engineer a way to dispense each product with a specific QR code with coded price or with multiple QR codes.  We will also work on an inventory system based on dash addresses.  Some of these features are possible but we won’t know how effective they will be until we do them.

Would it be possible to come up with milestones for this project? What are you planning on accomplishing? How will it benefit the ecosystem? Setting specific milestones is difficult to nail down aswe will need to work with several groups who are already working on projects.  I would expect every 3 monthswe would finish a product and start work on a new product.  The goal here is to find applications that are similar to a wide family of products. Then another merchant can easily adopt from what we started.  The benefit is to answer this question,“Where can I spend Dash?”  We believe that question is what gives Dash it’s value.

Are you planning on selling vending machines, components of them eventually, or something like this? Who will earn these rewards?
This is not planned to be a profitable undertaking.  We are not planning to sell products.  We expect the final result of any of our builds to be machines that are in use in the real world making money for the merchant. All code will be open sourced as much as possible to enable DASH-specific projects to flourish.

I would assume if the masternode network is funding your operation, it should receive a cut of the profits each quarter paid out as dividends. I would like to also establish some sort of agreement between yourselves and the Darkcoin foundation as well to make that agreement official.
As for profits, we don’t expect any.  If we do get to the point where there are no new projects to develop we will ask for the proposal to be voted down.

I’m curious what the answers are, as that will inform the decision of the masternode network. Funding is starting to get tight on the network so we definitely need to be careful that we’ll have great return on the network’s investment.
We understand that there a lot of other projects that are valuable.  With the success of the Dash N Drink, we can’t help but think this is every bit as valuable as other projects.The key to success of any crypto project is real world adoption.  This kind of development will stimulate that process.

I am doing this because I want an option to buy things with my Dash. I own a solar company and do pretty well. I am not trying to collect an income with this project. This is merely a way to give back to Dash with a project that I believe will make it exponentially better. Camosoul also owns a business. We know how to make projects succeed even with short time frames or difficult challenges.

We are planning to allocate a lot of the funds to developers. We know the wallets will take time to add features, we will be asking for a lot of man-hours. The software to get the backends to work correctly isn't easy. We will also be working with server platforms and may need assistance from, likely, an outside party to get shopping carts to work correctly. We need to pay the people that do the work, and that isn't free. Each product will have unique challenges and we may need to seek outside help pay them for their time. We will also have the cost of the products we will be converting/building and parts needed to test properly.

We are charting new territory. I would like to say that we know how to do all this already and here is our cost breakdown, but we don't. We will learn as we go. This is where the excitement begins.

Most investors risk their funds to have a chance at a big win. This proposal is an opportunity that you don't even have to risk funds since they will be lost anyway. Why not put them to a good use? Pay our developers and expand the Dash Ecosystem.

If you think this project is ambitious, look at the Dash N Drink.  We refurbished and designed IX detection with bip32 deposits with a changing QR code, along with IX on three mobile wallets, and an awesome website in about a month.  It was also said to be impossible when announced.  We did it.  (moocowmoo deserves a ton of credit for all the help with the software, and wallet developers fulltimegeek, quantumexplorer, hashengineering deserve praise too, along with Raptor 3d, thedashguy website, oaxaca funding)  Rather than push through a project as fast as possible and keep almost all these guys(plus Camo and I) up to 4am each night, this one will be done one step at a time.  I feel like we took advantage of all the people that helped us on the Dash N Drink, and it isn't fair to set deadlines that may not be reasonable.

We view this proposal as a core requirement for Dash adoption, not something that is for a single merchant application or single product.  If anyone would rather only support this proposal for 1 month/3 months just vote it out when you want.  We plan to deliver and keep pushing the envelope of possibilities.

We plan to initially target easier devices and as we learn get to more complicated infrastructure projects.  This is the plan as we have it now, but that could change based on vendor participation or types of products available.

Vending machine with multiple products that uses a custom interface.
- Design software to communicate with interface, implement multiple product selection within the dash wallet.

Gas pumps
- Design software to communicate with the pump controller, implement a wifi captive portal checkout with one product.

Dash Sky Store Checkout
- Design a wifi captive portal with multiple products.  Implement the Dash Fast Lane - no register checkout.

We will be getting assistance from inside and outside the Dash space.  Each application will win press releases and additional status as a leading crypto similar to how we won publicity with the Dash N Drink.

As for the questions about what happens to the products after we are done, we expect them to be in the hands of a merchant who will actually use them.  This will bring ongoing publicity along with proof of concept for other merchants to adopt and a base for testing.  The valuable part of all these projects is the software, publicity and to gain adoption.  The software will be open source as much as possible.  The intent is not to make a business to sell products but to show how products can be used in real world scenarios.

From the creators of the Dash N Drink, we bring you a phase 2 proposal called Vendor-Experience.  After all of the interest the Dash N Drink showed in Miami, we anticipate future products we create and present will do the same.  Please vote and or ask any questions.

https://www.dashwhale.org/p/Vendor-Experience

We believe the best way to grow Dash is to give users a place to spend their Dash.  Dash has an advantage over any other crypto with InstantX that can enable point of sale purchases without risk.  We plan to utilize this advantage to show projects in the real world.

The initial project we implemented was the Dash N Drink soda machine.  The key to making this project was to implement InstantX detection and trigger a machine credit.  This has now opened the door for the next phase.

The next projects we will work on will include more sophisticated interfaces that will take engineering and software to connect to properly.  We will be updating mobile wallets so they work quickly and easily. We expect to deploy actual products in actual stores.

The core team members coordinating this project are Camosoul and Solarminer.

dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 1cfc2525f33d8dee81640f6860fc85751acea552724ec58d6619f7fcee694ea1 yes

I understand, it took me a while to figure out where the wallets and data files were.  It isn't obvious and certainly not simple.  Just saying it should be easier.  Maybe we need a load wallet command and to specify a directory where the wallet is.  We could also add an option to create shortcut for loaded wallet.

We will get there....

Honestly, I would just do this.
Create a folder anywhere you want.  If you just go do C: drive and create a folder and name it dash we should have this as your location:
C:\dash
copy the dash-qt.exe into this folder.   Right click copy, right click paste.  If you don't know where this is then download the windows .zip file from dash.org or below
https://www.dash.org/binaries/dash-0.12.0.56-win64.zip   Open this, double click on bin, right click on dash-qt.exe and copy, then right click on C:\dash folder and paste.
right click the dash-qt.exe and create shortcut.
Look in that same folder you should see dash-qt.exe with either a - Shortcut or a small arrow on the icon. That is your new shortcut.  Now right click change to "C:\dash\dash-qt.exe" -wallet=wallet1.dat   On the General tab you can rename this to something else.
Go back to where the older dash-qt.exe is and start it up.  Click file - backup.  Save the existing wallet to c:\dash\wallet.dat and close.

Go to the C:\dash directory, Click on the the new dash-qt.exe without the arrow and it will download the blockchain and you should have your old wallet.  The dash-qt.exe - Shortcut(or with an arrow) is your second wallet.

This shouldn't be that hard should it....Sorry.  I hope that all makes sense.

As for no Target: line in windows 10.  This could be called program location: or program:  (It is not the start in: box)  On windows 8 it is under the shortcut tab which you may have to click to get to it.

That works. That new wallet should be located here:
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Dash\

You can either copy from that directory to backup or use the backup command in the File menu of the running wallet to backup.

The wallets are in the data folder.  The default location for the data folder I think is C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\Dash - I move all my stuff to another folder, to make it harder for an attacker to figure it out and easier for me to find.  I also name all my wallets something other than wallet.dat as this is a really easy to search for target.

You can customize config files like WinesRus.conf for each wallet so a title shows up by adding this line:

windowtitle=WinesRus

Then open notepad and copy the following line and save as startwinesRus.bat.  The .bat extension allows you to double click that file to open your wallet.  You can use the same data folder for all your wallets if you don't need to run them at the same time.  Example if you want a wallet named WinesRus with a WinesRus.conf config file.

c:\coolname\dash-qt.exe -datadir=C:\coolname\Data -wallet=WinesRus -conf=C:\coolname\Config\WinesRus.conf

And a second wallet and config could be.  It will create a new wallet if it doesn't find one.

c:\coolname\dash-qt.exe -datadir=C:\coolname\Data -wallet=Wine4me -conf=C:\coolname\Config\Wine4me.conf

For the machine at the show, we actually rejected standard transactions and only accepted InstantX transactions.  This also set in the point that we are not accepting the risk of 0-confirm transactions.  Most people there understood the concept and were impressed at the speed.  There were a few that just couldn't get out of the 'Bitcoin Bubble' and were stuck on their preferred fix that didn't exist yet.  I suspect they were heavily invested in Bitcoin or a company using the Bitcoin blockchain.

The users on btctalk are not buying the machines.  The merchants are the ones we need to inform as they take the risk of double spends and would prefer Dash.