Dash Business Development Update July 2016

Today we are happy to announce we have reached an important milestone in our Dash ATM integration project. With help from our development contractor GitGuild (former Deginner) we are making available to the community two Lamassu compatible ATM software versions.

1)Lamassu official stack (multi-currency version)

As you may know from previous reports Lamassu created their own basic multi-currency version that is able to support BTC/ETH and our contractor the GitGuild created a similar DASH version that could support BTC/DASH. As the first Dash version was released ahead of Lamassu publishing their ETH branch, they introduced some changes and made some different design choices that were not considered in the initial Dash version, so we had to go back and adapt our branch that follows the Lamassu official version to reflect these changes and choices.

Today we’re happy to announce the merging of the Dash and Ethereum code bases authored by our team and Lamassu respectively. Though the process is still technically challenging, Lamassu operators will be able to add Dash support side by side with Bitcoin and Ethereum. We hope to ease the user experience over time, but are committed to not moving ahead of Lamassu on this fork, to stay as close to their official stack as possible.

As the GitGuild mentions in their latest report to our team:

“After an initial release with Dashd and Poloniex, Lamassu surprised us by releasing a Ethereum branch. Though this was announced with a press release and much fanfare, it is important to note that the ETH branch is still alpha, and has not been merged to the Lamassu master. Due to this uncertainty, our team is now developing 1–2 months behind lamassu’s ETH branches.”

You can see here, how ETH or multicurrency support is still considered alpha by Lamassu and it is not yet merged to master. Dash’s contractor GitGuild maintains an excellent relationship with Lamassu and will continue to keep Dash’s branch up-to-date with the Lamassu ETH branch with maybe a buffer of about 4 weeks behind it to make sure we don’t diverge or duplicate efforts based on changes that they may still be doing to the code.

Having said this, this code is available and any technically minded operator can run it. The message here is that as the Lamassu official multi-currency support evolves the official Dash support will evolve with it and any operator that wants to run the current official stack will be able to support Dash too.

2) TigoCTM partnership — Improved Unofficial Software Stack

In an interest to produce ready to deploy Dash machines today, that make it easier for the operator to start offering Dash to the public(which is the ultimate goal of this project). Dash has partnered with TigoCTM to offer a second software stack that includes additional features that are not part of the official Lamassu stack. This is a forked and improved version of Lamassu’s software. This version connects to modules being developed for Dash under the “fiat-gateways” project, like the shared wallet and trade manager. We believe this version to offer added value and ease of use. Eventually TigoCTM has plans to develop a completely new stack.

Being open source software this alternative version could also be used by any technically proficient operator that has the hardware and wants to run it.

Existing Operators — Outreach

If you are an existing operator that would like to add Dash support to your machines using the software in sync with the official Lamassu version our contractor GitGuild has agreed to do (1) hand-off call to show you the right repositories and get you started. Be mindful that the current official multi-currency version from Lamassu requires good technical skills to set up.

You could also check the improved TigoCTM software version and run it on your own, no relationship with TigoCTM required, we could point you to the right repositories as well. Remember this is all open source software so anyone is welcome to use it or help improve it.

At this point, we will be starting operator outreach and gauging interest of current BTC operators to offer Dash as a second product on their machines expanding their business horizontally. We would like to request community assistance for this part, if you know ATM operators that may be interested or have contacts that may help us in this process please email me at daniel@dash.org We will of course be contacting potential operators on our own but help is always welcome.

New Operators — Interested in running a dual DASH / BTC machine?

Thanks to our partnership with TigoCTM there are now Lamassu ATMs pre-flashed with Dash support available for immediate shipping, being a wholesaler they can offer very competitive pricing.

If you have the technical know-how you can just buy your machine pre-flashed with Dash support, do the setup of the machine, banking, wallet and back-end servers yourself and operate on your own, without any further commitments.

Fully supported option!

For people that have no experience or technical skills our partner will be offering a fully managed option for a 1% fee on transactions. TigoCTM walks you through a simplified account setup at banking, exchange, and wallet partners, create and hosts the backend server(s) your machine requires and you only visit the machine to manage the cash. As a reference, average fee on ATM machines around the world is 7.4% .

This support model is very similar to Masternodes where we have users that run and maintain the servers themselves and users that use fully managed services that charge them a fee for convenience. In the future we expect more services to offer Dash ATM support but we are very happy to launch with a solid partner like TigoCTM.

On a personal note, I have already ordered my very own Dash ATM machine from TigoCTM and will be documenting my experience and sharing it with the community over the next few weeks. I encourage any Dash enthusiast that is able to host a machine to run one. Together we can improve access to DASH and consolidate even more in our role as digital cash.

Note: You can find some of this same information and some additional relevant links in the latest report our partner GitGuild prepared for us here.

Future plans

We are thrilled to be reaching this important milestone today but this project is really just one of the first steps in our plans as we would really like to take it further and see if we can turn Dash into the digital currency with the largest network of teller machines and the best access from FIAT.

For this we are researching an idea as a potential scaling strategy for the ATM network. I will be sharing this idea with the community soon, we are very much looking forward to some feedback so stay tuned for an update on this in the next few days.

FIAT Gateways Project (short-update)

As we mentioned, the improved ATM software version already uses back-end modules that have been developed as part of what we call the “Fiat-Gateways” project. The project is progressing at a good pace, Dash is being included in all the backend tools that are part of the framework our partner GitGuild is building and this will allow any business that wants to use these modules a friendly and reliable way to offer Dash services.

Dash is not the only organization that is funding and will be using this framework, in fact, a number of reputable crypto services are participating in the project too. I am planning to post a full update on this project separately later this month to allow the community to digest all the information that was posted today. Also, because I will be in San Francisco this week participating on d10e and won’t be able to work on another update report until next week.

Something I can say now is that our business development efforts have been bearing fruits and we have secured some important partnerships that we will be publicly disclosing over the next few weeks, some very soon. A few of those partners, including TigoCTM which launched today, will be using the framework that is being developed as part of our FIAT-gateways project to integrate Dash, so we are very pleased with the progress so far.

In the meantime, if you can’t wait for more news, you can check the full technical overview of the framework the GitGuild is working on, this should give you a better understanding of the whole project.

Daniel