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The Dash Investment Foundation (DIF) — is the world’s first ownerless and memberless investment fund. It was created on 21 March 2019 as a Cayman Islands foundation corporation confined by guarantee and it is completely managed by Dash’s decentralized Masternode Network. Dash Investment Foundation is tasked with strengthening the Dash network through investment operations. By this the foundation creates a bridge among the network protocol and the legacy monetary and legal structures. This opens opportunities for entrepreneurs and the Dash network to partner and mutually benefit from the funding available through the Dash network via Dash Investment Foundation. The fund derives all of its budget from the enterprise's first treasury system run by the global decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

Reasons for creating
The main reason was the realization, that handing out grants (i.e., gifts) to for-profit businesses was ineffective. Too often commercial projects happily accepted DAO funding only to give nothing back or create a weak project and take most of the funds for themselves. In addition, the DAO coffers were limited by investment opportunities, so not all proposals could be implemented due to the lack of flexibility in the grant system.

Genesis
After realizing these problems in 2018, the dash community thought about how to solve them and even conducted a study on ways to solve the problem. Soon a solution was found by DCG (Dash Core Group) and initial investigation into the formation of a "Dash Ventures" investment vehicle to benefit the network was initiated (June - July 2018). The Dash Investment Foundation (DIF) in its earliest stages, as an idea, it was called "Dash Ventures". But turns out there is already a VC firm by that name, so it was decided to call it DIF.

Getting started
The Dash Investment Fund was registered on 21 March 2019 as a founding company in the Cayman Islands, at which time its activity began. Then on 13 June 2019, the first funding proposal was requested on behalf of DIF, to fund the cost of establishing the organization. And it was approved by the masterminds and the DIF received funding from the DASH Treasury in the amount of 514 DASH, this proposal didn't include funding for any investments. On May 9, at official site of cryptocurrency dash.org published an article entitled "Introducing The Dash Investment Foundation", which contains the most important information about the fund. The official DIF twitter was created in June, where you can find all the DIF news and other significant information. Already in September we created an official channel on YouTube, where you can watch the quarterly reports and various podcasts. And also a review video of Strategy & Policies was released. In June, details of the Dash Investment Fund supervisor role were published, and in July were announced first four elected supervisors the first year of DIF: Amanda Johnson, Michael Lewis, Jan Heinrich Meyer, Hytham Abdel-Karim. From that moment, the foundation began its full-scale work.

Nowadays
DIF currently has 6 active supervisors: Dr Darren Tapp, Sven Rossbach, Michael Lewis (AKA Walter), Ash Francis, Rodrigo Ambrissi, Glenn Austin. And DIF's investment portfolio already includes 7 companies from various key industries, cooperation with which strengthens the DASH network. Two years after its incorporation, DIF's position is only getting stronger. DIF is already starting to bring its benefits to the DASH network, and is only continuing to gain investment momentum.



Structure
At the time of creation, DASH is the first cryptocurrency that has an investment fund for its treasury and DAO, also at the time of writing this article also has no similar projects in the crypto sphere.

In fact, the Dash Investment Foundation can be divided into two parts:


 * 1) Supervisors (At the moment 6). They, the 6 volunteers elected by the network of DASH masterminds every year, not one of them receives any monetary remuneration. They are the key figures in the work and management of DIF.
 * 2) Directors (At the moment 2). They in turn are appointed by the supervisors, have full control of the company on the cayman, access to all the funds of the investment fund, the right to hire staff to carry out legal and household tasks on a day to day basis. As well as all the signing of investment contracts and other actions with the funds can only be made by them, but before these actions are submitted for approval to the supervisors.
 * 3) Secretary (At the moment 1). The secretary keep a full and proper record of requests made and information provided regarding contributions to assets for which the secretary is required to provide a notice of no objection.


 * The fund receives funding directly from DASH Treasury, the funds are allocated only after the consent of more than 10% (of the total number of masternodes), at the moment requests for funding DIF leaves every 3 months. All funds of the fund are distributed in bank accounts, hardware wallets, exchange accounts, as well as in custodial cryptocurrency wallet accounts.
 * The legal structure of the Cayman Islands is unique in that it offers relatively new company structure, that's why company is opened there. DIF is a foundation company, This type of companies was created for projects where there is no owner (Beneficiary), that is, the company does not belong to anyone. DIF has neither an owner, nor participants, but it is an independent legal entity, which does not belong to any other company. The contract which established the company says that DIF was created to finance and invest in everything that could benefit the DASH network.
 * If the Dash Masternode network suddenly wants to close DIF, DASH will be bought all the funds, thereby reducing its turnover, which will increase its value.

Investment process: First the DIF contacts the partner they want, or the partner contacts the DIF on their own. Then supervisors and general manager of the company (sometimes other representatives of the company partner), contact in a general call and DIF gets information about the project/business/companyю. Later DIF gets more in-depth financial data. If the DIF is interested in the draft partnership, then there is a vote among the supervisors, if most supervisors vote for investment, then there is a careful study of the terms of the deal, various data on the deal and the legal conditions. This is all studied not only by the supervisors, but also sent to the directors and the board in the Cayman Islands, they will look for any red flags or any potential legal problems or anything that might have been missed by the supervisors. And once the DIF is happy with the proposed deal and its terms, then the directors will be instructed on behalf of the supervisors to sign this investment contract, as well as to carry out all the financial work that is required to execute this deal. Also at the same time will be unbalancing the funds of the fund, so that the account has a sufficient amount of U.S. dollars to finance this transaction. The directors then send the money to the project in which the investment is going, the DIF receives the final contract. The whole process takes about 5-10 weeks.

Retail & Payments

 * CrayPay — is a univinveersal loyalty platform with instant rewards. The platform allows users to earn savings at more than 155,000 retail locations and 75+ national U.S. retail websites, in just a couple of seconds.
 * CTX (formerly Dash Retail) — This is a company that allows you to accept cryptocurrency payments in a simple way, in-store and online. Easy integration into any business, specialized support and daily payments in local currency.
 * Bitfy — is a multi-purpose cryptocurrency wallet in Brazil, which is non-custodal. For example, it can be used to make all kinds of financial transactions, using cryptocurrencies to pay at more than 1.5 million establishments and a number of other digital services.

Financial Services

 * Valkyrie — Valkyrie Funds LLC is a specialized alternative financial services firm at the intersection of traditional finance and the emerging cryptocurrency sector whose affiliates aim to offer asset management, research and other services. Headquartered in Nashville, Valkyrie Funds aims to provide exposure to the emerging digital asset class through traditional financial vehicles.
 * 88i Seguradora Digital —It is a Digital Insurer focused on customers and service providers in the mobility, delivery, fintech and e-commerce ecosystems. This company provides for the Mobility, Delivery, Fintech and eCommerce ecosystems..

Trading & Tools

 * Quadency — is a digital asset management platform that provides automated trading and portfolio management solutions for both retail and institutional traders.

Entertainment & Gaming

 * ReadyRaider — This is a company that gives you the opportunity to develop communities and other gaming ventures. For every player with a powerful arsenal of in-game companion tools, team management systems, in-game item databases and cryptocurrency cybersport leagues..