In a major overhaul in the Dash ecosystem, Ryan Taylor, Dash’s Director of Finance, has been appointed as the CEO of the Dash Core Project and will now focus on leading organizational growth, maintaining the project vision, and overseeing communications with Dash partners and investors.

The appointment comes as Dash Founder Evan Duffield on Monday announced that he is transitioning to an advisory role, officially departing from day-to-day duties. He plans to focus on other projects aimed at expanding Dash’s ecosystem, but will remain available to offer advice and consultation to the Dash Core and its developers.

“Since the beginning, my ambition was to create a sustainable and resilient blockchain project without any singular points of failure. Today’s announcement has been in development for many months, and I am proud to have helped Dash become the extraordinary project it is today”, Duffield said. “For the last several months, daily operations and technology development at Dash Core have been led by now-CEO Ryan Taylor and CTO Andy Freer. Our most recent software upgrade - deployed in February - was developed and released without my hands-on involvement. Thanks to the Dash Core, our developers, advisors, masternode operators and every single user around the world, the upgrade was the smoothest yet.”

According to the official release, the appointment has been unanimously agreed upon by Duffield and the Dash Core, the democratically-elected body responsible for the development, marketing and expansion of the Dash ecosystem. Dash clarified that no changes are being made to its blockchain governance, voting and treasury model.

Taylor has been a key contributor to Dash since mid-2014. He left a traditional Wall Street career in March 2016 to join the Dash Core full-time helping accelerate Dash’s progress in becoming a blockchain industry leader and global payments network. Before joining Dash, Taylor was a hedge fund analyst covering a global stable of payments industry investments for the private equity and public market funds of a $20 billion investment firm based in New York, and previously served as an Associate Partner in McKinsey & Company’s Business Technology Office in New York.

“Evan is one of the most gifted minds in blockchain and fintech. He created something that will have a permanent and lasting impact on many people across the world in a rapidly evolving economy. The Dash Core team is committed to ensuring that we follow the grand vision Evan laid for Dash. Today, we have extensive resources in place to deliver that vision. Dash is fast becoming a popular payment option for many thousands of people around the world, and we look forward to announcing further progress in the near future as we create compelling and relevant solutions aimed at everyday people”, Taylor said.

In the first quarter of 2017, the Dash Project announced several milestone partnerships, which includes collaboration with BitPanda, MaRSe, and BlockPay, and the implementation of the highly anticipated Sentinel software upgrade which it touts as a stepping stone towards an industry-first decentralized payments system called Evolution.

Dash is currently the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization (worth over $540 million at the time of writing). With the recent surge in its price, leading cryptocurrency exchanges, including Kraken, BTC-e, and Bitfinex, have added support for Dash on their platform.

“The beauty of a blockchain-based project is decentralization, the dispersion and distribution of functions and powers. Since its inception, Dash has been the benchmark of decentralized success; our unique governance model ensures an ownership mindset that is designed to improve the state and functionality of the Dash network and increase the network’s value. Together with Evan, we built the world’s first self-sustainable decentralized autonomous organization with a substantial organic budget, and there’s so much more to come”, Taylor added.

Dash further stated that it has a full pipeline of integrations in place and high-level business partnerships in progress. Now headquartered from Arizona State University’s SkySong Innovation Center, the Dash Core team recently announced its plan to add over 20 new positions, including development, customer support, infrastructure support, marketing, and administration.