Proposal description
For the forum discussion see: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-buydash-website-easiest-and-fastest-way-to-buy-some-dash-for-newcomers.15003
Not longer online (proposal did not get enough yes votes till June 1st 2017): Working demo website, you can buy Dash with your credit card there for real!
Elevator Pitch
Making just the first purchase of Dash as easy and fast as possible. #DashPointPoint "Key words: Non-profit, self sustained, open source!" (by Mizzymax)
Preamble
This proposal addresses the issue Amanda recently talked about in one of her new videos: US Residents Need Good Way to Buy DASH with Credit Card.
Instead of going through many steps and verification Dash is directly and instantly sold from a storage to new users. Once storage runs low new Dash is added from the non-profit earnings and made available for new potential users. The service is completely automated, selfsustained and Non-Profit.
Pretty much everyone here got introduced to Dash the hard way. How to buy the first Dash? Most of us had to convert some BTC to Dash and understood Blockchain and Bitcoins already. There are now more ways to get Dash pretty easily if you have coinbase, bitpanda, changelly, wesellcrypto, etc., but even those are still very painful for new users: It still takes days or weeks to get approved in any big exchange or get trusted by any payment provider for any serious buy amount. We assume most users get lost in these early steps. Most future users will be even less technically versed and will still have a hard time getting into any cryptocurrency.
Dash is by far the easiest to get into for new users, it already feels pretty close to PayPal and thanks to InstantSend new users don't have to fully understand Blockchains or why you have to wait for confirmations. The only thing holding back new users is understanding why they would need Dash in the first place, where to spend it and the difficulties buying the first Dash.
Proposal
TL;DR: We have quickly hacked together a functional demo (tested on PC, Android and iOS): BuyDash is a simple website to solve this exact problem: Get new users easily into Dash by providing a pain-free way to buy their first Dash via Credit Card in less than a minute from nothing to a fully functional Dash wallet with some Dash in it. You can try it out and buy real dash (limited to $0.50-$5.00 for demo purposes) right now to see it working and getting Dash instantly with your credit card. We propose to put this on the official Dash.org website, e.g. Buy.Dash.org
Website shows a quick 1 minute video of the process working for completely new users (1 minute is all the time you need)
The website is a non-profit service with the only goal to make the first experience for new users easier and straightforward. All crypto-currencies have this exact same problem, but Dash is in a unique position to make this on-boarding process easier. This is not intended to be another big buy service or exchange, the only purpose is to onboard new users and give them a nice and easier way into Dash. The whole Dash community benefits from new users and new money coming in the ecosystem, the Buy.Dash.org website will NOT benefit from this and stay non-profit.
Current Flow:
Please be kind if the service is not as newbie friendly as possible, still has burgs or the fees are high for low $ amounts, this is what this proposal is all about. We only hacked together a demo and made it work like in a GameJam, now the real work starts to make it rock solid, find good deals with payment providers to get down to 1-2% fees and help with marketing (hint: interview us Amanda ^^). All of this will cost time and money.
Costs
150 Dash: 50 Dash for the development and BuyDash website support and 100 Dash to fund the BuyDash service, these Dash will stay on the site and will be rebought once the payment processor pays the service. If the Dash price would stay unchanged this will always get back to 100 Dash, which new users can buy. In the future we might want to increase this funds, but for now 100 Dash should be good for a 2 week payment processor schedule and limiting every new user to 0.004-1.0 Dash.
We know that 50 Dash will only cover our basic costs, but we think this proposal has a future and we can request monthly proposal payments to improve the website and service in the future.
All development is done in the latest .NET Core ASP version and will be open-source. The website is 90% js, css and html, the backend (C#) is very thin and can be ported to any other development platform easily. Technical users can easily see the formulas used and see there are no tricks. As far as I know no other crypto payment providers have their full website open sourced.
Closing
By providing this free service we hope new users can be directed more quickly getting their first Dash. Dash is in the unique position to allow such a service, which would be impossible in all other cryptocurrencies (either no way to fund this, no InstantSend, no way to create a NonProfit service like this, etc.). Obviously other problems still have to be addressed like what new users will actually do with their Dash, which we will hope other proposals will address as well. We think this service alone will increase the value of Dash for everyone, but especially for newcomers. We are excited to work on this and many more things for Dash in the future, let's do it.
Not longer online (proposal did not get enough yes votes till June 1st 2017): Working demo website, you can buy Dash with your credit card there for real!
Elevator Pitch
Making just the first purchase of Dash as easy and fast as possible. #DashPointPoint "Key words: Non-profit, self sustained, open source!" (by Mizzymax)
Preamble
This proposal addresses the issue Amanda recently talked about in one of her new videos: US Residents Need Good Way to Buy DASH with Credit Card.
Instead of going through many steps and verification Dash is directly and instantly sold from a storage to new users. Once storage runs low new Dash is added from the non-profit earnings and made available for new potential users. The service is completely automated, selfsustained and Non-Profit.
Pretty much everyone here got introduced to Dash the hard way. How to buy the first Dash? Most of us had to convert some BTC to Dash and understood Blockchain and Bitcoins already. There are now more ways to get Dash pretty easily if you have coinbase, bitpanda, changelly, wesellcrypto, etc., but even those are still very painful for new users: It still takes days or weeks to get approved in any big exchange or get trusted by any payment provider for any serious buy amount. We assume most users get lost in these early steps. Most future users will be even less technically versed and will still have a hard time getting into any cryptocurrency.
Dash is by far the easiest to get into for new users, it already feels pretty close to PayPal and thanks to InstantSend new users don't have to fully understand Blockchains or why you have to wait for confirmations. The only thing holding back new users is understanding why they would need Dash in the first place, where to spend it and the difficulties buying the first Dash.
Proposal
TL;DR: We have quickly hacked together a functional demo (tested on PC, Android and iOS): BuyDash is a simple website to solve this exact problem: Get new users easily into Dash by providing a pain-free way to buy their first Dash via Credit Card in less than a minute from nothing to a fully functional Dash wallet with some Dash in it. You can try it out and buy real dash (limited to $0.50-$5.00 for demo purposes) right now to see it working and getting Dash instantly with your credit card. We propose to put this on the official Dash.org website, e.g. Buy.Dash.org
Website shows a quick 1 minute video of the process working for completely new users (1 minute is all the time you need)
The website is a non-profit service with the only goal to make the first experience for new users easier and straightforward. All crypto-currencies have this exact same problem, but Dash is in a unique position to make this on-boarding process easier. This is not intended to be another big buy service or exchange, the only purpose is to onboard new users and give them a nice and easier way into Dash. The whole Dash community benefits from new users and new money coming in the ecosystem, the Buy.Dash.org website will NOT benefit from this and stay non-profit.
Current Flow:
- Before the first buy the user is directed to download a Dash client to create his first wallet (Jaxx on iOS, Dash Wallet on Android, Dash on Desktop, Web wallets, etc.)
- Next the user can spend between $0.5 and $100 to get 0.004-1.0 Dash (limited to $5 for this demo right now, maybe we can increase the limit later, for now we want to keep it simple)
- If the user has entered his new wallet address and paid the amount with his credit card, he immediately gets his Dash into his wallet (in about 1s thanks to InstantSend)
- The new Dash will be available on the website and can be bought by any new user.
- Any fees and overall charge-backs/deductions/etc. are displayed and distributed to all new users, if this goes to several 10%+, the service will probably not be very useful anymore and would have to close down (Fraud protection from the payment provider will help here)
- Please do not compare this service with fully fledged payment providers or exchanges. This service is NOT for experienced users, the purpose is JUST to help new users. Once a user has already some Dash he should use other services. In later iterations the website will help pointing users to other ways to put funds into exchanges (Kraken, or coinbase and then Poloniex) and get Dash cheaply that way if they are interested and have the time to go through all that.
- Please ask in the comments for details, especially credit card payment is a complex topic. Overall payment is a very complex problem and many have tried and everyone has their own solution to make a bit of money, but we think it is very bad for initial users to get tricked with way too high rates and fees just to make some big company richer.
- Currently Stripe is used for the demo, which has a 2.9% fee plus $0.30 flat, in Europe we can get down to 1.4%+0.25euro, but the main market is US as most people have a credit card there, we will try to find better rates in the 1-2% range. AML/KYC is handled by the payment processor.
- Payment via PayPal, Amazon, etc.
- Easy usage for any other app, wallet, exchange, etc. via API
- More automated, closer integration with exchange to acquire more Dash quickly
- Sell Dash and get it back on your CreditCard, PayPal, etc.
- Sell Dash and get bank transfer/SEPA, etc. (then buy.dash.org would function almost like an exchange, but for complexity reasons we would like to avoid that and just keep it simple)
- Buying and Selling Dash alone would be a great usecase and showing people many things very easily:
- Dash prices goes up, if you make a gift to your niece and she pays out to her credit card a month later, she will most likely have more money in $
- It shows how easy it is to send someone some Dash and if they can’t find a use for it yet, they can easily sell it and use the money. And if they want to get back into Dash, they can easily acquire them again.
Please be kind if the service is not as newbie friendly as possible, still has burgs or the fees are high for low $ amounts, this is what this proposal is all about. We only hacked together a demo and made it work like in a GameJam, now the real work starts to make it rock solid, find good deals with payment providers to get down to 1-2% fees and help with marketing (hint: interview us Amanda ^^). All of this will cost time and money.
Costs
150 Dash: 50 Dash for the development and BuyDash website support and 100 Dash to fund the BuyDash service, these Dash will stay on the site and will be rebought once the payment processor pays the service. If the Dash price would stay unchanged this will always get back to 100 Dash, which new users can buy. In the future we might want to increase this funds, but for now 100 Dash should be good for a 2 week payment processor schedule and limiting every new user to 0.004-1.0 Dash.
We know that 50 Dash will only cover our basic costs, but we think this proposal has a future and we can request monthly proposal payments to improve the website and service in the future.
All development is done in the latest .NET Core ASP version and will be open-source. The website is 90% js, css and html, the backend (C#) is very thin and can be ported to any other development platform easily. Technical users can easily see the formulas used and see there are no tricks. As far as I know no other crypto payment providers have their full website open sourced.
Closing
By providing this free service we hope new users can be directed more quickly getting their first Dash. Dash is in the unique position to allow such a service, which would be impossible in all other cryptocurrencies (either no way to fund this, no InstantSend, no way to create a NonProfit service like this, etc.). Obviously other problems still have to be addressed like what new users will actually do with their Dash, which we will hope other proposals will address as well. We think this service alone will increase the value of Dash for everyone, but especially for newcomers. We are excited to work on this and many more things for Dash in the future, let's do it.
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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
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Overall it is really hard to get things through this system, I still think it is better than what all other cryptocoins have, but it is far from perfect. Our proposal does not target Masternode owners and thus newcomers might be more friendly to the idea as they recently got through the trouble obtaining their first coins (e.g. coinbase being down once again, fighting with getting approved at exchanges, etc.). I still think a service like this is going to help new users enormously and no other coin can offer a community project like this one (maybe not even Dash, well 4 more days to vote, let's see what happens).
I do agree with others that charge-backs could be a problem. Do you have any plan on how to deal with that possibility?
Key words: Non-profit, self sustained, open source
This is great because there is no middle man and it's a great point of sale use for Dash. We can target customers online and get them to buy instantly, broadening marketing options. It's also easier for someone to spend money using a card then cash, and not to mention quicker! Can't wait to see it in action.
OK I tried again just to see and it went through second time...
But CC shows 2x $1 charges so i guess they both went through...
It should be attractive to newcomers. Obviously a Masternode owner is not going to buy 0.1 Dash on some new website and pay Credit Card fees, even if the Dash is sold there for 30% cheaper due to a recent price spike.
of it like this.
100$ of Dash is bought
1% added fee to go towards additional Dash to be added
Next round of Dash will increase to 101$ worth.
When people see its lower then the actually price, sure they will buy it but it still helps us and doesn't hurt the system or us at all.
The amount of Dash may decrease but the dollar amount of Dash will continue to increase. So it will constantly be putting more money into Dash even if people just buy and sell. More money buying Dash = higher market cap = happy Dash owners (:
Cool little system for people to test out Dash
On is the 4th EU AML Directive that will go live this year. Its complex, but a short summary of the relevant points is available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4aml-directive-salient-points-damian-mifsud. This specifically mentions Virtual currency exchanges being responsible for KYCing the user. In Europe, at least, you will hit this hurdle.
Regarding the comments that '$15k is too much for a website!', I would counter that it is nowhere near enough, not for the actual website creation, but to jump through all the regulatory hurdles necessary.
There is a reason that Poloniex etc. don't touch fiat at all...
But we only know once we try and get started, we are still pumped and eager to make this a reality :)
This is a good new onramp into Dash for the little guy.
My tiny piece of advice is to shop around for credit card processors who may be able to offer you higher transaction limits. Additionally, you never know when your current processor may pull the plug on you. You may end up needing a backup.
We do not have a limit with our payment processor, we can do $1000 or $5000, but I never have dealt with these big amounts (I have a lot of experience in the FreeToPlay gaming area, where things are in the $1-$5 range, maybe $20-$50 once in a while). It is more a precaution against Fraud where we would lose all bought Dash and not get the money. As other have suggested higher amounts might make sense with greater validation, we will look into this.
From the looks of it you want to sell dash via credit-cards without any AML and KYC ? (correct right). Unless your very lucky no payment processor is going to allow this, and even if it gets allowed the site will receive a massive amount of charge-backs. I know from experience dealing with this stuff it's never gonna fly (I did well over 10.000 peer to peer trades, and was going to setup, a no AML/KYC site just like yours).
Further more, it's a 24/7 on call job keeping the hot-wallet filled with enough dash, that have also been bought in for a decent price.
I'd like to thank the guy and see where this goes.
When we cut out being reliant on others, that's when you will start to see Dash proposer. otherwise we are just feeding the beast we are trying to take down.
If we don't want to feed the beast we are trying to take down then why accept credit cards in the first place? It's because it's what people use. I don't have a problem with integrating with third parties especially if those third parties are services that lots of people already use. Credit card access is good but I don't see a huge value in providing a service like this if it is not being headed up by a company that has the resources and is prepared to sustain the risks associated with accepting credit cards.
What stops someone continuing to buy?
Vote yes.
And just wow at the recent dash price increase ..
Here is a thought for fun, what if I'm introducing a friend to Dash and they want to buy $200.00 worth. They place the order with their CC and the website says "large purchases require an existing Dash holder to insure the transaction". A QR pops up and I send the requested amount into escrow, it gets returned to me in 60 days as long as no chargeback is placed.
Just a thought.
The +100 Dash are required to make the service work, otherwise it is not possible for us to get this thing up and running, the 100 Dash are not paid out to us, but stay within the service. Let me know if you need further explanation.
Amanda's video is really a rant. Whether or not she has valid points, the biggest thing I took away from the video was that she was caught unprepared to properly introduce her uncle to crypto. And that's fair, because that's the same reason I don't go evangelizing crypto to my relatives. If her dream buying experience were to come true, then a lot of other things do not, such as the due diligence someone should have in learning about security required and best practices, but this is starting to digress.
It seems that this proposal takes her rant video literally as a business plan and technical layout for a service platform. I can't imagine how this would scale or add anything of real value to the current market. Certainly not 15k worth.
You are right that Amanda was just on a rant because of her recent experience, but it hit a nerve for me and maybe many others as well. When I go to our local bitcoin meeting and any newcomer is there, he has a pretty bad time because everyone explains how QR codes work, how the blockchain stores the transaction, why he has to wait, etc. and after all that the newcomer thinks he is stupid and way too late to get it ..
I always think of it like how I would explain it to my mother or some completely non-technical person and I pretty much have to give up right away, last year I did not speak with anyone about crypto, it was way to cumbersome. This year is much better and it is more in the news, but there are still too many geeks .. my hope is that Dash solves this problem in the future with Evolution and this great voting ..
Doesn't have to be BuyDash (it is an experiement, we hope it works, but we can't be sure, this has not been done before), but something should be done to make things simpler in the long run.
Anyway, thanks for your feedback, let's see what the other voters say.
It'll allow people to test out Dash quickly, then if they decide to buy more, they can get it elsewhere.
It could also be an excellent play-in for a lot of the proposals we're starting to see on this board. For example, a merchant could then offer a $1-2 promo discount on a beer if paid in Dash. That same merchant could refer the customer to your website and the transfer could be made in minutes.