Welcome!

SEPTMEBER UPDATE: IMPORTANT PROPOSAL UPDATE AND STATEMENT

IMPORTANT PROPOSAL UPDATE AND STATEMENT



Hello Dash-Community,
Dear Masternode-Owners,

I want to give you a short update about our future plans. Before I start with the outlook, I want to inform you about some major changes in our organisation. But first of all, I want to thank you for funding us during the last cycle. This funding allowed us to pay for liabilities from July and August and saved us from running into insolvency and private debts.
Due to the financial uncertainties of the past two months I decided to cancel almost all contracts we had. This includes the office, associations, contractors and employees. All employees, including Sidem. I offered Sidem to continue working for the Embassy as a freelancer, but he declined due to private reasons. This and the fact that the network doesn’t want us to execute the activities based on the strategy document we have been working on for the last five months, puts me in a very difficult situation, because:

1. I lost my most important employee.

2. The network doesn’t want me to do what (from my perspective) would be best for the network.

Because we haven’t received a lot of feedback on our Q3 proposal, neither in public channels, nor in private messages, nor via the survey we created, I can’t really tell why we have been defunded in the first place. Maybe our planned activities were ahead of time, which means that we wanted too much too early. Maybe we were not able to explain the reasons behind the planned activities as they were very comprehensive and because of that they may have been too complex. Maybe there is an issue connected to our region, because I know that some of the decision makers in the network think that Dash should focus on high-inflationary markets mostly. Maybe it was the amount of Dash we asked for, even though we had a higher ask in the beginning of this year. As said, unfortunately, I can’t tell what has caused the initial defunding, because only a few people gave us detailed feedback on our proposal.

That being said I don’t think that an adjusted and scaled down scope of the Embassy and a budget that is cut down to a minimum will help Dash to grow in our region anymore. Doing some basic stuff without any budget feels like a drop of water on a hot stone to me. 

I’m a person that likes to fight and I’m a person that likes to succeed. I like to fight for freedom, equality and success. This is why I started to work for Dash back in 2017. I had ambitious plans, I made mistakes and I learned a lot during this journey and I succeeded to a certain extent. I always stood up and adjusted the activities of the Embassy after we have been defunded, but this time it feels different. It feels like based on my experience of three years working for Dash and based on the intensive research we did for five months I know what needs to be done to increase our success, but it also feels like the network does not allow me to achieve this success and instead forces me to ground my guns. 

The worst thing about this is that from my perspective this didn’t happen by purpose. I believe it happened because most of the participants in the network did not pay enough attention to what we created and did not do a detailed review of our strategy document, so most of the decision makers were not able to make a well-founded decision.
As a consequence of this very unsatisfying situation I decided to scale down the Embassy to a level which allows me to get a regular job. This means that I won’t work for Dash in full time anymore. I will start a new job as Head of Business Development beginning on 15th of September. 

At the same time I believe that discontinuing all activities in our region might harm Dash’s international reputation and this is exactly the opposite of what I want. I really hope that the interest of the network for our region and for our work might increase again, when the price of Dash increases, which would cause an increased budget of the DAO and by that allow us to operate in the way we think would be best.

In the meantime Nils Hermann (aka Orion) and I will try to find a solution that allows us to keep the Embassy running and not let Dash go completely. We definitely want to keep up social media marketing, blog post translations from DCG, Influencer-Marketing and PR. Of course I will not miss out on any business development opportunity, but I will not do active business development anymore, because, as described in our strategy document, it is a waste of time and money to do business development if we can’t combine business development with proper marketing activities. Right now I can not tell in which way we will be moving forward, but I can assure you that my new position will not be of disadvantage for Dash. 

As always I’ll be happy to receive feedback in every way and I hope that you will understand the decisions made based on the situation I’m in.
Thank you for your time,

Jan/essra



AUGUST UPDATE: PREREAD FOR ADJUSTEMTNS AND LOWERED ASK

Please make sure to watch this video before you vote, as it contains important information about the adjustment of the scope of this proposal and a reduced ask for funding.





EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. Business Development vs. Marketing
   It seems that there is the understanding that we want to focus on marketing completely and don’t want to do business development anymore, but there is no versus. Our planned marketing activities are not a substitute for our business development efforts. They are an add-on, a necessary supplement to enable future success in business development. This means that educational marketing and business development are meant to go hand in hand. 
   
   
2. Adjusted Proposal Scope based on Feedback from the Community
   Based on the feedback we received from Masternodes on DashCentral, through the survey we created and through private conversations, we will reduce the scope of our proposal. This means that we will dismiss some of our planned activities and only take in account what is most important.
   
   
3. Scaling down the organisation and lower our ask to the network
   Due to the reduced scope of our proposal, we will be able to lower our ask in future. This means that we will submit a new proposal in the next cycle. But right now we need our current proposal to pass, because we haven’t received any funding for the last month. This means that our current proposal covers the expanses of two months which is equal to a lowered ask of 50%. We already made a lot of cuts in regards to salaries, staff and infrastructure, but we still have liabilities from July. If we don’t receive funding in this month we will fall into insolvency.
   
   

These are the adjustments we made



These are the cuts we made



This is the budget reduction



IMPORTANT



We will mark all adjustments to the scope of this in the text below using *



DACH: Marketing and Business Development Q3/20

Dash Embassy D-A-CH (www.dash-embassy.org) was founded on the 23rd of Feb 2018. Our main goal is to drive adoption of Dash. To achieve this we were convincing FIAT-Gateways such as ATM Companies and Exchanges and companies from the payment industry, such as payment service providers (PSPs), cashier systems and payment terminals to integrate Dash in the past. During 2019 we experienced that convincing payment companies, wallet providers and exchanges was becoming harder and harder. This was happening for two reasons:

1 - We convinced most of the major crypto-companies in our region to integrate Dash. This means that the number of remaining integration opportunities has decreased.

2 - The remaining companies are demanding a higher degree of awareness, partnerships in marketing and/or advertising or a listing fee.

This only applies to major crypto-companies. We could move on integrating Dash in smaller services, which are not demanding anything except for a twitter post, but we are convinced that integrating Dash in those, comparably less significant, businesses is not adding a lot of value to Dash, anymore. We are not willing to pay for integrations into the major companies, as we believe that this would send the wrong signal to the industry. Much rather we would like to work on increasing the degree of awareness and create partner programs, because this would enable integrations following real market demand. We are convinced that this approach is a lot more sustainable than “pay to play” integrations, as it offers additional benefits, such as increased visibility and usage of Dash in general. All this was part of the reasoning behind our decision to work on a comprehensive marketing strategy. 


This proposal is based on the DCW: Marketing Strategy and Structure proposal we submitted in January 2020 

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/DCW_MARKETING_STRATEGY_AND_STRUCTURE

All the actions listed below are the results of the findings we made during the past 5 months. The derivations and reasonings can be found in our working document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gUMKOD8FbtgQtkQh6YKJY4RlW3_zE8BGa0UWvJ2WwnI/edit?usp=sharing 

As we are aware that a document which contains over 160 pages might fall under TLDR, we want to give you a short summary of what we learned from our research. For further details please take a look at the entire document linked above.


1 Research Summary


1 - Payments 

The traditional payment industry in Europe is beginning to adopt cryptocurrency payments. Worldline (3rd biggest payment company in the world) will start their rollout for BTC and ETH payment in collaboration with Bitcoin Suisse (Broker, Staking, Crypto-PSP) in Switzerland during this summer. They control the vast majority of the payment market in Switzerland. (https://de.worldline.com/de/home/newsroom/press-releases-general/2019/pr-2019_11_08_01.html). 

We were not able to convince Worldline/Bitcoin Suisse to integrate Dash into their payment solution, because they believe that the awareness of Dash and the demand of potential users for Dash are too low, compared to BTC and ETH.

A1 Payments (leading payment company in Austria) and Ingenico (worlds biggest payment terminal company) already started their rollout for BTC, ETH, Dash, Stellar, Ripple and Litecoin payments in Austria in collaboration with Salamantex (Crypto-PSP) https://www.salamantex.com/en/newsroom/197-payment-with-bitcoin-co-available-nation-wide-throughout-austria-starting-this-summer

According to A1 and Salamantex the usage of BTC is already increasing. Dash is lagging behind BTC and ETH and is not catching up with the current growth phase.


2 - Remittance

Dash can’t offer any advantages for remittance inside of Europe compared to companies such as Western Union, Transferwise or MoneyGram. It seems like the competition in the most attractive corridors by volume is so high that Dash can’t beat it, as long as fiat on-/off ramps are involved. This can only be changed if Dash will be used as a means of payment in the sending or in the receiving country. We did not examine intercontinental remittance yet.

In conclusion we found that the benefits of Dash remittance can only be fully utilized if the need for fiat on-/off-ramps is eliminated.


3 - Finance

According to BaFin (German regulator) the demand for financial products based on crypto-assets is increasing significantly. Right now Dash is not available as ETN/ETC or as any other kind of derivative on traditionals markets. Those kinds of products based on Dash will only become available if a potential issuer believes that there is enough demand for the underlying asset or if a third party pays for the setup fee and covers the initial investment. Dash is not benefiting from this growing market, because the demand for Dash is too low. 

The reasoning behind the low demand seems to be connected to the comparably low market capitalization and the comparably low usage at the POS and in e-commerce.


4 - Media

Europe's leading digital publisher (https://www.axelspringer.com/en/) and Europe's leading news-website for finance (https://www.finanzen.net/) are invested in the first fully regulated cryptocurrency exchange based in Germany (https://www.bsdex.de/en//). Bitcoin, Ethereum and several other projects are getting coverage on leading financial news websites and even in mainstream media. Dash is almost not getting any coverage, not even in crypto related media. As a result Dash is not being recognized by people interested in cryptocurrencies. Conversations with leading finance news websites such as finanzen.net (32m visitors/month) and leading crypto related news websites such as BTC-ECHO (1.3m visitors/month) have revealed that Dash is not being covered because of its comparably low market capitalization.

Unless the market capitalization grows significantly, it is unlikely that Dash will get significant organic media coverage for the technical innovations and updates it delivers.


5 - Competitors 

BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC, XRP and XLM are the closest competitors of Dash when it comes to availability and usage via Crypto-PSPs at the POS and in e-commerce. They have access to a much bigger user base than Dash due to a very comprehensive distribution in Multi-Coin-Wallets and Crypto-Banking. Most of them are a lot more visible on crypto related news-websites and in social media. The most visible and best distributed are having leading figures in media. All of them are having a higher market capitalization than Dash. 

Currently we are unable to convince any of the large multi-coin-wallets or crypto-banking services to integrate Dash. This is because they believe that the awareness of Dash and the demand of potential users for Dash is too low compared to its competitors.


6 - SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) 

The SWOT analysis has shown that due to the current market developments in the payment and financial sector, but also due to the increase in availability in the area of ​​wallets and crypto banking, there are numerous opportunities for Dash that can have a strong positive impact on the success of Dash as a means of payment. At the same time, however, there are also numerous threats, which mainly result from untapped opportunities, which might lead to the project failing. When considering the threats and opportunities in terms of strategy, two factors are particularly noticeable: market capitalization and awareness. This means that many of the opportunities can only be used, and the majority of the threats can only be avoided if Dash's awareness and/or market capitalization increase. As a final conclusion, it can be stated that crucial investments need to be made in the awareness level of Dash, that educational work on the product has to be carried out, that Dash's mission statement has to be communicated more strongly and that business development and communication in the area of ​​investment have to be carried out. Partner programs for the payment industry should also be developed and measures to increase transactions should be taken.

The Treasury and the DIF seem to be Dash's biggest strengths at the moment. They should be utilized to increase the visibility of Dash's superior technology and to avoid the threats and take advantage of the opportunities the market is offering.


7 - Strategy

The paragraphs above have shown that Dash's success is limited by a low level of awareness, a low market capitalization and a low demand by users. We call this Dash's growth threshold




To overcome this we need to work on the two limitations that we can take influence on, which are:

- low level of awareness 
- low demand by users

To do so we identified five target groups. All of them contain several personas, such as the hodler, the trader, the pirate or the developer. For each of them we created a detailed marketing funnel and specific arguments based on their interests and mindsets so that a conversion can be made.

We highly recommend you to learn more about this by taking a look at the strategic goals, target groups and strategy chapters of our working document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gUMKOD8FbtgQtkQh6YKJY4RlW3_zE8BGa0UWvJ2WwnI/edit?usp=sharing 

We understand that not all of you are willing to do the deep dive. This is why we created this graphic as an abstract overview of what we want to achieve:





For logical reasons it does not make a lot of sense to start approaching all of the target groups at the same time. This is mainly because they are building up on each other and leads to the following prioritization:



The target group IT-Branch/Developers is not part of the prioritization due to the reasons mentioned in the working document. Dash Owner, Crypto Idealists, Crypto Hodler and Crypto Developer are the personas that should be addressed immediately.


2 Marketing Actions

In this part of the proposal you will only see marketing activities, which are planned for short term. We expect this period to take around 6 months. While executing this, we will prepare marketing activities for mid term. The paragraphs below are part of our working document. Some of them are referring to chapters and paragraphs of that document. Please make sure to read them.


10.1 Short Term

Dash Owner, Crypto Idealists, Crypto Hodler and Crypto Developer are the personas that should be addressed immediately in order to create the basis for achieving the strategic goals defined under 8. On the basis of the strategies presented under 9.1, the following measures are derived.


10.1.1 Landingpages

To begin with, information and arguments that can lead to the conversion of the respective personas must be prepared in a bundled form and made accessible. For this purpose, landing pages will be created, which are tailored to the interests of the personas and thus allow them to change their beliefs. The topics will be payment, technology and investment (Masternodes/Shared-Masternode-Staking), whereby the ideological component and the mission statement of Dash will always be part of their content. Landing pages will play a central role in all communication measures and will act as the destination for traffic.

More details about the topic can be found here:
 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1O-iySLmzF_OZv0z84FNO4YQ4cgNdZj44KWaa7RguCPo/edit?usp=sharing 

Task: 3 Landing-Pages
KPIs: Number of visitors and conversions (clicks on further links)


10.1.2 Blog

Currently only German translations of Dash Core Group updates are published on the blog at https://www.dash-embassy.org/news/. Going forward, summary blog posts will be created for the press releases published at https://newsroom.dash.org/. The blog will also be expanded to include the content categories payment, technology and investment. In these three categories, all topics that can influence the beliefs of the target groups (see 9.1.2 & 9.1.3) will be covered. 

Any blog posts created will be integrated into the landing pages in a meaningful way, so that the thematic preferences of the visitors of the landing pages can be flexibly addressed. For this reason, each blog page will also link to the landing page with the appropriate topic. Individual blog posts will be distributed via the social media channels of the Dash Embassy D-A-CH, in forums, in groups on Facebook, via newsletter and in telegram groups. They can also be used as thematic hooks in cooperation with media platforms and influencers.

To increase the reach of the blog posts and thus the number of visitors to the landing pages, it would be useful to advertise the posts on the social networks. (see 10.1.4)

More details about the topic can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jynuJ70UyS7yGvX53lZBKEdn22bAHZsfg8YuvSvz0_M/edit?usp=sharing 

Task: Initial 9 contributions, then 8 contributions per month
KPIs: Visitor numbers and conversions (clicks on landing pages)


10.1.3 Newsletter *dismissed

A newsletter is used to keep interested users up to date and to draw attention to new blog posts. Depending on the subscribers' wishes, the newsletter is sent out every 2 weeks or monthly. It also allows a selection of content based on the topics mentioned under 10.1.2. 

In order to give potential newsletter subscribers an additional incentive to subscribe to the newsletter, each subscriber receives a shopping voucher of 5€ when paying with Dash on https://satoshigoods.de/. Satoshi Goods will provide this voucher free of charge.

More details about the topic can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HUIJKzIFtK9bL7BkVLGQhyJt_o1SnpnEf8vjFTSpYCM/edit?usp=sharing  

Task: Setup newsletter, dispatch newsletter
KPIs: Leads or recipients


10.1.4 Social Media

Building on the insights gained in 7.1.1.2, the Dash Embassy D-A-CH will initially focus primarily on Facebook, including Instagram, Twitter, Telegram and smaller social media channels such as Hive. To keep Dash fans aware of the topics of payment, technology and investment, and to achieve greater coverage of their own content through user-side sharing, the blog posts designed under 10.1.2 will be shared immediately after publication. 

To encourage users to use Dash for payments, incentives are created through competitions and customer interaction. Such incentives will always communicate the beliefs aimed at under 9.1.2.1 and combine them with activity. One example of such an activation would be "The Dasher of the Week". The concept of this contest is based on users posting proof of their use of Dash in payment transactions and thus participating in a raffle for shopping vouchers. A quiz provides knowledge about the technology behind Dash in a playful way. For their participation, the winners will be rewarded with a fan package.

To improve interaction rates and strengthen the bond between Dash and its fans, online game tournaments will be organized for the community. Everyone is welcome to participate. The games will be selected based on a survey of the community. The top three finishers will receive a prize in Dash and will be recognized via postings. 

An introduction of Dash acceptance points is used to increase the visibility of these acceptance points within the community. Combined with special offers and discounts, the number of Dash transactions can be increased. 

In addition, graphical statistics on Masternodes are published regularly. These statistics can include a reference to ROI, but also deal with other metrics.

It is recommended to advertise the corresponding postings in order to increase the reach and interaction rates of the individual posts and thus, for example, to increase the number of blog posts but also the number of Dash fans per se. At the beginning it is especially important to find out which of the postings lead to the best conversion rates, so that over time an optimization can be made. More details on the required budget will only be possible after a concrete editorial plan has been drawn up.

More details about the topic can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Jv5fIy7KxO6xbspRgLqsIxnbgVJbS5I0TVoVB7SOPUc/edit?usp=sharing 

Task: Editorial plan, Content creation, Community management
KPIs: Follower, Interaction


10.1.5 essra - Influencer

Based on the findings of 4.2.4 and 7.1.1.2.2, a separate media figure or YouTube Influencer will be built up, as this promises higher coverage in addition to the existing channels than relying exclusively on completely Dash specific channels. It is important to show a certain amount of tact and sensitivity when creating content, since a purely Dash-based channel can quickly appear one-sided and would probably not be well received by potential subscribers. To ensure that the channel has the widest possible reach, it is advisable to enter into cooperation with other crypto-youtubers, particularly at the start. We have already created content for test purposes under the pseudonym "essra":
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuLSfeIMuQ_npjjBY3J_FPA 

More details about the topic can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/187CMBxb9QKONswnTCnav7Fzdxd8pxpUYsrlsvfzT1Os/edit?usp=sharing 

Task: Editorial plan, Content creation, Community management
KPIs: Subscribers, Views


10.1.6 Forums *dismissed

To reach Dash Owners, Crypto Idealists, Hodler and Developers apart from our own communication channels, it is necessary to create Dash-related threads on the topics of technology, payment and Masternode(-Staking) in the forums listed under 7.1.1.2.4. In case corresponding threads already exist, it is necessary to actively participate and make the blog posts listed under 10.1.2 available. To avoid a possible advertising impression it might be useful to work together with active community members or to use the influencer figure mentioned under 10.1.5. Relevant forums in the German speaking area are

https://coinforum.de/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=16.0 

Another conceivable option would be to place advertising for specific topics, blog posts or landing pages on forums. This would entail additional costs, which would have to be covered by an additional budget.

Task: Creating Threads, Sharing Content, Active Participation in Discussions
KPIs: Conversions (clicks on landing pages and blog posts)


10.1.7 Market Letters

The number of market letters related to cryptocurrencies, as listed in 7.1.1.2.5, is currently relatively small, but Dash must still be represented in letters with investment related topics. A cooperation with the publishers of these market letters will therefore be sought and editorial content will be jointly developed. The objective is to position all relevant information, which is also mentioned on the investment related landing page and in the investment related blog posts, in the market letters and to establish links to the investment landing page if possible.

The cooperation arrangements mentioned above may involve additional costs, which would have to be covered by a corresponding budget.

Task: Establishing Contact, Negotiating Offers, Content Concepts
KPIs: Conversions (clicks on landing pages and blog posts)


10.1.8 Podcasts *dismissed

To complement the YouTube channel of the influencer figure, interviews and other already existing content, which does not require visual material, will be published as podcasts on all platforms. Advertising for this format is currently not planned. This is an overview of the already existing channels

iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/essra/id1504452625
Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cQuRnmTkmjWLzzKynjWwH
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/essra
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/essra-one

In addition to their own podcast, the influencer figure is suggested as a discussion partner for the podcasts listed under 7.1.1.2.6, where he or she can refer to their own YouTube channel on the one hand, but also convey knowledge about Dash.

Task: Adjust and share video content, arrange interviews
KPIs: Subscribers for Youtube & Podcast


10.1.9 Events

The events listed under 7.1.1.2.7 usually have a B2B orientation, so cost-intensive partnerships and sponsorships should be avoided in this category of events. It is desirable to place the media influencer figure as a speaker or panelist, as long as this is possible without fees. This also applies to participation in larger meetups. While these events usually have a B2C orientation, the CPC (cost per conversion) cannot be compared to digital measures due to the small number of participants and the high travel costs. 

A different approach could be taken with organizing an event yourself with the intention of making a profit and a clear focus on the topics of payment and possibly also Masternodes. More details can be found under 10.1.10 Crypto-Payment Community.

Task: Speaker Placements
KPIs: none


10.1.10 fairpaid - Crypto-Payment Community *postponed

The name "fairpaid" is used to establish a coin agnostic community for those who want to pay with cryptocurrencies. This community basically deals with the ideology behind cryptocurrencies. Its goal is to gather all idealists from the crypto-scene in one place and to create a lifestyle-movement as outlined in 9.1.2.1. Within such an environment, Dash has the opportunity to convince other personas of the advantages of Dash in the payment traffic through testimonials of already existing Dash commuters. The activation measures defined in 10.1.4 can also be shared in such a community, which increases the visibility of Dash and thus the number of potential new Dash owners & commuters.

The first step is to start the "fairpaid" movement in the form of a Facebook group, on Telegram and on Hive. The creation of corresponding threads in the forums mentioned under 10.1.6 is also required. If sufficient interest is shown by the community, the approach under 10.2 will be pursued further and measures will be taken to expand the offer.

More details about the topic can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LDGmAiAt64pgeqOv3gj-93Ve6vzw6wtnW4uusP1j3fY/edit?usp=sharing 

Task: Create Facebook/Telegram Group, convince Influencer, Media Platforms and PSPs to participate, Community Management
KPIs: Members


10.1.11 Masternode Staking Community *dismissed

In a similar way to the payment community outlined under 10.1.7, coin agnostic groups will be created on Facebook, Telegram and Hive, offering users the opportunity to exchange information on the topics of Masternode and Shared Masternode-Staking. These groups will be regularly updated by the Dash Embassy D-A-CH on new developments and partnerships of Dash through the blog posts written under 10.1.2. To enable a lively culture of discussion, influencers and media platforms are planned to be won over to provide regular content. 

Assuming that the groups are well accepted by the community, the approach under 10.2 will be pursued further and measures will be taken to expand the range of offers.

More details about the topic can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13RGwRHuV6v09-0A0fvWhiwQKsFSuIqajGidcR0lVB8c/edit?usp=sharing 

Task: Create Facebook/Telegram Group, Convince Influencer, Media Platforms and Masternode Service Providers to Participate
KPIs: Members


10.1.12 Influencer-Marketing (Cryptocurrencies & Developer)

As mentioned in 10.1.2, 10.1.11 and 10.1.12, influencers have an important role in the spread of information. With their opinions and evaluations, they also have a significant influence on the consideration phase of the target groups defined under 7 and can make important preliminary work for the actual conversion of potential Dash Owners and Spendlers.

To benefit from these potentials, cooperations with influencers are being sought. The main goal is to arouse the influencers' interest in Dash, so that they will become multipliers of press releases and other news about Dash in the future. In order to achieve this, it must be ensured that the influencers deal with Dash intensively. Because Dash is currently not one of the most hyped coins on the market (market capitalization, general awareness level), especially crypto influencers are currently prioritizing other projects that achieve better results in terms of click rates. It will therefore be necessary in some cases to compensate for the research effort involved.

The result of the initial research just described will be content that will contribute to the education about Dash and can be used for example in blog posts or on landing pages. In the cooperation with influencers it is absolutely necessary to develop concepts together and not to make strict content specifications. We will provide inspiration and support in the research, but the thematic focus will be completely in line with the basic interest of the influencer. The subjects we will focus on are as follows:


Technology - Dash DAO, Masternodes, InstantSend/PrivateSend, LLMQs, ChainLocks, Platform

Investment - Token Economics, Masternodes, Shared-Masternode-Staking

Payment - Speed, Fees, Privacy, Partnerships


It is not yet possible to say which influencers from the German-speaking world will cover which topics. More detailed information will follow as soon as first talks have been held. A separate budget will probably be required for this measure.

Suitable Youtubers can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1F-b4FFVHnVMvL1_P186MZcR0VfW4juZODTYmkG0pk_k/edit?usp=sharing 

Task: Establishing Contact, Definition of the Thematic Framework, Support with Research
KPIs: Number of Videos, Reach


10.1.13 PR / Media Cooperation

According to the findings of 7.1.1.2.1, news websites are one of the strongest information platforms for Crypto Owners. It is therefore inevitably necessary and absolutely essential to work on the presence of Dash on news websites. The problem is, however, similar to what was mentioned in 10.1.12, that Dash is not a very hot project at the moment. For this reason, more trending topics are preferred in news coverage. The only possibility to increase the presence of Dash on news websites is to develop content together with the editorial and sales departments, which is published in the form of sponsored editorial articles and links to the landing pages listed in 10.1.1. Besides the mentioned sponsored editorial contributions, static content must be provided in knowledge areas that present Dash in all its facets and also link to the landing pages. An additional budget will probably be required for this measure.

The topics we focus on are as follows:

Technology - Dash DAO, Masternodes, InstantSend/PrivateSend, LLMQs, ChainLocks, Platform

Investment - Token Economics, Masternodes, Shared-Masternode-Staking

Payment - Speed, Fees, Privacy, Partnerships


On top of "paid content", we will continue to use the press releases published at https://newsroom.dash.org/ to generate articles on recent updates from the Dash ecosystem.

Suitable websites are:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16oj2Oo2lZfkNYplvuVCXG8mWihRTRc7cTv7wZkvk77U/edit?usp=sharing 

Tasks: Definition of the Thematic Framework, Support with Research, Negotiation of Media Prices
KPIs: Number of Articles, Range


3. Business Development

We continue to maintain all our existing business contacts to be able to execute our business development strategy which remains to be focused on fiat gateways, wallets and crypto-banking and companies from the payment industry such as crypto PSPs (payment service provider) and traditional PSPs. Following our strategy document above, financial products based on crypto, such as funds, ETNs, certificates etc. might also become part of our business development strategy in the future, even though we believe that this should be part of the work of the DIF.

Important: it is unlikely that we will be able to deliver integrations during the upcoming months, but of course we won’t leave any opportunity untapped.


4. Integrations

To keep you updated about all our integration projects we are using the kanban software trello. To get detailed information about the status of all integration projects, please take a look at our integration pipeline: https://trello.com/b/cmCxf1JZ/dach-integrations

In addition to our own integration projects Sinay Demirel (@sidem) is supporting other DFOs (Co-Working members) with the technical integration and assistance of their acquired partners.


5. Team

Jan Heinrich Meyer (@essra) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-heinrich-meyer-a5a6bb108/
Sinay Demirel (@sidem) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sinaydemirel/
Klaus Hipfinger (@simontheravager) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/klaus-hipfinger-510390150/
Nils Herrmann (@orion) *dismissed
Johanna Czekalla - https://www.jungundflexibel.de/ *dismissed

6. Financials

Budget requested for Q2/2020:

165 Dash/month (estimated avg. Dash Price of $ 91.05) = Total Q2: $ 45,117 or € 41,316 

Due to the decreased Dash price we only received € 32,346k for the 2nd quarter of 2020.


Budget request Q3/2020:




We use the 30 days SMA on the 5th of July 2020 with an average Dash Price of $71,57: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/price-dash-sma30.html#6m. We request the total amount with a volatility buffer of 10% for the quarter because of the risk of possible price declines.

DACH Business Development - Public Budget Planning and Accounting 2020:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vzp2_9f1Hm9UNvqSahstl_6RXkwk1gNthDChhsqeWy8/edit#gid=1772385164

Corporate Wallet Address:
https://insight.dash.org/insight/address/XuMeunJDZrAusw45B4oreuH8RcKUY2fkMN


*UPDATE



As described in the PREREAD Video:

Due to not being funded for the last month we automatically decreased our ask by one third for this quarter. As we will reduce the scope of our proposal in future, we decided to put up a new proposal during the next cycle. As a result our current proposal will cover our expenses for July and August. As we haven’t received funding for the last month, this is equal to a lowered ask by 50% for July and August.

*CUTS



We hope for your vote, support and contribution and will be happy to answer all of your questions in the comment section.

The Dash Embassy D-A-CH Team