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Dash Core Group November 26th Funding Proposals
DCG is submitting 3 funding proposals for the budget cycle that pays out November 26th:
1) DCG Compensation: 2,324 Dash per month (currently in month 1/3)
2) DCG Business Development: 321 Dash (currently in month 1/3)
3) DCG Marketing: 321 Dash (currently in month 1/3)

What is this proposal about?
This proposal funds Dash Core Group’s ongoing business development efforts. The last time funding was requested for the Dash Core Group’s business development budget was in June 2021, and we received a total of 494 Dash (2 month payout) to fund a total of 30 activities during Q2 and Q3 of 2021. With the recent increase in both the scale and number of strategic initiatives and number of activities within each strategy, this funding request is intended to continue to support expansion into our core scope of activities, and most importantly support a higher pace of focused high-impact opportunities, as well as maintaining presence in select industry conferences which align with our business development objectives.

Our focus for growth activities in the current cycle include:

Maintain and accelerate momentum in our strategic growth verticals:

• Trading: We are consistently expanding our fiat on- and off-ramps. Most recently, Dash/Fiat pairs were added to Mycoins Exchange in Georgia, and in CryptMKT Exchange, which enabled Dash access in Argentina and Peru. We will work to enhance liquidity in target regions where feasible, and continue working to enable new pairs in LatAm and EMEA. In terms of the high impact exchanges and volume makers, we are working with our internal regulatory team in order to enter the two largest untapped markets for Dash: New York State and Japan, as these are the markets that can have the biggest impact for Dash.
  

We will also continue seeking derivatives and ancillary services such as custody and loans. These are key products to have ready, to help ensure professional traders and institutions have everything they need to achieve their trading and investment goals with Dash. 

• Venezuela: We will further grow promotional efforts with our partners in large supermarkets and major retailers — such as the Burger King promotion with Cryptobuyer — and onboard additional large retailers. In addition, the core effort of our team is now focused on getting large amounts of people paid with the Dasherpay solution, as this ignites the circular economy.
  

We have a massive point-of-sale integration in the works that will allow us to increase Dash acceptance by an order of magnitude. This enhances our need for a large payroll play, which has regulatory and business development implications, but we are doing everything that can be done in order to support its completion.

• Online, E-sports, and others- While we identified promising opportunities in eSports and iGaming, and planned to deploy funds from our previous proposal, the price drop in May reduced our budget significantly.  This resulted in preventing us from working on deals in this industry, as eSports and iGaming partnerships usually demand the most significant monetary support. Despite the obstacles, we have built a funnel site in order to measure user behaviour on integrations (can be viewed here). As stated, we have not yet been able to financially support the partnerships as this segment remains prohibitively expensive to engage in while the transaction count within eSports currently remains low. We are currently working on other projects as proof-of-concepts in areas such as Agriculture, and expanding the ecosystem in Haiti. Utilizing Dash to solve existing problems in these industries and countries is a set of experiments we wish to pursue because of their potential to grow Dash adoption.  
  

In addition to the current growth verticals, the added resources that were made available to us through our new, Brazil-based LatAm BD manager, we will also work in growing in three new verticals. These include:

NeoBanks: The global neobanks sector is growing rapidly. With their explosive growth, neobanks have turned their sights on digital busicurrencie. The industry saw even more growth due to the current pandemic driving more users toward digital banking solutions.

We are presently approaching associations and startups in the sector and held initial meetings with several to better understand where their business interests lie, and to add cryptocurrencies to their current offerings. Dash offers advantages to neobank customers due to our real-world ecosystem, and neobanks are attracted by the relevancy the Dash network can provide their customers.

We are in conversations with several of these players, especially in the Brazilian market, where we have found a range of small and medium sized firms that are a great place to start obtaining initial success and validation. 

The payments and traditional banking industry are now signaling that cryptocurrency is part of their near-term roadmaps, specifically for use as payments. This is an observable trend in the United States. There has not been a better time than now to grow within the payments space. Although payments partnerships have been an area we have always engaged in, we have now prioritized integration into large legacy payments networks as a strategic focus. 
The costs for these integrations appear manageable, and we believe the impact to our project from additional funding can therefore be significant. We will focus on integrating major payments and fintech tools in order to grow merchant adoption at scale. Prior to 2021, large payments companies were hesitant to enter the cryptocurrency space. The landscape has now changed, with interest in crypto continuing to grow. We want to make sure Dash is a part of the conversation when they decide to add cryptocurrency offerings to their portfolios. 

Brazilian Fintech firms: We have been in contact with firms in Brazil in the Fintech space, in order to better understand the opportunities they are pursuing, and have identified some institutions that are interested in leveraging crypto as an option to include as rewards, means of payment, and investment options.

Through Fintechs, we have ample opportunity to harness Dash in prepaid and debit from user accounts, and implement other partners such as Bitfy as a consortium of partnerships within the Fintechs business environment.  

Below, we provide our integration count for the first 3 quarters of 2021, total annual spend, and an accompanying brief analysis to demonstrate both our performance, as well as our spend per integration from 2019 to date.

• During all of 2019, we launched 53 integrations, with a total spend of 143,890 USD
  
• During 2020, we launched 55 integrations, with a total spend of 147,489 USD
  
• In Q1, Q2, and Q3 of 2021, we announced 45 new integrations and support activities, spending a total of 197,800 USD for an average spend of 4,395 USD per activity.
  

This year, the business development team has focused on providing more impact, and the quality of integrations are markedly different.This also means that we are including resources and user incentives on many of them. Many of these partnerships take many months to prepare and announce depending on whether the partner has already integrated Dash, cryptocurrency, and other factors. Dash’s addition into the Binance P2P project is an example of an endeavor that takes a few quarters.

We have been more focused on scale, size, and impact than ever before, which both signals that the industry is evolving, and so are we. 

Some examples of current promotions include:

• Bybit - InstantSend Trading Promotions with total Prize Pool across all promotions is 94,000 USD in Dash, from which we funded less than 25% of it.
  
• Binance P2P enabling in Venezuela: We are participating by paying for 9,000 USD in end user prizes, which include cashback to the first 200 users of 4 USD each, and giveaways of Dash swag. 

Important highlights: 
-We NEVER pay for integrations or listing fees. Cases in which we do support an integration cost are for projects that involve a partner that does not have the technology ready, and is building it with us. In those instances, we can split integration costs.

-In order to maintain a healthy and transparent use of funds, DCG determined a max spend for partnerships, so we do not utilize more than 20,000 USD per rolling quarter on any one partner. If there were ever a case in which a partnership would require a higher amount than the cap, we would go to the DCG board in order to ask for approval. So far, we have not needed to do so.

-For trading promotions, we usually waive fees or provide prizes for deposits or trades, which boosts volume and usage on exchanges, while experientially introducing Dash to potential new users. With the recent Dash price recovery, we were able to contribute to such activities at a rate of 3,000-7,000 USD on select exchanges, and more when working with a really large exchange. This is something we were not able to do during the bear market.

If you have any questions, please direct them to @ernestoc at dashcentral to ensure we are notified of your request.

Requested funding is as follows for the December through February budget cycles:
·   319.33 Dash for Business Development per month ($62,000 USD @ $194 per Dash)
·       1.66 Dash / per month proposal reimbursement 
Total: 321 Dash per month

Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future business development expenses and any related taxes.