Proposal “Dash-Force“ (Closed)Back

Title:Dash Force - Dash Community Energizer
Owner:InTheWoods
Monthly amount: 280 DASH (6607 USD)
Completed payments: no payments occurred yet (6 month remaining)
Payment start/end: 2016-10-05 / 2017-04-19 (added on 2016-09-27)
Final voting deadline: in passed
Votes: 423 Yes / 830 No / 0 Abstain

Proposal description

Problem

Dash doesn’t have a strong enough visible presence on social media when it comes to active social media engagement and that can be a problem at times. If you take a look at the comments posted in response to Brian Armstrong, the Coinbase CEO’s recent reddit post, that suggests Coinbase is moving towards integrating other cryptocurrencies, Dash was totally absent there and it's not for the lack of a big community. It's because paid activists of a rival projects swoop in and stole the spotlight. It also lead to an article where Dash isn't even mentioned. Dash didn’t manage to get enough Stackexchange.com votes for the same reason. The community just wasn’t motivated enough to get actively engaged. To provide another concrete example, the Overstock CEO of the US retailer Overstock, Patrick Byrne, issued a community challenge, asking which 2.0 Crypto platform is the best one and in that case, following a strong community showing, Counterparty was selected because it had the most vocal community. Dash stands to lose a lot by not having a vocal active community presence on social media and the previously mentioned Coinbase reddit interaction or lack thereof is a good example of that.  

It would seem the average age of the Dash community is higher than that of other crypto communities and that doesn't play in our favor at times when it comes to active outreach.
The high barrier to entry when it comes to owning a masternode could be a reason why this is the case. The young, social media savvy active people, have less disposable income according to statistics and are less likely to be actively involved with Dash. The older population tends to be more lethargic on social media and less engaged than the younger generation.

Perception is reality, as they say. This is especially true in the cryptocurrency space. If you're not out there creating it, others will do it for you and most often than not it won't be in your favor. PR agencies work to some extent, but they are slow to react, and bureaucratic and don't have what it takes to work in the current environment and tackle some of the challenges, where active engagement on Reddit, for example, is often more important than articles that may appear sterile and unimpressive. Often, the comment section is way more important than the article itself. For example, you can have a bunch of Dash pieces, but 2-3 negative comments placed there by competitors, set on ruining Dash to prop up themselves, is often more than enough to nullify all the positive of that press release or Dash related article, especially when no Dash community members step in to engage them with sensible counter arguments.

Solution

I've put together a team of Dash activists. Our aim is to be actively engaged on social media and to fight for Dash wherever & whenever it would be required. Other projects have well organized teams conducting such efforts in an effective manner. Our Dash Force team will be limited to 7 members. Our team won't be about making social media announcements. There are folks already handling that. Our aim is active engagement, reddit discussions, forums, twitter engagement, article comments. We also aim to weed out Dash disinformation wherever we find it because there's plenty of it and to present the Dash value proposition in a positive manner.

We will also combine this proactive approach with the Swarm model that was used quite successfully by NXT in the past. All community members, aside from our main team. will be encouraged to link, retweet, post, like and engage in exchange for small Dash tips. A series of bounties will be created in order to achieve this goal of getting community members engaged. A screenshot proof or link to their social media contribution will have to be posted in a dedicated document or in a dedicated chat channel.

This approach will be very cost effective. I believe that having a strong social media presence can go a long way and have a big impact on how Dash is perceived as a project. Not being seen or heard on social media can create a negative perception, that of a project that doesn’t have a strong following. Bitcoin managed to get where it is now because it had a hardcore community following of crypto enthusiasts. Dash Force aims to be the engine driving community growth by energizing and mobilizing the Dash community.

175 Dash will be allocated to pay 7 active Dash Force members who will be the bread and butter of this community activist effort and will also act as community coordinators.
100 Dash will be reserved for Dash Swarms, an organized effort  to incentivize all community members to get actively engaged in the Dash Force community outreach efforts.

The following article written by The Desert Lynx goes into detail to explain why such organized community efforts make sense http://thedashtimes.com/2016/09/26/cryptocurrency-needs-activists/

The Dash Force team consists of the following members:

InTheWoods - Dash slack owner and mod
The Desert Lynx - known crypto journalist  
Macrochip - Dash slack mod, Dashpay reddit mod
SovereignBTC - Sovereign BTC podcast author
Tao - active Dash community member who runs the TaoOfSatoshi Twitter account
Elisha - Dash Times owner and author
Buster - Darq.io/The Cryptoreport author and Dash publick slack owner/mod

Show full description ...

Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?

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8 points,8 years ago
The only other people i have seen spew toxic misinformation, especially the constant 'Evan cult' snarky remarks against DASH and it's core dev's is icebreaker and the rest of the troll cabal.

You may observe an occasional lucid and reasonable interaction with the community from the proposer however on considered reflection, for me, these does not feel authentic when you weigh it up against the toxic attacks.

This proposal owner is currently slightly in front of that cabal in the amount of venom and hatred he has for DASH and it's core dev's.

All I'm seeing at the moment is a 'cornered troll' tactic and I'm not following this self declared DASH visionary into a fork because the proposer argues that DASH should be destroyed in order to be rebuilt.


inthewoods [8:39 AM]
@ceti _The process of Creative Destruction is an essential fact about capitalism_ Destroy the old, create the new. So moving down a different path, shaking things up and destroying an established order is perfectly fine and often quite productive. Sure, there will be moments of drama like in the past few days but in the end we'll all be better off. Thank you again for those No votes, you've only managed to accelerate this process. (edited)
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8 points,8 years ago
VOTE NO - toxic proposal owner wants to fork dash
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8 points,8 years ago
Some people just don't know when to quit.....

inthewoods [11:03 PM]
Evan's vision wasn't even that special honestly. Initially Darkcoin was just a coin with a built-in mixer. It added some stuff on top as project progressed. That first feature, that mixer is still very much work in progress as it's kinda` difficult to use.

[11:03]
Incentivized nodes was something that Satoshi thought about years before Darkcoin got started.


inthewoods [11:09 PM]
I never understood this cult that formed around Evan really. Seems like a very unhealthy thing for a decentralized project.
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-7 points,8 years ago
what's your point?
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-8 points,8 years ago
All those statements are factually correct. Are you part of the Evan cult or what?
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5 points,8 years ago
Well, thanks for being honest with your dishonesty. I congratulate myself for voting no initially, so no changes needed.
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6 points,8 years ago
Fork You!
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8 points,8 years ago
This proposal owner is toxic to dash....

From the dash slack:

“inthewoods [Today at 6:06 PM]
Some of us are not emotionally attached to Dash because in the end it's just a vehicle for an idea. There are other vehicles. To some of us this is not a job and a virtual corporation or some interest bearing account. Evan was afraid community would splinter in two but maybe that's not such a bad thing I guess.
Posted in #dash_chat”

inthewoods [Today at 11:41 PM]
Babyg is a propped up guy. We've given him all this support so that he can take a dump on all the community. (edited)
Posted in #dash_chat

inthewoods [Today at 11:51 PM]
We are probably gonna have to fork into another project and find our own developers from within the community.
We can let the core have their crappy centralized bankster Dash.
with shady crappy proposals and a lack of an active community.
Posted in #dash_chat

inthewoods [Today at 11:56 PM]
This! Evan stopped coding long time ago and is just sitting there sipping cocktails at events with Daniel the top bullshit artist and a bunch of guys that just fill up space and eat up budget resources. (edited)
Posted in #dash_chat


inthewoods [Today at 12:08 AM]
Corruption is too strong when it comes to the Dash budget system at this point to get any significant non core proposals passed. Amanda was different because Dash needed a face and a spokeperson and even core team realized that. (edited)


inthewoods [12:54 AM]
remember guys, the word of the day is *fork*


inthewoods [12:55 AM]
We're seriously considering forking the project at this point. Devs that have suggestions or would like to be part of a future decentralized Dash not a one man show centralized bankster project, please send us your thoughts and ideas. We're open to suggestions.

And that's just a few hours worth of his toxic rants from Thursday evening.


Here's more from Friday....

“Evan, the lead dev is clueless when it comes to what's going on. He is a self described autistic guy who closes up in his ivory tower and he's got these 2 snakes Daniel and Babyg calling the shots, who managed to crawl around him, hijacked the project and misallocate budget funds to either prop up themselves or fund dubious proposals.”

“Here is some piece of trivia for some of you skeptics out there. NXT was a project doing fine but not great. Community split in two and some guys started NEM, which became more successful in terms of market cap. We can make that happen. Dash is just a vehicle for an idea, nothing more. We're not emotionally attached to dash.org for example.”


Who the hell is this guy anyway.
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8 points,8 years ago
just a toxic troll trying to pull apart the community
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7 points,8 years ago
someone selling drama with a longer term to fork anyways.

Who or what group of folk that we know well does he sound like from his behavior?.........
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7 points,8 years ago
I actually changed my votes from yes to no when i read that on Dasktalk.org as i dont like people trying to drive a wedge between the dev team and the community.
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8 points,8 years ago
I have also changed my votes. That's just sad--without Evan he wouldn't have anything to fork in the first place! What's really terrible, though, is that I thought this had great potential and was really excited about it. Hopefully somebody different will revive this idea at a later date.

Toxic people are toxic...I shouldn't give the benefit of doubt so easily I guess.
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-6 points,8 years ago
Everything I've said there is true. If you have a problem stomaching that, well, that's your problem not mine.
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-6 points,8 years ago
Some weak hands changed votes because they lack context and don't see the big picture. That's fine. This proposal was about putting a lot of work in supporting a project that currently lost its way. No one said project will be forked. What I've said was that we entertain the idea in case things keep going south. Such possibility is well worth exploring at this point.
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-7 points,8 years ago
Some weak hands changed votes because they lack context and don't see the big picture. That's fine. This proposal was about putting a lot of work in supporting a project that currently lost his way currently. No one said project will be forked. What I've said was that we entertain the idea in case things keep going south and that it's worth exploring the possibility at this point..
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7 points,8 years ago
i changed my votes to NO.

Agree re the toxic posts and now the threats to fork if not paid, I'm not funding a fork.
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7 points,8 years ago
i changed my votes because of itw. the rest of the dash force team are good people though.
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-7 points,8 years ago
You really are a piece of work Coingun, did you know that? This proposal could have helped Dash a lot but Babyg chose to fund Legal 2 and some Business dev and defund Dash Force and the Slack proposal while it still had lots of yes votes. I don't really care about this proposal anymore. Babyg offered to fund it himself out of pocket and I've refused his offer. It would have been a cheap and effective way of promoting Dash. Knock yourself out. Babyg made a terrible mistake in a time when Dash really needed strong community support. Yes, you've decided to quote me out of context at times but those are accurate statements, like it or not. Dash is in a tough spot right now with some tough competition around the corner. You have to acknowledge the weakness if you want to be able to grow. You've spent too much time in that echo chamber.

What about this quote since you enjoy quoting the Slack chat so much?

babygiraffe
@inthewoods We talked on the 23rd of the month. At that time, I encouraged you both because I genuinely think it is a good idea (good value for the money), and because at the time there was sufficient room in the budget, yes. I genuinely thought you would garner enough support and there would be room. Since that time, there have been many additional community proposals. I suspect the MN owners are simply prioritizing. We actually adjusted our plans for infrastructure to leave more room for community proposals. I think you should try again next month assuming it doesn’t pass. How about this? I’ll even pay your proposal cost.
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8 points,8 years ago
So it's Coingun now? You sure about that? I thought you said I was Alex-RU. Or maybe it's Ceti or Qwizzie or Mastermind or Noobkid. You've made so many new friends lately it's hard to know for sure. Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

Babyg never said he would fund this project. Before you trashed DASH, Evan and him he said he would pay 5 DASH to resubmit this proposal because he felt bad about legal 2 knocking it out. It was probably more for the DASH force team than you. He ain't funding nothing with your name on it now though. It would be a wasted 5 DASH as I think it's now safe to say we can put a Fork in you because you're Done.
And no that was not a threat my precious little snowflake it was a idiom you idiot. Now run back to your Slack Safe-space to whine and mod anyone who dares to disagree with you.


Remember ITW, the word of the day is *Toxic*
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3 points,8 years ago
Oops i left ddink7 off your freindz list.

I would not want you to think "He is I, and I am him, slim with the tilted brim"

Who Am I (What's My Name)?

Snoop Doggy Dogg?
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-5 points,8 years ago
I think people like you are toxic to Dash piggybank.
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6 points,8 years ago
Was it something I said ;)
That was just my opening salvo. When I'm done with u there won't be anything left of your already sullied reputation.
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-6 points,8 years ago
Wow. Spoken like a professional. Bravo!
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6 points,8 years ago
"inthewoods [10:18 PM]
Yes, when you speak the truth you receive threats. That's nothing new. That's how mature some are and yet same people are schooling us on how to behave professionally. (edited)"

LOL, That was not a threat, It was a promise i plan to fulfill.
You sure can dish it out but when confronted you whine like a witch and go cry in slack. But even they have had enough of your crap...

"troydash [10:19 PM]
i'm not sure i understand the threat
[10:20]
if he's planning to release more screenshots or something from public conversations, that's all?"

Yeah TD that's all.

Too bad this is not slack ITW where you can just ban people and delete their post when they disagree with you. You're such a benevolent little authoritarian dictator.
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1 point,8 years ago
this is what I do daily on myself - I do not think that DASH needs a paid task force to storm social media - that may end up in a bad reputation
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-1 point,8 years ago
So what you're saying is that you have it handled, all by yourself? Much thanks to your effort, but I disagree, I think we need all the help we can get.
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4 points,8 years ago
Absolutely in favor. I've seen firsthand how inferior (in my opinion) cryptos generate tons of buzz, dominate the community psyche, and end up getting big integrations with power player companies before Dash. To be honest, I only came to Dash by chance, because I know some friends deep in the community. I'd like to see something there for the rest of "cryptodom."
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3 points,8 years ago
great idea!
too many times over the years i have been the lone dash supporter fighting trolls in the comment section of articles and youtube. dash has been getting better on reddit but not as good as other coins. we have a lot of activity on slack and the dash forum but fall short almost everywhere else. we definitely need this proposal.
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2 points,8 years ago
Hope you haven't given up, especially now that you're getting reinforcements! :)
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1 point,8 years ago
i'm planning to step up my efforts even more now.
if i step it up it will force everyone on the team to step it up too.

i also don't think the dash force team members should be permanent. i think everyone (dash force members included) should post screenshots and links to what they are doing so we can compare that with all community members efforts.

i would like to see one person from the dash community who is going above and beyond be rotated into the dash force team every month. the dash force team could vote on it like an employee of the month type thing.
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0 points,8 years ago
In theory, that part sounds good. In practice, we may end up finding out that the learning curve of monitoring all applicable sites, social networks, and juggling all the work and collaboration makes it not worth it to switch out regularly. But a rotation is definitely something I'd be open to.
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-2 points,8 years ago
Not trolling, honestly curious but why is there this massive disconnect between community projects and core projects? How is it that core projects get like ZERO expectations and all the leeway possible, but community ones get the world requested of them? This is not aimed at you individually, but more-so everyone else. I'm very keen to figure this out..
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11 points,8 years ago
That's an easy question to answer: it's Evan. He's created and nurtured Dash since the very beginning. He quit his job and worked full time on Dash, without receiving any compensation at all until the budget system was introduced. Now he's receiving about 65 DASH per month--hardly a real salary.

Evan has spent 31 months working on Dash and making it what it is today, for little or no pay. Along the way, he has found dedicated volunteers that have also put in unpaid sweat equity and that he's developed a trust relationship with, and about a year ago formed the official "Core Team."

By all accounts, you have done great things for Dash, but you've been around for less than a year. Core Team (and Evan in particular) has shown 2.5 years of continued, dedicated, nonstop service to Dash, creating it and building it into what it is today.

Evan has always kept his promises. He's always delivered. While the work of "community members" is certainly appreciated, many of them are new and few of them have such a long track record.

Let me turn this question around on you. Core Team took Dash from a nonexistent project (effectively worth $0.00) to its present-day valuation of $11.40. Sure, community members have helped along the way. But honestly ask yourself if all of your efforts would mean anything at all if not for Core Team's development of the software?
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5 points,8 years ago
this
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0 points,8 years ago
I would encourage a more forward-thinking approach. Much props to the core team for making something amazing (without which I wouldn't be here), and their continuing work is important.

That being said, what's the objective? In my view, it's for Dash to succeed. Whatever works, works, and should be funded. We care about the early workers who brought Dash from nothing, but the market doesn't. It only cares if we win. Well, this is one great way we win, a current big weakness of ours.

We saw what took Dash to 11.40. What'll take it to 100 or beyond? I believe that Dash Force will be a big part of that.
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3 points,8 years ago
You have my vote.
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3 points,8 years ago
Fantastic! I support the effort and good luck.
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0 points,8 years ago
"a team of Dash activists" - who? How will we know this is actively doing what it says it will do?
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0 points,8 years ago
Read the proposal, it's in there. The team is already assembled and organizing.
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1 point,8 years ago
You are right, I missed it by not clicking the full description button. Thx.
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-1 point,8 years ago
Status update:

TDG/The Dash Guy decided to leave the team. I will respect his decision. Buster has decided to join in his place. I think he will make a great addition to the team.
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-2 points,8 years ago
Pretty surprising to hear he was ever even on the team. I was leaning toward voting 'yes' on this until I read this comment, which now has me questioning your ability to judge character.
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-1 point,8 years ago
While erratic at times he could have really put in the time. I wanted active guys that can go the distance. With the right guidance it could have worked. He did some good work recently on the dashchat.co website. He can get the job done faster than most people I know. He suffers from ADD and he doesn't shy away from admitting that. I don't think we should alienate people with such conditions but try and find ways to get them involved in a productive capacity. Such people could provide real value under the right circumstances.
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