Proposal “DashDaoGrowthEngine“ (Active)Back
| Title: | Turning the Dash DAO into a visible growth and adoption funnel |
| Owner: | nebojsa |
| Monthly amount: | 218 DASH (12042 USD) |
| Completed payments: | no payments occurred yet (3 month remaining) |
| Payment start/end: | 2026-09-05 / 2026-12-04 (added on 2026-09-08) |
| Final voting deadline: | in 1 month |
| Votes: | 20 Yes / 11 No / 7 Abstain |
| Will be funded: | No. This proposal needs additional 303 Yes votes to become funded. |
| External information: | docs.google.com/document/d/1zYgYt7dv_MLvWSiGfAMBhP5y-lVSGrG_i25LH8P3_Ks/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0#heading=h.8588qwswsyfr |
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Proposal description
TLDR: Bringing better projects and established professionals to the Dash DAO
This proposal is for a pilot to increase the number and quality of proposals reaching the Dash DAO from credible professionals, companies and organizations.
In addition to adoption and promotional benefits, each successful participant extends Dash’s reach by sharing their involvement and firsthand experience with the public and their own professional networks, many of which Dash does not currently reach. This can dramatically expand Dash’s visibility, support its recognition as payment infra, and help more people understand its value beyond its role as a crypto asset.
Outside crypto communities and specific markets, many people perceive Dash only as a digital investment asset and do not know that its DAO can support projects creating measurable value for the ecosystem.
We will use our networks and targeted outreach to change that and source, educate and prepare qualified projects to explore Dash's payment infrastructure and pitch the Dash DAO with their proposals.
Why US?
I am Nebojša Jović. I am head of Dash Serbia since 2016, founder of Gorillas Guild (backed by LvlUp Ventures), with previous experience at Crypto.com, Taiko. Vedad is a jury board member at Global Startup Awards (150 countries), founder at AI 3D company serving companies like NVIDIA and Tencent, and former national head of crypto regulations. Some of you may know me from leading Dash-related growth activities in Serbia, including organizing events, meetups, and hackathons, introducing entrepreneurs to Dash, and communicating with members of the Dash Core team on several occasions through Discord.
We believe the Dash DAO can be one of Dash’s most powerful growth engines. It already gives Dash something most cryptocurrency projects do not have: a recurring, decentralized way to fund development, adoption, integrations and promotion.
The mechanism already exists. The opportunity is to make it more visible, easier to understand, and more attractive to capable people outside the existing Dash community or crypto communities in general.
In case you do not want to read the full proposal or you are interested in a visual presentation, here is our pitch deck, available directly in Google Drive as PDF with no download required. It provides a clear visual summary of the proposal, its benefits for Dash, how the program works, and what we aim to achieve: PITCH DECK
Funding request: 218 DASH per month for three months
Program capacity: Up to five projects per cycle (one cycle every two months)
We do not make funding decisions. Masternodes retain complete control over which projects receive funding.
Why this is different from a fund or incubator
We will not invest in startups, take equity, incubate undeveloped ideas, offer bounties, build products, or decide which projects receive funding. We are leveraging our position in the industry and creating an attraction and preparation funnel that finds credible founders and professionals with growing brand recognition and startups, introduces them to Dash, evaluates their readiness, and helps them prepare strong proposals for the DAO. Every graduating team presents directly to the Dash community, and masternodes retain complete control over funding decisions.
It has never been easier for experienced professionals to turn their expertise into working products, more and more people are building personal brands, yet access to early funding remains difficult. We will leverage our networks, LinkedIn, X, founder communities, spotlights, and recognition campaigns to reach these builders, especially those outside traditional crypto circles, and bring them into the Dash ecosystem. Each project will propose its own practical way to promote or adopt Dash and use its product, industry experience, audience, and network to help Dash grow.
Why the Dash DAO is the opportunity
The Dash DAO has operated a treasury system since 2015. Masternodes can evaluate proposals and direct funding toward development, integrations, marketing, and other ecosystem needs.
We believe this can become a powerful adoption engine:
What Dash receives
Dash receives:
NOTE: Displaying the Dash logo, publishing generic PR articles, or paying influencers who promote dozens of products every week will not be accepted as a path to adoption. Visibility without real integration, active use, and/or clear and measurable value proposition does not produce lasting ecosystem growth.
Budget
The request is 218 DASH per month for three months.
Our real costs are lower than the requested budget but we left a margin in case of price volatility and corrections.
The compensation covers hiring two team members, our salaries and operating costs. This includes founder sourcing, outreach, promotion, application review, interviews, product and team vetting, preparation sessions, pitch and proposal work, content production, community management, subscriptions, Dash communication and reporting.
Closing
Dash already has the funding mechanism. What it needs is a stronger bridge to the people who can build with it or benefit from its value proposition. We want to create that bridge.
We will find founders and professionals, bring them into Dash, vet their teams and ideas, prepare them thoroughly, and help them present their proposals to the DAO.
Masternodes will continue to make every funding decision.
This is not an investment fund or an incubator. It is a gateway for bringing exceptional founders, industry experts, and promising products into the DASH ecosystem. Our purpose is to give the DASH DAO the visibility and recognition it deserves, prepare credible teams to contribute to DASH adoption, and let masternodes decide which proposals should receive funding.
The result is a practical growth loop in which new people discover DASH, serious teams propose useful integrations, the community evaluates them, and successful projects create the stories that attract the next generation of applicants. Even if certain projects are not invited into the program or funded by the DAO, they will still learn about DASH and explore opportunities to join the community and propose projects on their own.
Here is a clear visual summary of the proposal, its benefits for Dash, how the program works, and what we aim to achieve: PITCH DECK
For any questions, I am here, or you can ping me on Discord, my IGN is Neb.
Thank you for your time to review this proposal.
This proposal is for a pilot to increase the number and quality of proposals reaching the Dash DAO from credible professionals, companies and organizations.
In addition to adoption and promotional benefits, each successful participant extends Dash’s reach by sharing their involvement and firsthand experience with the public and their own professional networks, many of which Dash does not currently reach. This can dramatically expand Dash’s visibility, support its recognition as payment infra, and help more people understand its value beyond its role as a crypto asset.
Outside crypto communities and specific markets, many people perceive Dash only as a digital investment asset and do not know that its DAO can support projects creating measurable value for the ecosystem.
We will use our networks and targeted outreach to change that and source, educate and prepare qualified projects to explore Dash's payment infrastructure and pitch the Dash DAO with their proposals.
Why US?
I am Nebojša Jović. I am head of Dash Serbia since 2016, founder of Gorillas Guild (backed by LvlUp Ventures), with previous experience at Crypto.com, Taiko. Vedad is a jury board member at Global Startup Awards (150 countries), founder at AI 3D company serving companies like NVIDIA and Tencent, and former national head of crypto regulations. Some of you may know me from leading Dash-related growth activities in Serbia, including organizing events, meetups, and hackathons, introducing entrepreneurs to Dash, and communicating with members of the Dash Core team on several occasions through Discord.
We believe the Dash DAO can be one of Dash’s most powerful growth engines. It already gives Dash something most cryptocurrency projects do not have: a recurring, decentralized way to fund development, adoption, integrations and promotion.
The mechanism already exists. The opportunity is to make it more visible, easier to understand, and more attractive to capable people outside the existing Dash community or crypto communities in general.
In case you do not want to read the full proposal or you are interested in a visual presentation, here is our pitch deck, available directly in Google Drive as PDF with no download required. It provides a clear visual summary of the proposal, its benefits for Dash, how the program works, and what we aim to achieve: PITCH DECK
Funding request: 218 DASH per month for three months
Program capacity: Up to five projects per cycle (one cycle every two months)
We do not make funding decisions. Masternodes retain complete control over which projects receive funding.
Why this is different from a fund or incubator
We will not invest in startups, take equity, incubate undeveloped ideas, offer bounties, build products, or decide which projects receive funding. We are leveraging our position in the industry and creating an attraction and preparation funnel that finds credible founders and professionals with growing brand recognition and startups, introduces them to Dash, evaluates their readiness, and helps them prepare strong proposals for the DAO. Every graduating team presents directly to the Dash community, and masternodes retain complete control over funding decisions.
It has never been easier for experienced professionals to turn their expertise into working products, more and more people are building personal brands, yet access to early funding remains difficult. We will leverage our networks, LinkedIn, X, founder communities, spotlights, and recognition campaigns to reach these builders, especially those outside traditional crypto circles, and bring them into the Dash ecosystem. Each project will propose its own practical way to promote or adopt Dash and use its product, industry experience, audience, and network to help Dash grow.
Why the Dash DAO is the opportunity
The Dash DAO has operated a treasury system since 2015. Masternodes can evaluate proposals and direct funding toward development, integrations, marketing, and other ecosystem needs.
We believe this can become a powerful adoption engine:
- Make the Dash funding opportunity visible.
- Attract founders and professionals with credible projects and/or audiences.
- Vet their teams, plans, and proposed Dash use.
- Teach them how Dash and its DAO work.
- Prepare clear and comparable proposals.
- Present those proposals to the community.
- Let masternodes decide which opportunities deserve funding.
- Help approved teams communicate their progress and attract the next group of applicants.
What Dash receives
Dash receives:
- A new route for discovering founders outside cryptocurrency circles
- Better prepared and easier to evaluate proposals
- More quality projects and professionals coming to the DAO
- Potential integrations into new products and services
- Exposure to professional and institutional networks
- Reusable interviews, spotlights and founder content
- A growing Slack community of entrepreneurs familiar with Dash
- Transparent information without surrendering funding authority
NOTE: Displaying the Dash logo, publishing generic PR articles, or paying influencers who promote dozens of products every week will not be accepted as a path to adoption. Visibility without real integration, active use, and/or clear and measurable value proposition does not produce lasting ecosystem growth.
Budget
The request is 218 DASH per month for three months.
Our real costs are lower than the requested budget but we left a margin in case of price volatility and corrections.
The compensation covers hiring two team members, our salaries and operating costs. This includes founder sourcing, outreach, promotion, application review, interviews, product and team vetting, preparation sessions, pitch and proposal work, content production, community management, subscriptions, Dash communication and reporting.
Closing
Dash already has the funding mechanism. What it needs is a stronger bridge to the people who can build with it or benefit from its value proposition. We want to create that bridge.
We will find founders and professionals, bring them into Dash, vet their teams and ideas, prepare them thoroughly, and help them present their proposals to the DAO.
Masternodes will continue to make every funding decision.
This is not an investment fund or an incubator. It is a gateway for bringing exceptional founders, industry experts, and promising products into the DASH ecosystem. Our purpose is to give the DASH DAO the visibility and recognition it deserves, prepare credible teams to contribute to DASH adoption, and let masternodes decide which proposals should receive funding.
The result is a practical growth loop in which new people discover DASH, serious teams propose useful integrations, the community evaluates them, and successful projects create the stories that attract the next generation of applicants. Even if certain projects are not invited into the program or funded by the DAO, they will still learn about DASH and explore opportunities to join the community and propose projects on their own.
Here is a clear visual summary of the proposal, its benefits for Dash, how the program works, and what we aim to achieve: PITCH DECK
For any questions, I am here, or you can ping me on Discord, my IGN is Neb.
Thank you for your time to review this proposal.
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Sorry, I don't know anything about your previous activities in Serbia. But you said you were introducing entrepreneurs to Dash, which is what you are offering to do now right? Can you please show us what those earlier entrepreneurs delivered for Dash? Where are they today, what are their companies and products?
Why exactly 218 DASH?
We request 218 DASH per month for three months, or 654 DASH in total. Using our planning rate of $66 per DASH, this equals $14,388 per month. Of that amount, 174.4 DASH, approximately $11,510, covers planned operations, while 43.6 DASH, approximately $2,878, remains as a 20% volatility reserve.
The monthly operating budget includes $3,000 for Vedad and $3,000 for me for full program delivery. Two additional people are budgeted at $1,500 each, one supporting applicant research and operations and the other supporting content and community management. Approximately $650 covers the website, software, video production, and other tools, $900 covers travel and meetings, and $850 covers costs related to outreach. We have also allocated 5 DASH across the complete pilot to sponsor the proposal submission fees of up to five graduating projects.
The reserve protects the operating plan if the DASH price falls by approximately 20% before conversion. Its use and remaining balance will be reported publicly. If it is not required, the unused amount will be disclosed and deducted from any request to continue the program.
What happened during my previous Dash activities in Serbia?
My earlier work, mainly between 2016 and 2018, focused on education, events, hackathons, and introducing people to cryptocurrency. We organized what was, to our knowledge, the first dedicated Dash conference in the Balkans, bringing together participants from startups, companies, politics, and embassies. We also supported initiatives such as the Smart City Challenge, whose winning team received a prize in Dash, as reported by N1 (CNN network), bizlife, netokracija and other news media.
However, those activities were not a structured founder program with formal selection, proposal preparation, measurable Dash adoption plans. They were more focused on promoting Dash in the regions, in general. It would therefore be misleading to present every entrepreneur who attended an event as a Dash company or claim that we created a portfolio of lasting Dash integrations. The primary results were events, education, visibility, and relationships.
Crypto was still a young industry, the subsequent market decline affected continuity, and we were also much younger and less experienced people. Most importantly, we did not have the experience and the network that we have today.
Why is this different today?
During the years since, I have worked on the growth of projects including Crypto.com and expanded my network across the blockchain and startup sectors. Vedad has gained experience in cryptocurrency policy development in Bosnia and Herzegovina, startup evaluation, and technology company operations as cofounder and COO of YVO3D. We now have considerably stronger experience, networks, and execution capabilities than we did 10 years ago.
The market is also different. Crypto is not perceived as "scary" as it was years ago, more people are aware about the values of privacy due to geopolitical developments, and digital assets are being adopted by institutions. More and more professionals are also building personal brands online and have built following that they are leveraging to market their projects and ideas. We want to leverage these trends to find great promotional and adoption opportunites for Dash.
This creates the right moment to approach professionals, founders, organizations, and public sector leaders who already have expertise, products, or audiences. We will not present Dash as an investment opportunity. We will introduce it as payment and privacy infrastructure supported by a DAO capable of funding valuable initiatives.
Our primary objective is not promotion. It is to increase the number of credible people and well prepared proposals entering the Dash DAO. Greater awareness and promotion should follow naturally when selected participants introduce their Dash involvement to their own professional networks.
This three month pilot is designed to make those results visible and measurable. We will report who applied, who was screened, who graduated, which proposals were submitted, what masternodes decided, and what the funded projects subsequently delivered.
hope this helps
I'd feel more comfortable voting yes if you could show us first what you can actually do. 14k a month require a solid freebee sample IMO.
Besides having our Linkedin, and what I've done in the past for Dash (go to the forum and search for my name) on numerous occasions, bringing hundreds of people at the events, presenting in front of 2000 people conference, created first game that utilizes dash natively working directly with DCG on that (that failed because the market crashed 80% in 2 months but oh well), and even working with 2 of the masternodes personally at some of those events (one helped with organization and banners; the other was a speaker), implementing Dash into our one and only crypto ATMs at the time, that alone makes me eligible to attract people to Dash.
Also, that was almost 10 years ago, and I was 24 at the time. Fast forward 10 years, I had a fair share of my work history in crypto (professionally in crypto since 2016), my own starups and participation in funding, accelerators, incubators and builders, because I am.. or we both are one of them.
What I can promise is us to bring valuable people who would be interested in building and supporting Dash in different ways.. whether they will, it's up to them.
I am not someone who lives on Dash discord, but I do still feel how underrated Dash has become and how, even now, its tech is pretty advanced today and people need to hear about that, need to play around, explore. In numerious ocassions in past few years I came with some suggestions on how to improve visibility and adoption to Dash (one was stable on Dash and we had really good convo around that (search Discord) but it didn't came into fruition.
Now, the timing couldn't be better as we wrote in the proposal, there are more and more builders thanks to AI (and layoffs..) that are looking for some funding. And since Dash is in a unique position, why not attract that talent?
imo it would be dumb not try at least.. it's a pilot project and who knows.. if this succeeds, there can be plenty more options to scale this into mass adoption.
this is just my $0.2..
P.S. since you wrote $14k, it now became $12.5k.. so the amount is not as much set in stone since dash is not a stable
P.P.S. damn.. this turned out to be a lot of text again, but you will forgive me for that xD
2nd?
3rd?
Month 1: Launch and awareness
We will launch the website, application system, selection criteria, and public call, followed by promotion through LinkedIn, X, founder communities, professional networks, and direct outreach.
We will also use tools such as HeyGen to produce professional and potentially multilingual videos explaining Dash, the DAO, eligible project types, privacy, integrations, and fast, affordable international payments. This gives us a reusable content library without excessive traditional production costs.
The first report will show the live platform, published content, campaign activity, audience reach, early applications, and outreach conversations.
Month 2: Outreach and vetting
We will use our relationships, especially Vedad’s network, to approach founders, developers, business and startup leaders, public sector representatives, nonprofit organizations, privacy advocates, and professionals outside traditional crypto circles.
We will introduce them to Dash, explain how DAO support works, and explore how they could integrate Dash, promote its values, or introduce it to their communities. We will prioritize credible applicants with existing teams, products, audiences, or distribution and funding needs that fit the DAO’s capacity.
Applicants will be evaluated based on their team, credibility, reach, strategy, feasibility, Dash adoption or promotion plan, expected value for the network, budget, and ability to execute.
We will continue publishing educational content and monthly professional spotlights. Featured professionals can share their recognition with their audiences, creating trusted organic exposure for Dash while supporting their own public positioning.
The second report will cover outreach, applications, sectors reached, screening activity, and the strongest candidates moving forward.
Month 3: Proposals and presentations
Up to five qualified projects will receive support with Dash onboarding, pitch decks, proposal writing, adoption or promotion plans, budgets, milestones, success measures, and recorded founder interviews.
We will sponsor their Dash proposal submission fees and help them present clearly to masternodes and the community. Participants will also be encouraged to explain their Dash involvement to their own networks, extending Dash into new professional and institutional circles.
Every project will submit independently, and masternodes will make every funding decision. We will prepare and vet applicants, but we will not approve funding ourselves.
By the end of the pilot, we aim to deliver up to five credible and publicly presented proposals, a reusable educational content library, a growing external network that understands Dash, and a transparent final report. Five is our maximum capacity, not a promise to advance weak applicants.
The wider purpose is to create a lasting gateway into the Dash DAO, bringing better prepared proposals from outside crypto while building a network of credible people and organizations that can promote Dash through their own communities without relying on generic PR or paid influencers.
We will sponsor their Dash proposal submission fees and help them present clearly to masternodes and the community."
What will the proposals consist of and how will that help Dash?
Each final proposal will include a specific Dash use case or benefit to the Dash ecosystem, the requested budget, delivery timeline, milestones, accountable team members, risks, reporting commitments and measurable outcomes.
We will also help each selected team prepare a concise pitch deck, realistic budget, DAO proposal, Dash Forum announcement, and one page project brief. And we will record a focused, YC-like team interview that challenges their assumptions. This will give MNOs both clearly prepared materials and direct answers through which they can judge each project.
DAO can only fund strong opportunities that reach it. Many great professionals outside the crypto do not know this funding mechanism exists or how to approach it. Even if they heard about crypto or Dash, they see it only as a “risky investment asset". We want to change that perception by introducing them to Dash as payment infra and the DAO as a clear path to support.
If we can do this effectively, and bring more good projects here, demand for Dash will grow as a natural result of adoption and recognition. We believe this is the only sustainable way to achieve long-term growth.