Welcome!

This proposal is to build a marketing fund to promote Dash’s upcoming releases and features through the end of the year and beyond.

Motivation

Dash has made a series of technological and adoption leaps over the past 2-3 years: Evolution, shielded transactions, DEX integrations into the Maya Protocol and NEAR Intents (and soon THORChain), global bill pay, spending tools, and much more. However, the vast majority of our focus as an ecosystem has been in development and partnerships, for the simple fact that we haven’t been fully ready for mass-scale promotion.

For years we haven’t had usernames and contact lists in more wallets than DashPay Android, sufficient development tools to build meaningful apps on Evolution, user-friendly and competitive privacy functions (especially for mobile users), and integrations and partnerships directly into our wallets to make the top-of-the-line Dash experience workable for all.
Now, over the next few months, we’ll have all that: usernames, contact lists, and shielded privacy in both our Android and iOS wallets, as well as at least one multi-coin third party wallet. We’ll have our DEX and spending integrations built into our mobile wallets so that users don’t have to juggle multiple apps to use Dash. And, most importantly, we’ll have a growing ecosystem of Evolution apps to promote and also serve as examples to third-party developers to build more.

At Dash Growth’s current budget, we have enough for light promotion and content marketing, conference appearances, and some strategic KOL partnerships, but not enough to deliver our message to adequately let the market know what we’ve built, and to onboard the users we need.

What we need to promote

Medusa/Orchard: Very soon, Dash will have the most advanced privacy in the industry, using the same tech as industry leader Zcash, yet with a more elegant implementation: scalability, instant sync, instant settlement. This also gives us more robust privacy than industry runner up Monero for at least until FCMP++ is released on mainnet. We have the opportunity to position ourselves as the top project in cryptocurrency’s hottest sector.

Evolution: Finally, Evolution and its development tools will be in a sufficiently workable state to build and release many apps. Web3 still struggles to create basic Web2-style apps built fully on decentralized user-owned data, and we have an opportunity to finally get momentum on this front.

Dash-to-Anything: Thanks to our multiple DEX integrations, including ones like Maya which support InstantSend, Dash is now interoperable with the rest of the space in a truly practical way: a Dash user can receive or get paid in almost any coin and send Dash out to almost any other coin, faster than any other competitor. Zcash gained great acclaim for the built-in CrossPay feature, which is a much more limited version of what we have, with much slower swaps than we can achieve.

DashSpend: Dash’s built-in spending features work well for US users, but once we integrate partners like AEON Pay and Bitrefill, it will truly be a global spending tool. Then we can truly promote Dash as money to the world.

Dash the asset: The crypto space is rapidly consolidating, with many projects going bankrupt or being acquired by private equity. Dash has remained independent, decentralized, and innovating for over 12 years, and we’re starting to see it outpace much of the space in growth and reputation. If we can position Dash as one of the safest, independent, and most proven projects in the space, investors will take notice and see it as a unique opportunity. 

How the funds will be spent

KOL partnerships: We have already partnered with several key opinion leaders (KOLs) to promote Dash and onboard users. However, more funds means we can expand this and create a narrative and reputation turnaround for Dash.

PR: We have worked with MarketAcross for our PR work in the past, and have achieved success in the media in amplifying our wins. We’ve found that PR efforts work best to amplify hype and good news rather than create it, but when used in conjunction with other promotions we can create a narrative momentum shift.

Stratospehre: We are in discussions with marketing firm Stratosphere, which has been responsible for major momentum turnarounds for several key cryptocurrency projects before. If we receive enough funding, we can partner with them to create market narratives positioning Dash as the next Zcash-style sensation.

Other marketing activities where applicable

Ask

The ask for this proposal is 200 Dash monthly for the next 6 months. Masternodes should feel free to fund this on any month where they feel it can provide more value, and to not fund it when other proposals should take precedent. We will do our best and prioritize with whatever we receive.