Welcome!

This proposal is for the third quarter 2025 of the Dash Growth business development and marketing initiative.

Dash Growth consists of two full-time employees: Joël Valenzuela (myself) and Marina Siradegyan. We also employ several part-time contractors on an as-needed basis: Nicole Grinstead (Crypto Quorum producer and marketing consultant), Dan Sessom (video animations), Alex Rourke (video clips), Black Mirror Designer (graphics and presentations).

Last quarter recap

This past quarter the Dash Growth team attended seven different conferences in-person, including networking, speaking, and in some cases sponsoring the event. We sponsored and spoke at Web3 Amsterdam, a crypto conference in Amsterdam in March, and made many important connections at the conference. We also attended the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, where we presented on two separate panels. Our major conference for the year was ETHDam, where we sponsored as a gold conference sponsor, had a table presence and volunteers on the ground, and spoke on five separate talks and panels. We also attended Blockchain Futurist and Consensus with SwapKit, a tool enabling easy wallet integrations for Dash DEX swaps via the Maya Protocol. We also attended Crypto Basel to speak, with the organizers generously covering travel and accommodation. Finally, we attended the Bitcoin Conference and the Litecoin Summit, where we presented by leading up the privacy panel. We were also announced as presenters at Porcfest this month.

Crypto super app and spending service Zypto integrated Dash payments. This includes for bill pay services for many countries including USA, Mexico, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Philippines, Honduras, and Egypt, as well as prepaid cards, gift cards, and more. Zypto also integrated InstantSend functionality.

We launched a new weekly space on X called the Crypto Quorum on the DashPay account. The first episode drew many high-profile guests and attracted over 20,000 organic listeners, and we have since run a total of 10 weekly episodes at the time of the proposal. We have also secured a sponsored co-host for the show from a Dash-supporting crypto compay, which will help to provide us with additional budget outside of the treasury. Please tune into future episodes at 5pm UTC every Thursday.

We debuted our first influencer partnership as a test run with YouTube channel Real Infinite Crypto, with this sponsored video, and are exploring expanding this strategy with more influencers this quarter.

Payment processor CurPay has added Dash InstantSend support, leading to our other gift card partner PiggyCards being able to accept Dash payments instantly.

We have continued to release videos in our Evolution video series, with this next one covering data contracts. We also have begun receiving coverage and attention over our upcoming Confidential Transactions upgrade for Dash, including from Edge, the Crypto Show, and the main CT developer for Dash.

We held promotional AMAs with Web3 threshold signature wallet Vultisig and private AI prompt service NanoGPT, and partnered with hardware wallet provider Ellipal for a giveaway of hardware wallets for Dash fans. Dash was listed on cryptocurrency exchange BaltEX, as well as online marketplace Crypto Corner Shop, and was added as a donation option to digital online library Z-Lib. It was also added as an option on DEX aggregator Rubic, and finally, Dash masternode and EvoNode support was added to Armour Hosting, of course payable in Dash.

Despite a month of conference travel, we also participated in over 40 spaces on X with Pi42, Maya Protocol, DigiByte, Web3 Global, xSpac3s, Xcohost, and The Aggregated by QuickSwap. These will be linked at the bottom of the proposal.

What's ahead

This coming quarter we will focus on launching as many advertisement and PR campaigns as we are able to in order to highlight DashPay and/or the DashSpend feature in the wallets, when one or both of those features is up and functional for both Android and iOS. We will start with the Brave campaign we already have paid for and ready, and will engage in further media blitzes as we are able to afford. We will also focus on whatever free/earned media we can obtain in the more cypherpunk-focused areas of the space to highlight our recent CT decision proposal and future development. Overall, we will push the narrative that Dash is "back from the dead” with a host of new innovations and integrations.

After a successful trial run, we will now begin focus on a micro-influencer sponsorship strategy to target small to medium creators to promote Dash. We feel this demographic allows for a much greater reach for a lower price, and additionally smaller influencers tend to have greater trust from their audiences than large financially-successful creators.

On the business side, finding the best partner for instant swaps in DashPay, particularly outbound Lightning Network payments. The goal is to allow DashPay users to pay an invoice for virtually any cryptocurrency, almost as quickly as if they had that cryptocurrency to begin with. The reasoning behind Lightning in particular is that US fast food chain Steak 'n Shake implemented Lightning payments across almost 400 locations, and merchant point-of-sale company Square indicated it would integrate Lightning payments in the next year for its roughly 4 million merchants. Giving Dash users the ability to pay at all these businesses, while still holding 100% Dash non-custodially, we feel gives us an advantage over every other decentralized cryptocurrency project for payments, and we will work with the Core team on to achieve this functionality.

Finally, the mantra for the rest of the year for us (and should be for the rest of the Dash community) is: users users users. Once we have DashPay and DashSpend, as well as numerous bill pay and other integrations, we can begin to seriously onboard regular users and increase our volumes across the board.

Ask

We are keeping our monthly ask to 530 Dash in light of current market movements. This revised ask will be enough to sustain salaries as long as the price does not decrease significantly. Our ability to pay for more advertising and sponsorships may vary depending on the price, but our ability to make salaries should not be an issue. We are also exploring other exogenous funding sources to ease pressure off of the treasury, such as the Crypto Quorum sponsorship.

Crypto Quorum

https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1910362531299745895
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1912861950733582486
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1914500301240889678
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1916944393941963124
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1919543710448071089
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1923062923024339352
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1924859626748530820
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1927400598061670609
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1930063855008223493
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/1932541996335534340

Speaking, coverage, and media appearance links

https://youtu.be/3lmJnlKZySk?t=4693
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeCJL3Np7BU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNgorf4xcWA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2zENV_9vg0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztQdy9zp5wY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRES8A51-Hk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwKHLhStwqY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkOAMnuaW38
https://x.com/SallyMayweather/status/1920813735360209379
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy4bPyRO6no
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRDtEsUZHM8
https://x.com/TheDesertLynx/status/1927411378005884971
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVROJSSj5yE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT3fGHGDkeM
https://duke.hush.is/memos/9/
https://x.com/Pi42Exchange/status/1924472476458963219
https://x.com/Maya_Protocol/status/1929553658070335517
https://x.com/DigiByteCoin/status/1922363566704783595
https://x.com/web3globalmedia/status/1916190957164281936
https://x.com/xSpac3s/status/1918349803853103227
https://x.com/i/spaces/1yoKMolkLAlJQ/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1kvKpypWZPaGE/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1ypKdZnrkZyJW/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1OwxWXbRaNAKQ/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1eaJbWZjbDZxX/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1zqKVjkkvyDKB/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1YpJkBemaaoGj/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1ZkKzYvMlWrxv/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1rmGPybezggJN/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1YpKkBemMWAxj/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1djGXVXZmLjxZ/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1YpKkBjkZpAxj/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1gqGvjvLEgQGB/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1PlKQMwQrOZKE/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1eaJbWkEovYxX/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1yoKMonmqMkJQ/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1LyGBWzYZXbJN/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1mnxegBaApLGX/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1nAKEgjNQWbJL/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1mnxegBdYOPGX/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1yNGaLyeyXrKj/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1OyKALaELvLxb/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1LyxBWmjnmEKN/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1nAKEgXYMRaJL/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1vAxRDmpkXkGl/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1kvJpyzdPODxE/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1yNGaLlRZrbKj/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1ZkJzYzwPdDGv/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1gqxvjzBPRlxB/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1zqKVjkDlvmKB/peek
https://x.com/i/spaces/1zqKVjkkvyDKB/peek
https://x.com/nxtmoonproject/status/1932467858287841749
https://x.com/QuickswapDEX/status/1915431800853217597
https://x.com/QuickswapDEX/status/1913246173739016282
https://x.com/QuickswapDEX/status/1915782919341424946