Welcome!

This proposal is for the second quarter 2026 of the Dash Growth business development and marketing initiative.

Dash Growth consists of one full-time employee (Joël Valenzuela, myself) and several part-time contractors: Nicole Grinstead (Crypto Quorum producer and marketing consultant), Dan Sessom (video animations), Alex Rourke (video clips and social media posting), PatriotSounds (X spaces support), as well as other contractors as needed for one-off tasks.

Last quarter recap

This quarter Zebec launched a streaming payroll product for Dash, enabling employers to pay their employees in Dash, streaming continuously so that the employee is able to access their earned portion of the salary at any point. We are working with Zebec to further refine this product offering and expand with other features, including fiat on-ramping.

Dash has been added to exchange BTSE for spot trading, expanding access for Dash to new markets. Southeast Asia-focused QR Wallet announced an integration pending for Dash in their product.

Dash was re-added to critical gift card platform Bitrefill after being removed following a major hack of the platform. We confirmed through in-person discussions with the CEO that Dash was slated for removal, and was only added back because of our direct efforts. We urge the Dash community to maximize usage of Bitrefill for paying with Dash in order to improve volume across the platform so that delistings are not at risk in the future.

We attended and presented at several conferences around the world including Bitcoin Las Vegas, Consensus Miami, BCH BLISS in Ljubljana, the Nordic Blockchain Conference in Stockholm, Vienna Blockchain Week, and the PubKey Privacy Popup in New York City.

This past month we launched the Dash Ecosystem Fund, a new fund jointly custodied by members of Dash Growth, Dash Core Group, CrowdNode, Dash Investment Foundation, and several more. This is a fund made to supplement the treasury from external contributions (and potentially leftover treasury spends) to allow a more flexible funding model for the Dash ecosystem. Consider the fund a catch-all method for receiving external or surplus funds for the DAO.

We ran two additional ad campaigns with Brave Browser, with two additional campaigns slated for the coming months. We will keep the community updated on their results and create a comprehensive report after their conclusion at the beginning of August.

We have continued our popular Crypto Quorum weekly space on X when not interrupted by travel, due for its 55th weekly installment.

We received coverage from podcaster and influencer Bri Teresi (over 1m+ followers), we held a giveaway with EMCD and attended numerous spaces and shows including Crypto Empress, Unscripted, LetsExchange, Zypto, Nym, Exolix, Steve Thurmond, MoneroTalk, Bitcoin Cash and Chill, 8lends, Mondays With Maya, MMT Finance, LetsExchange, THORSwap, ProtoFire, QuickEx, Exolix, WenAltSeason, Roman Storm rally space, QuickSwap, Quai Network, CryptoCoin Mindset, Emergence Media, Digital Gold Talk, NOWNodes, House of Chimera, Kaspa Silver, THORChain community podcast, and DeFi Media.

Finally, for easier ecosystem-wide tracking of not only our progress but that of the major DAO players, we have launched a Quarterly Recap call. Here is the first installment, with a new one for this quarter due soon.

What's ahead

Our goals for the future is as follows:

Q3 Business Development

• Initiate integrations with third party wallets for Dash's special features (shielded transactions and usernames)
• Secure another DEX listing
• Finalize a Dash-to-Lightning integration partner

Q3 Marketing

• Finish out the two remaining Brave ad campaigns, evaluate results
• Launch several new KOL partnerships
• Run a successful DashCon conference in September

2026 Business Development

As announced last quarter, these are our major business development goals to have completed by the end of the year, along with progress:

• Debut our Dash-to-anything, anything-to-Dash features in the DashPay wallets with at least multiple DEX rails (first phase concluded with Maya Protocol addition, multiple new routes pending)
• Expand DashSpend to more providers and regions (in progress)
• Integrate WalletConnect functionality into as many Dash-supporting wallets and interfaces as possible (in progress, likely waiting on DashPay integration first)
• Onboard to several new payment processors and wallet integrations (several pending)
• Integrate Evolution support into third-party wallets and services, particularly in the multi-coin world (will create a push post-iOS/Orchard release)
• Integrate Orchard private transaction support into multiple third-party wallets and services (preliminary conversations started)
• Onboard as many new DEXes as possible (one new major DEX in progress, several more on the way)

2026 Marketing

These are our planned marketing activities for 2026, with more coming as opportunities arise:

• Launch at least 4 separate Brave ad campaigns compared to 1 in 2025 (2 out of 4 completed)
• Debut an ambassador program strictly for new user acquisition (pilot in progress)
• Launch several additional KOL relationships in our niche (several more in progress)
• Host DashCon without treasury funds and with 100-200 attendees (in progress)
• Get to 5,000+ Evolution users (in progress, though dependent on DCG release schedule for DashPay/dev tools/Yappr)

Ask

Unchanged from last cycle. We are keeping our monthly ask to 530 Dash. This ask will be enough to sustain one full-time salary and three part-time salaries even with a significant price decrease, and at current levels is able to pay for select giveaways, KOL partnerships, advertising, sponsorships, etc. We have successfully leveraged exogenous funding sources from the Crypto Quorum sponsorship (which at current prices gives us about 14 extra Dash per month to work with). We will continue to explore new external funding sources as well.

Links

https://x.com/MMTFinance/status/2034660405495169254
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2034676895069999417
https://x.com/letsexchange_io/status/2036080336216453457
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2036429120096055645
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2036454110589759576
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2033731564488581408
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2033920236399845476
https://x.com/bitrefill/status/2033931580352221656
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2034252856682041445
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2034269003007381798
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2034281214610133437
https://x.com/briteresi/status/2034308012438090124
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2036429120096055645
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2036454110589759576
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2036037409096286474
https://x.com/letsexchange_io/status/2037152397743554819
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2037213363827101898
https://x.com/protofire/status/2037197976045838766
https://x.com/QuickEx_Tweets/status/2037862353950396827
https://x.com/exolix_com/status/2038568913819042238
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2039017661703594088
https://x.com/wenaltseason/status/2039372350529941691
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2039750154710815189
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2039765413228146752
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2039750154710815189
https://x.com/cialoneCodes/status/2039542953916383691
https://x.com/Zebec_HQ/status/2041176330432110626
https://x.com/QuickswapDEX/status/2042618706270773647
https://x.com/QuaiNetwork/status/2042633536763461880
https://x.com/CryptoCoinMind/status/2043827095718244841
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2043618029284598229
https://x.com/_EMAgency/status/2044009566434902318
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2044823923183824923
https://x.com/DigitalGoldTalk/status/2046621186508140964
https://x.com/NOWNodes/status/2046937350740103285
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2046149212153278626
https://x.com/HouseofChimera/status/2046984147105726506
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2047360221123584303
https://x.com/_EMAgency/status/2047674895547670563
https://x.com/KaspaSilver/status/2048744161688351089
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2049961317130182938
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2052018565767741666
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZBf4ashEU
https://x.com/DefiMedia1/status/2053861760411512853
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2054555399932563537
https://x.com/emcd_io/status/2054578891163914374
https://x.com/CryptoEmpressX/status/2054999567540842612
https://x.com/LeslieM0tta/status/2060496832669917249
https://x.com/letsexchange_io/status/2061810075165974648
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2061416958860448243
https://x.com/nym/status/2061345604094058608
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2062250671877792012
https://x.com/stevethurmond/status/2062315166604403159
https://x.com/MoneroTalk/status/2062693919415062619
https://x.com/kzKallisti/status/2062977673207378097
https://x.com/ZyptoApp/status/2062837323876728914
https://x.com/eightlends/status/2065071556678791590
https://x.com/Maya_Protocol/status/2066169790381637687
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2056372371712274555
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2060084442396287269
https://x.com/WebWipeMeDown/status/2057169754087891069
https://x.com/TheDesertLynx/status/2065951516482019831
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2054612514273394715
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2062581475891925457
https://x.com/Dashpay/status/2065117047256699119