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An Open Letter From Evan and Ryan Regarding Dash Marketing

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I like it, however I would encourage Ryan and Evan not to encourage the community to do or not do a thing.


I would respectfully but vigorously disagree with this sentiment. The Masternodes, the Core Team, and the larger Dash community all have extremely valuable insight into how to make Dash succeed. Asking the Core Team to not use/express that insight to contribute to the plan on how to win would be unwise in the extreme. That would be like tying one hand and two feet behind your back.
 
As evidenced by the hundreds of (apparently misguided) discussions about unused budget, almost no one is aware of this. I suggest this be put into the code or at the least formally documented.
I participated to many discussions on that matter and I knew about those resurrecting funds.

I always have been against it. I believe that funds that we wasted because we couldn’t get organise to save them is on us.

Now, the nuance is what will we decide to do about the future unused funds, this is what I (and so is @Ryan Taylor if I understood well his post) am talking about.

That would means taking the decision at some point (the sooner, the better) to agree through a proposal that we will pile up all unused fund from the date the decision was taken.

It is possible that the technical or accurate term for that pile up is “resurrection” but it is a real poor choice of words if we refer to a decision that we take now about future funds.

Nothing to do with a decision made in the future about unused funds in the past – which would be resurrecting and bad thing IMO (or decide now to bring back to life the unused funds from last month for exemple - that's on us).

I don't know if I manage to express the nuance..
 
This is excellent news on many fronts.

Yes, everybody will benefit from better, more intentional and more timely communications. The sooner the better.

We recognize that the Core Team has been struggling mightily to cope with the growth in the budget, and the sudden huge increase in the size of the team. I think the Team has done a creditable job under tremendous growth challenges. Well done and carry on!

Thanks for clarifying the “burned vs saved” excess budget question. That should largely eliminate a lot of the frustration from “wasting” unassigned budget. Whether we vote now, or vote later on the fate of those uncreated funds is immaterial to me.

Excellent that Dash Core Team has a working plan in place to ramp up targeted professional cohesive marketing, with feedback and course corrections. This should cause a lot of the tension and drama to just evaporate.

Dash is so much more than just a speculative investment. We have the most viable plan to become a successful replacement for cash, credit cards, debit cards, money transfer across borders and legacy banking services.

Based on my understanding of the current ICO mania, I guarantee that a lot of the people throwing money into that pot will end up bitterly disappointed. While I feel bad for them, I am confident that when the bubble bursts, Dash will weather that storm better than most. We just need to keep knocking down obstacles to becoming a real, functional, easy, fast, safe currency.

But in addition to becoming the new cash, we are also a community. We are becoming a virtual nation. As we get to know each other better as a community, something like patriotism emerges. Pride in belonging to the community. Respect for other community members. A willingness to support each other, and look out for each other. This quality as a virtual nation will have more to do with our success as a currency than all the (admittedly wonderful and amazing and industry leading) features.
 
Thanks very much for this letter regarding Dash Core's marketing plans.

The outlined ways in which Dash should and should not be marketing itself are logical, and very helpful to myself, and to all the independent proposal owners who seek to add value to Dash on a daily basis. This type of guidance helps the MNOs be more valuable participants.

I came onto the Dash scene very strongly a couple months ago when I saw things in Dash's marketing that weren't right. Airshow money, for example, could be invested in Google PPC ads easier, faster, more flexibly and for a much higher ROI. Every sane investor wants to remain silent forever, but it was this nagging question of "Why is this happening?" that kept me up at night.

I have spearheaded the CMO vote, which I (and the majority of voting MNOs) still feel very strongly is necessary . Perhaps in time, Dash Core will hire a CMO to manage their arrangements with an outside firm, or in order to cut fees on in-house run online advertising campaigns. In time, as Ryan and Evan suggested, perhaps the MNOs themselves will hire a CMO to organize a Marketing Core which works in a more decentralized manner and increases the value of all the independent proposals arriving on the board.

While other coins may not currently be widely advertising the benefits of their chain, this is something that Dash's treasury budget could enable. I'm unable to be convinced that a passive marketing stance now is anything but a lost opportunity. I, of course, agree that Dash should not be aiming at short term investors, but rather increasing its roster of long term stakeholders who can bring with them network effect, talent, and capital.

In the meantime, I'm grateful to see this marketing issue addressed. If the issue continues to fester, the MNOs will have all summer to reconsider their vote on an independently hired CMO. The CMO proposal was not set up with a normal single cycle deadline, but with an expiration date set for September 2017. If the treasury budget continues to grow and the MNOs feel the need for more professionalism in Dash's marketing is warranted, they will be able to adjust their votes accordingly and form an independent Marketing Core.
 
Is there any particular benefit to having the core team hire a marketing firm instead of hiring a CMO either with their own team or to work with a marketing firm? If Core contracts with a marketing firm then working with that firm still requires work, and unless there is a dedicated person, it is going to fall on the existing team which is already stretched thin.
 
I am very glad to read this. I totally agree that marketing Dash as an investment would be a very dangerous strategy. I also thing using a marketing firm is a sensible approach.
 
As evidenced by the hundreds of (apparently misguided) discussions about unused budget, almost no one is aware of this. I suggest this be put into the code or at the least formally documented.

Resurrecting unspent budget funds is a political decision, and that's the problem. The "hundreds" of discussions about unused budget were not misguided at all, because though it is technically feasible to do what Ryan and Evan have suggested, it's politically challenging. In fact, at least one full-time Core Team member has publicly stated that he will resign if such a plan is ever implemented. Because of the foreseeable political controversy, it's wise to consider unallocated budget funds as lost forever.
 
" The "hundreds" of discussions about unused budget were not misguided at all..."

They were misguided in the sense that many people were working under the assumption that the unspent funds are burned or destroyed and are lost forever.

They are not lost forever, and could be used if the community decides it would be useful and worthwhile to do it.

Whether it's a good idea to resurrect the un-allocated budget money is a different and interesting question that we can work on as needed.

Anybody have a back-of-the-napkin estimate of how much is in our "savings account" ??

Maybe when it's time to run some 5 million dollar superbowl ads, there won't be much controversy about dipping into our savings account...
 
Also, @solarguy, in the case they were never created, they wouldn't be lost. The direct effect of never creating them is an increase in the price of the currency unit. It would be like saying that when the central bank authorities decide not to print money, they are destroying money.
 
Maybe when it's time to run some 5 million dollar superbowl ads, there won't be much controversy about dipping into our savings account...
Of course there will be... As far as I'm concerned, there is 0 on our saving account.

Let's first agree on the future unused budget that will have much more consensus before anything else
 
Is there any particular benefit to having the core team hire a marketing firm instead of hiring a CMO either with their own team or to work with a marketing firm? If Core contracts with a marketing firm then working with that firm still requires work, and unless there is a dedicated person, it is going to fall on the existing team which is already stretched thin.

It is not internal team or external agencies. 99% of the companies have a marketing team and hire agencies. Work is marketing is usually super specialized and what makes sense is to hire the work, not the people. We think that it is better to wait until we are certain about what kind of marketing work we need. Then we hire the people. In the meantime, top agencies have great talent and will keep us flexible and fast.

It is true that managing the firm(s) will require a lot of work, but we can do that in the team. If we hired someone, marketing is so tied to many other things that all the team would need to dedicate a lot of time to that person anyway. There will eventually need to be someone, but we don't believe it is the time just yet. By setting this in motion now we will prepare the field for that future person/team.
 
" The "hundreds" of discussions about unused budget were not misguided at all..."

They were misguided in the sense that many people were working under the assumption that the unspent funds are burned or destroyed and are lost forever.

They are not lost forever, and could be used if the community decides it would be useful and worthwhile to do it.

Whether it's a good idea to resurrect the un-allocated budget money is a different and interesting question that we can work on as needed.

Anybody have a back-of-the-napkin estimate of how much is in our "savings account" ??

Maybe when it's time to run some 5 million dollar superbowl ads, there won't be much controversy about dipping into our savings account...

Of course they're not lost forever--from the point of view of code. Heck, Core Team could change the code right now to create 5 MILLION DASH out of the blue. There is no *technical* reason why it couldn't be done. The problem is that it's unlikely the network (e.g. the masternode owners) would ever allow that to happen. That's why I think it's important to spend the funds right away, or to create a formal savings account. The notion that "we shouldn't worry about it because we can always create them later" is a bit of a red herring. Yes, you *can* create them later, but no, the network won't ever *allow* you to. Think the scaling debate was a big deal in Bitcoin? Can you imagine trying to create new coins (even if it doesn't change the intended emission rate)?
 
I strongly support rolling over the unused portion of the budget. Let's put that to a vote as soon as possible. The vision should continue to be a long term one that provides Dash with discretion on how to shepard our resources.
 
Of course they're not lost forever--from the point of view of code. Heck, Core Team could change the code right now to create 5 MILLION DASH out of the blue. There is no *technical* reason why it couldn't be done. The problem is that it's unlikely the network (e.g. the masternode owners) would ever allow that to happen. That's why I think it's important to spend the funds right away, or to create a formal savings account. The notion that "we shouldn't worry about it because we can always create them later" is a bit of a red herring. Yes, you *can* create them later, but no, the network won't ever *allow* you to. Think the scaling debate was a big deal in Bitcoin? Can you imagine trying to create new coins (even if it doesn't change the intended emission rate)?


I wasn't necessarily advocating for it, just pointing out that people were working under the false assumption that if we didn't spend it all this month, it was gone forever and wasted.

It was false on two counts, it's not necessarily gone forever, and failing to create it does add value to the remaining Dash supply, so not necessarily a waste.

Now, perhaps people will be less concerned if we can't spend the whole budget.

I would not be opposed to making a real life savings account for the excess rather than resurrecting them later.
 
Now, perhaps people will be less concerned if we can't spend the whole budget.
They should because currently there is no way the majority of MN would support a resurrection at anytime.

MN just might support a saving of future unused budget, but that's still to see.

We could easily resolve the question of whether unused budgets should be rolled over to future periods through a simple network vote.
Does that means Core is supportive of that and will put up a proposal ?
 
Deciding to roll over funding going forward is one thing, but to have previous unallocated funds resurrected is never going to have MN support, IMO.
 
Deciding to roll over funding going forward is one thing, but to have previous unallocated funds resurrected is never going to have MN support, IMO.

I guess that depends on what the funds would be used for. As long as everyone are aware of the possibility of bringing them back from now on. Evan suggests that bringing the funds back would require a special proposal with stricter requirements (https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/6jtje1/what_to_do_with_unused_1m_in_budget/djhroke/)
 
Thanks for this; I learned a lot. I believe we should make intelligent choices among budget proposals, and not move too quickly or too slowly.
 
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