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Dash Mission and Vision Statement

balu

Active member
Foundation Member
Dear Community,

The main focus of the Project Management group is to facilitate community efforts in order to reach the project goals as early as possible. The very first thing in our agenda was making sure these goals are clear. Having clear, well-defined goals can act as a reference point when future decisions are required, and play an important role in brand identity. We decided to use two industry-standard practices for defining what Dash wants to achieve: vision and mission statements.

What are vision and mission statements, and why are they important?

A vision statement is a short written declaration of an organization's core purpose and values. A vision statement provides a community an understanding of what it aims to accomplish in the future, while remaining broad enough to encompass a variety of perspectives and approaches toward achieving that future. A well-crafted vision acts as a long-term reference point toward which the entire community can strive.

A mission statement is a description of your more immediate goals. It lays out more precisely what the organization plans to do and why. It can (1) serve as a filter to separate important activities from those that are not, (2) clearly state which markets will be served and how, and (3) define broad measures for the organization's success.


Together, the vision and mission statements can help us to define meaningful objectives and more easily align as a team behind those objectives that best support our long-term objectives.

How were the statements created?

Although such fundamental elements as a vision and mission should not change often, we do not expect that this first vision and mission is set in stone. Especially over long periods of time, the mission and even our long-term vision may change. Once the decentralized governance system is in place, community members will be free to submit an alternative vision or mission if they require revision. Revision of the mission or vision will require majority vote.

However, in order to create Dash's initial mission and vision, the core team engaged several community members with deep expertise leveraging these tools. Several drafts have been debated internally by the core team with guidance and council from the experts. It was further debated in a public Slack channel for extended team members to provide input. We now feel that the initial versions are refined enough for broader distribution to the entire community and will serve as our initial vision and mission. Of course, as an open-sourced decentralized community, we expect our mission and vision may require refinement, especially over longer periods of time, so the voting mechanism is in place to ensure or mission and vision reflect the community's values.

Alright, already, so what are they?

Mission statement: Dash’s mission is to deliver safe and reliable financial solutions to consumers and merchants in a decentralized manner - providing greater economic freedom to its users.

Vision statement: People and businesses use Dash as digital money for everyday financial transactions. We will build and maintain an innovative decentralized payment network which will act as the core of an ecosystem of consumers, merchants, and service providers. This network will provide users with a fungible currency that provides a high degree of privacy, speed, and reliability for both physical and online transactions. We will foster a robust ecosystem of products and services by developing solutions that services the needs of both consumers and merchants while working closely service providers (e.g., merchant service providers, exchanges) to enable features and functionality that will delight our users. Finally, we will cultivate adoption of this ecosystem through education, promotion and engagement of potential users on the benefits of cryptocurrencies and the functionality our solutions enable.

We feel that the above vision and mission define an impactful, achievable set of goals for our organization. Ultimately, we aim to be much more than simply a digital currency, as evidenced in the passion, energy, ideas, and sense of community found throughout the pages of the Dash forum. We aim to be a trusted means for consumers and merchants to transact in everyday life. While we don't yet know what financial services niches Dash may occupy in the future - alongside cash, credit cards, bank deposits, or any number of other solutions in use today - we believe Dash will have an incredible impact on the world. We look forward to hearing the community's response and we hope you are as happy as we are to have a vision and mission that can help guide us in the same direction toward meaningful goals.
 
Mission statement: Dash’s mission is to deliver safe and reliable financial solutions to consumers and merchants in a decentralized manner - providing greater economic freedom to its users.

Maybe mission have to be less achievable and set more global "direction" for dozens of years ahead.

Something like (just as a joke... or may be not joke) "Dash is about creation of payment system of the future, created by decentralized community to replace current financial system for whole humanity to prosper."
 
Dear Community,

The main focus of the Project Management group is to facilitate community efforts in order to reach the project goals as early as possible. The very first thing in our agenda was making sure these goals are clear. Having clear, well-defined goals can act as a reference point when future decisions are required, and play an important role in brand identity. We decided to use two industry-standard practices for defining what Dash wants to achieve: vision and mission statements.

What are vision and mission statements, and why are they important?

A vision statement is a short written declaration of an organization's core purpose and values. A vision statement provides a community an understanding of what it aims to accomplish in the future, while remaining broad enough to encompass a variety of perspectives and approaches toward achieving that future. A well-crafted vision acts as a long-term reference point toward which the entire community can strive.

A mission statement is a description of your more immediate goals. It lays out more precisely what the organization plans to do and why. It can (1) serve as a filter to separate important activities from those that are not, (2) clearly state which markets will be served and how, and (3) define broad measures for the organization's success.


Together, the vision and mission statements can help us to define meaningful objectives and more easily align as a team behind those objectives that best support our long-term objectives.

How were the statements created?

Although such fundamental elements as a vision and mission should not change often, we do not expect that this first vision and mission is set in stone. Especially over long periods of time, the mission and even our long-term vision may change. Once the decentralized governance system is in place, community members will be free to submit an alternative vision or mission if they require revision. Revision of the mission or vision will require majority vote.

However, in order to create Dash's initial mission and vision, the core team engaged several community members with deep expertise leveraging these tools. Several drafts have been debated internally by the core team with guidance and council from the experts. It was further debated in a public Slack channel for extended team members to provide input.
Which public Slack channel if you don't mind? I just joined Slack and don't see any past discussions, pretty empty there. I'm not familiar with Slack and trying to find things around there but don't see what you mentioned.
 
moli - there was a discussion on this on PM channel in March/April and then on general channel during the last 2 weeks of April.
Any input to this is very welcomed - feel free to share your ideas here.

alex-ru
Why do you find less-achievable goals more attractive? personally I prefer to do the achievable work :)
And remember about the very important thing - this (mission and vision) is not written in stone.It will evolve for sure (if we are taking about the perspective of dozens of years ahead)
 
Which public Slack channel if you don't mind? I just joined Slack and don't see any past discussions, pretty empty there. I'm not familiar with Slack and trying to find things around there but don't see what you mentioned.

Hey Moli if I'm not mistaken the discussion took place in the #General Channel in the slack forum you just joined. If you scroll all the way up there is some discussion remaining, but from my understanding we have a free slack group so only 10,000 messages are saved throughout all the channels. I remember the discussion was short and everyone who was in the slack channel had an opportunity to participate.

Anyways if you need some help with slack let me know. :)
 
Hey Moli if I'm not mistaken the discussion took place in the #General Channel in the slack forum you just joined. If you scroll all the way up there is some discussion remaining, but from my understanding we have a free slack group so only 10,000 messages are saved throughout all the channels. I remember the discussion was short and everyone who was in the slack channel had an opportunity to participate.

Anyways if you need some help with slack let me know. :)
Yes, I stopped reading Slack after not finding anything worthwhile, then about 5 min ago i looked at it again and found the button "Previous", that's what took me to the archive of #general channel and i just read your post on April 17th, interesting :)
 
moli - there was a discussion on this on PM channel in March/April and then on general channel during the last 2 weeks of April.
Any input to this is very welcomed - feel free to share your ideas here.

alex-ru
Why do you find less-achievable goals more attractive? personally I prefer to do the achievable work :)
And remember about the very important thing - this (mission and vision) is not written in stone.It will evolve for sure (if we are taking about the perspective of dozens of years ahead)

Because mission should be something like perfections. We cannot get the perfection but we always go forward to it.
 
Because mission should be something like perfections. We cannot get the perfection but we always go forward to it.
Mission and vision are only effective IF a path to getting there is possible. If not, it doesn't really help provide direction. The example given earlier of "replace the entire financial system for whole of humanity" is neither something that is feasible nor something that I think the majority of our community could agree is even a good thing. Yes, our existing financial system has many flaws, but to believe that the entire thing... stocks, bonds, credit cards, checks, banks, traveler's checks, debit cards, stored balance cards, gift cards, etc have no remaining purpose and should be scrapped completely is such an extreme position that hardly anyone would back that mission - including the very merchants, consumers, and financial services firms which would need to be on board to make mass adoption possible.

Replacing the existing financial system, or some other unachievable goal, actually makes decision making HARDER, which defeats the entire purpose of a mission and vision. Carving out a niche in which we are an effective payment method alongside other solutions? Sure. But let's achieve that before moving on to conquering the world. Believe me, that mission alone is plenty hard to keep us very busy a very long time. Otherwise, you end up funding projects for other things before you've even gotten a start in payments... services that really should be built on our protocol rather than built into the protocol for example. The point is to keep us FOCUSED, not imagining some utopian future which will never happen.
 
Because mission should be something like perfections. We cannot get the perfection but we always go forward to it.

Exactly. Mission is like perfection (maybe my example isn't perfect - so sorry if it sounds too "aggressive")

If Dash will complete mission (just an ordinary goal really) "Dash’s mission is to deliver safe and reliable financial solutions to consumers and merchants in a decentralized manner - providing greater economic freedom to its users." and there will be hundreds of other more popular "safe and reliable financial solutions ..." - It wouldn't be perfect or even good... Sorry for my bad English.
 
alex-ru No worries. This a topic we could debate over for ages, and unlikely find consensus. We just had to make it straight what we are aiming for. We could spend further weeks/months on fine-tuning, but it would only make them more distant due to the time wasted.

Should we come to a point when these statements are to be revised, it will be done. And given the circumstances we can be even more ambitious.

Also, I cannot stress how important the words of babygiraffe are:
... Believe me, that mission alone is plenty hard to keep us very busy a very long time. Otherwise, you end up funding projects for other things before you've even gotten a start in payments... services that really should be built on our protocol rather than built into the protocol for example. The point is to keep us FOCUSED, not imagining some utopian future which will never happen.

Now we have a reference point guiding future development - we can focus on things helping us achieving out goals, and putting less effort on features/products/etc that wouldn't bring us closer to them.
 
Alright, already, so what are they?

Mission statement: Dash’s mission is to deliver safe and reliable financial solutions to consumers and merchants in a decentralized manner - providing greater economic freedom to its users.

Vision statement: People and businesses use Dash as digital money for everyday financial transactions. We will build and maintain an innovative decentralized payment network which will act as the core of an ecosystem of consumers, merchants, and service providers. This network will provide users with a fungible currency that provides a high degree of privacy, speed, and reliability for both physical and online transactions. We will foster a robust ecosystem of products and services by developing solutions that services the needs of both consumers and merchants while working closely service providers (e.g., merchant service providers, exchanges) to enable features and functionality that will delight our users. Finally, we will cultivate adoption of this ecosystem through education, promotion and engagement of potential users on the benefits of cryptocurrencies and the functionality our solutions enable.

We feel that the above vision and mission define an impactful, achievable set of goals for our organization. Ultimately, we aim to be much more than simply a digital currency, as evidenced in the passion, energy, ideas, and sense of community found throughout the pages of the Dash forum. We aim to be a trusted means for consumers and merchants to transact in everyday life. While we don't yet know what financial services niches Dash may occupy in the future - alongside cash, credit cards, bank deposits, or any number of other solutions in use today - we believe Dash will have an incredible impact on the world. We look forward to hearing the community's response and we hope you are as happy as we are to have a vision and mission that can help guide us in the same direction toward meaningful goals.

Clear, concise, descriptive. Almost gave me goose bumps. I can tell from this first product that we have great people working on this initiative. Had zero input and couldn't have said it better myself. Great job guys. Are we good to start quoting this?
 
Yes, you are good to start quoting this :)
We will find a good place on the main webpage to put these statements there too
 
I was actually thinking a while back now to suggest we come up with a vision and mission statement. I'm glad that it was in the works and happy to see it being published today.
I cannot come up with any refinements to the M&V statements above so consider this as a sign of my approval.
 
I had been wondering about this since I ventured into this space. Happy to see a mission statement.
Safe, reliable, decentralized financial solutions to enhance economic freedom.
That's how I remember it anyways.
 
great vision and even if the vision statement is actually good, could be better if we related it to two importants words, easiest and primary digital currency to use.
 
People and businesses use Dash as digital money for everyday financial transactions
Absolutely committed from Dash_Maracaibo with that vision to build the use of Dash for everyday life, from Venezuela we have the perfect start in the inefficiency of the financial system and the lack of cash. Venezuela has all the conditions to build adoption thanks to the need to have new money.
 
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