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I think Dash needs some changes

Hey @Marine - are there any positive news on the marketing front?
Hey Robert, glad you asked :)

This is what we're having right now:

  • We're expecting to have 2 podcast episodes about web3. The first one is already recorded.
  • I organized a Space with THORChain and now waiting a guidance from them about technical specs for the integration audit.
  • We're making regular Sprint review updates and will have an additional core update review after the 20th.
  • We hired a content writer working for Dash Incubator and made a content plan for blog. Now it's 2 articles per month but I'm planning to increase this number by Autumn.
  • I'm also working together with DMH and our partners to run marketing campaigns. Like, we're planning to run a campaign with Brave in the near time.

Basically, we're doing our best to make positive changes in the marketing field. Let's wait some time to see how positive they are in fact.

I'll make a report at the end of this month.
 
Hey Robert, glad you asked :)

This is what we're having right now:

  • We're expecting to have 2 podcast episodes about web3. The first one is already recorded.
  • I organized a Space with THORChain and now waiting a guidance from them about technical specs for the integration audit.
  • We're making regular Sprint review updates and will have an additional core update review after the 20th.
  • We hired a content writer working for Dash Incubator and made a content plan for blog. Now it's 2 articles per month but I'm planning to increase this number by Autumn.
  • I'm also working together with DMH and our partners to run marketing campaigns. Like, we're planning to run a campaign with Brave in the near time.

Basically, we're doing our best to make positive changes in the marketing field. Let's wait some time to see how positive they are in fact.

I'll make a report at the end of this month.

Thanks Marine!
I am excited to see the campaigns in the near time - I think Dash really needs that.

Good luck!
 
loool guys, DASH has a lot of disadvantages which were improved in other fork cryptos from DASH. E.g., WEI etc. Unlike DASH, which itself is a product of Dash Foundations Inc, WEI is the coin of the ecosystem and its entire economic model is built on this. WEI mining is available with three algorithms PoW, PoS and WEIback, whereas DASH can only be mined using PoW or PoS. And I can continue on and on and on. It's either DASH does something about itself, or other cryptos will simply move it from the arena :/
 
loool guys, DASH has a lot of disadvantages which were improved in other fork cryptos from DASH. E.g., WEI etc. Unlike DASH, which itself is a product of Dash Foundations Inc, WEI is the coin of the ecosystem and its entire economic model is built on this. WEI mining is available with three algorithms PoW, PoS and WEIback, whereas DASH can only be mined using PoW or PoS. And I can continue on and on and on. It's either DASH does something about itself, or other cryptos will simply move it from the arena :/

Poppycock!
 
So, we just have had another major release.
In the middle of the bear market. Again.

In case you are wondering why Dash in unnoticed and under-appreciated. This is one of the major mistakes repeatedly made.
 
I wouldn't be so pessimistic.
If you look at charts, Dash is holding its rate despite the bear market.

Postponing the release for better times might be even worse, imo.
Plus, we can use this update to build content and other activities even after the bear market.

What we really need to focus on is platform promotion, to my opinion. This is the thing we have to perform the greatest way possible.
 
True, dash has been holding this price range very well. Tbh, it can't really go that much lower. I think a lot of people are recognizing good prices for solid projects and OGs. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if quality alts (such as dash) correct upwards while bitcoin holds 20K or less.
 
When would you have us do the release then? Recall it was 14 months since v0.17, the developers dragged their asses long enough!
 
I wouldn't be so pessimistic.
If you look at charts, Dash is holding its rate despite the bear market.

Postponing the release for better times might be even worse, imo.
Plus, we can use this update to build content and other activities even after the bear market.

What we really need to focus on is platform promotion, to my opinion. This is the thing we have to perform the greatest way possible.

Hey Marine!
Somehow I have a hard time to be optimistic, seeing Dash on position #73 on the CMC. I don't find it a proper place for the project.

We have never tried postponing the release and it wasn't good in my opinion. It was always rushed to release as soon as possible, with argument that "tech will defend itself". Well... it did not.
You are right - you cannot predict the future, but you can learn from your mistakes. We have made no releases during the bull run and now having the release during the bear market. It is lack of strategic thinking and indicates that no lessons have been learned from the past mistakes imo.
Even simple awareness of the pure hype-based crypto reality tells me that it was a mistake. I consider it a lost chance for a solid marketing opportunity rather than opportunity for the content in the future.
Not to mention to not plan so long releases - shorter, incremental updates.

As for the platform promotion - I would avoid it at all cost now (except solid information about the upcoming releases).
Platform is considered an example of development hell and promoting it doesn't make sense until it is being released. It was promised to be released soon so many times, that no one takes these promises seriously anymore. We don't even know the release date, right?
I think there are solid, exiting functionalities and use-cases to be promoted and they are much better suited for marketing than the platform.

All the best!
 
I consider coinmarketcap rank pretty pointless at this point to evaluate a specific crypto project.

Marketcap is nothing more then Price x Supply. Dash has relatively low circulating supply (10.8 Million Dash) in comparison with other crypto projects, which effects its marketcap calculation formula considerably. In that regard Dash will always have an uphill battle to fight. Also coinmarketcap nowadays includes just about anything : stablecoins, exchange tokens, ICO's, crypto coins, crypto tokens, premined coins, PoS coins, PoW coins, DeFi, NFT and it lists close to 10,000 crypto projects. That site is basically comparing apples with oranges.

What point is having a lower or higher marketcap rank anyways, when the price performance (% down from ATH) is pretty much the same or worse ? (See Bitcoin Cash and Dash)

NvCtMJ9.jpg

Source : https://cryptorank.io/

I really don't understand why people are still so focussed on marketcap rank alone, when there are other more usefull metrics to evaluate a crypto project.
 
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@kot I wouldn't get so hung up on when code should be released (or not). It just needs to be rock solid reliable and good communications with devs and stakeholders.

As previously said, governance modifications should not be lumped in with other updates, they deserve priority over all other updates.
 
I mostly agree, marketcap is a really poor indicator of success. I do think, however, it currently serves a key psychological role to your average Joe "investors" / gamblers. The problem, really, is there are few alternative ranks with widespread appeal. Where can we find ranks based on actual real world usage?
 
@qwizzie , @GrandMasterDash ,

Thanks for your input and opinion.
Despite the fact that I share your opinions, I think we, as a project and community, could not afford ignoring CMC. Mainly for two reasons:
  1. CMC is the first place, where majority of crypto investors, users and press go to verify the project and build their opinion about it. No matter how we hate it, CMC position is a big indicator for all people in crypto. If we ignore that simple fact, market will ignore us.
  2. We are heavily dependent on the price of coin. Only if position is higher, there will be money for development, dapps and new projects in the ecosystem. Higher position is a must imo
 
When would you have us do the release then? Recall it was 14 months since v0.17, the developers dragged their asses long enough!

The answer is always the same - when the time is right (and in the right place).
How successful you would be launching a new line of surfing boards in the beginning of winter (and advertise it in eg, Zermatt, Switzerland)?
 
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Thanks for pointing this out, Robert.

I would say that the reason why Dash is 75th is that is that we're acting slow.
The overhyped cryptos on CMC's top are not like that, as they're constantly offering something new, something unusual, be it a new concept or marketing thing.
Among them all Dash is looking sometimes like Steve Buscemi from an old meme.
1661962177953.png


I'm here only a couple of months and not so experienced as you but anyway, I don't think we lost our opportunities. We just need to define our way before the platform goes live.
I'm communicating a lot with podcasters, web3 devs and schools for platform promotion, and other blockchains for integration. Everyone is interested in it, I never met negative reaction on my proposal to cooperate.
We still hold the aces to make it right I think, and plenty of time to build our strategy of platform promotion, once it goes live. Because, it all eventually comes down to its release.
 
@kot I know nothing about surfboards so I searched and found this:

"Remember to try to sell your surfboard in the right season. There will be more interested buyers in Malibu and fish boards during summer and more potential buyers for high-performance sticks during the winter season."

I like your analogy but the only way I see this applying to dash is if we intentionally delay a product release for a planned and coordinated campaign. Nothing wrong with this, but I suggest that certain updates - such as governance - should be released ASAP for reasons of network effect. Take, for example, "one dash proposals". I would argue that this delayed feature has negatively impacted us i.e. we failed to attract more treasury contractors when we needed them most. The feature can still be marketed later - and we may consider the best timing - but I suppose what I'm saying is, there is a balance to be made because of lost opportunities.
 
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@qwizzie , @GrandMasterDash ,

Thanks for your input and opinion.
Despite the fact that I share your opinions, I think we, as a project and community, could not afford ignoring CMC. Mainly for two reasons:
  1. CMC is the first place, where majority of crypto investors, users and press go to verify the project and build their opinion about it. No matter how we hate it, CMC position is a big indicator for all people in crypto. If we ignore that simple fact, market will ignore us.
  2. We are heavily dependent on the price of coin. Only if position is higher, there will be money for development, dapps and new projects in the ecosystem. Higher position is a must imo
As mentioned before...we do run the risk of solely focusing on development and not proper marketing. As you are also one of the OG's in this project, in the years you were in DCG, what were the discussions on how to approach this. I'm sure there was frustration with the lack of traction...but there must of been some high level discussions as what could be done to curb the slip DASH suffered.

Moving forward...how do you think this could be best addressed?

Richard
 
Dear Dash Community Members,

I would like to offer my thoughts about the project direction and possible changes we, as a project and community, should consider. I am not writing this to demand changes but rather offer my point of view and have productive conversation about the project's future.

I think Dash needs some corrections on strategic and operational levels and I would like to present some of my propositions on this matter. I am not going to argue with those who think the direction of the project is correct - this is not my intention.
The intention of this post is to focus on improvements and a better future of the project. This only - no fights, unproductive arguments and finger-pointing.

Few years ago, when Evan was still around, the brilliant idea of Evolution was created. At that time Dash was already a payments-focused project and Evolution was going to be a great supplement for the project's strategy. It was going to be a Venmo-like wallet run on blockchain. Sadly, Evan left the project and other engineers continued his work. Simple solution (wallet with user names and list of friends) grew to the idea of a development platform and DashPay wallet. According to the development teams, it was supposed to take only a few months to develop the platform and wallet, so the management team made a decision to go into that direction, despite possible delays. From the business perspective it was much more attractive and the estimated difference in the delivery time (3-6 months, according to the devs) was insignificant, compared to the possible advantages. It was 2018 - you know the rest very well.

2018 was also a year when the market crashed and DCG had to make many difficult decisions about the budget and headcount. The development teams constantly assured us about the relatively quick delivery time of the platform, management made a decision to focus on technology delivery, and not on other equally important iniatiatives such as marketing, comms, bizdev. All of our efforts and funds were used to retain developers and deliver Evo. This approach has not changed to this day and I consider it to be a mistake. I confess that as a member of senior management I am also guilty that it was kept this way for such a long time.

Crypto industry evolved, markets evolved, communities evolved but Dash remained narrowly focused on Evolution delivery and focused solely on developers and delivering the best possible technology. We can see now that it was not a perfect choice - markets punished us hard for this choice.

In my opinion changes in the current strategy and direction are necessary, if the Dash network wants to survive and thrive. We have always heard from our devs that good tech is going to defend itself and eventually will be recognized by the markets. I think the reality does not support this claim anymore. We have probably the best tech in the industry and despite this, the project is slowly fading (from the market perspective). Much (technologically) weaker projects managed to explode in the space - projects that are still in development, or completely without development, constantly failing (eg. stopped blockchains) are much more recognized and have a much better position in the industry. I think we should stop ignoring markets? and put more focus on what is working for other projects. And follow. Let's not repeat the same mistakes, expecting different outcomes.

It seems like the common thing to successful projects in our space is not a great tech, perfect decentralisation, sophisticated solutions and focus on development but instead:
  1. Focus on promotion and marketing
  2. Consistent, effective and incremental technology development and delivery
  3. Welcoming and enthusiastic communities around the world

So what, in my opinion, could we change?

1. More promotion and marketing
We already have great tech - there is no doubt about it. And almost no one knows about it. I am pretty sure that there is no need to create more new products or more sophisticated tech-oriented solutions. What is needed instead is cheering on what we are having, comparing to the competitors, screaming how good we are, creating videos, memes, messages etc. We have a lot to talk about.

After the expected platform release, I think there will be no necessity to put more money and effort into developing more tech. I think that much better use of the network money would be to spend it on promotion. It doesn't mean that we should stop development - no. I think we should limit money spent on development for a year or two and redirect this money towards promotion and marketing. Existing development teams should not be expanded but focus more on documentation, marketing support and actively participate in the promotion efforts (e.g. by doing videos, samples, tutorials, joining development communities and promoting our tech). Their help will be largely needed to promote the platform in the development community.

Recent changes in DCG communications and growing efforts on the community side created a solid foundation for better promotion. This created a constant flow of Dash-related information, increased visibility of the project and it should be definitely continued.
I think what is missing is a professional marketing campaign, driven by experienced agencies and/or people, who have experience in the field.
Dash needs good promotion and recognition - and there are people out there, who could help us to achieve it. In my opinion we don’t need perfection, we don’t need more experiments with DAO, we don’t need radical transparency, we don’t need more tech etc. We have made many of those experiments and we are pioneers in many things. However, we don’t have to be pioneers in everything and constantly experiment.
Let’s simply use the tools that work. Traditional marketing works.

So what would be my proposition here?
  1. Continue community and DCG efforts in constant flow of messages, communication and promotion. This is a great foundation and starts working well.
  2. When the platform is launched, move developers to promote it in the development community, create videos, visual materials, code samples, tutorials, great docs, articles, participate in conferences and hackathons and engage in discussions with other devs. Just don’t stay hidden in the caves or create more and more features - we don’t need more.
  3. As a supplement for the foundation, from time to time (not constantly) launch campaigns with professional agencies. Good example is Coca-Cola and their summer campaigns. When the time is right - which in our case is a bull market - we should push hard. Agencies from the industry know how to do it - they successfully promoted many projects. Let’s use their experience, hire them and work together. There is no magic in that - one or two experienced PMs could coordinate these efforts. What is needed is money. We could collect the funds earlier - slowly, to not drain the budget, and prepare for the right time.
    What is important is to not do these campaigns during the bear market - it would be a total waste of money.
2. Less focus on tech and developers
Just to be clear - by writing “developers” in this post, I mean all functions within DCG that are responsible for the code: developers, tech leads and CTO.

It is not easy to say but it needs to be said. Simple and straightforward - for a couple of years this project has been kept hostage by developers. And this needs to be changed.

As mentioned above, in 2018 the Dash network and DCG became focused on developers and gave them a lot of power and independence. And since then we were hearing that we need 3-6 months to deliver. We have GREAT developers but we also have problems with developers and the delivery process. It requires changes - the good thing is that those changes are easy to do.

The biggest of our problems is that developers are cheered, almost worshipped, despite not delivering as promised and not kept accountable for that. We have always shielded our devs. As a result, they do whatever they want, without focus on the delivery but with focus on development instead. If you let developers drive the project, they will do what they do the best - they will develop the code (the more sophisticated and geeky, the better) as development is fun for them - but this is not necessarily what the project needs. We need timely delivery, releases and products - not more and more super-complicated code.
This should be acknowledged and changed. We need results and delivery, not development for the sake of developing code.

There were tons of books written about why you should not give developers power to lead the project and product development. I am not going to repeat that - DYOR. Great summary of this is this the tweet from Andreas - it reflects our situation very well:
Just watch the latest 2-3 sprint reviews and you’ll know what I am talking about.

Our efforts should NOT be focused on developing code. Focus should be on delivering products and explaining why these products have value. Value to investors, users and also external developers. Great code is great but this code should serve the purpose of giving value to our users (not just giving fun to developers). And also encourage potential investors to buy Dash. This is really important - don’t ignore the power of the markets.

So I propose to apply the following changes in the delivery process:
  • Delivery excellence should be the key. Keep developers accountable for what they do and what they promise. Make sure they understand the goal of what we are doing (and this goal is not to develop as much code as possible to be clear)
  • Replace those, who don’t deliver like they promised or are unreliable. Accidental failures can be tolerated, constant failures and broken promises not.
  • Let other people do what they should do and let them control developers. We have other people, who could improve the delivery process a lot - let them work and not interfere. Scrum Masters should oversee the development process. Product Owners should control product roadmaps and delivery of products. SMs and POs should oversee and control developers, not the other way around.
  • Create a clear vision of what is going to be delivered and explain what is done already. In a simple language, understandable for the average person. Geeky, tech language is counterproductive in the long run - people don’t understand that.
  • Better plan of the releases. Avoid big releases (platform is a great example of that mistake) and plan small, incremental releases instead.
  • No releases during the bear market (or at least minimal number of releases). Bear market annihilates the positive impact of the releases - we have experienced this already. Market situation has a big impact on the project and Bitcoin dictates the market situation. Follow the market.
  • Last but not least - put the right people in charge and give them power to apply necessary changes. Even if those changes are difficult. If we don’t want to have more years of development but effective delivery instead, changes are absolutely necessary. Start from CEO - in my opinion it should be a market-, business- and user-oriented individual with a good understanding of financial business. We should only consider a person whose primary objective is the quick delivery of a platform.
  • On the other hand, if you think everything is great, any changes are unnecessary.

There is also an option to contract an external party, completely detached from the project, to make an audit and assessment of the technology development situation in DCG. They would create a report and suggest necessary changes - this is not uncommon and there are many consulting companies doing such assessments of agile companies. It is also not expensive. I would strongly recommend considering this to gain an external perspective on the internal challenges instead of relying solely on DCG internal developers opinions as those may be biased.
3. Community evolution
I think we also need change and evolution in our community. I remember well what a great community we were. Community is a vital part of the project and the backbone of it. We don’t need politics, manipulation, “transparency”, “investigations” etc. Dash needs enthusiastic and positive people who are all working together to make the Dash network successful..
I am not going to write a big elaborate entry here. Let’s just eliminate negativity and those who create it - it doesn’t serve the project in any positive way. Let’s focus on building a positive message, supporting those who do things, being welcoming to new people, inspiring positive change, supporting each other, and spreading the word about the project. I think you know very well what I mean here.

If you managed to read this to this moment - thank you very much. Please let me know what your opinion is about the changes needed for Dash.
I am happy to have a productive discussion and help make necessary changes, as I have much more free time now, and care deeply about this project.

Robert
I'm willing to shift focus, as long as we never ever compromise decentralization. Without this, Dash is nothing.
 
@kot, thank you for your support, it means a lot to me! I’m really happy and proud to be part of the team behind Dash.

I believe we can do more for Dash, talk more and get more people involved.

Let me explain my point about agencies. OFC there are good and bad ones. But crypto is a quite specific industry, and classic marketing stuff may simply not work here. A particular expensive agency may have tons of successful case studies with big brands, but all them may mean nothing if they have no experience in crypto with its specific audience and behavior.

The previous fintech I worked at (not crypto) hired the best agency in our region for content and SEO stuff. These guys built their strategy only by using SEMrush's (marketing software for paid campaigns and organic promotion, yet another service I worked at before lol) algorithm analytics. The problem was that SEMrush and similar services just analyze keyword databases to suggest competitors to beat, but this information is not enough for building an actionable content strategy. Because one cannot be a competitor of Wikipedia, or Investopedia, if we’re talking about fintech. The guys from the agency didn’t care much about that and built content strategy based on that data which was completely wrong and led us nowhere.

And this is just one of such cases.

I believe there are many crypto-focused agencies, but it’s hard to tell how many scams there might be. I’m only saying that we gotta be super picky when it comes to working with an agency.

Regarding the internal team, you're absolutely right. I think I have a solution that might work for DCG. I wanted to tell about it a bit later (once there’s some proven track record at least), but since we’re talking about marketing changes right now I can’t help but tell you about DashWorks.

This is a DashIncubator fork we want to propose with the guys from DMH. Basically, DashWorks is a small team consisting of me, Doeke Koedijk, and Sam Kirby as mods. We aim to create and deliver valuable output for Dash. Anyone can join DashWorks and contribute to Dash for reasonable costs. DashWorks workflow is still under construction, but I think it can be a great solution for our further marketing efforts. DashWorks may put all organizations together and produce collective outputs.

IMO, we gotta focus on our strategy first, set up goals, spread roles, and see what tools we can use right now given short budget, market bloodbath, etc. Maybe it sounds too obvious, but that's just the way it is.

What do you think?
Where can I learn more. I know nothing about marketing, so need simple explanation :p
 
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