Climbing the Blockchain Adoption Ladder
Dear Dash investor,
We are in the process of securing one of our most important partnerships to date from an adoption and business development perspective and we need your support to complete it.
Background
In order to understand the significance we must provide some background on the industry as a whole. Dash’s business development team spends considerable time understanding the business needs of industry participants and building an understanding of the structure of the industry. Through our engagement with both existing partners and prospects, we’ve developed a deep organization-wide understanding of the drivers for business development in the industry. To illustrate our perspective we developed a concept we are calling the “Blockchain Industry Adoption Ladder”:
Level 1 – Core Development / Blockchain Payment Network
All new cryptocurrency advancements are born at level 1, the core development level, and thus we focus a large amount of Dash resources here. Without creating new value for the industry, merchants, and users, there is little sense in building and promoting a new digital currency network.
We create features like InstantSend, PrivateSend, Masternodes, and Evolution to differentiate our network and deliver functionality to address market needs. While these features are innovative and exciting for the future of Dash and the industry, they can’t really reach end-user adoption without climbing the adoption ladder first.
In Dash, we are experimenting at the protocol level in innovative ways but we are also defining a clear path for adoption of our network and its features that should help us climb the blockchain industry ladder as described above in figure 1.
We are also making sure we align our technical developments with the business needs of the market by creating tools and services that are necessary for real commercial adoption of Dash in the blockchain start-up environment.
Level 2 - Blockchain Interfacing Tools
The next step up the adoption ladder is creating appropriate blockchain interfacing tools so that industry actors can plug into the Dash blockchain more easily. Dash decided to build a network that was compatible with the currently dominating protocol (BTC) so that it could benefit from the network effects we are all creating as an industry. We avoid going into protocol development directions that would make Dash incompatible with the more popular blockchain interfacing tools available and decided to build towards the current blockchain industry instead of away from it. Most of the differences with our protocol such as InstantSend are simply additional features with incremental tools.
Last year there was a strong focus on this by porting all important tools and libraries that make integration into the Dash network easier. Including bringing some of Dash’s unique features like Instant Send to this level. We now have libraries and tools updated for Dash that make life easier for services that want to interact with the DASH blockchain e.g. multicoin wallets, mobile wallets, multisig and spv based services.
As an example,
Insight API (along with the rest of the Bitcore platform) has been ported to Dash:
https://github.com/dashpay/bitcore-dash
https://github.com/dashpay/insight-api-dash
https://github.com/TradeGuild/trade-manager
https://github.com/WalletGuild/desw
InstantSend is fully supported by Insight API / Bitcore:
● InstantSend Whitepaper
● Insight API Integration
Without this layer, it would be much more difficult and costly for businesses like multi-blockchain wallets to integrate with the blockchain protocol layer. Also, added value user features like InstantSend that are born at the protocol level need to climb the adoption ladder in order to really become available for end users.
The “blockchain interfacing tools” level is where Dash has operated until now. Even at this level, integration with new services is not a trivial exercise for many businesses, especially those that are outside the cryptocurrecy industry and lack associated expertise. For example, these integrations typically require hosting full nodes and other associated infrastructure with which these businesses lack expertise. Several well-intentioned partnerships have been delayed due to these implementation challenges.
Level 3 - BLOCKCHAIN B2B API WEB SERVICES
The blockchain industry is rapidly evolving from a business perspective and it is very important for the future of Dash to stay aware of how blockchain start-ups and B2B services are interacting with each other and the interdependencies they have to produce user-oriented services that will lead digital currencies to the mainstream. B2B services are frequently a gateway to accessing these user-oriented services.
Through the years we have been focusing more and more in our business development efforts. This fall, we surveyed the entire landscape of the existing ecosystem and developed a targeted strategy for buildout of Dash’s integrations. This will shift Dash from reacting to opportunities to proactively driving adoption in an intentional and prioritized manner. Recently, we began aggressively approaching end user service providers with our unique value proposition, and asking them to start accepting Dash for their service. This has included exchanges, gift card selling services, cell phone top up services, US based debit cards, crypto-gold exchanges, brokers, etc.
The reaction has been very positive. We are quite successful in getting many of these user services to say “yes” to Dash. Once they agree from a business perspective to integrate Dash, we next need to evaluate the mechanics of integration. That is where challenges frequently arise, because up until now we have had no blockchain API web services available. There is an important reason why this is an issue: most of the crypto user oriented services are not running their own bitcoind or Bitcoin Core. Almost all are using 3rd party API web services to handle all the interaction with the Bitcoin blockchain, to a higher or lower degree, depending on the nature of their service. This includes most of the brand name start-ups in the industry.
This constitutes a glass ceiling for altcoin projects other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. The only services that altcoins can aspire to without this 3rd party Blockchain web service providers are those that by the nature of their business benefit from adding multiple currencies. This is only exchanges and multi-coin wallets. No other mainstream user oriented service is going to go through the hassle of running altcoin infrastructure when they are not even doing it for Bitcoin and most lack the internal resources and expertise to do so.
Who are the 3rd party Blockchain web services infrastructure providers that are servicing the whole industry?
There are two companies that constitute the vast majority of the market share for these API services. They are both VC funded, larger type start-ups out of California: Bitgo.com and Blockcypher.com
SOLUTION
We have been looking for a solution to this issue in depth for the past few weeks. It has been part of many of our conversations in our weekly team calls. We have evaluated many options to address this need, including the existing service providers, or even running our own service.
Running an internal service carries many risks. It would expose Dash’s network to reputational risk should any downtime to service level issues be encountered by our API service. It would distract the team from focusing on development of our payment network itself.
We have contacted both Bitgo and Blockcypher and we are actively negotiating a mutually beneficial arrangement. We believe that an integration with an existing provider offers many benefits beyond the availability of the service itself in the form of (i) reputational gains of joining Bitcoin and Ethereum as the only networks integrated with one of these brand-name services, (ii) potential to integrate Dash into existing customers (e.g., cross-selling) without changing technical architecture, (iii) faster time to market with an API solution, (iv) service provider preference to work with a single established API vendor, and (v) offering market-leading expertise compared with building our own solution from scratch.
At this time, we are nearing an agreement with BlockCypher and should be able to announce the details soon.
Who is using Blockcypher?
Just to give you an idea of how important these 3rd party API Web services providers, here are some of Blockcypher’s clients: Purse.io, Xapo, Coinbase, Verse, Bitrefill, Sfox, Shocard, KeepKey, Meco, Shapeshift, Fold, Blinktrade, Joystream, Coinify, Coinhako, Netki, Coinprism, Vaultoro, Bitkassa, Abra, Bitquick, Deloitte, Bitpagos, Quid, Volabit, Mexbt, BTCfacil, Bitwage, Coineza, Coinjar, Paxful, OKCoin, Paystand and many more.
Those are only some of the ones publicly displayed on their website, there are actually a lot more that are not featured and others that work with Bitgo.
What would Blockcypher start offering for Dash accepting services?
BlockCypher will integrate with the Dash Payment Network and provide the following web services:
● Asset API - issue & handle assets on the blockchain
● Data Endpoint - place data or a hash on a blockchain
● Multiple Address Wallet API - multiple addresses under single wallet name
● Multisignature API - multiple signature key management
● Payment Forwarding API - forward, consolidate, add commissions to payments
● Transaction API - build transactions easily
● WebHooks and WebSockets - monitoring & notifications on blockchain events
BlockCypher will support the current fork of Bitcoin 12.0 for Dash v. 0.12.1. Additional support for Masternodes (and InstantSend) are not part of this proposal and will be considered at a later time and will be driven based on BlockCypher’s business customer demand.
What else is part of the partnership?
Part of the requirements for this to happen go beyond just covering the integrations costs. We would be going into a more in-depth partnership where our bizdev team would be selling together with the BlockCypher team in all the opportunities that we have accumulated that were missing an API Blockchain Web service provider. So a lot of our focus going forward from a sales perspective would be bringing the BlockCypher team to help implement once a new potential user service says yes to Dash. This should also help offload some of our internal resources, so the business team needs less direct support from Evolution developers.
The second part of the strategy is for us to approach BlockCypher’s existing clients so they can start accepting Dash. Accepting Dash would become a much easier process for the clients since it would just be extending the setup they already have for Bitcoin. We believe this is a superior strategy than expecting the brand name start-ups to go out of their way to start running Dash-specific infrastructure they are simply not running for Bitcoin directly.
Finally, BlockCypher is also requesting a commitment from Dash to participate in conferences and events together. For now a tentative calendar could be:
Attendance (with session) and booth at the following conferences, providing BlockCypher with a pass:
○ Blockchain 360, Santa Clara, May 16-18
○ Consensus, New York, May 22-24
○ Money 2020, Las Vegas, October 22-25
What are the costs of the investment?
Our director of finance will be putting a proposal out soon as part of the normal budget cycle with all the details of the funding requirements to finance the integrations costs and making this service available to the Dash ecosystem. Costs will be comparable to other significant integration efforts we’ve funded in the past.
What do we need from the Dash community?
What we need from you is mainly committing the time to learn about the industry’s underlying structure (which by reading this post you can fulfill), and of course providing your buy-in and support for the associated proposal. Also, please check out the Blockcypher.com website and get a bit familiar with what they do and the clients they serve.
Finally, I would strongly recommend listening to this interview with Catheryne Nicholson, CEO of Blockcypher. The interview is from March 2015 but if you listen for 15 mins it will give you a much better understanding of why this is important for us.
LEVEL 4 - BLOCKCHAIN END-USER SERVICES
We already have a number of end-user services that have agreed to add Dash, and once we have resolved the absence of a level 3 service through our Blockcypher partnership, we will focus first on initiating and completing the backlog of integrations where this was a road block.
Immediately after this we will start approaching new opportunities, but now with a complete solution that should allow any interested service that we encounter to complete a Dash integration in a easy, seamless, and cost effective manner.
NEW DASH TEAM MEMBER
Our project keeps growing and we would like to welcome Matthew Meek to the business development team. Matthew is working closely with me and has greatly expanded our business development capacity.
Matt (AKA itscrazybro) is a entrepreneur with a flare for business, marketing and sales. He co-founded an advertising agency that now services over 200 local businesses in his area. He has multiple years experience in sales, business development and product management.
[email protected]
Dear Dash investor,
We are in the process of securing one of our most important partnerships to date from an adoption and business development perspective and we need your support to complete it.
Background
In order to understand the significance we must provide some background on the industry as a whole. Dash’s business development team spends considerable time understanding the business needs of industry participants and building an understanding of the structure of the industry. Through our engagement with both existing partners and prospects, we’ve developed a deep organization-wide understanding of the drivers for business development in the industry. To illustrate our perspective we developed a concept we are calling the “Blockchain Industry Adoption Ladder”:
Level 1 – Core Development / Blockchain Payment Network
All new cryptocurrency advancements are born at level 1, the core development level, and thus we focus a large amount of Dash resources here. Without creating new value for the industry, merchants, and users, there is little sense in building and promoting a new digital currency network.
We create features like InstantSend, PrivateSend, Masternodes, and Evolution to differentiate our network and deliver functionality to address market needs. While these features are innovative and exciting for the future of Dash and the industry, they can’t really reach end-user adoption without climbing the adoption ladder first.
In Dash, we are experimenting at the protocol level in innovative ways but we are also defining a clear path for adoption of our network and its features that should help us climb the blockchain industry ladder as described above in figure 1.
We are also making sure we align our technical developments with the business needs of the market by creating tools and services that are necessary for real commercial adoption of Dash in the blockchain start-up environment.
Level 2 - Blockchain Interfacing Tools
The next step up the adoption ladder is creating appropriate blockchain interfacing tools so that industry actors can plug into the Dash blockchain more easily. Dash decided to build a network that was compatible with the currently dominating protocol (BTC) so that it could benefit from the network effects we are all creating as an industry. We avoid going into protocol development directions that would make Dash incompatible with the more popular blockchain interfacing tools available and decided to build towards the current blockchain industry instead of away from it. Most of the differences with our protocol such as InstantSend are simply additional features with incremental tools.
Last year there was a strong focus on this by porting all important tools and libraries that make integration into the Dash network easier. Including bringing some of Dash’s unique features like Instant Send to this level. We now have libraries and tools updated for Dash that make life easier for services that want to interact with the DASH blockchain e.g. multicoin wallets, mobile wallets, multisig and spv based services.
As an example,
Insight API (along with the rest of the Bitcore platform) has been ported to Dash:
https://github.com/dashpay/bitcore-dash
https://github.com/dashpay/insight-api-dash
https://github.com/TradeGuild/trade-manager
https://github.com/WalletGuild/desw
InstantSend is fully supported by Insight API / Bitcore:
● InstantSend Whitepaper
● Insight API Integration
Without this layer, it would be much more difficult and costly for businesses like multi-blockchain wallets to integrate with the blockchain protocol layer. Also, added value user features like InstantSend that are born at the protocol level need to climb the adoption ladder in order to really become available for end users.
The “blockchain interfacing tools” level is where Dash has operated until now. Even at this level, integration with new services is not a trivial exercise for many businesses, especially those that are outside the cryptocurrecy industry and lack associated expertise. For example, these integrations typically require hosting full nodes and other associated infrastructure with which these businesses lack expertise. Several well-intentioned partnerships have been delayed due to these implementation challenges.
Level 3 - BLOCKCHAIN B2B API WEB SERVICES
The blockchain industry is rapidly evolving from a business perspective and it is very important for the future of Dash to stay aware of how blockchain start-ups and B2B services are interacting with each other and the interdependencies they have to produce user-oriented services that will lead digital currencies to the mainstream. B2B services are frequently a gateway to accessing these user-oriented services.
Through the years we have been focusing more and more in our business development efforts. This fall, we surveyed the entire landscape of the existing ecosystem and developed a targeted strategy for buildout of Dash’s integrations. This will shift Dash from reacting to opportunities to proactively driving adoption in an intentional and prioritized manner. Recently, we began aggressively approaching end user service providers with our unique value proposition, and asking them to start accepting Dash for their service. This has included exchanges, gift card selling services, cell phone top up services, US based debit cards, crypto-gold exchanges, brokers, etc.
The reaction has been very positive. We are quite successful in getting many of these user services to say “yes” to Dash. Once they agree from a business perspective to integrate Dash, we next need to evaluate the mechanics of integration. That is where challenges frequently arise, because up until now we have had no blockchain API web services available. There is an important reason why this is an issue: most of the crypto user oriented services are not running their own bitcoind or Bitcoin Core. Almost all are using 3rd party API web services to handle all the interaction with the Bitcoin blockchain, to a higher or lower degree, depending on the nature of their service. This includes most of the brand name start-ups in the industry.
This constitutes a glass ceiling for altcoin projects other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. The only services that altcoins can aspire to without this 3rd party Blockchain web service providers are those that by the nature of their business benefit from adding multiple currencies. This is only exchanges and multi-coin wallets. No other mainstream user oriented service is going to go through the hassle of running altcoin infrastructure when they are not even doing it for Bitcoin and most lack the internal resources and expertise to do so.
Who are the 3rd party Blockchain web services infrastructure providers that are servicing the whole industry?
There are two companies that constitute the vast majority of the market share for these API services. They are both VC funded, larger type start-ups out of California: Bitgo.com and Blockcypher.com
SOLUTION
We have been looking for a solution to this issue in depth for the past few weeks. It has been part of many of our conversations in our weekly team calls. We have evaluated many options to address this need, including the existing service providers, or even running our own service.
Running an internal service carries many risks. It would expose Dash’s network to reputational risk should any downtime to service level issues be encountered by our API service. It would distract the team from focusing on development of our payment network itself.
We have contacted both Bitgo and Blockcypher and we are actively negotiating a mutually beneficial arrangement. We believe that an integration with an existing provider offers many benefits beyond the availability of the service itself in the form of (i) reputational gains of joining Bitcoin and Ethereum as the only networks integrated with one of these brand-name services, (ii) potential to integrate Dash into existing customers (e.g., cross-selling) without changing technical architecture, (iii) faster time to market with an API solution, (iv) service provider preference to work with a single established API vendor, and (v) offering market-leading expertise compared with building our own solution from scratch.
At this time, we are nearing an agreement with BlockCypher and should be able to announce the details soon.
Who is using Blockcypher?
Just to give you an idea of how important these 3rd party API Web services providers, here are some of Blockcypher’s clients: Purse.io, Xapo, Coinbase, Verse, Bitrefill, Sfox, Shocard, KeepKey, Meco, Shapeshift, Fold, Blinktrade, Joystream, Coinify, Coinhako, Netki, Coinprism, Vaultoro, Bitkassa, Abra, Bitquick, Deloitte, Bitpagos, Quid, Volabit, Mexbt, BTCfacil, Bitwage, Coineza, Coinjar, Paxful, OKCoin, Paystand and many more.
Those are only some of the ones publicly displayed on their website, there are actually a lot more that are not featured and others that work with Bitgo.
What would Blockcypher start offering for Dash accepting services?
BlockCypher will integrate with the Dash Payment Network and provide the following web services:
● Asset API - issue & handle assets on the blockchain
● Data Endpoint - place data or a hash on a blockchain
● Multiple Address Wallet API - multiple addresses under single wallet name
● Multisignature API - multiple signature key management
● Payment Forwarding API - forward, consolidate, add commissions to payments
● Transaction API - build transactions easily
● WebHooks and WebSockets - monitoring & notifications on blockchain events
BlockCypher will support the current fork of Bitcoin 12.0 for Dash v. 0.12.1. Additional support for Masternodes (and InstantSend) are not part of this proposal and will be considered at a later time and will be driven based on BlockCypher’s business customer demand.
What else is part of the partnership?
Part of the requirements for this to happen go beyond just covering the integrations costs. We would be going into a more in-depth partnership where our bizdev team would be selling together with the BlockCypher team in all the opportunities that we have accumulated that were missing an API Blockchain Web service provider. So a lot of our focus going forward from a sales perspective would be bringing the BlockCypher team to help implement once a new potential user service says yes to Dash. This should also help offload some of our internal resources, so the business team needs less direct support from Evolution developers.
The second part of the strategy is for us to approach BlockCypher’s existing clients so they can start accepting Dash. Accepting Dash would become a much easier process for the clients since it would just be extending the setup they already have for Bitcoin. We believe this is a superior strategy than expecting the brand name start-ups to go out of their way to start running Dash-specific infrastructure they are simply not running for Bitcoin directly.
Finally, BlockCypher is also requesting a commitment from Dash to participate in conferences and events together. For now a tentative calendar could be:
Attendance (with session) and booth at the following conferences, providing BlockCypher with a pass:
○ Blockchain 360, Santa Clara, May 16-18
○ Consensus, New York, May 22-24
○ Money 2020, Las Vegas, October 22-25
What are the costs of the investment?
Our director of finance will be putting a proposal out soon as part of the normal budget cycle with all the details of the funding requirements to finance the integrations costs and making this service available to the Dash ecosystem. Costs will be comparable to other significant integration efforts we’ve funded in the past.
What do we need from the Dash community?
What we need from you is mainly committing the time to learn about the industry’s underlying structure (which by reading this post you can fulfill), and of course providing your buy-in and support for the associated proposal. Also, please check out the Blockcypher.com website and get a bit familiar with what they do and the clients they serve.
Finally, I would strongly recommend listening to this interview with Catheryne Nicholson, CEO of Blockcypher. The interview is from March 2015 but if you listen for 15 mins it will give you a much better understanding of why this is important for us.
LEVEL 4 - BLOCKCHAIN END-USER SERVICES
We already have a number of end-user services that have agreed to add Dash, and once we have resolved the absence of a level 3 service through our Blockcypher partnership, we will focus first on initiating and completing the backlog of integrations where this was a road block.
Immediately after this we will start approaching new opportunities, but now with a complete solution that should allow any interested service that we encounter to complete a Dash integration in a easy, seamless, and cost effective manner.
NEW DASH TEAM MEMBER
Our project keeps growing and we would like to welcome Matthew Meek to the business development team. Matthew is working closely with me and has greatly expanded our business development capacity.
Matt (AKA itscrazybro) is a entrepreneur with a flare for business, marketing and sales. He co-founded an advertising agency that now services over 200 local businesses in his area. He has multiple years experience in sales, business development and product management.
[email protected]
