A Potential Goldmine: Making The #FirstDashWallet Campaign Permanent

[GrandMasterDash]

I agree it's been a successful campaign, however, let's not be lazy and simply repeating things. When you consider all the great innovators and creative minds; they didn't just have one-hit-wonders, they re-imagined and re-invented themselves; Michael Jackson, Madonna, Steve Jobs... every single one of them came back with something fresh and that's what differentiated them, made them superstars.

So let's just give Amanda the space to innovate and progress.

But also, let's keep in mind that Apple could never be the same without Jobs. Amanda is equally a potential liability because in many ways she is the face of dash. If Amanda is not here tomorrow, how would dash be perceived? - how would it affect the price of dash? And with that in mind, I think it would be money better spent if we could find more Amanda's. Let's get some diversity and let's keep trying new things.

 

[AndyDark]

Andy, thanks a lot for the thoughtful response.

I read through the article you provided, and it sounds like the main pitfall in early scaling is that startups burn through funds they'll need for later. In the case of Dash, it works in reverse, for the most part. Each month, the funds either get used or burnt, and renewed the next month. What I'm suggesting is that all funds be reinvested towards gaining more investors now, so that when we need a larger marketing budget for Evolution in the future, we've planned ahead. New investment now will be used to market Evolution later.

I agree that getting people in at the user level will not be nearly as valuable as gaining new investors at this moment.

There is some difference of opinion here, but I think ourselves and many MNOs would prefer to continue to support Core completely and entirely instead of creating political parties over this issue. If this issue isn't addressed, it's a guarantee that it will become a governance issue and be brought to more and more contentious votes, but we'd prefer that it never got to that level.

Somebody should be picking up this leftover $1M per month and putting it to efficient use. A pump or hype is not what we are after, but we are interested in making sure that Dash wins its fair share of the new investment money that is flowing into crypto right now. We will need it for Dash's many battles to come.

If Core is not interested in utilizing more than its R&D portion of the budget, I think Dash would benefit by, at least, receiving some guidance as to what other large Dash teams could be doing to put that money to use. We could all benefit from a coordinated strategy which puts Dash's ample treasury to use. Nobody wants to step on Core's toes if there is a better plan for this money.

There is clearly a cap on how much can be thrown at programming, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to utilize nearly $1M/mo in surplus funds that would otherwise just be burnt each month. If Core has no ideas of how that money can be spent effectively, though, that is a different and bigger problem.

Thanks again for taking this issue seriously and responding. We are very grateful for your work and focus with R&D.

Many of us keep waiting for Core to take this gigantic budget, invest every dollar (that's not going into R&D) right into productive marketing, such as Google, Bing, Reddit pay-per-click ads.

"What I'm suggesting is that all funds be reinvested towards gaining more investors now, so that when we need a larger marketing budget for Evolution in the future, we've planned ahead."

That's really not what you were saying at all. What you said was:

"Many of us keep waiting for Core to take this gigantic budget, invest every dollar (that's not going into R&D) right into productive marketing, such as Google, Bing, Reddit pay-per-click ads. Until the day that Core realizes that this surplus money needs to be reinvested into aggressive outreach and marketing to new investors, I think Tao's vision of surplus reinvestment into an evolving #FirstDashWallet campaign is brilliant, and we support it."

I.e. marketing now, not saving the funds for Evolution, and your contacting the Core team on seperate channels to do this also - my point again - heavily marketing a product for mass market before Evolution is just going to hurt our ability to market something people can actually use in future. Second, the Core Team should not be responsible for marketting - we have zero marketing activities because our job is producing secure, scalable open-source software, this role needs to be protected and not involved in trying to draw noob users just to invest when we haven't released our main product yet.

"We've run blockchain analysis on several large samples of the payment addresses to see what's going on."

Care to share that? How did you know people are giving Dash to friends? That would be interesting analysis.

BTW who are you exactly? New to Dash? Masternode owner? You seem to be connecting with quite a few people and influencing various strategies, pushing agressive marketing strategy, emailing the core team trying to get us to do same? Care to share some info?

 

[IronVape]

@dashdisciple are you saying that Amanda has given you the raw data for analysis? Where was the data posted? @amanda_b_johnson how can I get a pre-release copy of your results?

 

[AndyDark]

I agree it's been a successful campaign, however, let's not be lazy and simply repeating things. When you consider all the great innovators and creative minds; they didn't just have one-hit-wonders, they re-imagined and re-invented themselves; Michael Jackson, Madonna, Steve Jobs... every single one of them came back with something fresh and that's what differentiated them, made them superstars.

So let's just give Amanda the space to innovate and progress.

But also, let's keep in mind that Apple could never be the same without Jobs. Amanda is equally a potential liability because in many ways she is the face of dash. If Amanda is not here tomorrow, how would dash be perceived? - how would it affect the price of dash? And with that in mind, I think it would be money better spent if we could find more Amanda's. Let's get some diversity and let's keep trying new things.

"So let's just give Amanda the space to innovate and progress."

this... Amanda is one of the great innovators in Dash, using blockchain funding to make potential users aware of Dash through education and honest assesment of the value and technology from a real-world user perspective so users can decide for themselves, with great original content. That's an instruction on decentralized governance to everyone in this space how this technology can grow with the right incentives model and decentralization. It's up to Amanda what Amanda does and like all innovators in Dash we should support and let them try things and see what works and what helps us grow into a mainstream currency.

 

[dashdisciple]

"What I'm suggesting is that all funds be reinvested towards gaining more investors now, so that when we need a larger marketing budget for Evolution in the future, we've planned ahead."

That's really not what you were saying at all. What you said was:

"Many of us keep waiting for Core to take this gigantic budget, invest every dollar (that's not going into R&D) right into productive marketing, such as Google, Bing, Reddit pay-per-click ads. Until the day that Core realizes that this surplus money needs to be reinvested into aggressive outreach and marketing to new investors, I think Tao's vision of surplus reinvestment into an evolving #FirstDashWallet campaign is brilliant, and we support it."

I.e. marketing now, not saving the funds for Evolution, and your contacting the Core team on seperate channels to do this also - my point again - heavily marketing a product for mass market before Evolution is just going to hurt our ability to market something people can actually use in future. Second, the Core Team should not be responsible for marketting - we have zero marketing activities because our job is producing secure, scalable open-source software, this role needs to be protected and not involved in trying to draw noob users just to invest when we haven't released our main product yet.

"We've run blockchain analysis on several large samples of the payment addresses to see what's going on."

Care to share that? How did you know people are giving Dash to friends? That would be interesting analysis.

BTW who are you exactly? New to Dash? Masternode owner? You seem to be connecting with quite a few people and influencing various strategies, pushing agressive marketing strategy, emailing the core team trying to get us to do same? Care to share some info?

Andy, thanks again for addressing this issue.


I've been involved for the better part of 2017 as a Dash investor having also brought in other substantial Dash investors. For the last couple months, we've been more actively involved in Dash. We all have experience in running fiat businesses. In our current involvement, we're tending to our investments, which is something you should be prepared to see more and more of as the market cap of Dash rises. Dash is getting a different caliber of investor now, and you'll see that they demand more professional management. If these investors are not satisfied by seeing an increasing level of professionalism in management and deployment of resources, I fully expect that no more investors will come in, and that Dash's market cap may go back to the $100M market cap level, (where you may not have to see people like us again).


Our main statement is that Dash's treasury budget needs to be fully re-invested at the moment, which I hope is not too controversial of a statement to make. Since spending the Dash monthly budget does not decrease a reservoir of future funds (but instead can accomplish the opposite), it becomes a simple strategy decision to get them deployed fast, and well. That has not been happening, which is why we have gotten involved. We want to see that $1M/mo deployed now. If Core grabs the bull by the horns and takes advantage of its current opportunity, we'll do everything we can in support.


As you stated, we have been aggressively pursuing this agenda through as many channels as possible. We've created DashTreasury.org, we've worked to provide tools to marketing teams within Dash who are making progress, we've organized and taken calls with other MNOs, and done our best to coordinate with Dash Core by email and phone in the attempt to form a cohesive strategy. We're investing a substantial amount of time and money into this, because we know that Dash is at a critical crossroads right now. Dash can regain its #3 position in the market, along with the talent and investment that comes with it, or it can languish down the ranks, with its head buried in the sand not wanting to hear the realities of large business competition.


Our agenda is exceedingly simple and clear. We want 100% of the Dash treasury to be deployed well, and deployed now, and every month after. If Dash Core only wants to pull a portion for R&D, that's perfectly fine. We're just asking that this intention be communicated so that other professional, organized teams can develop in other critical areas. Perhaps after this intention is stated, Dash core can assist in establishing these separate Marketing Core Teams. We all stand to benefit if we can tackle this issue.


We believe that Core is well intentioned and has been extremely busy building Dash products, and for that we remain grateful. As investors, we either 1) want to see Core putting to use more than 30% of the budget, or 2) helping to assist other professional teams pull the other 70% out in a coordinated way.

 

[dashdisciple]

@dashdisciple are you saying that Amanda has given you the raw data for analysis? Where was the data posted? @amanda_b_johnson how can I get a pre-release copy of your results?

Hi @IronVape, 100% of this #firstdashwallet data is completely available to the public. You can find it by going to Twitter and performing a search for #firstdashwallet. That will produce a list of over 2000 entrants who have provided image, payment address, twitter URL, follower size, timestamp. None of the data is hidden to the public. It's all fully available for anyone to see, so that nobody has to wait to see the results.

We took this publicly available data and programmed a tool to analyze and compile it to help Amanda and Pete reduce their labor inputs.

Our samples of this compiled data have shown that the Dash is being passed around in various ways, and in varying ratios. Following the payment addresses obviously doesn't provide concrete data in who's eventually getting the money and what exactly they're doing with it, but it's currently the best place to start in getting a general idea of its usage.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

Thats good to know , this idea is arguably one of the best Campagins i can think of, its created a whole new level of vibe across people

once we cross say 100k users or something we can probably stop the campaign

cheers

 

[AndyDark]

Andy, thanks again for addressing this issue.

I've been involved for the better part of 2017 as a Dash investor having also brought in other substantial Dash investors. For the last couple months, we've been more actively involved in Dash. We all have experience in running fiat businesses. In our current involvement, we're tending to our investments, which is something you should be prepared to see more and more of as the market cap of Dash rises. Dash is getting a different caliber of investor now, and you'll see that they demand more professional management. If these investors are not satisfied by seeing an increasing level of professionalism in management and deployment of resources, I fully expect that no more investors will come in, and that Dash's market cap may go back to the $100M market cap level, (where you may not have to see people like us again).


Our main statement is that Dash's treasury budget needs to be fully re-invested at the moment, which I hope is not too controversial of a statement to make. Since spending the Dash monthly budget does not decrease a reservoir of future funds (but instead can accomplish the opposite), it becomes a simple strategy decision to get them deployed fast, and well. That has not been happening, which is why we have gotten involved. We want to see that $1M/mo deployed now. If Core grabs the bulls by the horns and takes advantage of its current opportunity, we'll do everything we can in support.


As you stated, we have been aggressively pursuing this agenda through as many channels as possible. We've created DashTreasury.org, we've worked to provide tools to marketing teams within Dash who are making progress, we've organized and taken calls with other MNOs, and done our best to coordinate with Dash Core by email and phone in the attempt to form a cohesive strategy. We're investing a substantial amount of time and money into this, because we know that Dash is at a critical crossroads right now. Dash can regain its #3 position in the market, along with the talent and investment that comes with it, or it can languish down the ranks, with its head buried in the sand not wanting to hear the realities of large business competition.


Our agenda is exceedingly simple and clear. We want 100% of the Dash treasury to be deployed well, and deployed now, and every month after. If Dash Core only wants to pull a portion for R&D, that's perfectly fine. We're just asking that this intention be communicated so that other professional, organized teams can develop in other critical areas. Perhaps after this intention is stated, Dash core can assist in establishing these separate Marketing Core Teams. We all stand to benefit if we can tackle this issue.


We believe that Core is well intentioned and has been extremely busy building Dash products, and for that we remain grateful. As investors, we either 1)want to see Core putting to use more than 30% of the budget, or 2)helping to assist other professional teams pull the other 70% out in a coordinated way.

DashDisciple,

So effectively you are claiming to represent a new investor group who has are organizaing communications with Masternode operators and 'coordinating' with Dash Core team to push your strategy. And the reason being because Dash needs to regain #3 position in the market cap rankings, presumably so you can earn your ROI and exit (my assumption), apparently either being oblivious to the existing strategy (Evolution) or being implicitly opposed to it.

You've also setup DashTreasury.org, a new, anonymous 'network police' that gives you some centralized influence of the network potentially, ability to sway opinion on proposals and position yourselves as some kind of power broker (outside of the existing system which requires proven ownership of Dash to influence proposals).

You're also subtley hinting that current management doesn't reach your required level of professionalism, which strangely didn't crop up in your due dilligence and apparently oblivious to the fact that management in Dash is produced by MNO's via the governance system, unless you are referring to the Core Team specifically, and if this is not met Dash market cap 'may go back to $100M'.

You also want 100% of Dash treasury to be deployed inperpetuity regardless of what the proposals actually are and you want most of that spent on marketing, you're happy for Dash Core to 'pull a portion for R&D' but you want to setup other teams.

Quite an event in Dash history no? Anonymous guys claiming to buy up large portion of Dash to have this kind of influence, creating websites, coordinating MNOs out of band, agenda to pivot from Evo strategy to raise Dash market cap to a specific position, threatening action if agenda not met?

Quite agressive, negative, toxic attitude to introduce too and not what we're used to in actual MNO's tbh.

Do you have any evidence to any of your claims apart from the things we do know (creating dashtreasury.org, attempting to 'coordinate' with MNOs and the Core team - how do we know this isn't just a social attack to subvert the actual governance system? And even if you did, quite a big risk to invest large stake, get this machine rolling to push your agenda and hope the network and developers doing the coding actually bends to what you want, you must be pretty confident in this?

Best,
Andy

 

[RGXDK]

You guys need to start treating the Treasury with more respect. Business decisions here are being made by people with no business experience. Whether a campaign is successful is not a subjective matter, the decision to spend everyone's money isn't subject to how you FEEL about it. Read what UdjinM6 said:

I think we should check the results of current campaign first after some time i.e. How many of them really became Dash users in any sense? How many of them just converted Dash to btc/$/whatever and just got their "free money" from us? (How can we verify this btw?)

@GrandMasterDash, @Jmmon, @TroyDASH , @TaoOfSatoshi (and even @amanda_b_johnson) haven't provided, so far, any evidence that this campaign is "successful". Again, if 1 MILLION newbies signup, are you going to just give then $20 MILLION DOLLARS for installing an app on their phone? This is a ridiculous idea and if you want to challenge that, present the fact not your opinions.

Here is a list of things that are NOT facts or don't objectively support this campaign:

• getting dash "out there" (what does that even mean?)
• getting people talking about dash (subjective)
• "Amanda is one of the great innovators in Dash" (that's an opinion and doesn't support anything)
• "Dash's budget needs to be fully re-invested" (that's also an opinion and I can easily challenge that)

Here is a list of OBJECTIVE facts as examples:

• E-commerce spending $1 per click on google ads with a conversion rate of 3% because it earns $100 for every $70 spent.
• UBER offering $30 per ride because they already have a product for the market and models indicate ROI in 6 months.
• Paypal offering $10 per account because they already have a product for the market and models indicate ROI in 6 months.

Can you spot the difference?

1. Dash doesn't have a product. I'm in the USA and can't spend Dash anywhere.
2. Dash isn't ready for the market. The product that is ready for the market is called Evolution guys.
3. Companies doing this have precise metrics to measure ROI.
4. Those companies doing this have a fiduciary response with their investors. Do you want to spend the funds and dilute the currency supply just because the funds are there? Absolutely NOT!

Dash's treasury needs to be treated with more respect and responsibility!

 

[dashdisciple]

Andy,

The concepts we're putting forth aren't new to the business world. The importance of effective deployment of capital in a competitive industry is not an idea that we came up with ourselves.

We're not interested in being proposal owners on any new marketing teams, nor are we interested in being compensated in any way, but we have offered our resources to assist Ryan in creating effective marketing programs that could be run under the Core umbrella if he wishes. In the absence of those initiatives, however, we will seek to support any other teams who emerge as competent, honest and ambitous marketers of Dash's evolving product offering.

We are not short term investors. We believe in Dash's technology, and we believe that Evolution could be a revolutionary product in this space. We want to make sure that when the product is eventually delivered, Dash has been planning ahead and has the resources in place to take advantage of its place in the market.

We'd like that our investment could stay in Dash forever. We have no interest in going back to fiat, and believe that the technologies of other cryptocurrencies don't provide compelling alternatives.

We understand your instinct to become defensive and/or feel threatened, but that shouldn't be the case. Our long term goals are aligned with Dash's continued success. We support your work on R&D, and are grateful for the hard work Core continues to put into this visionary project.

 

[TroyDASH]

About diluting the supply. Creating an additional 1000 dash per month is equivalent to about 0.01% of the trading volume for the month and also represents about 0.01% of the total coin supply. Even if almost the entire amount is dumped, if it produces at least 0.01% gain then it has positive ROI for the network.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

You guys need to start treating the Treasury with more respect. Business decisions here are being made by people with no business experience. Whether a campaign is successful is not a subjective matter, the decision to spend everyone's money isn't subject to how you FEEL about it. Read what UdjinM6 said:



@GrandMasterDash, @Jmmon, @TroyDASH , @TaoOfSatoshi (and even @amanda_b_johnson) haven't provided, so far, any evidence that this campaign is "successful". Again, if 1 MILLION newbies signup, are you going to just give then $20 MILLION DOLLARS for installing an app on their phone? This is a ridiculous idea and if you want to challenge that, present the fact not your opinions.

Here is a list of things that are NOT facts or don't objectively support this campaign:

• getting dash "out there" (what does that even mean?)
• getting people talking about dash (subjective)
• "Amanda is one of the great innovators in Dash" (that's an opinion and doesn't support anything)
• "Dash's budget needs to be fully re-invested" (that's also an opinion and I can easily challenge that)

Here is a list of OBJECTIVE facts as examples:

• E-commerce spending $1 per click on google ads with a conversion rate of 3% because it earns $100 for every $70 spent.
• UBER offering $30 per ride because they already have a product for the market and models indicate ROI in 6 months.
• Paypal offering $10 per account because they already have a product for the market and models indicate ROI in 6 months.

Can you spot the difference?

1. Dash doesn't have a product. I'm in the USA and can't spend Dash anywhere.
2. Dash isn't ready for the market. The product that is ready for the market is called Evolution guys.
3. Companies doing this have precise metrics to measure ROI.
4. Those companies doing this have a fiduciary response with their investors. Do you want to spend the funds and dilute the currency supply just because the funds are there? Absolutely NOT!

Dash's treasury needs to be treated with more respect and responsibility!

its looks like you are thinking in a slightly wrong direction , the key different between uber and dash , dash is money , uber is just a product.

dash can be used in 1000 ways, but the most important thing for money is NETWORK , and building that network is very very hard

imagine 1 billion people have opened wallets , you would say 20 billion dumped right , absolutely wrong , if 1 billion people open a dash wallet

dash will replace fucking US dollar in 1 year or less, its takes a lot of money to build the pipes for digital cash and once those pipes are built lots of things will happen

do you know the biggest users of bitcoin have been from nigeria , india , venezuela , indonesia etc , do you know why ?

yes they are developing countries , their currencies are screwed up , but these are the people that use crypto day in day out not people like me who just pile up dash

we need dash to get out there , if it costs a bit of money thats fine.

i reckon $20 is bit too high , we can probably pay like $5 but yes we need people to open wallets and use them

we need MLMs to run on dash not on expensive bitcoin

Its 100x times better to get dash to used for people to open their first wallet than be burned in hell

 

[RGXDK]

About diluting the supply. Creating an additional 1000 dash per month is equivalent to about 0.01% of the trading volume for the month and also represents about 0.01% of the total coin supply. Even if almost the entire amount is dumped, if it produces at least 0.01% gain then it has positive ROI for the network.

The flaw in this logic is assuming the value of Dash will stay constant. 5 years from now, all this Dash being spent on irrelevant things (acrobatics, dash t-shirts, $20 to install an app, mma fighters) will taste as sour as the 10,000 BTC pizza. By being responsible with other people's money we will not dilute the currency supply in the future and we can focus on the majors.

 

[ampp]

I think everyone is a bit lost of what cryptocurrency is right now. I've said this on slack a few times that crypto only has to be a good store of value (right now). Dash is as much of a store of value as any other crypto and probably better than bitcoin soon. The ecosystem does not care about technology right now. While it is important to improve upon that the act of bringing people into Dash can be separate from the current features and does not need to wait on the next feature release.

I'm for aggressive strategies but i prefer a first dash wallet that is tied to a purchase. Much like coinbase if you refer someone you both get $10 worth of bitcoin. That way both parties are able to purchase more. I feel that a large number of people with dash first wallet may not ever go on and buy a Dash until mainstream adoption anyway. However if only a few percent do we are still doing something.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

The flaw in this logic is assuming the value of Dash will stay constant. 5 years from now, all this Dash being spent on irrelevant things (acrobatics, dash t-shirts, $20 to install an app, mma fighters) will taste as sour as the 10,000 BTC pizza. By being responsible with other people's money we will not dilute the currency supply in the future and we can focus on the majors.

ok you suggest people simply hoard dash not spend on anything, thats absolutely foolish , if there is no trading , no spending , a currency will die

Currency has two important features , the first its a good store of value the more important one is that its easy to trade ( aka spending ) without transactions happening no one will buy into a currency if no one buys into a currency the value is basically zero

Its funny but thats how currencies work

Saying that hoarding is the best thing to do is riduculous , remember this it doesnt take much to clone the best crpyo in few clicks

whats gives networth to a currency is its network remember that and networks consists of people who spend as well those who invest / hoard

 

[RGXDK]

ok you suggest people simply hoard dash not spend on anything, thats absolutely foolish , if there is no trading , no spending , a currency will die

Currency has two important features , the first its a good store of value the more important one is that its easy to trade ( aka spending ) without transactions happening no one will buy into a currency if no one buys into a currency the value is basically zero

Its funny but thats how currencies work

Saying that hoarding is the best thing to do is riduculous , remember this it doesnt take much to clone the best crpyo in few clicks

whats gives networth to a currency is its network remember that and networks consists of people who spend as well those who invest / hoard

I am explicitly talking about treasury; trading between individuals of a network has nothing to do with treasury.
I wrote "being responsible with treasury" and you understood it as "you suggest people simply hoard dash not spend on anything".
I never even used the word hoarding

 

[Dashmaximalist]

ok but we have to spend the treasury amount today even if the price goes up 100x in 5 years whatever , we need to spend it out to get the word about dash , thats what is needed

i reckon we should get best ROI for our spending , but remember we need to spend first to get the ROI

lets face it , this whole $20 thing is not such a bad idea , its might be the best coz we could probably just give $10 or even $5 tbh

but its far better than letting the coins burn

 

[amanda_b_johnson]

Hello, everyone.

I'm happy to see that so many well-respected long-timers as well as newcomers have taken the time to discuss this campaign. That is a great sign to me.

Firstly, for anyone who cares to review the raw participant and payments data -- there are over 2000 entries as of now -- here is our spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SMvHjloOlKpWo4SyTA9h_Me0UUOXmUhxScekNljiWCc/edit?usp=sharing

You'll notice that the first tab is Facebook, second is Twitter, and third is called "Scrape[_]," which is the batch of Twitter scrapes currently being processed, soon to be moved to the "Twitter" tab once paid.

Speaking of "scrapes," I'll take this space to confirm -- in case anyone was wondering -- that @dashdisciple has indeed been providing constant and ample assistance to Pete and myself in making this campaign possible. After about day three or four, we realized we were in over our heads. Dashdisciple reached out, and within 24 hours, set an employee of his to deploy a remote Twitter scraper and batch payment tool for us to use. Dashdisciple has also spent several hours with me on the phone, providing advice when I required it (for questions like, "How should we deal with this specific type of entry?", etc.)

Beyond that, Dashdisciple and I had already been communicating almost daily over the past 3 weeks -- ever since he became "public" here in Dashland. I find myself requiring guidance and support in navigating the world of media, and though I don't know his real-life identity, I have found his advice and support to be quite valuable. I have no reason to doubt that he is a "Dash whale," because he's refused every attempt I've made to pay him or his programmer employee for their assistance.

Regarding this particular campaign -- Dashdisciple and I agreed that were it to get any mainstream media coverage, it should continue. Despite offering a large bounty, reaching out to Wachsman PR (the Core team's PR firm), and personally sending over a dozen emails to known cryptocurrency reporters, still no bite.

For this reason -- and because the entries are becoming more group-specific by the day -- I'll close this particular campaign today, while leaving things open for another campaign in the future. Whether it will be a #FirstDashWallet one or something slightly different, I've not yet decided. More analysis of the results of this one, combined with a strategy to make fraud-detection more automated, will be required before deploying another campaign.

What I do know, is that it worked.

Thank you, everyone, for your feedback and support.

 

[TanteStefana]

This was written before I saw Amanda's post above.

1. In all honesty, I really miss Amanda's shows. I don't think she can do her shows and spend her manual labor / 100% of her waking time doing this. Worse, If she's not burning out, I'd be surprised!

2. It would be better if another group took over, like Dash Force or something, and if they could poke at Amanda and Pete's genius/creativity for new angles, that'd be awesome.

3. I disagree with Andy. The core team are so conservative, it is pretty disappointing. But then again, the rest of us have got to learn that to be decentralized, we need to make other core teams, and demand they work together.

Why I disagree with Andy is that Dash is a startup that will not burn through the funds in the traditional way, as @dashdisciple pointed out, the article Andy linked does not pertain to Dash. However, doing this right will require a lot more labor. We shouldn't waste talent (Amanda and Pete) on something like this.

Now, for my reasons why funds SHOULD be used to grow Dash (whatever way we can come up with) even if Evolution is not ready yet:

Volume and Price. We need to grow volume and spread Dash to as many people as possible if we want it to be usable without huge jumps in in price. I argue that campaigns to increase users is closer to organic growth than big announcements and sudden spike in prices, then panic sell offs because the spike is unnatural looking.

I don't care what people do with their Dash after they get it, it's theirs, though a program analyzing what happens would be really cool.

My suggestion would be for either Dash Force (if so inclined) and Amanda and Pete to get together and build a DAO to take this campaign forward, hire the people they need, and oversee it a bit until they feel comfortable handing the reins off to a person in charge Thgis could be the start of a "marketing core team"

Dash Core is operating INSIDE THE BOX, but Dash has no box. It's sad.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

This was written before I saw Amanda's post above.

1. In all honesty, I really miss Amanda's shows. I don't think she can do her shows and spend her manual labor / 100% of her waking time doing this. Worse, If she's not burning out, I'd be surprised!

2. It would be better if another group took over, like Dash Force or something, and if they could poke at Amanda and Pete's genius/creativity for new angles, that'd be awesome.

3. I disagree with Andy. The core team are so conservative, it is pretty disappointing. But then again, the rest of us have got to learn that to be decentralized, we need to make other core teams, and demand they work together.

Why I disagree with Andy is that Dash is a startup that will not burn through the funds in the traditional way, as @dashdisciple pointed out, the article Andy linked does not pertain to Dash. However, doing this right will require a lot more labor. We shouldn't waste talent (Amanda and Pete) on something like this.

Now, for my reasons why funds SHOULD be used to grow Dash (whatever way we can come up with) even if Evolution is not ready yet:

Volume and Price. We need to grow volume and spread Dash to as many people as possible if we want it to be usable without huge jumps in in price. I argue that campaigns to increase users is closer to organic growth than big announcements and sudden spike in prices, then panic sell offs because the spike is unnatural looking.

I don't care what people do with their Dash after they get it, it's theirs, though a program analyzing what happens would be really cool.

My suggestion would be for either Dash Force (if so inclined) and Amanda and Pete to get together and build a DAO to take this campaign forward, hire the people they need, and oversee it a bit until they feel comfortable handing the reins off to a person in charge Thgis could be the start of a "marketing core team"

Dash Core is operating INSIDE THE BOX, but Dash has no box. It's sad.

well said , we have arguably best currency in the world yet the growth is slow , the reason is simple , we have bad / non cohesive marketing team or in my opinion no team at all

We need a strong marketing core team or else our ranking and mark cap will not shoot up to the stars

 

[TaoOfSatoshi]

@amanda_b_johnson Way to go, Amanda. You've shown us that we can create passion for Dash through these types of campaigns. Wish you the best of luck in future campaigns.

@AndyDark I fully agree with you that it would be better to have Evolution underway before we dive into a campaign like this, but it was started already. However, I disagree with your approach of treating this man @dashdisciple who's done nothing but good for Dash since he's shown up, and makes valid points. We all see things from different viewpoints, and it would do us well to try and see things from many different angles, instead of immediately going into attack mode. We are all Dash, and I too am thankful for your work.

@dashdisciple Thanks for all your help, I'm sure we will be ready to take the next step when we all work together, as is the Dash Nation way!

Great discussion. Let the passion flow, because we all love this project, and are like a big global family.

 

[TanteStefana]

Not talking about this particular campaign, it's worthiness etc... but I do feel that the Dash Core team have become far to conservative. Dash is so far outside the box on traditional wisdom, I fear that not only Dash Core but many, if not at least half of MN owners are constrained by their schooling. I think even printing out all our Dash budget onto paper wallets and "air dropping" them is a better solution than letting them burn. Yes, I do. We need to get it through our collective heads that funding Dash has NOTHING to do with funding a corporation / start up / anything ever faced in the history of mankind. Well, maybe a little more to d with the Space Program in the USA geting the first man on the moon. That's the closest thing.

Outside the box, people, outside is a whole new universe! Forget the inside, that's well known and established! We can't do anything new inside that claustrophobic box!

 

[SimontheRavager]

This was a very great campaign and i do not see why we should not repeat that every 3 or 4 month again. It can become an regularly campaign aka institution for us. I would also like to see Amanda be free for new things again. She had a hell lot of work to do so please give her a few days off ^^ We is so creative, just let her work.

 

[IronVape]

IIRC on Jan 1st we were n the $14-$17 range. Now core team is catchimg flack for not spending money fast enough? Nobody was prepared for this size budget this soon. It will take a while for the ecosystem to adjust to it (assuming it remains). But we will adjust.

Let's just keep moving forward. Let's try to keep the community unified. Let's disagree respectfully.

When in doubt... Vote on it.

 

[ampp]

When in doubt... Vote on it.

It would be easier to vote if the proposal fee wasn't 5 dash, or $910 as of today.

The conversation died at $70 and now it's even more of a problem.

Lets all remember, growing pains are good problems to have.

 

[stellabelle]

I also see the huge value in this social media campaign. I think an effective way to leverage it would be to have it for one week per month, every month. That way it builds up momentum, and also creates exposure for Dash on Twitter and everywhere else. Having it for a week long campaign builds up energy, so I can see that it's a really good way to get people to follow Amanda on Twitter, and create excitement.

 

[ampp]

@AndyDark I fully agree with you that it would be better to have Evolution underway before we dive into a campaign like this, but it was started already. However, I disagree with your approach of treating this man @dashdisciple who's done nothing but good for Dash since he's shown up, and makes valid points. We all see things from different viewpoints, and it would do us well to try and see things from many different angles, instead of immediately going into attack mode. We are all Dash, and I too am thankful for your work.

I think it's fair to question a new person. There are a lot of people who have been through the ringer that spent a long time building a valid reputation in this community. Releasing a site and doing a lot of work is not a ticket to trustworthiness. If it is we are going to get a lot of surprise projects. It is a very good first step. My only issue with releasing a utility site is if someone else was also working on it there would be a duplication of effort. And why not announce the project is getting worked on before and then over deliver rather than surprise. Anyway that's not very important at the moment.

There are many ways to read into the messages between andy and dashdiscipline. It's not in good taste to say or imply that you are responsible for investors or growth of dash. People want proof when those things get said. I'm also not in agreement with the perspective that core needs to grow faster as the growth rate is quite fast already. Growing programing teams is a technical difficulty as well as a management difficulty and can only be done so fast. Putting pressure on core is a very investor minded concept, the DAO is made for decentralized horizontal growth. However trust is the primary limitation here and right now dashtreasury only helps with after the fact housekeeping rather than beforehand escrow, usd payout and/or price protections which some group needs to take on sooner or later. And a very small group of people are trusted enough to handle hundreds of thousands in dash.

I could easily list many different incentive based projects we can be working on right now and i'll probably do that in another thread. If you guys really want to eat the budget up.

 

[Jed Clampett]

I just watched your #FirstDashWallet videos today, and I am impressed. I've been out of the crypto-space for a while, but the DJIA hitting 20,000 drew me back in... I get the feeling that this is going to be the summer of cryptocurrencies. I see subscription-based services giving away paper wallets with $20 BTC/ETH or $50 BTC during livestreams on YouTube. The last one I saw required viewers to leave a comment during the livestream and share the video on FB, Twitter, or Steemit.

 

[solarguy]

"Please ask Solarguy"


Thanks so much for the compliment. Been a bit hectic for me for a couple days. Had to fix two sink holes at church. Sometimes the real world intrudes into my Dash universe.

I will look over the thread tomorrow for a bit deeper analysis, but here are my initial thoughts:

1. I trust Amanda B. Johnson and will listen hard to her further thoughts regarding this matter of excess or unspent budget and expanding the current project x 10 or 100. Amanda got me seriously interested in Dash, and this is a familiar story. I think this latest strategy has been successful at producing new users, far exceeding Amanda's expectations.

There is this phenomenon that credit card companies lavish a lot of goodies on new college students to entice them to get their first credit card. It has been demonstrated that even though they may go on to get 5 other credit cards later on, they show unusual devotion to "their first". This is what Amanda is doing. I am in favor of it. Does it need to be increased to 10x or 1000 x the size? I don't know. Not sure frankly how to even do that.

2. I trust Tao, he has played such an integral role in giving the Dash community a goal; to be supportive. To argue your point, and argue it with passion and power, but be respectful. If the community succeeds, Dash succeeds. I am going to give every idea he proposes, serious consideration.

3. The idea that burning the un-allocated Dash budget is a waste, this idea has come up repeatedly, and there is substantial truth there. At its root, I think it springs from a deep seated, almost unconscious recognition of how rare and valuable and innovative Dash is. Yes, burning it makes the remaining coins more valuable. Mathematically, I totally get that. But emotionally, the question just keeps coming up, "Is that the best we can do with the excess? Burn it?"

And legitimately, sometimes the answer is yes. I don't want to fund crazy silly stupid last minute ideas. Ineffective and makes us look stupid. One way to avoid burning the excess is to build a slush fund that could be directed to special projects or unexpected expenses, or saving up for a superbowl ad. If the slush fund is too complex and risky, then we could develop of list of special projects.

Companies that have highly variable and unpredictable incomes solve that problem by budgeting the base amount that they have to have to stay open (and that they can generally count on getting). This category consists of "must haves" like payroll, rent for the office space, electric bill.

But, they also have a long list that prioritizes what to do after they have the basics covered. If they get an extra 10 grand, they do the first extra project. If they get another extra 17 grand, they go to the next special project. The list of special projects is always long enough to absorb the highest imaginable jackpot of extra funding. We could develop such a list.

I would challenge the Core team, and Amanda and Piet, and Tao and Mastermined and all the masternodes, and everybody that cares about Dash to contribute to that list.

I'll just throw out some examples to stimulate your imagination.(just unrefined examples, I'm not lobbying for these necessarily):

Identify a high powered advertising company that specializes in social media campaigns. Give them a down payment to think about what the big roll out would look like once Evolution comes on line. That just does not happen overnight. User experience surveys, focus groups, artwork etc etc etc. A good and effective campaign will takes months of work and research. Holy Crap! Better start now. We could "interview" three different firms and have some time to make a thoughtful selection so we are ready.

Hire a fantastic lawyer and/or accountant to look after or supervise the unique needs and risks of being a Masternode owner.

Identify the three most influential cryptocurrency advocacy groups (CoinCenter? Electronic Frontier Foundation? P2P?) and throw some support their way to help influence policy making and legislation so our fine legislators don't make stupid and clumsy mistakes that set the whole ecosystem back.

Hire our own Dash lobbyest to develop a relationship with the shakers and movers in Washington. I want crypto as a whole to succeed, but I want Dash at the top of the mountain.

Fund some nifty research into some aspect of the Dash ecosystem by talented researchers at Cornell, or MIT, or wherever the hotbed of crypto research is these days. Maybe the Core Team has some question they don't have the time or expertise to answer, but know somebody who could do the research. Good academic papers would add a definite sense of legitimacy and cutting edge flair to the Dash endeavor.

We the Masternodes could hire our own genius person who is gifted at finding out about x, y or z nitty gritty details about complex technical proposals. Almost like a private investigator that specializes in crypto. We all hate getting scammed, this would reduce scams.

Put up a big fat juicy bounty to figure out a decentralized escrow system for the Treasury that does not require trust in a 3rd party. this would add so much accountability to the proposal process, and we just do not have that feature right now. Maybe this is a new full time person for the core Dev team. I have a feeling if we put up a quarter of a million dollars, somebody would find an elegant and effective way to get that done.

Identify and support the 3 most influential people or groups who are trying to fix the terrible state of banking in most developing nations. There are some brilliant and motivated people working in this space. (to me, helping the unbanked and the underbanked is a sure fire slam dunk road to take Dash to the moon) This would enable the regular folks to make their personal situation, and their whole country, better in a hurry. This is the antithesis of charity. This is gathering people and resources and groups who already have insight into what the developing nations need in regards to personal finance all the way up to system wide reform (or replacement). Then we fill that need with Dash and go to the moon doing it.

Enable Amanda and Piet to do whatever they think up next. their exclusive slush fund to push Dash. Did I mention that I trust Amanda?

__________________________________ you fill in the blank with 89 creative amazing things that push the Dash ecosystem to greater adoption.

Having a systematic plan for those excess funds (and how to trigger them at the last minute) insures that we don't have to burn it, which isn't wasting it exactly, but isn't putting it to maximum use either.

Developing a list like that also raises the bar for the rest of the proposals. Whatever the proposal is, at the very least, it has to be better than paying our lobbyist to educate senators and finance committees so Washington doesn't do a big stupid. etc etc etc.[/QUOTE]

 

[Vedran Yoweri]

"Until the day that Core realizes that this surplus money needs to be reinvested into aggressive outreach and marketing to new investors"

Total BS. Second hand car sales man attitude.

Core's strategy is based on the recognition that Dash (and crypto in general) is not ready for the mass market yet due to lack of access, usibility and complexity. To solve this we are working on Evolution, which you can read about in many places, and progress on that is (we feel) good and on schedule.

Wise.

Mass/agressive marketting before we have a mainstream product is something certain new people have been pushing agressively, and is something that is potentially very damanging to Dash before it can deliver the kind of value those users are looking for, and people are openly talking about how this can raise the price, i.e. driven by greed, and desire to increase the value of their Dash before we have a mainstream product and to new users who don't necessarily understand what they are taking on and potentially get burned if this kind of agressive marketing causes bubbles / large price rises, which again is damanging to our long term strategy and desire to actually benefit a much larger base of users in the mainstream than crypto is currently capable of doing.

Fooling noobs is the worst we could do. And we are doing it on a massive scale. nice guys.
Fucking indawoods all over again. Amateurs.