Dash Medellín / Dash Colombia: 12 meetups, 250 new wallets, merchants, remittances & more

[Unstoppable]

@George Donnelly, it looks like new merchant signups on discoverdash has come to a stop. Could you give us an update?

 

[George Donnelly]

@George Donnelly, it looks like new merchant signups on discoverdash has come to a stop. Could you give us an update?

Thanks for the question, @Unstoppable. I have a new MNO report ready for editing, should be out soon.

I have at least another 60 merchants ready to add and I intend to upload them before the end of the month.

What is the delay?

Up until Aug 31, Dash Colombia was a two-man team. I have hired 3 new people, and 1 quit. New people means training, and everything slows down a bit.

Dash Colombia is now 2 salesmen and a communications person in addition to myself. I am the sole administrative person, and the administrative burden has grown because now I have to manage payroll and deal with communications and new merchant signups and a dozen other small things all by myself, as well as going out to sell (get new merchants) and train my new team.

Over the last 2 weeks, we have made great progress and I have blocked off 3 days next week just to go out, deliver POS marketing displays with each merchant's QR code (habladores) as well as verify the work of my salesmen.

Once that is complete, I expect to start uploading new merchants to DiscoverDash.com once again.

Please see attached 2 screenshots that partially evidence these new merchants.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions. Happy to attend to them. Thanks for your patience.

 

[George Donnelly]

A New MNO Report.

- 122 merchants
- 2 new events
- 46 new wallets

 

[George Donnelly]

New Dash Colombia / Dash Latam MNO report!

- 145 merchants
- 6 new events
- 143 new wallets
- Progress on Dash Latam in Bogotá, Sao Paulo and 2 more cities

 

[Unstoppable]

Yet the merchant count on discover dash had not budged from 106, and since they cleaned it up, it hasnt budged from 54.
I'm beginning to think you need to focus harder on Colombia, and should not attempt to handle all of Latam. It's likely locals will handle it better.
I want to believe in your progress but unless it is showing up somewhere I don't see it.

 

[George Donnelly]

Yet the merchant count on discover dash had not budged from 106, and since they cleaned it up, it hasnt budged from 54.
I'm beginning to think you need to focus harder on Colombia, and should not attempt to handle all of Latam. It's likely locals will handle it better.
I want to believe in your progress but unless it is showing up somewhere I don't see it.

Colombia is currently number 5 globally in terms of Dash-accepting merchants and number 6 in Dash Android wallet installs as of mid September. In May, before I started, Colombia was at zero merchants and wallet installs were barely a blip.

https://discoverdash.com/statistics/

I have created a large amount of video documenting my work: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjizxJYH0K7oYhW6gQ9iG4g

My Twitter also has a bunch of evidence/updates: https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly

I am not attempting to handle all of Latam. The DAO has given me 87 dash with which to meet the goals of the Dash Latam proposal and I am doing that. I did not ask to be given the 87 dash 1 month late and have to come up with an entirely new plan for the funds almost entirely on my own. But the DAO voted for me to do it and so I am doing it with gratitude and passion, in order to achieve greater Dash adoption in Latin America.

I will upload more merchants to DiscoverDash before the end of this month. Adding a merchant to DiscoverDash is not something I do lightly. A salesman does his work, then I verify and ensure the merchant is ready to receive payments, then I ensure I have complete and accurate information. Then I batch the merchants for delivery to DiscoverDash.

I encourage you to visit Medellín for the conference on the 27th to see my work firsthand.

Would you like to see something else? Do you have specific suggestions for improvement? Happy to oblige/listen. Thanks again.

 

[Unstoppable]

Consider updating discoverdash daily. It's quite fun to check on it every day and see what kinds of new merchants are recently listed and where they are. Your progress will also be crystal clear and above reproach. As it stands, it seems no new merchants have been uploaded in at least 3 weeks, maybe 4. That's a bit disappointing.

 

[George Donnelly]

Consider updating discoverdash daily. It's quite fun to check on it every day and see what kinds of new merchants are recently listed and where they are. Your progress will also be crystal clear and above reproach. As it stands, it seems no new merchants have been uploaded in at least 3 weeks, maybe 4. That's a bit disappointing.

I only upload after verifying and I do that in batches. I will attempt to upload more frequently. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[George Donnelly]

I recently sent IIRC more than 100 new merchants to Discover Dash.

To provide greater transparency to the DAO, Dash Colombia has created a blog just for DAO reporting of our activities. The first post is up. More to come. Sign up via email to get notified of new posts automatically.

http://dashcolombia.org/dao/

 

[George Donnelly]

Dash Colombia's MNO report for the month of October.

- 39.6% growth in merchants, #3 globally
- ~30% growth in active wallets
- 6 events, including Dash conference

Dash Colombia's MNO report for the month of November.

- 54.7% growth in merchants, still #3 globally, 311 total
- 25% growth in active wallets, now #3 globally, 1354+
- 6 events

 

[George Donnelly]

With Dash at $65, our current proposal (59 dash/month) can only buy about USD$3,800 per month which represents only life support for the most essential members of the team and means we are currently losing momentum. We can’t hold new events. We can’t visit all the merchants who contact us. All of our progress so far is at risk.

In order to not grow our ask, but to just restore 85% of the previously DAO-approved buying power for Dash Colombia, we need 120 dash per month for 2 months in stopgap funding. This is our proposal:

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/dashcolombia-stopgap-122018

Will you please assist us in safeguarding the unique growth we have carved out for Dash in Colombia over the last 6 months?

We have been working on partial salaries for 6 months and have still overdelivered.

Please vote yes and please leave a supportive comment.

Together, we’re building the future of Dash.

 

[solarguy]

No question, it's tough times for everybody until the Dash value perks up. Clearly, you guys have shown a "get it done anyway" attitude.

 

[George Donnelly]

No question, it's tough times for everybody until the Dash value perks up. Clearly, you guys have shown a "get it done anyway" attitude.

Thanks @solarguy . And we'd like to continue getting it done. We're going to do everything we can no matter what - all of us are very committed - but I have already had to make the difficult decision of cancelling several events this month.

 

[Unstoppable]

I support your efforts, but again I ask you to keep discoverdash updated. Batching once per month isn't enough. I'll give you my yes vote when it says 311 for Colombia.

 

[George Donnelly]

I support your efforts, but again I ask you to keep discoverdash updated. Batching once per month isn't enough. I'll give you my yes vote when it says 311 for Colombia.

Understood. Sebastian is going to verify 40 remaining merchants in the verification queue in the coming week and at that time I will send a fresh csv to Albert.

Likewise, if we are at 26% of what was already a bare minimum budget, and are working 7 days per week on partial pay while still overdelivering and standing out on a global scale, I think you can see why things like batching become necessary.

 

[pedro sandoval]

Hey guys this proposal looks pretty good! Keep up the good work!

Kudos! from Dash PLC - Venezuela

 

[George Donnelly]

I just emailed a csv file of 166 new Dash merchants we signed up in Colombia from Oct 24 to the present, to Albert at Discover Dash.

 

[Unstoppable]

Curious as to why discoverdash still shows only 216 merchants for colombia.

 

[George Donnelly]

Two reasons that I am aware of. (1) In the csv file I sent, there was some extraneous information, so Albert requested I fix that. Within the same day I did that and sent the corrected file back. This was Dec 19. (2) It takes Albert time to process the file.

Thanks for your question and interest, let me know if you need anything else.

 

[George Donnelly]

UPDATE: July Dash Latam MNO Report with a private look into our Slack (video)

UPDATE: 15 purchases with Dash in 5 cities across 3 Latam nations showing real people(vlog playlist)

UPDATE: Dash Growth in Latam Measured by Active Androids Wallets (real Google Play Store data)

UPDATE: 19 new Dash events this last month by Dash Latam across Venezuela, Colombia and Peru

UPDATE: 6 video testimonials of people using Dash for remittances (YouTube playlist)

UPDATE: What Dash Latam Has Achieved in Venezuela (surprise inside!)