Dear Community,
The main focus of the Project Management group is to facilitate community efforts in order to reach the project goals as early as possible. The very first thing in our agenda was making sure these goals are clear. Having clear, well-defined goals can act as a reference point when future decisions are required, and play an important role in brand identity. We decided to use two industry-standard practices for defining what Dash wants to achieve: vision and mission statements.
What are vision and mission statements, and why are they important?
A vision statement is a short written declaration of an organization's core purpose and values. A vision statement provides a community an understanding of what it aims to accomplish in the future, while remaining broad enough to encompass a variety of perspectives and approaches toward achieving that future. A well-crafted vision acts as a long-term reference point toward which the entire community can strive.
A mission statement is a description of your more immediate goals. It lays out more precisely what the organization plans to do and why. It can (1) serve as a filter to separate important activities from those that are not, (2) clearly state which markets will be served and how, and (3) define broad measures for the organization's success.
Together, the vision and mission statements can help us to define meaningful objectives and more easily align as a team behind those objectives that best support our long-term objectives.
How were the statements created?
Although such fundamental elements as a vision and mission should not change often, we do not expect that this first vision and mission is set in stone. Especially over long periods of time, the mission and even our long-term vision may change. Once the decentralized governance system is in place, community members will be free to submit an alternative vision or mission if they require revision. Revision of the mission or vision will require majority vote.
However, in order to create Dash's initial mission and vision, the core team engaged several community members with deep expertise leveraging these tools. Several drafts have been debated internally by the core team with guidance and council from the experts. It was further debated in a public Slack channel for extended team members to provide input. We now feel that the initial versions are refined enough for broader distribution to the entire community and will serve as our initial vision and mission. Of course, as an open-sourced decentralized community, we expect our mission and vision may require refinement, especially over longer periods of time, so the voting mechanism is in place to ensure or mission and vision reflect the community's values.
Alright, already, so what are they?
Mission statement: Dash’s mission is to deliver safe and reliable financial solutions to consumers and merchants in a decentralized manner - providing greater economic freedom to its users.
Vision statement: People and businesses use Dash as digital money for everyday financial transactions. We will build and maintain an innovative decentralized payment network which will act as the core of an ecosystem of consumers, merchants, and service providers. This network will provide users with a fungible currency that provides a high degree of privacy, speed, and reliability for both physical and online transactions. We will foster a robust ecosystem of products and services by developing solutions that services the needs of both consumers and merchants while working closely service providers (e.g., merchant service providers, exchanges) to enable features and functionality that will delight our users. Finally, we will cultivate adoption of this ecosystem through education, promotion and engagement of potential users on the benefits of cryptocurrencies and the functionality our solutions enable.
We feel that the above vision and mission define an impactful, achievable set of goals for our organization. Ultimately, we aim to be much more than simply a digital currency, as evidenced in the passion, energy, ideas, and sense of community found throughout the pages of the Dash forum. We aim to be a trusted means for consumers and merchants to transact in everyday life. While we don't yet know what financial services niches Dash may occupy in the future - alongside cash, credit cards, bank deposits, or any number of other solutions in use today - we believe Dash will have an incredible impact on the world. We look forward to hearing the community's response and we hope you are as happy as we are to have a vision and mission that can help guide us in the same direction toward meaningful goals.
