How to onboard 300,000 new users in one geographic location

I meant "flagship" only in the sense that they have stuff to sell. I don't care how big they are. I don't even care if they have a store. Have 3 or 4 lined up at the exit with stuff to sell.

But the ultimate goal is just to make sure to close the loop, and that the people getting the money have a place to spend it within a few days.
 
DavidHay said:
@solarguy this isn't the U.S. I have spent a lot of time in central and south america. In 2015 I spent a month living in Santa Marta which is 150 miles from Cucuta.

We are dealing with economic migrants that have very little. A huge amount of commerce is done by individuals, corner stores and markets. Only wealthy people use large supermarket chains. They are use to doing business in a far more decentralized way. For example when people want to change Bolivares to US dollars one of the most common ways is to join a facebook group and put out a request. The Venezeulan government controls and restricts everything in the country that's why we are doing this in the Colombian border town of Cucuta.

I think it is a mistake to focus on merchants before users. Merchants stock their stores with what people demand, that's how a free economy is suppose to work.

I've done sales in the past. Do you know how hard this idea is to pitch to merchants? Now you want to add the handicap of 0% adoption in the local community?

I believe you attack this problem from the other side. If you inject capital into a community and distribute it equally to everyone while educating them so they understand how it work some merchants will adopt quickly and make money others will refuse and loose money.

Now imagine this scenario. You own a small shop, a guy comes along and gives everyone in the community gold coins. How long do you think it's going to take before some stores start accepting gold coins?

People from Colombia and Venezuela. Can you add some insight?
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As a Venezuelan I can testify informal commerce is the the center of our economy, and its even more influencial on the borders. The situation there is even more anarchical than on Venezuelan's big cities.

One thing you should also consider is that to many people in our country cryptos are scary, some sort of "black magic". Remeber most of theses guys dont even use banks, just cash and illegal trade, so the benefits need to be rrallr attractive for them to consider using DASH. And a lot of capacitation will be needeed

But these are just observations, I believe that your proposal will be very attractive to them. Just need to get the work in.
 
I agree with the aim of this proposal taking into account the previous comments from djcrypto,stealth923 and theSingleton. Onboarding merchants and new users is key as well as using existing tools to facilitate this process. @DavidHay I beleive the dash team will continue to develop tools for this process as well. Work with the dash community. From my knowledge I think all proposals that has been connected to Venezuela has passed (with some moderations in some instances). The support for dash in Venezuela is strong and I welcome you aboard. I do have a friend from Venezuela as well and he was also exited about this prospect in addition to the existing dash projects there. Have you seen discoverdash.com ? Currently there are 58 merchants in caracas accepting dash, and it has been growing with the conferences held there.
 
@DavidHay Thanks for this proposal as I believe Dash can help change lives for the better.

1- With regard to the budget size how do you envisage the payment split up from the treasury- i.e 700 dash per month for 6 months.

2- So the project would continue to run and sign up people until the 2m funding runs out and if successful look to replicate?

3- The fact that you are looking to integrate existing Dash projects into this greater idea is perfect and builds on work already done.

4- Some consideration could be given to partnerships, what groups out there would contribute to also find a solution for financial inclusion in such a situation. The Gates Foundation has a whole team devoted to this but they are extremely difficult to get a hold of. I am sure there are others also.

We should also be mindful that this is in uncharted waters, replacing a failed currency so the plan should be fluid and able to react, flexibility is a must.

This is a huge opportunity and given escrow it is a sure fire yes. This "moves the needle" for Dash.
 
Regarding the Nano/Dash debate, I think a treasury proposal offers more in terms of funding top-ups and sustainability for ongoing launches like this in other cities if the first one proves successful - a single donor can only commit to a single donation. Also I would be concerned with the state of the Android wallet (in Spanish) for Nano - it's a great project, but IMO not mature enough for onboarding and regular use at this scale.
 
Stealth923 said:
End user support is going to be imperative otherwise people might just give up and not bother to use it. We need to make use of existing Dash Infrastructure with @AlejandroE - do you know how your Dash support services can be expanded to cater for this project, costs to factor in etc?
Click to expand...

Hello, thanks for your question, and thanks David for bringing this proposal and your desire to help Venezuelans.

Regarding directly to your question: if this proposal gets funded we can (and have to) set up a Dash Help Desk in the building/school in Cucuta where this project is going to take place, so we can help people directly with their questions and tech problems with their wallets. This will be a critical point because even they pass the test, they will have questions and they must be answered in a effective way, most of these refugees have a low educational level and they will need help.

Besides, we have stated that our Support Center (which is located in Caracas) will offer assistance throught calls, email, livechat and social media. First, calls will be local only (Venezuela) and then we have plans to open them to many latam countries in the near future. If this project gets funded we will open our call service inmediately (and obviously for free) so people from Cucuta can call us if they have any question or problem. Also, we can expand our working hours in order to attend all the request (demand of requests will be very high). But we are here to help and we will help David to make this proposal in the best way.

David, you say you have never been in Cucuta before, as I told you on Discord, you have to make a detail market research in order to know what we are going to find in Cucuta. We have to answer these questions:
1- What is the % of Venezuelan living in Cucuta who have a home for living? And which is the % who are homeless? This will give us a better context of the economical situation of Venezuelan living there.

2- What is the % of Venezuelan living in Cucuta that are currently working? and which is the % who are not? And if they are not, why is it? (they cant find a job or they just dont want to?) This question is very important because there are people with bad habits and we have to identify the good ones from the bad ones.

3- What is the % of Venezuelans living in Cucuta who have a smartphone? As you know, many venezuelans who migrate to Cucuta are very poor and are in a bad economic situation, and it is important to know this number in order to prepare the right amount of paper wallets that will be needed.

4- Is 4$ enough? 4$ is 2 weeks of a salary in Venezuela, but this plan is for Colombia, where the min. wage is aprox $250. It is important to ask what can you buy in Cucuta with 4$?

5- With an amibitious project like this, I think you have to run a "test" in a small scale of what you want to do, then learn from that experience and see if it is possible to scale up to 300.000 people. You can contact a NGO in Cucuta and ask them permission to do this first test in its building. You will learn a LOT at a cheap cost and I think many people from the community could donate you some Dash to make this first approach and then submit the proposal with your experience.

This proposal is focused on a extreme massive adoption, and that is why like it so much. You count with my support (Dash Help Venezuela) and I hope we can do this in a very effective way.
 
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On most issues with this proposal, I will defer to those who have firsthand experience of the region, its people, its culture, its economy, etc. It seems from consensus that the people who will most likely be serviced by this proposal will be mostly very poor and not very well established, so while I think it's an admirable effort and goal, what I'm wondering--along with a few other users--is if two weeks worth of wages in Venezuela is going to be sufficient for refugees in Colombia to do more than get a few nice things? This is not a bad thing in itself and I would probably support that even if that's all we accomplished, but more than anything, what we all want to see is for this injection/air drop to facilitate the creation of new opportunities for these people to become more established and create a Dash ecosystem in which they can thrive and grow, to see this as an investment in the future of people instead of a handout for relief. In other words, we want this to be a jumpstart for something ongoing and self-perpetuating.

So once people get their Dash, then what? It seems that the projection is that small, local merchants--which ostensibly make up a large chunk of commerce in the region, though that seems to differ to some extent depending on which side of the Venezuelan border you're on--will be the first to adopt, so once the people start exchanging the Dash with these merchants, where does that Dash go from there? I think your efforts to get Dash in to the hands of the people and the people to merchants, but could you elaborate on how this plan will ensure that the merchants will put it back in to circulation in some way? What incentives or opportunities do the people have to save and/or invest Dash in themselves and their community? I do wonder what might be gained by decreasing the total number of people but offering a larger sum might do? What would be the advantages/disadvantages to different distributions of total numbers vs. amount, and which would be more likely to lead to the jumpstart of an ecosystem?
 
Hi David,...
MNO, Sydney, Oz :) here.
Projects like this that actually put Dash in the hands of people who may actually use it, are ones I'm favourable too. I LOVE the idea of people having to take a class and pass an exam. This would surely assist to give them a feeling of the worth of Dash, rather than just getting a straight hand out.

Could a financial of Dash for introducing another person to the classes be part of this proposal? (viral effect) Just a thought.

"Bolivar Coin" - named after a failed currency!

"What is Cúcuta like?" - You have not been there! hmmm?

"No plan is perfect but the world.." - Glad to see you are no raving idealistic socialist leaning SJW (Yes, watched some of video - your family across planet vs politics).

Implement escrow.

A classroom of 40 seats introducing 300,000 to Dash in 150 days! How does this function in regards to class turn arounds days of the week and operating hours?
Is a constant electricity supply a concern in the region?
What happens if you only introduce 85,000 to Dash in that time?

Kind regards :)
 
I would agree with what others have said, I think that there needs to research how far $4 dollars will go in Cucuta.

I also think that since we have the money, it might be prudent to up it $6 to really hit it home.

Exciting proposal! Can't wait to see the final proposal you end up putting to the network!
 
I definitely think this has a good angle, It would be nice to do it on a smaller scale first tho, to learn and improve in order to make it bigger...
 

Hi David,
MN from Austria/Europe here ty for sharing your idear and i would like to Vote YES on this and Dash would be the perfect match for this.
Like AlejandroE pointet out this is a more complex Project and alot of pre work to do befor even we can help the people down there. at least 3-6 Months
The Dash network alreddy have a strong belive that we can help the Venezuelans and alreddy supportet alot of project down there that i belive are willing to help you.

but are you up to the task for this?

personaly i never heard about you in the past and i just saw your 2 Vids. (Saving 300k and Sorry i was wrong) and to quote "I run a youtube channel with 120,000 subscribers and 6.5 million views." and now you finaly found the way to the Dash Nation in time for need. makes me sad but im Ok with it atleast you are here .
Lets work something out.

i would hate it if the Dash Network just give you 2 Mio$ and say lets try it.
But i will love that the network will make sure that you get fundet over time so you can hit your Goals and the network can be sure Dash get used the right way

Servus from Austria

p.s. i do not need a responce this is just feedback cheers
 
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Hi David.
Plan sounds good.

One point I would propose to look into more closely is what the public authorities will do.
Ususally these kind of people make sure to get their cut (taxes, bribes, ...) and they may just feel compelled to shut down your operations completely if they feel threatened by your project.

I would chime in with the people that think your schedule may turn out to be a little tight. The people are suffering there and it makes sense to rush things as much as possible. But if the project falls apart due to lack of preparation this will not help the peeps there either.

Please structure the proposal with a multi-month payout schedule. 2 M$ in one shot will probably not fly.
 
I don't really know much about Nano so I'm still quite sceptical. To my knowledge it relies on user devices doing proof of work to avoid transaction fees. Have you tested it on a low end android device to verify that you can actually transact? Actually I didn't even find any android wallets in the appstore.
 
No plan is perfect, no idea will solve every problem. I don't know how to write a business plan to fund basic universal income. I have no idea how we can fix the corrupt Venezuelan government. I do know how to provide $2,000,000 of marketing services for a crypto currency and help 300,000 of the worlds poorest people at the same time.

AlejandroE makes some excellent points here. Getting accurate data will be almost impossible. We don't know how many illegal immigrants are in the country. If a miracle happens and we had accurate numbers from 6 months ago it wouldn't be close to accurate today.

A project like this has never been attempted before. How people will use the crypto once it reaches mass adoptions is unknown. Because of the economic situation and +1000% inflation Venezuela offers the best possible use case for crypto and the cheapest place in the world we can create life long members of our community.

The media attention gained by under taking a project like this would far out weigh the budget needed. Since I launched this idea 10 days ago in New York over 50,000 people have viewed my videos on this topic and there are already 200 volunteers working on discord to see this happen https://discord.gg/SrZmpPM

Nick from Datadash already covered the project in one of his videos and has joined the channel along with cor-devs from large crypto currencies that believe in this project.

Once the idea is funded and I am in Colombia I will be reaching out to the rest of my friends that run youtube channels and conferences to promote it. We are talking about millions of views and a storm on social media. I have 120,000 youtube subscribers, cryptobobby who I was in New York with last weekend has 130,000. Doug Polk is my neighbor has 180,000 and Nick from Datadash has 270,000.

The official Dash channel has 22,000.

Here is what we do know

Cucuta Colombia has a population of 650,000 native residents.

About 1.3 million Venezuelans have registered for a special migration card that allows them to cross the border by day to buy food and other products that are scarce in their own country.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...in-last-half-of-2017-government-idUSKBN1F81Z0

Minimum wage in Colombia is 77,000 pesos ($28) 1.2 million Colombians earn minimum wage. Venezuelans especially people without documents are paid much less.
https://thecitypaperbogota.com/news/colombia-hikes-minimum-wage-7-percent-for-2016/11465

Is $4 enough to give away? No, I would like to give away 10x more if people here are willing to fund it. Realistically I think $4 is enough money to create a real financial incentive to onboard. It is also enough money for people not to try to "spend it all in once place" and actually use their crypto like a bank.

For a family of 4 this would equal $16. People claiming this crypto will come from lots of different finical situations. Some of these family's only eat 1 meal a day. Do you know how much rice and beans $16 can buy? This is no small gift.

A project this large can be broken down into steps. The first step would be setting up A charity or company, getting legal advice, building systems with checks and balances to prevent fraud, creating educational content, hiring staff and renting an office.

I appreciate everything the Dash community has done so far. I don't want to sound rude or arrogant but I am determine to make this happen. If I can't fund the idea with a major crypto I will find private donors, if I can't find private donors I'll turn to crowd sourcing and if crowd sourcing doesn't work I'll sell all my crypto and do what I can.



(@AlejandroE where did you find the number of $250 per month as a minimum wage?)




AlejandroE said:
Hello, thanks for your question, and thanks David for bringing this proposal and your desire to help Venezuelans.

Regarding directly to your question: if this proposal gets funded we can (and have to) set up a Dash Help Desk in the building/school in Cucuta where this project is going to take place, so we can help people directly with their questions and tech problems with their wallets. This will be a critical point because even they pass the test, they will have questions and they must be answered in a effective way, most of these refugees have a low educational level and they will need help.

Besides, we have stated that our Support Center (which is located in Caracas) will offer assistance throught calls, email, livechat and social media. First, calls will be local only (Venezuela) and then we have plans to open them to many latam countries in the near future. If this project gets funded we will open our call service inmediately (and obviously for free) so people from Cucuta can call us if they have any question or problem. Also, we can expand our working hours in order to attend all the request (demand of requests will be very high). But we are here to help and we will help David to make this proposal in the best way.

David, you say you have never been in Cucuta before, as I told you on Discord, you have to make a detail market research in order to know what we are going to find in Cucuta. We have to answer these questions:
1- What is the % of Venezuelan living in Cucuta who have a home for living? And which is the % who are homeless? This will give us a better context of the economical situation of Venezuelan living there.

2- What is the % of Venezuelan living in Cucuta that are currently working? and which is the % who are not? And if they are not, why is it? (they cant find a job or they just dont want to?) This question is very important because there are people with bad habits and we have to identify the good ones from the bad ones.

3- What is the % of Venezuelans living in Cucuta who have a smartphone? As you know, many venezuelans who migrate to Cucuta are very poor and are in a bad economic situation, and it is important to know this number in order to prepare the right amount of paper wallets that will be needed.

4- Is 4$ enough? 4$ is 2 weeks of a salary in Venezuela, but this plan is for Colombia, where the min. wage is aprox $250. It is important to ask what can you buy in Cucuta with 4$?

5- With an amibitious project like this, I think you have to run a "test" in a small scale of what you want to do, then learn from that experience and see if it is possible to scale up to 300.000 people. You can contact a NGO in Cucuta and ask them permission to do this first test in its building. You will learn a LOT at a cheap cost and I think many people from the community could donate you some Dash to make this first approach and then submit the proposal with your experience.

This proposal is focused on a extreme massive adoption, and that is why like it so much. You count with my support (Dash Help Venezuela) and I hope we can do this in a very effective way.
Click to expand...
 
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1- I am flexible on how we setup the budget but it must allow for me to succeeded. It would be unfair if I was funded the first 100k and as I was setting everything up Dash found a different project it wanted to support. I will only need to handle a small amount of the overall funds and the initial estimates to setup everything are under 100k.

2- I would like to continue operating until we use the full budget but I also have some flexibility here. The idea is to create a model that is easy to duplicate. I think there are a lots of other scenarios where we may only achieve some of our goal but still consider it a success.

a) If we create a class room system and educational materials that make introducing people to crypto easy
b) We can measure and create a metric called "cost to board". We can look at our operating costs and the cost to on-board each user and tweak it for future models
c) If some small pockets of the city fully adopt crypto while the majority of the city doesn't. (I would be disappointed but even if there was a small community of 10,000 that switched to crypto that seems like a massive milestone.)
d) If we help 300,000 desperate people escaping a dictorship

3- I would like to work with people on the ground. I am willing to take over any roles needed to make this happen but I know where I am strong and where I am weak. I would like to hire trusted members of the community to run the day to day operations so I can focus on marketing and promoting this to the rest of the world.

4- Additional partnerships will complicate and slow things down, we need to act now. Other people can copy this idea and improve upon it once it works.

I'm not sure how the escrow progress works but I'm flexible as long as I can quickly get access to resources as I need them.



ewok said:
@DavidHay Thanks for this proposal as I believe Dash can help change lives for the better.

1- With regard to the budget size how do you envisage the payment split up from the treasury- i.e 700 dash per month for 6 months.

2- So the project would continue to run and sign up people until the 2m funding runs out and if successful look to replicate?

3- The fact that you are looking to integrate existing Dash projects into this greater idea is perfect and builds on work already done.

4- Some consideration could be given to partnerships, what groups out there would contribute to also find a solution for financial inclusion in such a situation. The Gates Foundation has a whole team devoted to this but they are extremely difficult to get a hold of. I am sure there are others also.

We should also be mindful that this is in uncharted waters, replacing a failed currency so the plan should be fluid and able to react, flexibility is a must.

This is a huge opportunity and given escrow it is a sure fire yes. This "moves the needle" for Dash.
Click to expand...
 
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People are free to use the funds as they wish. We won't know how the money moves until we start giving it away. A smaller scale test won't work because it won't prove anything this the smallest test we can do and pull meaningful results from. Half of this plan involves giving crypto to 300,000 people the other half is seeing how the economy reacts. How merchants adopt and what we need to do to encourage adoption.

I like your idea of giving away more but also want to stress my point about mass adoption and the need to treat everyone equally. By doing this we make the onboarding process much faster. It's like going to a restaurant that only has one thing on the menu. They can focus on making that one thing better than anyone else. Once this idea is successful I'm sure others will modify and create lots of variations.

Arthyron said:
On most issues with this proposal, I will defer to those who have firsthand experience of the region, its people, its culture, its economy, etc. It seems from consensus that the people who will most likely be serviced by this proposal will be mostly very poor and not very well established, so while I think it's an admirable effort and goal, what I'm wondering--along with a few other users--is if two weeks worth of wages in Venezuela is going to be sufficient for refugees in Colombia to do more than get a few nice things? This is not a bad thing in itself and I would probably support that even if that's all we accomplished, but more than anything, what we all want to see is for this injection/air drop to facilitate the creation of new opportunities for these people to become more established and create a Dash ecosystem in which they can thrive and grow, to see this as an investment in the future of people instead of a handout for relief. In other words, we want this to be a jumpstart for something ongoing and self-perpetuating.

So once people get their Dash, then what? It seems that the projection is that small, local merchants--which ostensibly make up a large chunk of commerce in the region, though that seems to differ to some extent depending on which side of the Venezuelan border you're on--will be the first to adopt, so once the people start exchanging the Dash with these merchants, where does that Dash go from there? I think your efforts to get Dash in to the hands of the people and the people to merchants, but could you elaborate on how this plan will ensure that the merchants will put it back in to circulation in some way? What incentives or opportunities do the people have to save and/or invest Dash in themselves and their community? I do wonder what might be gained by decreasing the total number of people but offering a larger sum might do? What would be the advantages/disadvantages to different distributions of total numbers vs. amount, and which would be more likely to lead to the jumpstart of an ecosystem?
Click to expand...
 
Name3 said:
I would agree with what others have said, I think that there needs to research how far $4 dollars will go in Cucuta.

I also think that since we have the money, it might be prudent to up it $6 to really hit it home.

Exciting proposal! Can't wait to see the final proposal you end up putting to the network!
Click to expand...

If Dash is willing to increase the budget I would happily raise the amount to $6 per person.
 
Antti Kaikkonen said:
I don't really know much about Nano so I'm still quite sceptical. To my knowledge it relies on user devices doing proof of work to avoid transaction fees. Have you tested it on a low end android device to verify that you can actually transact? Actually I didn't even find any android wallets in the appstore.
Click to expand...

I have not, but I am talking to their dev team and they fund this I am confident they will make the the technology work. It would be nice not to take that gamble.
 
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