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pre-proposal: (Dash Iran begins) we are going to educate and encourage

Will you fund this proposal?

  • yes

    Votes: 6 100.0%
  • no ( please share the reason below)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • abstain

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    6
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MahdiDarabi

New member
1- Project summary
Iran is a country with a majority of young educated population and widespread use of smart phones and Internet. It also is a pioneering country in banking industry and financial technologies [1]. Furthermore, Iran has huge potentials for expanding tourism [2] freelancing industry, and remittance [3], with a big market for special products (like saffron and barberry) and handcrafts (like Persian carpet). All those make Iran as a suitable place for Dash, as a leading crypt currency with desirable features.
Our goal in this proposal is to expand the use of Dash, as one of the best payment mechanisms, in Iran. We aim to achieve this by introducing and popularizing Dash initially among businesses, companies, and individuals active in IT and financial technologies, tourism, trades, and freelancing. In the next step, we will target general young populations.
Given the huge rate of trade and tourism exchange between Iran and its neighboring counties, this would be a promising step toward promoting Dash in the Middle East and central Asia.

IranIsGood.png



2- Description and business justification
As mentioned before, majority of Iranians have access to Internet [4] especially mobile networks [5]. According to official statistics, 67 percent of Iranians have access to Internet, there are 53 million smart phones in the country, and these numbers have been growing significantly in recent years. Iran is considered as a young country with 60 percent of its 80 million population are under 30 year old [6], where 4.5 million are enrolled in Universities each year. This young educated population is interested in using high-tech products and solutions to facilitate their daily activities. In particular IT finance products and applications are very popular. Payment applications are part of the daily life of many individuals. Online payments are widespread and constitute the majority of financial transactions [1]. According to official statistics about 1.5 billion electronic transactions are done each month in Iran and the amount of its turnover is over 40 billion dollars.

Recently, Iran’s society shows huge excitement about cryptocurrencies, its foundation, and applications, and began its journey to adopt them for payment and investments. There is considerable population in Iran that is active in cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies [7] [8]. Tutorials, workshops, and programs on cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology are among the most popular and highly demanded ones in the county.
This unprecedented interest has created enormous opportunities to expand the use of cryptocurrencies especially Dash. ُSome areas that can be targeted are listed below:

2-1- Inbound Tourists
For various reasons Iran is an interesting destination for inbound tourists.

IranTourism.png



2-2- Outbound Tourists: On average, eight million tourists travel from Iran to other countries each year. Some of these tourists travel to Iraq and saudi arabia for religious reasons. Some others travel to countries like Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, UAE, and Thailand for recreation.

tourist-text-box.PNG


2-3- Handcrafts and special products: Iran is a country that is composed of various cultures and is a home to an ancient civilization. Because of this, there are various kinds of handcrafts that root in rich Iranian-Islamic culture [18]. Some of them like Persian carpet are well-know in the world. Also due to Iran’s special geography, it’s a leading producer in some agricultural goods like date, pistachio, saffron and barberry. Financial Transactions related to these products can be a good opportunity to expand the use of Dash.

2-4- Freelance jobs and Remittance: There are a lot of engineers who graduate form good universities in Iran [19]. They can usually work on engineering and technical projects with a much lower wage than the average wage around the world. This caused a significant growth in freelance jobs in Iran [20]. Freelance jobs are growing and every year the number of people working as a freelancer increases significantly. Since most of the people working in this area are young and usually accept new technologies easily, the use of Dash can be boosted in this area. Furthermore, Iran is one the countries that has a lot of emigrants. Among them there are a lot students who want to continue their graduate studies abroad. Many of these students send money to their families or vice versa (The amount of money sent or received in form of remittance is over one billion dollars each year.) [21]


3- Values for Dash network
3-1- Since the number of inbound and outbound tourists is high, if some of the people who are involved in tourism use Dash to facilitate financial transfers, the number of transactions in Dash ecosystem increases and this also helps Dash be well accepted in other countries too because people of several countries use Dash and not only one country.


3-2- Buying commodities like saffron, caviar and and carpet with Dash, not only increases financial turnover in Dash ecosystem but also introduces Dash to new and special markets.

3-3- If Iranian IT experts and academic society use Dash, this can help Dash be more popular.

3-4- Freelance activities are economical in Iran and the amount of remittance transactions has increased over the past years. These provide a good opportunity for expanding the use of Dash in Iran.

3-5- The reading materials and contents that are produced and provided for Persians are not only used by Iranians; There are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide.


4- our team
Our team, Dash Iran, is comprised of skilled faculties and students of Sharif University of Technology (SUT) located in Tehran, Iran [22]. All our members have experience in academic and industrial projects and most of them are a members of Sharif Blockchain Lab.



4-1- Technical: Tour team members have experience in public and private blockchain platforms. Some of the projects that Iran Dash has been a part of include SAKKOK project [23], supply chain platform and consortium token for various companies. SAKKOK is a blockchain based project comprised of companies and various businesses which aims to facilitate the financial transactions of over 10000 SMEs among themselves. This project is one the first, biggest, and most important blockchain based projects in Iran. Supply chain platform aims to achieve transparency in the authentication process of commodities.

team-text-box.PNG


4-2- Education: Our team is one of the first groups that presented an academic course about the foundations of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. This course was presented in Fall of 2018 in SUT. More than 100 students from SUT and other universities attended this course and the feedbacks were excellent. For those who are interested, the contents of this course are publicly available in its official Telegram channel [24]. Furthermore, our team has held educational workshops on cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and smart contracts in different managerial, technical, and commercial levels. Some of these workshops have been held in SUT for students, university faculty and those who are interested in blockhchain technology. Some other workshops have been held in Banks and big IT companies and people has given good feedbacks thus far [25].

team-ex.PNG


4-3- Research: Our team is among the few groups that are active in research area about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Topics that have been covered include security, privacy, and scalability. These topics have been studied in detail and the results of these researches are published in theses and doctoral dissertations. Some of our team members that are active in research area are listed below:

4-4- Team members:
4-4-1- Mahdi Jafari Siavoshani
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Engineering,
Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran.
website
linkedin

4-4-2- Zeynab Khani
Student of Department of Electrical Engineering,

Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran.
linkedin

4-4-3- Mahyar Daneshpajouh
Student of Department of Electrical Engineering,
Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran.
linkedin

4-4-4- Mahdi Darabi
Student of Department of Electrical Engineering,
Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran.
linkedin

4-4-5- Sina Hashemi
Student of Department of Electrical Engineering,
Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran.
linkedin


5- Goal, vision, and road map

Our vision is to make Dash as the most widespread cryptocurrency in Iran. Our goal is to train people who are skilled at blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, especially the Dash cryptocurrency. We aim to encourage people and businesses to use Dash as their currency to facilitate financial transactions. Furthermore, we want to help people and businesses get familiar with Dash and its applications. We have a multi phase plan to achieve this. Each phase is composed of multiple steps.

phases.png



6- Operational plan

Implementing each of the aforementioned phases takes place in multiple steps. Since the implementation of each step is an expensive and time consuming task, in the first proposal the Dash Iran team intends to receive the expenses of the first step of the first phase. This will help the Dash Nation trust more in Dash Iran team. The things learned in this proposal will help us improve our work in next steps. Thus the following sections will cover the details of the steps of the first phase. In case this proposal are accepted, in the next proposals the implementation details of other steps and phases will be covered thoroughly.

Executive steps of the first phase:


steps.png



7- Budget and Content
As mentioned before, this proposal is for the first step of the first phase. The workshop's content details is described in this link . for more details of budget see this link.

budget-new.PNG


Thank you Dash community and your comments will be welcomed.
 

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Hello,

Thank you for your proposal.

I think Iran would be a good place for dash to have a foothold.

However I see some unaddressed problems in this proposal.

1. It’s not clear how you want to get into the Iranian business world. It’s unclear which problems dash would solve in Iran. The strategy should be organized following these considerations. The proposal is in its current form largely talking about why Dash needs Iran and not why Iran needs Dash.

2. The dash ecosystem as a whole is consistently moving away from “education”. The reason is simple, it has proven to not work. After attending conferences and educative meetups attendees rarely make the jump to actually acquire dash because there’s often times no preestablished usecase.

However there’s also a lot of good aspects in your proposal, your team seems motivated and professional. I’d like to extend an invitation to discuss your strategy in greater detail with you and provide guidance in how to relate to the Dao. I’ve already done this with another team with great long term success. So feel free to reach out on discord in case you’re interested and this is a serious proposal.

Thank you:)
 
Hi Quansen,
Thanks for your comments. There are some further explanations for this proposal below:

Why Dash is good for Iran?

Cryptocurrencties are already very popular in Iran, however the main interests are in Bitcoin and Ethereum, mainly as a hedge against decline of Iranian currency. However, due to the realities of the political atmosphere, Iranian population and whoever visits or trades with Iran, urgently needs a Cryptocurrency as a payment tool, which is instant, privacy aware, and with low transaction fees. This is what Dash offers to Iran.

About Education Program:

1- As we said, we believe Dash, as fast, private, and cost-effective Cryptocurrency, matches with what Iranian communities and whoever interacts with them need. Despite that, it is unfortunately very unknown in Iran. We identify this gap, and believe some education program can bridge that.

2- We are a well known team in Iran, in the heart of Iranian cryptocurrency ecosystem, well connected to this society and adjacent industries, such as IT and fin-tech. In addition, we have a track record of holding successful workshops on Blockchain. Considering Dash salient features, with a reasonable effort from us, we can have big impact on making Dash popular in Iran.

3- Currently, Iranian high-tech, Banking, IT and tourism societies are actively pursuing Blockchain and Cryptocurrency technology, and developing businesses and solutions around them. Dash, with all of its advantages can be part of this movement, if we act timely and fast.

4- As emphasized in the proposal, education is just our first step. This step is supported with other parallel proposals and activities, as soon as the first one is secured.

About Business and Industries:

1- Our team is among a few teams in Iran, who have been referred to for consulting, developing Blockchain oriented software and applications, evaluating, and business development. We are known as a knowledgeable, trusted, and well-connected team. We are already part of major events on this subject. We can convince and encourage industries to use Dash, and scientifically and technically support our arguments.
2- We even have been asked by major companies in Iranian tourist industries to develop business and the platform for them. We are in a strong position to convince them to use Dash, given the real and established advantages of Dash.
3- We have the technical knowledge and talents to help businesses to adopt Dash with minimum cost and changes in current business model.
We will detail our action plan in the next proposal

We would be more than happy to have a meeting as soon as possible. That would be an excellent opportunity to learn about your experience and elaborate our plan.
Hello,

Thank you for your proposal.

I think Iran would be a good place for dash to have a foothold.

However I see some unaddressed problems in this proposal.

1. It’s not clear how you want to get into the Iranian business world. It’s unclear which problems dash would solve in Iran. The strategy should be organized following these considerations. The proposal is in its current form largely talking about why Dash needs Iran and not why Iran needs Dash.

2. The dash ecosystem as a whole is consistently moving away from “education”. The reason is simple, it has proven to not work. After attending conferences and educative meetups attendees rarely make the jump to actually acquire dash because there’s often times no preestablished usecase.

However there’s also a lot of good aspects in your proposal, your team seems motivated and professional. I’d like to extend an invitation to discuss your strategy in greater detail with you and provide guidance in how to relate to the Dao. I’ve already done this with another team with great long term success. So feel free to reach out on discord in case you’re interested and this is a serious proposal.

Thank you:)
 
I like it.

Your team member zeynab has reached out to me on discord, feel free to do the same to discuss some ideas in more detail.
 
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