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Scaling up Bitcart & Festy

Opera Incubator

New member
We are excited to submit our proposal to split payments over 3 months to fund the Bitcart development roadmap and to integrate Festy in Irish bars in 10 locations. Thanks to all the feedback from the Dash community over the last few days. You can vote on the proposal here:

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Bitcart-and-Festy-Development-Roadmap

We have decided to split payments over 3 months to act as a guarantee that we perform month-in and month-out. We have to provide updates to you, the Masternode holders, to ensure that you can track every aspect of our work.

Title: Scaling up Bitcart & Festy
Amount: 406 Dash per month
Time: 3 months

Irish Pubs Global Awards

Overview:

Bitcart and Festy are two flagship companies within Opera Incubator that are entirely focused on expanding the utility of Dash among everyday people and everyday businesses. In our experience persuading real business owners of the merits of decentralised finance, Dash has emerged as the only truly viable digital currency for everyday merchants as it carries none of the negative connotations associated with Bitcoin while being a fast, scalable and reliable system with negligible transaction fees.

Dash has the capability of revolutionising day to day business as we know it and we are committed to developing technologies and businesses that help in achieving this goal. We want to make it possible for the Dash community to live 100% in Dash, through shopping online for goods on Amazon using Bitcart and making payments in all aspects of their day to day life, from retail and festivals to transit and tourism, using Festy.

Having achieved a consecutive $100,000 trading on Bitcart each month exclusively in Dash since our integration earlier this year, the team recently made a proposal to the Dash community to fund an advertising & marketing campaign in South Korea. Shortly after the proposal passed, CEO Graham de Barra and Creative Director Martin Kelly travelled to Seoul to put the proposal into action. The market research conducted on this trip was invaluable to understanding the cultural appropriation for entering into the advertising space in South Korea. We began successful negotiations with Bithumb - the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world (approx $1 billion traded daily) - and we are planning an advertising campaign on the Bithumb website and social media. This meeting paved the way for a successful partnership that will lead to an exponential increase in Dash adoption and traffic on the Bitcart website. In adhering to the principle of under-promise and over deliver, the team were responsible for Bithumb’s sister exchange in Singapore, Bitholic, beginning the process of integrating Dash on their platform. The return trip to Seoul is currently being organised to secure the deal.

Less than a fortnight ago, the team at Opera Incubator successfully forged an official partnership for Festy with Irish Pubs Global - an intercontinental federation of Irish pubs, distilleries and industry leading drinks companies that comprises of 9,500 members. Our recent proposal to the Dash community enabled Festy to secure the headline sponsorship package at the IPG Awards in Dublin where we executed a demonstration of our POS system, wearable wristbands and contactless cards by processing close to 500 payments in Dash at the bar during the event. The response from the pub owners and service providers in attendance was overwhelming and we are now in the process of rolling out a 12 month marketing plan with IPG to secure these 7,000 pubs as clients. We hope to begin full retail installations in Q1 of 2018. At the IPG event we were approached by the CEO of Bizimply who is also from Cork and wants Festy to partner with them allowing us entry into 3,500 locations separate to the IPG network.

On top of this, Darren Dineen - Director of Business Development - has formed a close relationship with Richard Tierney, former Head of Marketing for Aiken Promotions, Head of Marketing Partnerships for LiveNation and former Managing Director and Owner of Ten Ltd, while working on a decentralised record label and management agency last year. Richard has taken a huge interest in Festy and has offered to assist in the acquisition of the contracts for the major venues he has worked with including the 02 Arena (20,000 capacity) and the RDS in Dublin (18,500) as well as Live at the Marquee (5,000 capacity) in Cork to name but a few.

This would mean that Festy would be the main payment processor for all of the concerts that take place in these venues that have played host to every major recording artist you can think of thousands of people each night! We are not just exposing Dash and Festy to an incalculable amount of consumers attending these concerts, but actually allowing these people to use Dash instead of the Euro!

Furthermore, the longest running music and culture festival in the world is being launched next year called Atlantic Songbook. It is a heritage pub trail along the West Coast of Ireland - the famous Wild Atlantic Way - which will run from March - October, 2018 and beyond. Festy have been approached by the founders of this festival to be an official partner, shareholders and the payment processor for each business on the trail. Crypto tourism has come to Irish shores and Dash can be the currency that unites the Irish diaspora from overseas with the natives here on the Emerald Isle!

This level of demand for Bitcart and Festy requires a full team of highly skilled developers in order to scale effectively. With a team of 6 developers both part-time and full-time split between these two projects it is currently not possible to realise our wider vision for the mass adoption of Dash.

As our strategic business partners, we hope the Dash community will help us to acquire the resources and materials we need to take Bitcart and Festy to the global marketplace and capitalise on all of these developments. We believe we have shown what we can accomplish with a slim budget, and therefore feel we are justifiably taking the logical next step in asking for a larger sum this time around.

Find our Trello roadmap for Bitcart which outlines a clear and transparent route for achieving our immediate goals in the next 12 months. Click here for a more detailed roadmap for Bitcart and Festy.

With a strong belief in the importance of education, we are currently training talented developers to fulfill the role of blockchain development and this requires a lot of time and energy. If we want to satisfy the current demand, then we must hire experienced developers immediately to give us a firm ground on which to rest our foundation for future development.


Bitcart Updates:

To improve user experience it requires developing a fully functional and futureproof website for Bitcart that can sustain major traffic. By improving our codebase we will clean up the current system bugs and refine the UX significantly. This will allow an automated service that will build customer confidence and trust in sending their Dash without facing order delays. In addition we are hiring a new customer service agent to run a Live Chat during set hours which will better satisfy customers queries. This major update will be instrumental for Bitcart’s success and hugely beneficial for Dash.


Festy Updates:
Recent major developments for Festy have created the urgency for a committed and refined strategic business partnership with Dash. We have carefully selected 10 locations to integrate Festy as a priority. These areas have been chosen due to predicted traffic and better adoption of comparable technologies from our market research.

Retail (Pubs, Cafés and Restaurants)
We also have existing business relationships with Irish pub owners in these locations as a result our successful sponsorship of Irish Pubs Global which you can read about here. Within three months it will be possible spend your Dash in specific establishments in the following locations:

  1. Hong Kong
  2. Seoul, South Korea
  3. London, UK
  4. New Hampshire, USA
  5. Boston, USA
  6. Cancún, Mexico
  7. Cork, Ireland
  8. Dublin, Ireland
  9. Rome, Italy
  10. Berlin, Germany

Imagine a time when it will be possible to travel to these locations and use Dash for efficient tourism! No more dealing with massive fees from ATMs and converting from dollars to euros - let’s go from a ‘Cash is King’ paradigm to a ‘DASH is KING’ paradigm. We have strategically made these relationships with Irish bars in order to get us setup with a base in these locations and tap into local contacts to spread Dash among the tourism industry. Festivals and conferences have already been added to our list and contractual agreements will secure Festy as a payment processor at these events.

When a bar integrates our beta POS system, we will launch a Dash/Festy event on the night for the Dash community and locals. We will supply top quality music through our many contacts in the music industry and make these launch parties a night to remember. This will be pivotal to training the staff and interviewing the pub owner for endorsing our products. These will go out on the Dash social media and Dash Force News. The bar will be able to announce their loyalty card programs that have been made possible by Festy and will only apply when Festy is used for payments. This will lead to huge adoption rates of Festy as a payment processor and massive increases in the usage of Dash as a currency.

Spend Dash in Bars
Customers will be able to purchase Dash at these 10 locations using Dash branded ATMs which will be acquired as part of this proposal. People can put cash into the ATM, tap their wristband/card on the NFC reader and top-up with Dash. Customers can then start paying their bills with a simple tap! We will brand the ATMs with the flag companies of Dash including Dash Force News and Dash Force One graphics.

These bars will give us essential feedback on usability of our products to help us prepare for full-launch. Given 2-months of development and 1-month to test our systems, this development will propel us into the the market for bringing Dash to everyday merchants all over the world!

Festivals
Following our integrations in these locations, we will then begin the process of integrating Festy in the following festivals for the upcoming 2018 season. This list includes but is not limited to:

  1. Boomtown, Winchester, UK (60,000 capacity)
  2. Body & Soul, Ireland (15,000 capacity)
  3. Reno Air Race Championships, NV (200,000 capacity)
  4. Porcfest, New Hampshire, US (2,200 capacity)
  5. Atlantic Songbook, Ireland (potentially 10.5 million people using Festy over 9 months according to Irish tourism statistics in 2016 - 2017 was even higher)
  6. St. Patrick’s Day Festivals Globally ($5.3 billion is estimated to have been spent during the 2017 festival)
  7. Deichbrand, Germany (50,000 capacity)
  8. Wacken, Germany (75,000 capacity)
  9. Rock Am Ring, Germany (75,000 capacity)
  10. Electric Picnic, Ireland (55,000 capacity)

Conferences
We have been approached to facilitate payments and be the headline sponsor at the largest cannabis trade show in the world - Cannafest - which takes place in the Czech Republic from the 10th-12th November 2017. Graham has been asked to be a keynote speaker at this event also. On the 8th and 9th November, the first international B2B conference - The EuroAmerican Cannabis Business Conference - is also taking place in Prague and is linked with Cannafest. Festy have the opportunity to sponsor this event too and Darren has been asked to be a keynote speaker for this conference.

Full details of the sponsorship packages can be seen here:
https://www.cannafest.com/en/pro-vystavovatele/moznosti-reklamy-a-sponzoringu/
https://www.euroamcbc.com/

References

Festy Headlines Irish Pub Global

Irish Pubs Global Awards

The Festy Experience at Irish Pubs Global Awards 2017
https://medium.com/@operaincubator/...at-irish-pubs-global-awards-2017-3697c3e0f41f

St. Patrick’s Day Market Research
https://abc7ny.com/society/serious-green-spent-to-celebrate-st-paddys-day/1805506/

Festy Introduce Dash Network to 7,000 Irish Pubs
https://www.dashforcenews.com/festy-introduce-dash-network-7000-irish-pubs/
 
i am very surprised to see this proposal go live today
- 2 days before closing
+ the recent allegations against core (related to Bitcart scaling) as published by DFN have to be cleared up 1st before the community can have a real opinion on this proposal (300k US$ +) !

i suggest to abstain until all facts are on the table !
 
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@tungfa the proposal was submitted before the DFN article there was just an issue with it showing up on DashCentral because of it having the same name.

personally, I am voting for this proposal and hope that it will succeed despite the short time frame.
 
I agree with the sentiment in your proposal, let's put what's happened in the past and look objectively at how the Dash treasury can help Bitcart & Festy achieve the overall goal of growing the Dash network. With that in mind I have some questions with regards to these scaling plans:

Bitcart

1. By your best estimates (or figures if you have them!) how big is the second hand market for unwanted/surplus gift cards?
2. How do you plan to ramp up the supply of these gift cards whilst maintaining your margins? i.e. Exponentially higher demand for surplus gift cards without an exponential increase in readily available supply could create cost inflation, thus squeezing margins. How is that going to affect you?
3. Is the 15% discount on Dash purchases sustainable as you scale up?
4. Are you likely to require further funding from the dash treasury in order to reach profitability/sustainability? if so, are we talking 6 figures or 7 figures next time?

Festy

1. Is a quarter of a million Euros really going to touch the sides with this project? The list of festivals and their capacities is impressive but, frankly, it seems like a tall order, are you being a tad optimistic on the cost of ramping up and fulfilling on this? Or are you confident that the funding request is adequate?
2. Without going into business sensitive details, in a nutshell, how do you make money with festy? What's the model?

And finally, a more general question.. Would it be better to have split this proposal into two? One for Bitcart and one for Festy? You would at the very least have increased your chances of at least one being funded ;)

I really love the work you guys are doing and I really want the Dash Treasury to assist you where possible and viable to do so, but it's got to make financial sense for both partners. If you could provide answers to these questions I think it would help a lot of MN voters in the decision making process.

Thank you for listening.

Walter
 
@tungfa the proposal was submitted before the DFN article there was just an issue with it showing up on DashCentral because of it having the same name.

personally, I am voting for this proposal and hope that it will succeed despite the short time frame.

It was submitted to the network 16 hours ago according to dashninja. In what sense do you mean it was submitted earlier?
 
It was submitted to the network 16 hours ago according to dashninja. In what sense do you mean it was submitted earlier?

Well if you look at the old proposal on dashcentral they state they have submitted the newer version of the proposal 4 days ago but ran into some issues. And since Mastermind confirmed that he also had issues with proposal that had the same name in the past i am inclined to belive them.
 
Well if you look at the old proposal on dashcentral they state they have submitted the newer version of the proposal 4 days ago but ran into some issues. And since Mastermind confirmed that he also had issues with proposal that had the same name in the past i am inclined to belive them.

Maybe it is the wrong wording then, because I wouldn't consider a proposal to have been "submitted" until it actually shows up on the network. Maybe dashcentral was not able to generate the code to do the submission, but that would be different from having submitted the proposal and it not showing up on dashcentral. If dashcentral had a problem generating the code because it had the same name, then this could easily have been rectified by either (1) giving the proposal a different name, or (2) using a different method to submit the proposal, such as proposal.dash.org or dashtreasury.org or just through the core wallet console. Since the proposal was not actually submitted to the network yet, the 5 dash were not yet spent and these options would have been possible. Whenever a proposal is submitted to the network outside of DashCentral, DashCentral still picks it up without a proposal owner and then the proposal owner can claim it by signing a message, and then add a description after that. No reason this should have taken 4 days to resolve.
 
@Opera Incubator
Ryan and fernando reach out multiple times over the weekend to graham and still have not got him on the phone !
can you please talk to graham
we all want to get this sorted out ASAP - and need communication between the 2 parties to do so !

Please stop pressuring the community:
- this proposal came super late / a proposal only counts when it is on the network (it does not matter when you started to work on your proposal - the timestamp on the blockchain is what counts)
- "we may have to look for funding elsewhere" (DC comment of graham)
there is no need for these kind of threads ! would you guys have communicated earlier this would have never come this far
- "Are you happy that your CEO has not paid our developer's and violated a signed and dated contract from May?" (DC comment of graham)
DashCore has never broken any contracts and why would they start now ? ryan called you multiple times asking for a conversation but graham prefers to "badmouth" ryan in public again and again - pick up you phone - please
- "Why is Ryan waiting to reply? Surely the time to reply from your CEO would have been when the article came out, no?" (DC comment of graham)
ryan and team are waiting to reply as they are collecting their facts and data ! nobody contacted us about this story before it broke or asked for a comment or quote
("investigative journalism" always asked for both parties to comment on issues - if not - 1 sided is bias !)
-"There is still 1,000 dash left in the Treasury fund. Are MNs happy that this money will be burned, while my developer's family's are wondering why they aren't being paid?"
(DC comment of graham)
Your team and their families are your responsibility - not DashCore's !
it is very unprofessional to throw this into the Budget discussion - would you have reached out earlier to Core this could have all been dissolved and discuss !
if graham would pick up his phone this could be cleared up in no time (as far as i know)
if the coins are burned (never created) or not - does not have anything to do with this proposal, the network is doing exactly what the network is supposed to do ! (burning or not)
in my world: if you are in a deal and being ‘time pressured’ = something stinks
 
@Ryan Taylor comment on DC:
IDrrQBV.png
 
Maybe it is the wrong wording then, because I wouldn't consider a proposal to have been "submitted" until it actually shows up on the network. Maybe dashcentral was not able to generate the code to do the submission, but that would be different from having submitted the proposal and it not showing up on dashcentral. If dashcentral had a problem generating the code because it had the same name, then this could easily have been rectified by either (1) giving the proposal a different name, or (2) using a different method to submit the proposal, such as proposal.dash.org or dashtreasury.org or just through the core wallet console. Since the proposal was not actually submitted to the network yet, the 5 dash were not yet spent and these options would have been possible. Whenever a proposal is submitted to the network outside of DashCentral, DashCentral still picks it up without a proposal owner and then the proposal owner can claim it by signing a message, and then add a description after that. No reason this should have taken 4 days to resolve.

You mean this ? (found on https://www.dash.org/forum/find-new/1212756/profile-posts)

paJPvGM.jpg


This means they put this new budget proposal up last wedneyday, got confirmations (400+) but budget proposal did not show up on Dash Central. I suspect there is a bug at Dash Central that causes same name titles to not appear
on Dash Central / on the blockchain as budget object (dashninja.pl does not show this proposal from last wedneysday either).

Edit : now that i think about it, this could be the budget proposal that crashed Sentinel because of a comma in the decimal ?

quote from nmarley last thursday :
Masternode Owners: Today a proposal was submitted which our system didn't catch (comma in the decimal) and this broke Sentinel
 
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@qwizzie No, the "47,5" bug proposal was not related with this one at all.
 
Why are we even considering funding this? We are spending $365,000 for a very doubtful ROI. VOTING NO
 
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