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User Incentives

Nyk

Member
Has anyone talked about this? Like setting up with merchants to offer items at a discount for using dash, and funding it through the budget.. It seems to me like something like this should be ready to launch around the time evolution comes out. I think it would get more people interested and actually using evolution right away. at the very least it would make the user experience more enjoyable.
 
I've been thinking about submitting a proposal like this once evolution comes out. The idea would be to integrate Dash into our purchase process and give a 10% discount to people who paid in Dash which would be funded by the budget. Unfortunately though, based on other comments I've read, people don't seem too fond on "giving away" free Dash.
 
Surely the Evo's savings account would be enough of an incentive.
Agree, but a savings account targets people who are already in Dash or at least have already heard about crypto. Giving a 10% discount to users who purchase in Dash on a non-crypto related website will attract new users to Dash who have never heard of cryptos.
 
I offered a 10% discount for purchases made with BTC/DASH on my website.

When I got over the initial hurdle of explaining it, and customers left their carts to go find out about Crypto, they ran into the pseudo-libertarian and snowflake majoritiy groups that are the cryptotard community, and didn;t want to deal with "someone like that."

Promoting crypto, even with a carrot, resulted in lost sales and lost customers because the community is cancer.

One of the critical aspects of promoting adoption concepts to grown-ups, like vendors, is shielding them from the cancer that cryptotards are.
 
You make some good points @camosoul. I think it will probably be better to wait until Dash is on Coinbase and there is a good Dash wallet on IOS like Jaxx. It can be confusing today, at least in the US because Dash is not easy to purchase, but I think if we included a help video and a video explaining what Dash was there would be less confusion.

People love discounts though and we process a high volume of transactions. I think once we did integrate Dash, we could bring in a lot of new users.
 
As far as I'm concerned, I'm not that sure that the problem is about people wanting to spend dash. Many crypto seem to believe that. I believe the number of places accepting dash is more important than the people wanting to spend it (even if, of course, one brings the other). So I would be more about incentivizing merchants to accept dash (and proudly, that is with stickers on the door, leaflet on the counter, etc.). I was thinking about submitting a preproposal about using the unspent montly dash to incentivize merchant but didn't have time to do it (plus my feeling was that too people wouldn't support it, many feels it means giving away money when actually it is building a network and publicizing our presence)
 
As far as I'm concerned, I'm not that sure that the problem is about people wanting to spend dash. Many crypto seem to believe that. I believe the number of places accepting dash is more important than the people wanting to spend it (even if, of course, one brings the other). So I would be more about incentivizing merchants to accept dash (and proudly, that is with stickers on the door, leaflet on the counter, etc.). I was thinking about submitting a preproposal about using the unspent montly dash to incentivize merchant but didn't have time to do it (plus my feeling was that too people wouldn't support it, many feels it means giving away money when actually it is building a network and publicizing our presence)
I agree... As a merchant, I would be more incentivized to spend devolopment time integrating Dash if I knew it was going to be used... If we were able to offer 10% off to customers that use Dash, I believe we could get a lot of people using it. We have no real incentives right now, and maybe not even after IX is fixed if we don't believe people will actually use it.
 
It's needs more thinking out. For a start it needs to be based on actually sales you can't just give someone an arbitrary amount they may not get any dash sales. Maybe there could be a fund setup where merchants can redeem their 10% by some sort of proof of sale.

Also in this way each merchant does not need to individually make a proposal but all merchants can redeem from one fund. Something like this would cause a massive uptick in merchant acceptance.
 
It's needs more thinking out. For a start it needs to be based on actually sales you can't just give someone an arbitrary amount they may not get any dash sales. Maybe there could be a fund setup where merchants can redeem their 10% by some sort of proof of sale.

Also in this way each merchant does not need to individually make a proposal but all merchants can redeem from one fund. Something like this would cause a massive uptick in merchant acceptance.
I like the idea. It would have my full support.

My only concern is this could be a project for the Dash Core team, or require a group from Dash Core to manage the funding... I would hate for that to turn into a roadblock and cause this not to move forward.

I agree, that if a merchant made a proposal, it would have to be an arbitrary number because they would have no idea how many people would actually pay in Dash... that's why if I were to submit such a proposal, it would be for a small amount to see what kind of response we got.
 
There are different talks going on, such as, for example, creating the unallocated budget fund and keeping them until a proposal is worth it. I actually like that idea, but it is true that in its current state, I would definitely prefer give dash to every merchant that accepts it, than seeing those dashes not created because of a lack of proposal.

Any unallocated budget could be divided between all the merchants with a maximum of 1 dash or 2 dashes per month. -> The structure would be more or less like the masternodes : the more the masternodes, the less the reward will be in dash per store. But, like the masternode, as the dash increases in value, less dashes might mean actually more value for the store .

As the number of business increase, we could progressively separate online business that would be progressively less rewarded as opposite to brick and mortar shops that would get more reward (because they are the ones that will get us to mass adoption). For example, whenever so many business are listed that they get less than 1 dash per month, we could give 75 % to the physical stores and 25 % to online stores

And I don't believe that would mean "giving away dashes". Of course those store would get dash every month. But in exchange they would make a publicity of it by accepting it (sponsoring is a marketing technique as old as the world itself) and they would like so make the network bigger.

Plus, thats only an idea that could be improved in many ways ; we could have a proper control system (dash stickers on window saying “dash accepted here”, leaflet next to the cashier… + proof of existing point of sale shop – registration number & googlemaps image)

That we would get us an increass awareness of the public who go to that store plus the long-term advantage of building the network and resolve the chicken-egg problem (As CoinDesk pointed out about Bitcoin and the point of sales challenge : “This is a chicken-and-egg problem. If more businesses had the ability to accept bitcoin, it might encourage consumers to start obtaining and spending it, and vice versa.” http://www.coindesk.com/information/bitcoin-retail-pos-systems/)
 
As far as I'm concerned, I'm not that sure that the problem is about people wanting to spend dash. Many crypto seem to believe that. I believe the number of places accepting dash is more important than the people wanting to spend it (even if, of course, one brings the other). So I would be more about incentivizing merchants to accept dash (and proudly, that is with stickers on the door, leaflet on the counter, etc.). I was thinking about submitting a preproposal about using the unspent montly dash to incentivize merchant but didn't have time to do it (plus my feeling was that too people wouldn't support it, many feels it means giving away money when actually it is building a network and publicizing our presence)

This is not just an incentive for Users. People would buy a merchants stuff just because of the 10% discount which would bring more customers to the merchant. The thing is people that otherwise wouldn't have, will acquire some dash and use it. This gets people accustomed to using Dash and will open them up to the idea. Even if the intent of the customer is only to get that 10% savings.

There would probably have to be a max dash amount per merchant and a max dash amount per order. We also would have to start with only a handful of merchants i would suggest merchants outside of the tech realm.

I think waiting for evolution makes no sense. This should be something easily finished before evolution is released and launched at the same time. Masternodes would want specifics like what merchants and how much so we need someone to get started on this imo.

i think getting merchants and users(not investors(savings account) and traders) should be #1 priority.. doesn't matter how dash is used it just matters that dash is used.
 
Any unallocated budget could be divided between all the merchants with a maximum of 1 dash or 2 dashes per month.
We are not interested in pocketing 1 or 2 Dash a month just to integrate Dash... that is peanuts. We are more interested in our customer's experience saving money and using Dash. We would be rewarded by the money saved in credit card processing fees and elimination of fraud and chargebacks. We would be more interested in integrating if we could give our customer's a discount. We process $20 million USD a year in online credit card transactions, so I'm not sure if 1 or 2 Dash a month would be enough... it might be, but we would have to know our limits ahead of time if we wanted to give a 10% discount since our margins are small and we would be losing money otherwise.
As the number of business increase, we could progressively separate online business that would be progressively less rewarded as opposite to brick and mortar shops that would get more reward (because they are the ones that will get us to mass adoption). For example, whenever so many business are listed that they get less than 1 dash per month, we could give 75 % to the physical stores and 25 % to online stores
I'm not sure why you believe mass adoption will come from brick and mortar. I think it's more likely to come from the younger generation which transacts mostly online. Shoppers also have more time to research a crypto while shopping online than they would at a brick and mortar store. Also one brick and mortar storefront transacts with a small community while an online retailer transacts with the entire US or entire world. When IX is fixed, I'm certain mass adoption will be more widely used online than brick and mortar. Our user base is 90% young professional and we transact accross the US so I think we fit the perfect demographic.
There would probably have to be a max dash amount per merchant and a max dash amount per order.
I disagree that there should be a max Dash amount per merchant if they are bringing in a lot of new users to Dash. Like I said earlier though, if there is a max amount per merchant, we would need to know ahead of time what that number is because we would no longer be able to offer a 10% discount to our customers once that threshold is reached. I also disagree that there should be a max per order because you can't say "save 10% by using Dash" if it was only to apply to part of the order. It might turn out they only save 5%-6%. I think a better solution would be that merchants aren't allowed to offer the discount on items above a certain price. It's a much easier for a merchant to handle this on a per item basis than a per order bases. I wouldn't want to offer this for items that are $1000, but maybe $40 and below.
 
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We are not interested in pocketing 1 or 2 Dash a month just to integrate Dash... that is peanuts.
1. The amount is just an example to convey the idea more precisely. I don't care about the amount. Whatever makes it work.
2. You say "we" - do you talk about dash supporters or about merchants (online/offline ?) - in any case, except if you represent a consortium of people, I guess you are expressing only your opinion and not one of a community, maybe "I" would be then more appriopriate to use.

We would be rewarded by the money saved in credit card processing fees and elimination of fraud and chargebacks.
That is when there will be customers. Without customers no point to integrate dash. The point of my idea is to be the spark that lights the fire. You need something to set all the thing up in motion, then there will be a network of businesses and customers - no need for even payouts as the merchant will indeed save a lot on card fees.

if we wanted to give a 10% discount since our margins are small and we would be losing money otherwise.
You want to incentivize customers. I want to incentivize merchants (so my idea isn't giving discount to customer). I think we just differ on where should the spark be lit.

I'm not sure why you believe mass adoption will come from brick and mortar.
Brick and mortar : 3.9 trillions dollars (in the US) and online : 294 billion -> that's 7%... Everybody thinks that brick and mortar will disappear. That's not my and many numbers show that brick and mortar are very important. There is actually more webrooming (research online then buy offline) than showrooming (the other way round). We need to touch stuff and manipulate them before buying. Here is the source with more numbers http://www.retailtouchpoints.com/re...l-vs-e-commerce-trends-a-match-made-in-heaven

Also one brick and mortar storefront transacts with a small community while an online retailer transacts with the entire US or entire world
Small retailer and small online shop are the same in terms of transaction. The second one has the potential to transact with the entire world but they of course don't. It's about how big you are not so about if you are online or offline. If you are a big company, you open more store fronts. If you convince Amazon or Wallmart, I'll be happy anyways.

Our user base is 90% young professional and we transact accross the US so I think we fit the perfect demographic.
Who's we ? Would you mind quoting the source of the 90 % ?
 
2. You say "we" - do you talk about dash supporters or about merchants (online/offline ?) - in any case, except if you represent a consortium of people, I guess you are expressing only your opinion and not one of a community, maybe "I" would be then more appriopriate to use.
When I say "we" I'm referring to me, my company, and employees. I'm used to saying we when referencing the company. I can't speak for other merchants.

Brick and mortar may represent a larger number of transactions, but it's much easier to represent a much larger user base by integrating with online merchants... Integrate one busy brick and mortar and Dash may be introduced to thousands or even tens of thousands of shoppers in one small area. Unless, of course, we could convince a larger chain to integrate. Be selective and integrate with a busy online merchant and Dash could be seen by hundreds of thousands with one integration. Also, I think a purchaser is much more likely to do the research while purchasing online than seeing seeing it as an option at a brick and mortar.

I'm not sure there is an accurate measurement for what a "young professional" is. "Most" would have been more appropriate, I didn't intend for 90% to be taken literally. We sell tickets for events like beer tastings, wine tastings, festivals, bar crawls, etc. in inner cities. The demographics of the customers that attend these events fit my idea of what "young professional" is. If I submit a proposal after evolution I will include all this demographic data.

Traveling, so I apologize if I missed some of your questions.
 
I agree... As a merchant, I would be more incentivized to spend devolopment time integrating Dash if I knew it was going to be used... If we were able to offer 10% off to customers that use Dash, I believe we could get a lot of people using it. We have no real incentives right now, and maybe not even after IX is fixed if we don't believe people will actually use it.

The thing here is we're not ready yet. I know it's been three and a half years, and you'd think we had something already, but we don't. The only "product" we have is to investors at the moment. That Dash will become useful (actually, investors here are idiots and con artists - they gamble and con). But a few investors understand the real possibilities, and see Dash as having the best vision to make it all come together.

But until we have Evolution, we have no regular users. It's too much for them. Right now there is another thread where someone lost their password and wants to know the process of recovery. All we can say is "There is no process, you just lost your wallet". How can we market something so complex, and so unforgiving to the general public? It just won't work. So in these quiet months, when heads are to the grind stone, and everyone is bored and waiting for word, we think there has to be something that we can do! but unfortunately, some things just take time and hard work, and the show is getting boring, and we, the audience, want to see what's up behind the curtain - but it's quiet there too! They're all in their little realms working on their little piece of the puzzle.

I guess my point is, sit tight, you all are talking about things that are planned for when Evolution launches (or the after launch bug fixes) In fact, I think we should be storing funds from the budget starting now for a massive campaign no huge corporation would ever have dreamed of, all over the world. If everything goes right, this might happen as soon as next spring? But I agree here, the merchants have to be set up first.
 
So is it technically feasible ? What would be the next step ? Put a preproposal to see if community wants it also ?
LOL, I just did that (wrote a pre-proposal). I don't think anyone would trust anyone else, except the core team (who keep their wallets open and transparent) to do such a thing.
 
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