Will Dash Evloution be Shoppable?

[rafique]

I have already reached out to both Evan and Andy regarding this question via email. I have also posted in two of the Dash Slack channels #development_lab and #evolution

My questions are as follows:

1. Will Dash Evolution be shoppable with an ecommerce layer?
2. How is Dash proposing to onboard merchants? Will the platform be Plug n Play or are they expecting merchants to migrant to Dash Evolution?

I haven't received a response to these questions so it seems that nobody actually knows if Dash Evolution will be shoppable at the moment.

If nobody knows if it will be shoppable then what is everybody working on??

Please shed some light and let me know.

 

[stan.distortion]

I have already reached out to both Evan and Andy regarding this question via email. I have also posted in two of the Dash Slack channels #development_lab and #evolution

My questions are as follows:

1. Will Dash Evolution be shoppable with an ecommerce layer?
2. How is Dash proposing to onboard merchants? Will the platform be Plug n Play or are they expecting merchants to migrant to Dash Evolution?

I haven't received a response to these questions so it seems that nobody actually knows if Dash Evolution will be shoppable at the moment.

If nobody knows if it will be shoppable then what is everybody working on??

Please shed some light and let me know.

The Evolution whitepaper would be worth a read:
https://www.dash.org/binaries/evo/DashPaper-v13-v1.pdf

Short answers, yes, by being the best digital cash out there, whatever is best for merchants. To the best of my understanding ofc, the ecommerce end of things doesn't interest me as much as how Dash can be used to pay for regular stuff (the most viable cryptocurrency for retail btw) but a big chunk of the community is very focussed on ecommerce.

EDIT: That's quite an old doc and while the core is the same some things have changed. Naming for ex. InstantX is now InstantSend, DarkSend is now PrivateSend, etc.

 

[rafique]

So from what I see in the whitepaper is it will be from Merchant to Dash rather than an integrated shopping experience via DE?

Or have I missed something?

I would appreciate a definitive answer rather than an opinion. I am optimisitc about DASH and want it to succeed. The focus for me is whether DASH Evolution will be shoppable as I would like to make a proposal but want as much information about the platform before doing so.

 

[stan.distortion]

So from what I see in the whitepaper is it will be from Merchant to Dash rather than an integrated shopping experience via DE?

Or have I missed something?

Integrated merchants are part of it, not sure what the plans are there though. The DAPI is the main part for the other way around, merchants integrating Dash. Kind of like the paymet widget is the wallet and that's all it needs, something like a "pay with paypal" button added to a page or site does the whole thing. Lots more to it than that but that's what that part would look like to the merchant, extremely simple.

 

[rafique]

Integrated merchants are part of it, not sure what the plans are there though. The DAPI is the main part for the other way around, merchants integrating Dash. Kind of like the paymet widget is the wallet and that's all it needs, something like a "pay with paypal" button added to a page or site does the whole thing. Lots more to it than that but that's what that part would look like to the merchant, extremely simple.

I get that, the thing is Dash could be missing an important part out of their platform if it is not a shoppable marketplace. They will find it extremely difficult to convince exsiting merchants to adopt them as a payment method on top of the ones they have already.

So my focus is and the focus of this thread is to establish whether Dash Evloution will be shoppable and how they intend to onboard merchants?

Either by a Plug n Play mechanism or will they expect merchants to migrate to their platform or some other method?

This is what I am trying to find out here.

 

[AndyDark]

I get that, the thing is Dash could be missing an important part out of their platform if it is not a shoppable marketplace. They will find it extremely difficult to convince exsiting merchants to adopt them as a payment method on top of the ones they have already.

shoppable content would be on the merchant side. merchants can use DAPI to list products so they could pull the info out like that. but an API can't be shoppable..unless you have a different meaning.

BTW welcome to Dash Forum and I never received any emails from you

Andy

 

[stan.distortion]

I get that, the thing is Dash could be missing an important part out of their platform if it is not a shoppable marketplace. They will find it extremely difficult to convince exsiting merchants to adopt them as a payment method on top of the ones they have already.

So my focus is and the focus of this thread is to establish whether Dash Evloution will be shoppable and how they intend to onboard merchants?

Either by a Plug n Play mechanism or will they expect merchants to migrae to their platform or some other method?

This is what I am trying to find out here.

Lol. some degree of migration will be necessary, they're not suddenly going to find a "Pay with Dash" button on their site one morning or be abducted and force to sell goods for Dash Like Andy says, could you explain what you mean by "shoppable"?

 

[rafique]

shoppable content would be on the merchant side. merchants can use DAPI to list products so they could pull the info out like that. but an API can't be shoppable..unless you have a different meaning.

BTW welcome to Dash Forum and I never received any emails from you

Andy

Hi Andy, thanks for joining the thread I sent an email to you and Evan on 30th June to your .org addresses maybe check your spam or junk folder

I wanted to run a proposal by you first as I think there might be potentially a way to make merchant adotion easier.

If I understand what you are saying correctly, will merchants be able to push products from their existing stores to be listed on Dash Evolution so users can make purchases without leaving DE?

If that is the case will the API also support pushing order information back to the merchant platform for fulfilment?

Done via the API of course?

 

[rafique]

Lol. some degree of migration will be necessary, they're not suddenly going to find a "Pay with Dash" button on their site one morning or be abducted and force to sell goods for Dash Like Andy says, could you explain what you mean by "shoppable"?

Will Dash Evolution have a shopping cart ecommerce layer??

That's as laymen as it gets

 

[stan.distortion]

Andy da man for this and hopefully a few others will pipe in, some merchant info on the wiki incase it's any help:
https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DOC/Merchants

 

[rafique]

Andy da man for this and hopefully a few others will pipe in, some merchant info on the wiki incase it's any help:
https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DOC/Merchants

I've already checked that and realised it was written some time ago and is essentially putting the cart before the horse imo.

For Dash Evolution to attract exisitng ecommerce mercahnts the platform has to be a shoppable marketplace where users can make purchases without leaving DE.
When it comes to alterations of checkout pages on established ecommerce platforms merchants will be very reluctant to do so.

 

[stan.distortion]

I've already checked that and realised it was written some time ago and is essentially putting the cart before the horse imo.

For Dash Evolution to attract exisitng ecommerce mercahnts the platform has to be a shoppable marketplace where users can make purchases without leaving DE.
When it comes to alterations of checkout pages on established ecommerce platforms merchants will be very reluctant to do so.

The trouble is the "without leaving DE" part. The DAPI means that boundary doesn't really exist, accessing a wallet and clicking on a widget are more or less the same thing. As to actual item listings, I've no idea. There are some vids and info giving examples of merchants within Evolution but I'm not sure where.

 

[thedesertlynx]

I've already checked that and realised it was written some time ago and is essentially putting the cart before the horse imo.

For Dash Evolution to attract exisitng ecommerce mercahnts the platform has to be a shoppable marketplace where users can make purchases without leaving DE.
When it comes to alterations of checkout pages on established ecommerce platforms merchants will be very reluctant to do so.

I disagree with this. Is cash "shoppable?" How about credit cards? Apple Pay and things like that? As long as it seamlessly connects to the merchant point-of-sale, it'll be a large step ahead of what's already out there.

Beware of "Evolution bloat" where people try to cram everything into one interface. Other projects and business solutions exist, and it's fine if we let them do their thing, as long as Dash interfaces with them in the end.

 

[rafique]

I disagree with this. Is cash "shoppable?" How about credit cards? Apple Pay and things like that? As long as it seamlessly connects to the merchant point-of-sale, it'll be a large step ahead of what's already out there.

Beware of "Evolution bloat" where people try to cram everything into one interface. Other projects and business solutions exist, and it's fine if we let them do their thing, as long as Dash interfaces with them in the end.

I think DASH Evolution will miss a massive market but it's not my project so I'll hold fire on my proposal since it doesn't support a shoppable inteface.
I will still look forward to shopping with Dash in traditional brick n mortar stores though

I think you will find it very difficult to convince ecommerce merchants to add anything to their shopping carts that will confuse users which will only make adoption on the ecommerce side slower.

It's the cart before the horse in my opinion (no pun intended).

 

[rafique]

The trouble is the "without leaving DE" part. The DAPI means that boundary doesn't really exist, accessing a wallet and clicking on a widget are more or less the same thing. As to actual item listings, I've no idea. There are some vids and info giving examples of merchants within Evolution but I'm not sure where.

So the answer is "No" it doesn't have an ecommerce shopping layer...

Was that intentionally missed out or just not thought of yet?

 

[rafique]

I disagree with this. Is cash "shoppable?" How about credit cards? Apple Pay and things like that? As long as it seamlessly connects to the merchant point-of-sale, it'll be a large step ahead of what's already out there.

Beware of "Evolution bloat" where people try to cram everything into one interface. Other projects and business solutions exist, and it's fine if we let them do their thing, as long as Dash interfaces with them in the end.

The question isn't if "DASH is shoppable" rather is "DASH Evolution shoppable"

 

[rafique]

It seems like nobody really understands the question or do not have a definitive answer but either way it is worrying

 

[TroyDASH]

shoppable content would be on the merchant side. merchants can use DAPI to list products so they could pull the info out like that. but an API can't be shoppable..unless you have a different meaning.

I think he is asking about the "Evolution marketplace", a term I have heard used sometimes by Evan and others. Evolution obviously is not responsible for selling products but the question seems to be more about what is the marketplace experience like when someone uses Evolution. Is there a decentralized, searchable marketplace stored in DashDrive? Or do merchants just add in a snippet on their own websites to integrate dash as a method of payment from an evolution wallet? (Trying to get at what the OP is actually asking here...)

The second question was about how Dash intends to onboard new merchants (or how does evolution bring merchants and customers together) and that has not yet been addressed in this thread.

 

[rafique]

I think he is asking about the "Evolution marketplace", a term I have heard used sometimes by Evan and others. Evolution obviously is not responsible for selling products but the question seems to be more about what is the marketplace experience like when someone uses Evolution. Is there a decentralized, searchable marketplace stored in DashDrive? Or do merchants just add in a snippet on their own websites to integrate dash as a method of payment from an evolution wallet?

Thanks for your understanding and clarity. I apologize if I wasn't as clear in posing the question.

The trouble with the current direction (if it is the case) in convincing merchants to add a new feature to their existing checkout will create another barrier for merchant adoption which make the current effort futile. However, If products can be made available to purchase on an "Evolution Marketplace" merchants will be more open to having their products made available for sale as it is a softer barrier to overcome - exisiting checkout implementations should come after when the payment technology is proven and merchants can see that customers are actually buying with Dash which will be measured through sales.

Asking them to add a feature to their checkout without proving it works is asking them to experiement with the technology and will likely lead to poor results.

Lets not forget overstock.com has been accepting bitcoin for years and still we haven't seen many merchants adopt it as an alternative form of payment this is because the cart has been put before the horse so to speak.

 

[joemoraca]

It seems like nobody really understands the question or do not have a definitive answer but either way it is worrying

Maybe you could help us understand "shoppable" can you give a clear description of what that means.

What would this look like for example a small online retailer that today uses wordpress woocommerce / paypal to sell artwork. How do you see them selling through evolution.

 

[rafique]

Maybe you could help us understand "shoppable" can you give a clear description of what that means.

What would this look like for example a small online retailer that today uses wordpress woocommerce / paypal to sell artwork. How do you see them selling through evolution.

By selling their products directly on the Evolution platform to users of Evolution which would mean Evolution will need to have a shopping cart feature of it's own.

For example, If I were a merchant (say a Converse) and I wanted to sell on Evolution I would connect my platform (in this case Woocommerce) to Dash Evolution via the API or DAPI and push my product data into the DE via JSON which will include product information (Sku, price, qty etc).

Now a user should be able to search for a merchant then browse their products in the same way we do on an Amazon and purchase using DASH since that is the Platform currency.

Order informaiton will then be sent back to the merchant platform in order for it to be fulfilled i.e packed and shipped to the customer.

That's how traditional ecommerce marketplaces work with current payment methods.

 

[rafique]

I think he is asking about the "Evolution marketplace", a term I have heard used sometimes by Evan and others. Evolution obviously is not responsible for selling products but the question seems to be more about what is the marketplace experience like when someone uses Evolution. Is there a decentralized, searchable marketplace stored in DashDrive? Or do merchants just add in a snippet on their own websites to integrate dash as a method of payment from an evolution wallet? (Trying to get at what the OP is actually asking here...)

The second question was about how Dash intends to onboard new merchants (or how does evolution bring merchants and customers together) and that has not yet been addressed in this thread.

That is the second part but you would bring merchants and users together via a marketplace asking merchants to stick an iFrame or some other widget in their exisiting shopping cart will not yield the result everyone wants.

 

[joemoraca]

I understand that you can have a "shop" on Amazon / Ebay other marketplaces and manage the products using their individual APIs - so my small store owner has to know how to use each API - or you or someone is building an easy to use "middleware" that the non-technical store owner can use to create multiple storefronts.

 

[rafique]

By selling their products directly on the Evolution platform to users of Evolution which would mean Evolution will need to have a shopping cart feature of it's own.

For example, If I were a merchant (say a Converse) and I wanted to sell on Evolution I would connect my platform (in this case Woocommerce) to Dash Evolution via the API or DAPI and push my product data into the DE via JSON which will include product information (Sku, price, qty etc).

Now a user should be able to search for a merchant then browse their products in the same way we do on an Amazon and purchase using DASH since that is the Platform currency.

Order informaiton will then be sent back to the merchant platform in order for it to be fulfilled i.e packed and shipped to the customer.

That's how traditional ecommerce marketplaces work with current payment methods.

This will provide Dash and merchants with enough quatative data to substantiate how much user adoption there is for digital currency use to warrant any alterations to their exisiting checkout. At the moment Dash has none.

 

[rafique]

I understand that you can have a "shop" on Amazon / Ebay other marketplaces and manage the products using their individual APIs - so my small store owner has to know how to use each API - or you or someone is building an easy to use "middleware" that the non-technical store owner can use to create multiple storefronts.

Well, I would propose to build the middleware as I am a ecommerce developer and have experience in this field. But it seems there is no plan for an ecommerce shopping layer which I think is a mistake.

The middleware would be "Plug n Play" to push product data and pull order information into the merchant store.

This will also answer the question that I get whenever I send someone Dash "Where can I spend it"?

 

[joemoraca]

My advice would be stick around and follow the development process you may see a good opening for yourself. Could open bazaar be a "shoppable venue" that could be tied in with Dash?

 

[rafique]

My advice would be stick around and follow the development process you may see a good opening for yourself. Could open bazaar be a "shoppable venue" that could be tied in with Dash?

Yes it could but why send users elsewhere?
That's a bad business model in my opinion...

 

[joemoraca]

Yes it could but why send users elsewhere?
That's a bad business model in my opinion...

This has been a good discussion - including what has been posted on slack. As a Dash wallet user now or evolution - I don't see it as sending a user elsewhere - my money is here in my local bank (wallet) - me buying socks at your online store doesn't impact me deciding to use Dash or Bitcoin or USD so I don't think I lose a Dash customer when they go to "socksonline.com." - even if they clicked on an icon for your "featured store" in their wallet.

I do like your concept of "shoppable" but I don't think I want amazon / ebay / etsy directly in my wallet (maybe I would like it after I saw it) -- but I do want to be able to pay with Dash at as many existing online stores as I can. Thus the need to have a Dash payment gateway for every ecommerce platform possible - that stays in the store owners workflow with no extra work.

 

[rafique]

This has been a good discussion - including what has been posted on slack. As a Dash wallet user now or evolution - I don't see it as sending a user elsewhere - my money is here in my local bank (wallet) - me buying socks at your online store doesn't impact me deciding to use Dash or Bitcoin or USD so I don't think I lose a Dash customer when they go to "socksonline.com." - even if they clicked on an icon for your "featured store" in their wallet.

I do like your concept of "shoppable" but I don't think I want amazon / ebay / etsy directly in my wallet (maybe I would like it after I saw it) -- but I do want to be able to pay with Dash at as many existing online stores as I can. Thus the need to have a Dash payment gateway for every ecommerce platform possible - that stays in the store owners workflow with no extra work.

I agree it has been a very good discussion, if I were a merchant I would be reluctant to have Dash added to my checkout as I wouldn't want to have my customer service people spend time explaining to customers what the new payment option in the checkout is. It would be costly for merchants to explain what a crypto currency is to staff first and then to spend more time on customer queries. For example, how will my CS team issue a refund? What about a parital refund? How will my accounts department reconcile DASH for reporting?

I previously worked with Klarna AB in the UK as an Integration Specialist, they offered "Pay After Delivery" which caused some merchants to remove the option as customers didn't know what it was and bombarded their CS team with queries.

Merchants just want to sell products they don't care about decentralisation or any of that.

The average shopper is not as savvy as we all hope so there needs to be something in place to mitigate that.

That leaves two options in my opinion:

1. Maket Dash Evolution shoppable
2. The Dash MasterCard that should have been here already

Or all of the above would be the killer app that could bridge the gap between ecommerce and the world of digital/crypto currencies. If I could shop on a platform that was purely for Dash I would and it would also help to prove the concept while allowing me show new users and merchants that this thing is real not just another fancy payment method like Stripe, PayPal, Braintree and countless others that are all competing for a place in merchants checkouts.

Whatever happens I would like to be able to tell everyone that I introduce to Dash where they can spend it because I am always asked that question.

 

[joemoraca]

As I think back in about 2012 Roger Ver started bitcoinstore.com which if I remember correctly was basically selling amazon.com electronics but priced in bitcoin - he did it to drive bitcoin adoption - his pricing was basically break-even.