Welcome!

The following is a proposal for Dash Growth, a new initiative for growth marketing and business development for Dash. This is the follow-up to the successful crowdfund pre-proposal, which can be found here.


Challenge

Historically, the vast majority of Dash’s business development and marketing has been done by Dash Core Group, especially in periods of lean treasury. Right now, DCG is doing neither. Due to staffing cuts, there is no one doing business development or marketing for Dash at all.

To be clear: there is no one in charge of posting regularly from the official Twitter account or on other platforms. There is no one responsible for answering business development inquiries or partners like exchanges and wallets. This gives Dash the appearance of a completely dead coin, and we can expect a series of delistings and service disruptions if this continues. The situation is critical.


Opportunity

Thankfully, we have all the tools to easily not only reboot previous maintenance of essential functions, but also grow rapidly and expand our user base and visibility in 2024 onwards. Dash is an old and well-tested cryptocurrency project with major integrations in services the world over, has an established brand, and, most importantly, is the most practically useful and user-friendly digital cash in the world right now. We essentially have a great product with few users and little visibility, primed for a relaunch.

The original promise of cryptocurrency, that of decentralized digital cash, has largely been unfulfilled 15 years into the technology’s existence. The rest of the space has chased store-of-value, decentralized applications, and finance, but no one has successfully taken digital cash to market. I believe that Dash is the best digital cash in the world, as evidenced by my personal choice to overwhelmingly use it as my money for the past 7 years and counting. We have an enormous opportunity for growth here.

Especially with the start of the next bull market, and potentially the Evolution launch, the timing is good to make Dash come alive again and ride a wave, giving momentum and additional funds to make a lasting impact in adoption.


Plan

We will start a new DFO, Dash Growth, to handle business development and marketing for Dash. This will consist of two full-time employees, myself (Joël Valenzuela/TheDesertLynx) and Marina Siradegyan (former Dash Core Group communications officer). We will take over business development duties from where DCG left off, including engaging with partners (wallets, exchanges, etc.), rekindling lost relationships, and forming new ones. We will focus on growing Dash in strategic services as much as possible to increase its network effects in service of the digital cash use case, and heavily push for support of Dash’s special features (InstantSend, ChainLocks, and PrivateSend).

Additionally, we will leverage current Dash assets (website, Twitter and other social media accounts, etc.) to create a content-based marketing approach, building reach and visibility for Dash with a low-cost approach, leveraging partners wherever possible for mutual collaboration and promotion. We will supplement this low-cost growth strategy with several ad campaigns (as many as budget allows for) targeted for maximum reach and conversions per dollar. Please see our Dash Growth Marketing Plan outline.

(NOTE! The above plan is largely for Dash the cryptocurrency as it stands today, with currently-available or soon-to-be-released end-user products. When Evolution launches fully on mainnet in a stable manner with adequate documentation and developer tooling, we will explore a second growth marketing plan to run in parallel with this one which focuses more on decentralized applications and developers.)


Hybrid model

In order to improve sustainability, align incentives, and increase our accountability, we are pursuing a hybrid model where we receive part of our funding through voluntary community donations. By doing this we not only demonstrate that Dash can fund essential functions outside of the treasury’s constraints and masternode votes, but will also directly make ourselves accountable to individuals who donate their hard-earned money to make Dash succeed.

In summary, we have already fundraised the first month of our expenses through voluntary donations. These initial donors will receive weekly updates and other exclusive perks, in addition to the monthly public updates provided to the greater Dash network. Full pre-proposal crowdfund details can be found here, and full reasoning for this incentive model can be found in the Dash Structure document.


Ask

We are asking for 350 Dash per month. This should cover basic expenses and salaries for two full-time employees. In case of price appreciation, extra revenue will go towards ad campaigns and other paid growth. In case of larger campaigns outside of the scope of our budget, we will pursue a hybrid funding model for those as well, crowdfunding an initial amount while seeking a matching grant from the treasury.

We have spent the past decade building the best digital cash in the world. In order to continue to do so, however, we need serious user and partnership growth. I believe that we can achieve this over the next few years through effective growth marketing and partnerships, and we are prepared to give everything we have to achieve this goal.


Reminder: Please read linked documents before asking questions as most of the answers you’re looking for are likely in there.