Welcome!

This proposal is the perfect example why Dash Core should not be in marketing or making any big deals. Dash Core set up a $3 million marketing campaign with Ogilvy & Mather when Dash was at $1500, but submitted no proposals to pay for it. Very, very, poor planning. We all know the price of Dash fluctuates a lot. In addition, during all the time Dash Core was working on this, millions of dollars of Dash went unspent by the treasury. Then, of course, Dash Core now expects to submit proposals to pay for the $3 million campaign when Dash is $600. This proposal is only for the forst $1 million. Fernando made it clear, there are at least two more of these huge proposals for $1 million + coming in the next 4 months REGARDLESS of the price of Dash. MNOs, we should vote those oncoming proposals down. Dash Core has shown very poor judgement with it's handling of this matter.

Agree 100%. I hope MNO's see this post and other like it and realize that a policy of rubber stamping anything from core is a recipe for problems.

Let's not bump out other proposals this month and rather have Core resubmit next month with more details about what the funds are used for.

This is a silly idea, darkcoins. Core has already scared off new proposal owners and bumped off others with 1700.. Let them just have this money so there is no sword hanging over the communitys head for one more month.

If Fernando comes back with another stinker like this, then just vote no and hope that it can be brought down.

This is an example of core having the power to vote itself approval. This is very disappointing to me and I can't see any ROI on this crazy expensive request. This is the type of action that will sink the Dash ship.

@fernando, congrats on winning one of the biggest proposals in dash ever , way to go !!

Hi All - I talked about this proposal (and the debate herein) in the livestream earlier tonight: Here's a timestamped link to it for those interested: https://youtu.be/w2xCznonUn0?t=21m37s

Thanks for the video. Glad to have you as a thoughtful member of our community. Please continue.

I'm not filled with confidence with these O&M campaigns even though I'm not doubting the honesty and intention of Fernando and Ryan. I've hired a top notch FB/Google Advertiser for $3,000/month before and I feel like that would be a better investment than this behemoth blackhole advertising firm you're working with.

To elaborate more on my comment, it's clear we need something bigger than the example advertiser I was talking about, but I'm more concerned about the following issues:
1) Super expensive proposal and late in the cycle
2) Explanation is kind of all over the place here and when you first introduced what you wanted to do in another video as Core CMO
3) I never understood why you started ads in Europe first as a test. I've always advertised straight to my most advantageous geographic target audience (e.g. USA) even if the audience size was bigger than I needed.
4) Ogilvy has a brand name recognition but we should still shop around with other advertisers. Big marketing firms waste a lot of advertising dollars for their clients and we should be more prudent than that.

Voted no.

MNO Australia.
Where can we see results from O&M thus far?
Part of my concern is that we don't have an easy viable 'PayPal' like product for normies to use?

Deepblue makes GREAT points.

A service that accounts for each Venezuelan ID and gives away some Dash to Venezualans as a counter to their dismal bolivar would possibly be much more helpful. I think we ARE missing an opportunity if done right.

Nonetheless, I'm voting YES.... {although Venezuela is where DASH has real potential need now}

Fernando another place we can pickup valuable market research information on what is of interest to our customers, what customers are having difficulties in with DASH is the proposal DASH Acadamy. That proposal is aiming to create a variety of high quality interactive training programs e.g. How merchants can setup DASH on their websites or how a new user can get started using DASH. They have a whole library of interactive training courses planned. I watched a small snippet of one of their courses and it was very high quality - broadcast quality. If the stats are kept and analysed from the DASH Academy training then this would give you and the core team useful information in the areas that DASH users are interested in.

Currently the DASH Academy proposal is doing well but still needs quite a few votes to go through so it is worth having a look since you are aiming to get usable analytics data this is another way you can do to get additional market research information that can support your advertising campaigns. If DASH Academy passes this is another useful source of first class market research information without any additional costs to us. Here is the link to the DASH academy proposal:

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Dash-Academy

This last minute proposal killed the Dash Academy proposal by sucking up all the funds.

Dashacademy might get over the line but there isnt any budget left for it. It is far behind.

This money is going to be handed over to O&M so I dont there is too much scope for using research etc. None of what you are rooting for will likely happen so it is a little unfortunate but thats the way it is..

You are right Wixamlee. DASH Academy got a clear number of votes before the deadline to pass with +12 votes over the minimum required but it didn't go through because there was no more budget left.

Hi Ryan,

If you're going to ask for a third of the budget, please provide 30 days written notice in Forum and Discord so that proposal owners have fair warning. Many people and entities besides Core are working in the background doing business deals/integrations/etc. and could be adversely affected by this size of a proposal.

*FAIR WARNING*: I'm going to ask for a large amount of Dash next month for creation of a Superbowl ad and Fox Sports TV sponsorship. Check the forum pre-proposal in a couple weeks, if interested.

lnstantKarmaFund, will that be a March proposal or April proposal?

The following 3 proposals were Positive votes, but put out of reach (killed) due to this huge last minute proposal. Historically, all three would have passed.

Dash uptake by UK businesses
Dash Reputation Management Platform
The Indeterminacy Festival and Immersive Decentralization

This one too: Continuation of Dash Roadshow, Ghana - West Africa 2018
The Morocco proposal is hanging by a thread

Voting NO on this one for now. I'm concerned that O&M is overpriced and that this is too much ad funding too early in the game. Also, this proposal and expected ROI seems rather vague considering the funds involved.

Is there a reason we need to use O&M for marketing? Do we have a no-bid contract with O&M? Why not get proposals from other advertising firms?

Hey Fernando. Is there any reason why you can't approach maybe 3 or 4 agencies? Have them submit proposals to you based on our needs. You submit each proposal in the pre-proposal forum. Then based on feedback, submit the best proposal to the the MNs for voting? I know it's more work, but I think it's worth it considering the funds involved.

I have not seen anything coming out of Ogilvy so far. From my frog-perspective we have just sunk a barrel of cash into them.

Assuming that core runs this issue in a professional manner there is probably more to see from the bird-perspective.

The main issue is that the bird does not share their view with the frog, but asks the frog for funding.
Leap of faith - voting yes.

It was completely irresponsible for Dash Core to post this and another huge (>20% of the treasury funds) proposal at the last minute and basically eliminate several other good proposals that otherwise would have been funded. What makes it more inexcusable, is that IIRC, there was over 1000 Dash of treasury funds not paid out last month.

Essentially, Dash Core has become the COMPETITION to bonafide good faith proposers. Remember that Dash Core is a separate company/corporation from the Dash DAO and with no fiduciary responsibility to the DAO at all.

Clearly, with plans as poorly explained as this proposal, Dash Core should not be involved in marketing at all. And now it has hired a CMO! By the way, where is the Chief Marketing Officer and his/her comments in this proposal?

Expect more huge marketing asks from Dash Core, because that is what organizations and CMOs do to justify their existence. There are a number of expert proposers with excellent, well defined, and varied marketing plans so there is not any need to set up a marketing department at Dash Core.

The explanation for the use of funds asked for in this proposal is worse than abysmal. It is not even up to par for the marketing department of even a mid-sized company, much less a nearly $5 billion dollar organization. If Ogilvy & Mather needs the funds, then we should have a detailed layout of what the funds are for, the reach, and the expected ROI. How do you think Ogilvy & Mather works with major corporations?....they certainly don't trot out Fernando.

Of course, because it is Dash Core, the proposal will pass. But be on notice, this is centralization in a bad way, make no mistake about it. What is to prevent Dash Core from submitting budgets 2x, 3x, 5x, or for even ALL of the available treasury funds? This is obviously going to be a continuing problem that puts the heart of the DAO, the treasury, at risk.

The 5 billion organization is hardly fair. Dash was priced at $22 this time last year. We all witnessed the dramatic rise over the course of the year.

You are far too impatient.

At $22, this ask is for about 10x the entire treasury at that time.

Why don’t we wait and see what happens instead of trying to predict the future.

Core has no
history of repeatedly requesting a large portion of the budget and barely requested any money at all in the second half of 2017 because of price rises. Compare their requests vs the community over the past 6 - 12 months.
It is a small number.

It is just bad timing that the price drop of 50% over the past couple of months coincided with the marketing reving up.

Btw, Fernando is the CMO (announced on the forums) and several of his comments are in this thread — AND the description has been updated with a forum post of his containing more detail.

The info is out there...

If this is the work of the CMO, then I have grave concerns.

Fernando might be Ryan's CMO, but he's not Dash's CMO. Dash deserves someone of a FAR greater caliber. We do need to be spending millions a month in ads right now, but Fernando can't even get Ogilvy to do the work we paid them for 6 months ago.

We had 652 YES votes last year for a high-caliber CMO but Core blocked it and did nothing instead: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/CMORecruitment

Troll alert. This comment is made by graham from feedbands. Please ignore as he has a competing proposal..

Actually I had no idea about the previous CMO proposal.

Fernando has already said that this funding pays for 2 months out of a 6 month campaign. This means ripping out this kind of budget two more times, every alternate month. I have worked in advertising, The O & M guys are experts at absorbing marketing budgets, which is what is happening here..

Dear fernando,

let me just make clear that I have no quarry with you.

BUT:
Dropping a 1700 DASH proposal 7 Days before the ending of the voting cycle is really unprofessional. You really can't give me any reason how you couldn't have known this massive expense in advance. As the CMO and representative of core, you should set yourself higher standards for interacting with the DAO.

I like the marketing plan, but this "last minute dropping" is not acceptable for me.
Please resubmit next month at the beginning of the voting cycle. Voting NO.

Best Regards from Germany

AnCaptiol

Despite critical comments, it seems like this proposal will unfortunately pass on Core's goodwill rather than any intrinsic worth. Instead of asking for more money, core should utilize this money for a longer campaign and only come back for more when there is something equivalent of $1M in results like others.. Assurances to O&M about a 3 million spend should be taken back..

Keep in mind this is chump change in the advertising world. U.S. Banks spent over 17 billion on advertising in 2016. Even if it is not optimally used its so insignificant that for now dash will be fairly unnoticeable comparatively.

This is just bad logic. If nothing major is going to accomplished with this money anyway then why do go down the conventional path at all when we can never win from banks at that game.

Instead of competing on adspend, we should be fast, innovative and nimble, leveraging decentralization, allowing creative people all over the world try new ideas with small budgets. With 100-150 dash each, 1700 could fund 10-12 creative teams every month $100k is a lot of money, given to smart people.

Just see the kind of work being done by dashmaximalist. If we had only supported him at first, when he asked for 250, we would be 10x the size in veneuzvuela. But instead we wasted it on some random sponsorship and told him to get get escrow. He was forced to fly his plane without fuel and invariably crashed. Restarting will be challenging.

With due respect, fernando is just going to hand this over to the O&M who will give us some fancy metrics but ask for much more money. I have seen this racket operate at close quarters and you are right about one thing, there is little to no hope with an approach like this, no matter what the "metrics" will say.

Fernando, are there any deliverables you can present from the first $300,000 marketing proposal that we funded 6 months ago? For your reference, here is what was promised in the proposal on 09/21:

About the contract:

The main goal of the project is to begin approaching marketing and communication professionally to ensure we deliver a clear and relevant message to the market. The outcome of the project is to establish a solid basis to make Dash a powerful brand. There are several phases to the project toward achieving that goal.

Step 1: Brand Positioning

O&M will develop and propose a brand positioning for all future marketing communications. The goal is to provide a conceptual framework for the brand and make it relevant for the audience. Work on this phase has already begun in good faith as we await the outcome of this proposal. This framework will serve as an input into our logo, look & feel, artworks, guidelines and creatives.

Step 1 is expected to be completed by the end of October or early November. The exact timing will depend on the outcome from research on market effectiveness of various concepts.

Step 2: Visual Identity

Once step 1 is complete, O&M will develop the visual aspects of the brand to reflect our brand values and positioning. There are several phases to this step:

Phase 1: Logo creation. Starting from to the brand values and its positioning, they will redesign DASH’s logotype. In this phase, they will work on the creative concept, the shape, the symbol, the colors, the typography and its application.

Phase 2: Look & feel creation. The look&feel of the brand will define the complementary graphic codes, typographic codes, chromatic codes, photographic and illustrative style and the hierarchy of the information. You will see the look & feel proposal applied to key corporate or communication assets such as the website.

Phase 3: Artworks. Creation of the final artworks of the master logotype and the rest of logotypes from the brand architecture to ensure its correct reproduction.

Phase 4: Guidelines. Once the new logotype and look & feel has been totally finalized, they will normalize the new visual identity of Dash through a Brand Guidelines of 25-30 pages that enable consistent use and the correct implementation of the new brand identity system. These guidelines will include the creative concept explanation, the graphic construction of the logotype, the brand architecture and its versions, its dimensions and proportions, its application in different backgrounds, the look&feel and its main elements and all the key corporate and communication supports designed in the previous phases.

Step 2 will be completed approximately 2 months after it is started.


Why do you expect the community to take your word and provide another million dollars in funding, when you have NOTHING to show so far?

"We can’t really provide much detail on how specifically this money will be spent because for that we need to build the campaign and for that we need the money."
-Fernando.

If a regular proposal owner would have said this, there would have been a mountain of criticism and there would have been less than 50(10) yes votes and over 500 no votes. The truth is that you have no idea of what you are talking about and will more or less handover this to O&M racket. Ofcourse they want any budget they can get.

Coming from core, the quality of work and effort put here is abysmal.. Expected better..

Please tell me Babygiraffe's account got hacked or this is some kind of joke. Is this an April Fool's prank or did the Monero trolls find a way to post fake proposals? This guy can't possibly be for real. Did Fernando even watch this video before publishing it? Is he on drugs? Seriously, what in the hell is going on here?!

We want HUGE ad spends. The quantity of money asked for is a relief, not a problem.. We wanted these big ad spends 8 months ago when the community laid 652 yes votes down for a professional DECENTRALIZED CMO: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/CMORecruitment

The problem is that Fernando is demonstrating an utter lack of professionalism. On top of that... WHERE IS OGILVY???

PLEASE use somebody else with a proven track record for the Dash community like Feedbands, Eralith, or Strike Social.

WE DON'T WANT OGILVY IF THEY WON'T EVEN BOTHER TO SAY HELLO OR DELIVER ONE PENNY OF VALUE THAT WE PAID FOR.

PLEASE NOTE: This comment is posted by graham from feedbands through a fake account. Take this with a pinch of salt as he has a competing proposal and is making these wild accusations so this is voted down. BEWARE

Nope, I had no idea about the previous CMO proposal.

There should be no marketing "department" or CMO at Dash Core. It is inefficient, they are ill equipped to handle marketing and, by their own actions, clearly are way over their head.

What Dash needs is a Strategic Marketing Plan. Here is how it should work:

1. The professionally trained and experienced CMO for Dash DAO (not Dash Core) should create and have an overall Strategic Marketing Plan approved, and amended from time to time, by the MNOs.
2. The CMO should be posting a detailed wish list of projects that carry our the Strategic Marketing Plan 30-60-90 days in advance on Discord.
3. Proposers should then craft draft proposals to meet the items on the list.
4. The CMO should, at all reasonable times, be accessible and provide information to would-be proposers so the proposers can draft the proposals that meet the goals of the Strategic Marketing Plan.
5. Fine tuning of proposals should occur in the pre-proposal stage.
6. The CMO should comment on each marketing proposal and state whether it is consistent with the overall Strategic Marketing Plan.
7. The overall Strategic Marketing Plan should not ever exceed 50% of the monthly budget.
8. Large marketing proposals should be posted early in the cycle, not late.
9. Non-strategic marketing is also useful, and some funds should be available for it as well.
10. Unused treasury funds should be recaptured to fund the Strategic Marketing Plan.
11. MNOs shall have the responsibility to assess, question, optionally require escrow, and demand results from each of the proposers.
12. All payouts shall be in Dash, not in $ so, in the event of a price drop, there is no risk of having to deplete the treasury on a promise to any company (like is happening here with Ogilvy & Mather where $3 million has been promised).

That is what decentralization looks like with respect to a Strategic Marketing Plan. Unsuprisingly, it has nothing to do with Dash Core.

Fernando,
Please hire Amanda to do these videos and other marketing tasks.
She needs something to do and you need a holiday and a haircut.

Nate, do you want to join forces with trollpatrol and help weed out troll cretins?

I agree with you about Amanda being much better than me at video. My wife agrees with you about the haircut.

I would laugh out loud if we werent talking out ripping out a third of the treasury funds..

Amanda just announced that she's leaving Dash and promoting multiple alt-coins now. Fernando - how were you unable to bring Amanda into the fold? Another wasted opportunity. Christ almighty.

Is that true? why? That is a shame!!! Could you paste the link were the news is?

It's an awful shame: https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/7zjptw/update_and_path_forward_from_amanda_b_johnson/

Why didn't Core just use $1-2M to promote her videos on youtube or vimeo or something... jesus christ. With Amanda's charm and some actual ad budget behind it, she'd have brought in everyone from the cryptosphere to Dash....

PLEASE NOTE: This comment is posted by graham from feedbands through his fake account, sherlock holmes. Take this with a pinch of salt as he has a competing proposal and is making these wild accusations so this is voted down. BEWARE

This is completely untrue.

If I did not trust Fernando so much I have to say I would not feel compelled to vote "yes" for this project. It is very, very expensive and I can't help but think we could do much more good with this volume of money in a real and practical way. A lasting way. Advertising as soon as you stop the interest drops off.

I personally have never paid for advertising in my career. Yet my websites have had over 100,000,000 (not a typo that is 100 million visitors since I first set them up ) viewing around 300 million pages of information. I did this without spending a penny in advertising. No a single penny. I focused on creating so much value in a practical way that people need and want to use what I created. Creating a useful service, products that are so good people have to use them is the way. Educating people is another way. Combining the two is even better. I continue to receive over 13 million visitors per year completely free of any advertising costs year after year. All with ZERO advertising budget.

In my experience using funds only for creating true and usable value is the most effective marketing of all. Spend all the money on making services and products that are so good that people have little choice but feel compelled to use them.

Then adapt other services to fit with your service is another useful way without spending any money on advertising. Utility based ideas are considerably better than advertising because as soon as you stop advertising the interest drops off rapidly. With utility ideas the very nature of the niche chosen ensures exposure to customers is achieved and customer continue to use your product or service year after year with no advertising. I also look for ideas that compliment existing technology that already have the distribution and then adapt into those areas to gain a near instant new market.

Elon Musk does not believe in paying for advertising. Richard Branson also does not believe in advertising and I have to say I also do not believe in paying for advertising. I've never needed it because I align services so tightly with people's needs that it does not need to be advertised.

It is important to get a brand right but for the prices quoted here it seems like huge amounts of money that could do so much other good establishing DASH. With this money we would have a good chance of converting Venezuela to DASH.

I need to ask - Fernando how much experience do you have in marketing? Is that your area of expertise or have you just been assigned that position? What is your background in this area? I need to ask this because something does not feel right to me on this proposal.

May I ask what can the DASH community reasonably expect for this money in terms of return on investment? You must have some ideas? We would expect this from any other proposal and I think it is a fair and reasonable question. We could then make a fair comparison with other options for attracting DASH customers. I am beginning to think that we have made an association with a large and expensive advertising firm that is a bit out of our league at the moment and we are spending money that the likes of Microsoft and IBM would be spending. We could use other techniques to capture users. I have several ideas on these that I've researched myself that might be more effective use of this money.

As I said before I trust Fernando. However at the same time we have some fair questions about this volume of money and Fernando your expertise in dealing with marketing projects - would you mind sharing your background so we can see this money is being well spent?

You are on point on many points.
Personally, I feel that short of Evolution, we don't have a great product yet, for your average first world normie.
Venezuela is an opportunity passing us by.

I value your informed opinion highly, irrespective of which way you vote. You should try and comment on more proposals I will be watching out for your comments in future.

Thanks for your detailed feedback, I really appreciate that you care about the project and your trust in me.

Regarding building great products, I don't think anyone can disagree with you. But our development team doesn't need more money now. If they did, that would be more important than anything else. They need time to implement the vision. Nine women don't make a baby in a month and adding more developers doesn't always help as Quantum has said in another comment.

As for ads, I agree that we can't convert all the people we need to convert using them. I've mentioned it before. There are two reasons for this: a) We are asking people to change how they manage and think about money and that is too deep to be decided in the same way you choose soap in the supermarket and b) The budget that huge global brands have will never be possible for us even if we wanted to follow that path.

However, where there are other things happening, ads can complement that (for example, the Bitcoin billboard Roger Ver paid for in Silicon Valley would have only been a nice gimmick if he was not preaching at everyone in the area at the same time... the billboard raised eyebrows and then he entered the room). You mention Venezuela. Digital ads there are quite cheap compared to western countries. Don't you think it makes sense to put the brand in front of people with ads so when the amazing teams there reach those people they have a higher chance of getting their attention because the brand rings a bell? We'll need to control costs and measure very well, but it can increase their effectiveness a lot. And if it doesn't, we drop it, I have zero interest in wasting our money.

On another note, we have an awareness problem. Market research and direct experience shows that very few people in crypto really know what we are. To me it doesn't make any sense because we've been around for 4 years already, there are thousands of articles about Dash and we have an amazing technology. But that is how it is. We need to change something in our communication if we really want to dominate the payments space. It would be really sad that we launch Evolution and nobody notices. We need people to start thinking about us so we can then convert them.

But to change we need to know what is that is not working in our communication. Maybe we focus too much on the price of transactions and people don't really care... or we talk speed and in reality what people want to know is where to spend.

And there ads can help too. We can use them to learn about what is working and what not in our communication. Of course we also need to test things in our site and with the numbers you have in your own sites I'm sure you are familiar with all the things that can be done there. But we can learn a lot when we do a campaign with five different messages and really compare results. Some groups of users will react better to certain messages than others and there won't be a unique mix. With all that information we can refine all the other organic channels. If we learn that Americans that read the NYT react well to ads that mention security the next time that our PR agency pitches a story there they know what they need to say. Or we learn that the only thing that Germans react to is privacy... next event there has to be of a certain type.

TL;DR: I don't think ads will suffice, but they can complement boots in the ground and they can help us understand our users better. Some campaigns will focus more on one of those things and others will do both.

Finally, about my experience. Around the time I finished university I spent a couple years in HP doing mostly marketing to our distribution channel and some events. I then moved to a telecom company (Telefonica). I spent almost 3 years reporting directly for the Chief Commercial Officer of a division with operations in Europe and Latam. Sales and marketing operations in each country reported directly to us. I was then appointed marketing manager in the Spain operation and spent a couple years there revitalizing a few products that were not working well with final users. When the CEO of that division moved to another one, I was one of the three people that moved with her and I spent another year designing a complex B2B product with some regulatory problems. After that I decided to quit the corporate world to start my own business. It was a small health care company and because I'm not a health care professional I did everything except treating the patients. Our only two sources of clients were referrals of other clients and online ads. That business did good money and I started investing in real estate, which has been my other big activity since then (some marketing learning there from treating with people doing their biggest decision in their life). I also invested a few years ago in a small video games studio a friend started and managed myself distribution (app stores are a world of their own and there are a ton of things you can do there). Then I got hooked on Dash and started reducing the number of projects or my implication so I could put more time here.

I understand your doubts. I admit that I should have put more time on explaining the proposal. By rushing it to avoid waiting one more month it looked less thought/prepared than it is. I hope you can vote yes because I really think we can obtain value from this. But even if you don't, thanks for your feedback. I'll be back with a more detailed version if it doesn't pass. Or I'll be back with data if it passes.

PD: I first did one of the biggest proposals ever and now I've made one of the biggest DC comments ever... probably nobody still reading :)

I'm still reading Fernando. This debate is as much for you as for us so as long as YOU are still reading we are OK. You are right that we do not need more investment for the core team software devs. I was not referring to that when I say we need to improve DASH. We can't create a single baby in one month with 9 pregnant women but in 9 months we could have 9 healthy babies!

DASH is more than just the software that the core team are developing. DASH is all parts of what make up the DASH ecosystem. DASH is our partners. DASH is the people we help. DASH is the training materials. DASH is the innovations that work with DASH. DASH is the integration project. All of this and more is what makes DASH. We could invest to improve the DASH offering without investing any more money in improving the software. DASH is much more than just the software.

Your experience in marketing is very high level with likes of HP and Telefonica (Movistar) these companies have considerable resources. Is DASH at this level now ? You mentioned testing different environments by advertising however the space is changing so rapidly that what we test now could be different in a few months. Are we at that point to do that type of testing?

You mentioned that people are not noticing DASH. I think however it is not that we are not getting our message across it is that our offering is not yet compelling enough for the people we are primarily talking to. We are talking to the wrong people. They have no real need for DASH. The people that NEED DASH are in Venezuela and Africa. Where the message is coming across loud and clear.

We also need to established a real user base of actual users of DASH. Not investors and speculators. This would then make DASH a working currency. That would add stability to DASH price because then it is needed. A speculative investment is not needed but when it is a CASH for a nation it IS needed and irreplaceable. We need DASH to be established as a currency and the best place right now to do that is Venezuela.

Venezuela is at crisis point with its currency the people are screaming out for a solid currency. The government can't deliver that. We can with DASH. And the time to do that is RIGHT NOW. With a complete and focused effort of the entire DASH community. If we all focused we could achieve DASH in Venezuela as their working currency in 2018.

Maybe MNO do not fully realise just how critical the situation is with their currency in Venezuela: Take a look at this graph of the depreciation of the Venezuelan Bolivar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_bol%C3%ADvar#/media/File:Venezuela_inflation_on_the_black_market_(DolarToday)_on_a_logarithmic_scale.png

You can see in the last 4 months of 2017 the value of the Bolivar HALVED .

In 2013 6.3 Bolivars bought 1 USD. Today 230 228 Bolivars buy one USD.

I think the best AD for DASH in Venezuela is the people using it to solve their problem. What is of more value an AD to look at or giving that money for the AD to the people to use first hand? I don't know what the ads would cost in Venezuela but right now $0.5 USD is being claimed in a big way with the GETFREEDASH project with over 20K signups already. How much advertising money was spent on that campaign? Would it not be better to spend that Ad money on giving it away to the Venezuelans so we get an actual DASH customer with real DASH currency in their wallets like the campaign "GETFREEDASH" ? $0.5 of a USD = 215,000 Bolivars. I think if you ask Venezuelans what they would rather have - a view of an AD or actual DASH they can use in their wallets I think I know what they would say. Is it not obvious what they need? Giving DASH away in Venezuela in exchange for detailed information as they signed up would be a better way to get the info you need. e.g. when they sign up for free DASH they need to fill out a short questionnaire. Just put the questions in that you want and you get your market research information PLUS a DASH customer in the process. The GET FREE DASH is going viral with no Ad money spent. This is just one example of what we could do with the AD money without buying ads we get everything we need.

If we focused and moved quickly with everyone in the DASH community pulling together with all our resources, focus and energy we could we could establish DASH in Venezuela as their working currency.

Imagine if we could use that 3 million dollars in this AD campaign but instead used it for a focused effort to converting all of Venezuela to DASH. Imagine the PR that would bring world wide for DASH when Venezuela is using DASH as its national currency?

There is also the DASH HELP Venezuela project open right now which is a proposal for a DASH dedicated support centre. If this proposal passes they could gather all the market research information you could want during the process of providing tech support. What do you want to know Fernando about the Venezuelan customer? They will find it out for you. They said they are willing to work with you to give you all the data you need. Who is the customer? What problems do they have? What are their "Pain points" with using DASH? What businesses are using DASH? How do they want DASH to be improved? All of this information can be gathered and collated from the DASH HELP CENTRE project. Do we really need to pay for ADs to get that information in Venezuela? I have many more piratical real ideas to get established in Venezuela DASH as a working currency with no advertising needed. We could use that money to create REAL VALUE, actual real ASSETS that will help people and the market intelligence you want can be gathered naturally in the process of providing these services. In my opinion advertising money would be better spent creating real tangible value that people could use right now.

I think to achieve all this and to help Venezuela convert to using DASH as their main currency we may need to look setting up a new DAO. DAO - Venezuela. Were the projects could be focused raised and people that are passionate about solving the Venezuela cash crisis could become involved. Teams could work together to synergistically rather than the situation right now where each Venezuelan project is fighting on its own to be heard. I put 35 hours of hard graft work on the DASH HELP VENEZUELA project because I believe in that project so strongly. It is the foundation stone on which we will convert Venezuela to DASH. A survey at the DASH Caracas conference showed that 92% of the people had further questions and doubts on how to use DASH and out of those 96% said they wanted a SUPPORT CENTRE. Without the support centre the DASH conferences are nothing more than a PR stunt. The HELP CENTRE will convert those people into users. It will convert businesses to DASH merchants. It will help the 2.1 million Venezuelans oversees who need to make remits back to Venezuela make those remits. Currently due to capital controls they cannot send the money through to Venezuela in any currency other than Bolivars unless they have a special business license which is almost impossible to get. Western Union and Paypal are limited to no more than $3000 USD per year and they cannot send the money in USD or any other more stable currency. They are therefore having to smuggle the cash in. I have spoke to Venezuelans in Spain and they told me that they don't know how to make remits using DASH. They are sending money to accounts outside of Venezuela and then having friends or trusted persons send Bolivar's. It is a complete mess. But where is the DASH help on how to make REMITS to Venezuela? Where do they buy the DASH from? How do they convert the DASH to Bolivar? How do they use the DASH - there is no training, no courses no help to help these people. No resources. So how are they going to make the remits home. We can also fix this by creating quality training materials in Spanish showing how to make safe remits to Venezuela for families. For south America alone the remittance market is $70 billion USD. We can address that. But currently we have no structure, no training, no support, no guidance - nothing. I don't think we need Ads to find out about our customers. I think we need to use that money to actually improve our service, training, integrations, and giveaways (in Venezuela) and in the process gather the market information we need e.g. on the DASH HELP CENTRE Venezuela project. I hope you see this as a constructive feedback.

DeepBlue

Of course I see this as constructive feedback. We may agree or not in certain things, but it is obvious that you have well thought ideas and you care. I will always listen/read someone who has those two.

I fully agree with you that the Venezuela situation is unbearable and we can do things to help there. Besides the initiatives you mention in your post, I know of at least a couple more being pursued by the biz dev people in Core.

When I say that ads can help I am not saying do one or the other. I'm saying one and the other. I agree that the help center would be great, but the people who contact that already know Dash. Same with those who get freedash. What I say is that we can do campaigns that make the life of people working there easier by making potential users reach out to them instead of them having to find those users. The cost of ads in Venezuela is very cheap in comparison with western countries.

I agree that some coordination would be great among projects in Venezuela. A the moment I see Dash Caracas as the center piece of what is happening over there. But I think it is also good that people can act on their own without a central authority. In any case, I would love to help from Core in whatever I can. I didn't know you were so involved there, please feel free to ask for anything I can provide.

PS: besides the experience in organizations with huge resources I also have the experience of my own businesses, where the budget, specially in the beginning, was as close to zero as possible. I think we should behave more in that way that how HP or Telefonica behave, but that doesn't mean that we should renounce the tools that some resources can give us.

hi Deep Blue ,

you have a written a very detailed analysis and you deserve appreciation for all the thought you put . However i want to remind you one thing, all this while there have been intense debates about dash not doing enough in terms of marketing and not having a proper CMO.

All this is about to change , we have Fernando who is a real CMO and he needs funds to spend to change dash, what he does is probably a secondary point , personally i think all the unused dash of treasury should be dedicated to CMO , so that the marketing team can figure out what to do, big marketing campagins require big planning an money

my 2 duffs :)

Hello Dashmaximalist, thank you for your comment. It helps me understand the situation.

I would like to compliment you on your ingenious GETFREEDASH campaign. Very clever and gutsy campaign. Well thought out and I admire you for putting your own money in upfront to make it work.

I am raising these points for Fernando's benefit as well as for us to think this plan through. Through debate we can hopefully come to something better than if it was not challenged.

I really appreciate the fact that we have an CMO and it is Fernando. What I question is whether we need to spend that volume of money when the ways I've specified above - Data collection from the DASH HELP CENTRE Venezuela and Data collection from modifying your GETFREEDASH campaign can achieve the same, if not better data collection results than paying for Ads and we will be actually assisting customers at the same time.

These campaigns still required our CMO Fernando to run, co-ordinate and plan all of this work whether it is paid or not paid. I have stated above ways we can gather all market intelligence data we need completely without Ad revenue and get the added benefit of better servicing our customers in the support centre or in the case of your campaign detailed questionnaire sign up information which could give us even more detail than an Ad campaign. If then these ways do not gather other information we need then would be the time for paid Advertising money if it was necessary. Fernando has very high level marketing experience with working with HP and Telefonica however does Fernando also have "Guerrilla marketing" experience? If not then he could the possibly also speak with me and others who do have these skills to formulate an overall marketing strategy that gives us the very best of both worlds. "big marketing does not always require big money" . This has been proven by Richard Branson with Virgin, Elon Musk with Tesla, Google with their search engine, Jeff Bezos with Amazon. They did not spend "big money" on advertising and they are some of the most successful companies in the world. I feel we can do the same - at least in some areas. We can still do big marketing without big money. Especially in Venezuela.

I have experience in guerrilla marketing, but from some of your previous posts it is clear that you have a ton. I would love to hear more. Probably the comments here is not the best place, but let's try to organize something. Please send me an email to fernando@dash.org and we can organize.

Btw, I'm only Dash Core Group CMO, not Dash's. Dash is decentralized and I have zero control outside of Core.

I will record some videos summarizing some of my ideas for getting mass adoption of DASH in Venezuela. I will also present some of the background research I've done on which these ideas are based. I am running a full time business so this will be a challenge to make the time but I'll send you something by the end of the week.

you are absolutely correct when it comes to Venezuela and other countries like this , these do not require the type of approach O&M is devising , it needs more of Getfreedash and Dashinformer type of campaigns but for the developed countries , Getfreedash . doesnt work atleast in the current form ( getting $1 for signing up with OTP)

I don't like, that our (masternode's) trust (and money) is kind a centralizing around the core team.
We should have (and fund) a lot of teams around the globe. We should go more decentralized.

I agree with you valoov. Voting No. After spending some time on the sidelines, watching this proposal and discussion develop, I think:

1. This proposal is a bit of a joke as obviously no due diligence has been done. Fernando has been posting contradictory ideas about what this proposal is about. He is clueless about what he is trying to do. Maybe O&M should have have owned this instead of core. Might have led to a better discussion.

2. This is a lot of money to commit to something that has shown no results.

3. This will be kicking out a number of smaller proposals, all of whom will be losing 5 dash. This is an irresponsible amount of money to ask without a plan. The small project ecosystem needs to be grown and not shredded to bits by centralization..

4. Deepblue is right about creating products and services that add value. A 40 dash solid proposal by solar guy was voted out but 1700 dash for this is fine. Not fair.

5. Even if this proposal is passing out of goodwill, core should take this back and rework it to include details.. And no, there is no secrecy involved or needed here.

6. Why is Fernando not engaging in serious discussion and just letting it pass on the goodwill. Is it because there are no answers? . I am afraid this goodwill will take a hit if this attitude continues. He can reply using his own account..

1. There is a lot of work behind this, but you are right it should have contained more information. I didn't want to let it slip to the next budget cycle and could not do it earlier. I posted some more in the forum (can't edit the proposal myself) and can provide more if needed: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-core-team-advertising-march.29154/#post-169267

2. It is a lot of money, yes. When I did another for just one campaign (around 300k) I got a lot of criticism for doing something so small. I guess it all depends on the context. In any case, if there are no results we'll change course, this won't be spent in one bet.

3. No small projects will be kicked out IF this passes. In the current situation, and assuming no more proposals come in, there is enough budget to pay almost for all proposals that are in positive net vote if they reach 10%.

4. I agree. Every month there are proposals that are great and don't pass and some that are not so great and pass. One problem I think we have is that MNOs can't really analyze 50 proposals per month and many fail to raise attention. Unfortunately, I don't have solutions.

5. I've already added some more detail and will release as much info/results as we produce.

6. I am engaging. A third of the comments in this page are mine.

The problem of great projects being missed could be solved by subdividing known proposal categories of funds into logical sub categories and having MNO who have a particular interest in their chosen field volunteering to work on those projects. MNO would need to demonstrate that they have a particular interest in that subject through spending their own money, time and resources they have invested in getting to know that subject well e.g. I have a particular interest and a good working knowledge about Venezuela. I have undertaken extensive personal research on the currency crisis in Venezuela for approximately since September 2017 months and have studied 2 proposals in great depth using 35 hours of contribution time on just one of those proposals (DASH HELP Support Venezuela project) , I have paid a dedicated financial researcher out of my own pocket to undertake details research about the Venezuela situation and how we could address the issues there with guerrilla marketing strategies. MNO could register their particular interests and areas of expertise and they could devote their time on the proposals in those areas. This would mean much higher quality feedback. This helps the entire DASH community realise the value of certain projects that otherwise they might not think about, simply because they do not have the time to do the research. I do not have enough time to give for all proposals as I have done for the DASH HELP VENEZUELA project and other Venezuela projects. If masternode owners are able to focus on the projects that they have a passion for then we would have much higher quality feedback and much better decisions being made on these projects. My own personal goal is that we, the DASH network, establish DASH as the primary currency in Venezuela displacing the Bolivar completely by the end of 2018. Venezuela's GDP - even with the crisis in 2017 was 346 Billion USD . Just think for a moment. what would happen to the price of DASH if that happened? The Venezuelan people would most certainly benefit for the first time in many years their money would INCREASE in value. If Venezuela alone converted to DASH as it's primary currency we would not need to do any other marketing. That is more than double the bitcoin market cap at the time of writing. If we completely focused all our efforts in helping Venezuela move over to DASH we would not need to be concerned about generating PR for that achievement would be awe inspiring. The entire world would see the power of good that a solid, stable advanced digital currency like DASH could achieve. But most importantly of all. We would have helped a nation to help itself get back on its feet again. Isn't that something worth us working together to with some focus?

Ingenuity, creativity, passion and a good heart is what is needed. I have to say that I am really impressed with the GETFREEDASH campaign. This campaign has led to more people in Venezuela setting up wallets than all the promotional activities we have done so far. That is the power of ingenuity passion and creativity. And look at the budget that that campaign as been working with!

There is an inverse relationship between money and creativity. The more money we have to spend the less creativity is needed. That is why some of the most creative and innovative solutions to the world's problems have been born out of working with limited resources. I LOVE working with limited resources because it brings out my creativity. There is no better feeling.

That's not really true, take the last 6 months and see how much money went to core from the governance system, I would be surprised it if was even 10%. In terms of software and business dev, the problem with too many teams is that it dilutes the vision. For example if everyone is speaking at the same time no one can be heard. Also in terms of software dev, and not trying to sound cocky, I believe no one could catch up just on the amount of accumulated knowledge well within years.

Also the core team itself is quite decentralized with people quite well distributed among multiple continents.

Concentrate on dev and conferences, great. Keep up the work and can't wait to see Evo. Evo's plan is genius and Duffield is a rare genius to have blueprinted it out. But quit grabbing everything like advertising if Core is just going to sit on it and not actually do anything remotely productive.

CENTRALIZING AROUND CORE IS DANGEROUS FOR US ALL. MARK MY WORDS. DASH HAS ENEMIES and WE NEED DECENTRALIZATION.

Fernando's videos are unwatchably terrible, and this is the face of Dash's marketing?? Jesus, lord almighty, save us all. and WHERE IS OGILVY??? DO THEY EXIST??

*TROLLPATROL WARNING: This comment is posted by graham from feedbands through his fake account, sherlock holmes. Take this with a pinch of salt as he has a competing proposal and is making these wild accusations so this is voted down. Both Sherlock and Feedbands make the same spelling mistake but claim to be different. ';) BEWARE

This is completely untrue. Hopefully Rango can chime in here.

Fernando is part of the dash core team, and has been part of leadership for quite some time. I have faith in him. That being said my previous statement had to do software and business dev, not marketing. I feel like decentralization of teams can work well with marketing, not so much when making a software platform or engaging big businesses. I have quite a few experiences here as well to back that up.

I think I am going to have say that the emperor is not wearing any clothes on this one. For a potential 3m$ spend, there is precious little information. The video is a total mess and the second one in a row from Fernando.

It doesnt look like Fernando has a good grasp of this and I not sure if he should be handling this role but thats a call for dash core to take. I have voted no and will continue to do so till this proposal can atleast nearly compete with the other proposals on it own.

God, I wish this weren't true, but it is. Fernando in front of a video camera needs to end. How could anybody with a scrap of marketing sense put together, let along actually PUBLISH, such nonsense.

Jesus christ, please CORE:... enable, assist, power, invest in, but please don't SQUAT on all aspects of Dash without knowing what you're doing....

The account "sherlockholmes" going after Fernando and core personally is the same person running the account feedbands. He is making all these comments to serve his own interests. Total shame for a proposal owner to be going so low.

I am definitely not Feedbands but I am a bloke who sees through Fernando/Ogilvy/Rango's bullshit. I want the best for Dash and I'm getting fucking sick of this ineptitude, centralization, and power mongering without reason.

Lol Graham, thanks for clearing that up. Feedbands and Sherlockholmes are just different people who make the exact same spelling error. ;)

Trollpatrol, I appreciate efforts to try and look out for things like this, but your argument that sherlockholmes and feedbands are the same person is not convincing, and I wish you would not go around repeating the claim over and over again as if it was the obvious truth. Secondly, even if they *were* the same person, it would be irrelevant to addressing the points that are being made.

absolutely untrue.

Oof, why do you do this to us so late in the month when there are lots of other proposals up in the air while we try to figure out what the budget is? Of course yes, but oof, that's a chunk of change.

Ya this is how core works.. simple wait till last minute.

Throw a large enough budget to make everyone go wow.

I'd love to see a better budget breakdown here. This is a very opaque request for $1.2 Million USD.

I've posted some more detail in the forum, I can't put that much in a comment and Ryan is on the road for a couple of days and can't update the proposal:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-core-team-advertising-march.29154/#post-169267

Good stuff, thanks for the link Fernando!

Very exciting, Fernando!
-Patrick, CEO Strike Social

Thanks Patrick! I'm eager to be able to work more together.

A little more transparency would have been nice.

Until proven differently, I have huge faith in our core team. They are business like and the roadmap beats anything else out there.
You would hope that they had some big concerted marketing campaign in the works, certainly with Evolution on the horizon this will provide an indication of what we can expect..... yes?

Performing marketing tests with a logo that is about to be changed seems counter-productive.

We should get some results from O&M or you should dump them. This is throwing good money after bad just because they have a big name and you expect us to trust them? You need to earn our trust especially after T&A Miami.

We have independent marketing going on that is doing great in the meantime with feedbands and dashmaximalist and all the other boots on the ground proposals.

Come back when O&M have completed a milestone.

The logo is not the only thing we need to test. Waiting would be perfect, but sometimes waiting for perfect keeps you paralized and I think we need to start moving fast.

This is complementary to what other people are doing. In fact we are working with some of them to share practices and resources.

Will the advertising encompass the new dash branding?

As soon as it is released, yes. However, still a few weeks to go and in the meantime we'll use the current branding. It is not ideal, but I believe we need to execute fast and waiting for perfect is not the ideal strategy. Having some data with both visual identities can also be useful.

Dear God, please move faster. Dash has already permanently lost the ability to advertise on Facebook because of sloth. That is marketshare that Dash will never have. Yes, I vote yes, yes, yes.

I just hope this isn't a day late and a penny short type situation yet.

Just to clarify, Facebook is still working.

Wait...Facebook is still working but the CMO of Dash core doesn't know this or hasn't worked with Facebook to get theirs ads through...

Either Fernando or Feedbands is wrong here. Maybe you two should talk by phone since literally billions of dollars are at stake...

Amateur hour needs to end. Who's wrong here: Ogilvy, Fernando or Feedbands?

Also.. WHERE IS OGILVY??? We paid them 6 months ago and have HEARD NOTHING and RECEIVED NOTHING.

How about we go through one of the decentralized proposal owners who have actually successfully delivered like Feedbands, Eralith, Strike Social, or DashMaximalist?

OGILVY IS NOT IN THE PICTURE and they've let Dash fall the ranks to #10 without so much as a peep on any of the discussion boards.

*TROLLPATROL WARNING: This comment is posted by graham from feedbands through his fake account, sherlockholmes. Take this with a pinch of salt as he has a competing proposal and is making these wild accusations so this is voted down. Both Sherlock and Feedbands make the same spelling mistake but claim to be different. ';) BEWARE

Well, definitely not Feedbands since he has gotten merchant-targeted ads approved and run on FB after the "ban".

Guys, of course we do talk to Core about this. And let me say that we fully support all of Core's marketing efforts and stand behind them 100%, keep them informed of all that we are doing, and have even offered to step down from marketing if so desired.

Of course transparency with the Network is important, here is the timeline regarding facebook ads:

January 30: Facebook bans cryptocurrency ads

Feb 1: Feedbands begins work on a video and landing page referring to Dash strictly as a payment provider

Feb 6: Pilot video complete. Campaign, submitted to Facebook
Feb 6: Campaign is approved, begins running.
Feb 6: Dash Core is notified.
Feb 6: Dash Core gives us valuable feedback regarding the video.
Feb 7: We pause the campaign (while it is still active and gaining impressions and clicks) to incorporate feedback and migrate to a new landing page on a new domain that does not have a single instance of the word bitcoin or cryptocurrency.

Our ad budget was exhausted before we could turn the campaign and video back on.

Ogilvy and I talked to Facebook directly when they announced crypto ban. We already had part of the campaign approved and they said we could start that, but they could not guarantee what would happen in the near future or if they would be able to approve future campaigns. Ban came from high up and they had no clear implementation criteria yet. With that scenario we decided to move to Google before spending anything. Had they stopped the campaign in the middle it would have been a waste and it is unlikely that there will be much continuity anyway.

Feedbands video passed under the radar and that is awesome, but I don't think we can rely on Facebook for our ad strategy long term, so I prefer to focus on other platforms.

Very exciting! Is there any kind of a funding breakdown? Just asking for $1.23 million without providing anything resembling specifics is a little unprecedented.

I've posted some more detail in the forum, I can't put that much in a comment and Ryan is on the road for a couple of days and can't update the proposal:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-core-team-advertising-march.29154/#post-169267

Nice, I believe that this is exactly what most wanted to see.

I can provide some more details, but only about part of it.

As I said in the proposal, around 80% of this is to purchase media and you can't have the details until you have the campaign prepared... and you can't have that until you know you have the money. This proposal is for a couple months because we really need to have money in advance to be able to commit to things.

Right now I have to run to a few meetings, but in a few hours I'll prepare some info from the campaign we had to cancel in Facebook and the one we are doing in Google ecosystem to replace it, so you can see the detail I will be able to provide about each campaign. I will also provide some more details on the team Ogilvy will have at our disposal.

Fernando, about Facebook campaign.
I do not know if a campaign has been done on Instagram and Linkedin.
But, could we launch or re-launch on Instagram or Linkedin (profile of frelancers, which are of high strategic value)?
I think that these social networks, could compensate facebook especially instagram for the millennial profile.
Thank you por the proposal.

Instagram is owned by Facebook and they go together. In fact, most times people talk about a FB campaign it includes Instagram.

Linkedin we will include in the mix.

A little unprecedented...and a LOT ballsy.

Voted YES. Fernando is a solid, reliable, hardworking man. I trust Fernando 100% and if he says we need this then we need it.

If I had this type of money however i.e. 1,230,000 USD we I would use it in a series of creative practical ways instead of using it for marketing. e.g. for that type of money we could go a long way to helping Venezuela convert to using DASH as its national currency. Which one would we rather have? Venezuela using DASH as a national currency or an ad campaign?

Bear in mind that the GDP of Venezuela is 346 Billion a year even with the currency crisis. And once Venezuela is back on its feet with a stable currency like DASH it has the largest oil reserves in the world more than Saudi Arabia therefore making Venezuela one of the richest countries in the world if it can utilize its oil reserves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves Which means if we could establish DASH as its currency we would have the first wealthy country in the world using Digital Currency as its base currency. If it was me I would focus all our efforts and as much budget money as is possible and everyone focus on converting Venezuela to DASH. Imagine the world wide PR that would create. If the entire DASH community focused on that one goal to help Venezuela convert to DASH before 2018 I think we could do it. If we used more of our budget in a focused series of campaigns we could help Venezuela convert. I know we have some campaigns on at the moment but I am thinking to a whole new level. I am thinking a Venezuela projects DAO focused on a multitude of projects to help Venezuela establish itself with DASH as its principal working currency.

I am voting YES on this budget proposal. Fernando is a top man. I trust his judgement 100%.

DeepBlue

Agreed. Venezuela is very important. Big things are happening there in the cryptocurrency space. It's important for Dash to be there.

Would ANY MNO vote in favor of this if it didn't have the word "core" attached to it?

I agree it would be a more difficult sell, but I don't think that is necessarily bad. We have been delivering for years in different aspects of the project and it is only natural that MNOs tend to trust us more than other people with a shorter track record.

Having said that, it still has not passed and I don't take anything for granted.

Fernando delivering for years?

Would you care to remind us how long overdue evo is?

Yes. Delivering for years.

Without Core, Dash is not where we are today. They are the ones that have carried the torch (in terms of codebase development) after Evan moved on to Dash Labs.

And Evo is not late. It is set for late summer 2018. Any other reported earlier dates were due to misunderstanding and poor communication.

Still even if it's core. The community hasn't seen that much in the way of results from the O&M project yet, and the proposal asks for over 1700 Dash! I don't think it is unreasonable that the community asks for some more information.

Fernando, nothing against you personally, and I am not trying to be a troll, but the years of experience we have with Core does not include your position even existing for most of that time as far as I understand. And certainly we have very limited experience with O&M.

You have my support if the alternative is setting fire to Treasury money, but until all the proposals roll in, I can't blindly support such an amount for such a short period when we have yet to see much from O&M as far as metrics or results.

Fair enough, my new position was just created. When I say that Core has some track record I mean that most of the community agrees that we do things in a reasonable way and have proper controls within the organization so we don't waste your money or harm Dash.

Very good answer!! I trust you all core team.

As long as the proposal submitter is still the CEO of Dash Core Inc.: Sure.