I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and I very strongly agree with
@jeffh.
It is necessary that we have a go-to place to send people when they want to learn about dash which is of course dash.org -yet for it to be an effective destination it needs to have up to date and accurate (updated monthly or even weekly) information about community funded projects since that is so much of Dash's story. It directly reflects the values of Dash. How much value does Dash place in it's community? The community IS Dash
It is literally it's identity.
Moreover, the community is Dash's human element. It's exciting. It's interesting. It's what is unique to Dash. Talk to me all you want about confirmation times and second tiers and privacy features, until someone comes along with even more privacy, or even faster confirmation times, etc. But who else has a mobilized team around the globe receiving millions in funding every month in a completely democratic process? Who else has a multi-year head start in building a thriving DAO which, by the way, is the first in the history of humanity. In my opinion it is this, and not transaction times or evolution, that is most central to Dash's story. Transaction times could shoot up to three hours, evolution could never see the light of day, and the DAO would march on. Think about that for a second. Evolution, digital cash adoption, these are but missions of the DAO. But should those missions fail, the DAO has the ability to pivot, to become anything, to pursue any objective. It's success rests solely on empowering itself, which is it's community and it's process. It's ability to steer itself. It's ability to increase its own effectiveness. Despite the fact that we have a mobilized team around the globe, I do think we have an effectiveness problem. Nothing we do seems to gain us market share or increase transaction volume. We need leadership directing proposal owners to be more effective.
What role does Dash.org play, as Dash's de facto internet destination, in empowering the community behind Dash, in helping steer the global ship, in achieving greater effectiveness for the project and organization as a whole
which of course includes the entire community.
Dash becomes more effective if the projects it funds receive more exposure. Dash becomes more effective if marketing proposals build shared assets like email lists. Look at how the Golem project works: thousands of computers from all over the world plug in to process a single task. They can complete in a minute what used to take a day. How big would Dash's email list be if
ALL marketing proposals were building it, including Ben Swann, Strike Social, etc. What if part of the Fan Duel deal helped optionally sign people up to an email list if they wanted Dash updates. Fan Duel would agree because they're getting half a million dollars and would only have to add an email signup form. We could accomplish in a month what would take years.
We need a role within leadership thinking explicitly about how to leverage the decentralized nature of the project to accomplish in a month what would take years. It starts with clearly defining our goals as a decentralized organization and then communicating with proposal owners what our goals are and asking how they can help further them and building those into the proposals from the beginning. Is building an email list one of our goals? Is increasing transactions one of our goals? Is pure branding (i.e. logo on a video) one of our goals? Is distribution one of our goals? Goals can be discussed as a community and and then voted on to become defined. Then they become a checklist for proposal owners to check off. Increasing transactions? check. Gathering emails? check. Pure branding? check. An "evaluation" team could be dedicated to the forum to help proposal owners align with these clearly defined goals before they submit their proposal. This could make Dash more effective. We need to invest in our process. How can we better accomplish our goals? What even are our goals? How can a decentralized organization operate effectively without clearly defined goals? Honestly sometimes we feel like a bunch of chickens running around with our heads cut off. Sorry for the gruesome analogy but I see so much potential in Dash if we could just get a few upgrades to our process like explicit goal definition and communication of said goals to proposal owners and proposal evaluation according to alignment with those defined goals.
Getting back to the content thing, we experimented with the concept of community project support via content integrations paired with advertising resources with Dash informer. We put up information about community projects as they launched. Proposal owners reached out to us regularly, and felt supported to know that once their project was off the ground, information about it would appear on some main destination that has some advertising resources behind it to get the word out. We're still happy to provide these content integrations, but putting advertising resources behind it was central to the strategy and most of the value proposition for proposal owners and at this time we have no intentions to submit more advertising proposals because we are are confident that money can be spent more effectively as our efforts were not directly impacting market share or transaction volume so we deemed them ineffective and decided to pause, reevaluate how we can be truly effective, and formulate a plan to move forward. Although the advertising is paused for now, we hope to have contributed conceptually to what a Dash destination can be.
Dash.org is the central place people send other people to learn about Dash. It seems only logical that a section of the site would include accurate updates regarding the launch and existence of community funded project that expands the ecosystem and get people excited about it. Done right, people might even return to the site regularly. There's power in that.
But really we do need a way to clearly define our goals as a DAO & a checklist for proposal owners, real thought leadership on how we can accomplish our goals in a month as opposed to a year (the true power of the DAO), cooperation across the proposal ecosystem to accomplish those goals. Dash.org has an opportunity to reflect the values of the community and steer the ship. It can be an exciting destination filled with exciting updates and calls to action to get involved with clearly defined goals.
If we can really get it right, not confirmation times, not evolution, if we can really get the DAO right... holy hell. Look out world. It would be the fastest growing organization to have ever existed.
Clearly defined goals. A central (gasp!) web presence that reflects and empowers the community in meaningful ways to accomplish those goals. What's more important than that?
