Dash is an open-source project that delivers safe decentralized financial solutions. It is a form of digital cash that can be spent online and at merchants and service providers worldwide. Unlike bitcoin, Dash can be sent and received instantly, with zero risk of double payment or theft, and it boasts tremendous stability in its value.
Dash has created a collaborative thriving community, made up of over 4000 interconnected master nodes or servers. Each operator maintains a certain collateral of Dash, resulting in a high percentage yield, and voting power to accept or reject new community proposals.
Dash is currently the 7th most valued cryptocurrency worldwide, with a market cap of nearly $80 million. Dash is managed by a self-funded, self-governed organization comprised of over 15,000 users, moving well over a million dollars’ worth of currency across the network every 24 hours.
Dash – an innovative competitor to Bitcoin – is in many ways a “better Bitcoin”. While it is built on Bitcoin’s code – which makes it highly compatible with all the massive investments surrounding Bitcoin – it is quickly incorporating payments industry best-practices that the digital currency industry has lacked.
As Dash’s name suggests, it is blazingly fast. Transactions lock within a couple of seconds, making Dash acceptance feasible at the register, just like credit cards. The mechanics of how this happens are a feat of programming genius that can only occur in what’s called a “two-tier network” which Dash pioneered.
The Dash development team is a group of professionals with a combined two decades experience in computer science and financial technology. Each member of the Dash team different technical and business roles, including cutting edge developers, infra engineers, finance professionals, business development managers and quality control managers.
Dash also has a corporate-like structure in which the owners of the coin determine the leadership team and funding allocation for its development. Dash is also completely self-funded, which allows it to maintain focus on serving its users and merchants, and largely immune to undue influence from large benefactors.
Traditionally, most people use checks, credit cards and cash on a daily basis, and rely on banks to conduct personal financial management. In today’s rapidly evolving digital age, cryptocurrency has begun to change conventional thinking.
People can avoid transaction fees, transaction delays and financial controls by using cryptocurrency as a means to pay for goods and services online. One problem still remains though: for enthusiasts, cryptocurrency is easy to use, but for the layperson, using it is near impossible, let alone understanding what it actually means.
The Dash project is beginning to “normalize” cryptocurrency for the everyday person and it is quickly gaining mainstream adoption. While bitcoin is still largely inaccessible to the average user, Dash is seeing tremendous growth, and is bringing its ease of use and simplicity to its landmark project, Dash Evolution.
Dash Evolution is the payments system of the future. Dash identified a gaping hole in decentralized payments technology, and decided to build a platform, from scratch, that will help millions of people across the globe carry out instant, secure and near fee-free transactions, from anywhere, to anywhere. It is a user-friendly decentralized system designed for mainstream consumers with no previous virtual currency knowledge.
Evolution will eliminate all of the user-facing complexity of cryptocurrency networks, delivering a clean PayPal-like experience to users. Without relying on centralized services, consumers will have the ability to log in to an account-like view from any device with a simple username and password format with which they are already familiar. Payments are made to other usernames rather than long cryptographic addresses. Merchants that accept Dash will be searchable within an integrated marketplace. Users will eventually even be able to send or receive bank transfers directly through their account screen. In short, Dash will behave in a way that will make consumers feel comfortable and engage them more deeply.
Dash is also addressing bitcoin’s consumer-facing fees issue. Merchants will be responsible for most of the network’s transaction fees once Evolution launches, and peer-to-peer payments will be free.
Security issues are also being addressed. New “moderated transactions” will enable basic consumer protections in the form of dispute arbitration. Also, new “vault accounts” will offer additional protections against the numerous hacking incidences that have plagued bitcoin exchanges. Funds stored in these accounts are nearly impossible to steal. Dash is also providing alternative means to access lost funds, with password resets available via email.
The Evolution alpha is expected to be released in Q1 2017, with the final version set for public launch in Q1 2018.
Dash Evolution is like a decentralized PayPal or Venmo. People can use it seamlessly on web and mobile without an intermediary. It differs from the countless single purpose software wallets available online because it:
Invites much more mainstream adoption because it looks similar to current online banking systems
Is a client of an API in which users can make payments, add contacts, integrate apps and request moderators to settle disputes.
Offers all the benefits of a centralized platform, without a central entity.
Allows people to buy, sell or use Dash anywhere in the world.
Boasts a highly secure “vault,” like an encrypted savings account requiring email verification.
Contains a built in marketplace, or a series of apps from merchants who have integrated Dash, giving customers direct access to hundreds and thousands of products and services directly through the platform.
Features a “one-click order process” and contacts lists, so that all the friction of order processes and person to person payments are removed.
Evolution enables seamless integration of Dash payments to any web-store or app in minutes without the need for complex infrastructure or centralized third party services.
With Dash Evolution, Dash has designed a new type of API where the process is completely decentralized and still highly secure.
Evolution’s new decentralized API will allow users to interact with the Dash network without downloading and learning a complicated wallet, or waiting for their wallet to sync with the network. The goal of the Dash Evolution project is to make cryptocurrency as easy to use as PayPal and similar services, but without the centralization and fees.
Users can pay friends and shop online as easily as they do with PayPal and Google Wallet without losing privacy and control of their money to a third party.
Dash Evolution will provide scalability of up to hundreds of thousands of transactions per second
No additional software is needed and the service is 100% free and open source.
Users of Dash Evolution can:
Create an account you can access securely from anywhere on any device.
Invite and connect with friends to make and receive payments by username.
Track payments with contacts and share payment descriptions with payees.
Clear your transaction history at any time to stay private, as easy as clearing your browser history.
Merchants integrating Dash Evolution can:
Add Dash payments to the app in minutes using common web standards.
Forget about complex infrastructure or centralized services being needed to handle your customer's funds.
Keep full control of your funds without the hassle or hidden costs of centralized payment processors.
Monero and Dash are focused on entirely different objectives; ours is simply usability for the consumer, whereas Monero is to provide privacy for users of Darknet Markets like AlphaBay and Oasis
Privacy is one of the features that Dash incorporates into its overall user interface, but our objective is far removed from that of Monero’s.
Monero has a singular focus, providing a solution that is optimized for transaction obscurity.
Monero is targeting users of the DarkNet markets, whereas Dash is going in the complete opposite direction; we are going for mass adoption.
Dash’s optional privacy feature is built on pool mixing technology, allowing transactions to be untraceable on the blockchain.
Less than 1% of Dash transactions use our optional privacy.
Dash has been subject to unfair criticism on some early chatter boards and crypto community threads; we would like to take this opportunity to correct the record.
There was no pre-mine of Dash.
During the first 24 hours of the public mine, there was close to 2 million tokens issued, representing approximately 10-15% of the total supply.
These early mined tokens had no value at the time and many people traded them or sold them in exchanges very early on.
However, those that did mine early and held onto their tokens, have enjoyed remarkable growth in line with Dash’s market cap.
Dash is now a two-year-old project that has seen rapid adoption, including two organizational led distributions. Coins have been redistributed and thanks to the liquidity, many people that were not miners were able to buy Dash on exchanges and get involved.
Dash now enjoys a very healthy distribution.
Dash is earning its place with no VC funding or ICO.
Growth has been organic as the community expands and the project delivers innovations.
The silver lining of the launch was that a lot of Dash was distributed at the beginning, meaning less inflation and a more stable price.
The original intent behind DarkCoin was giving users the opportunity to make ‘dark’ or private transactions.
However, we did not want to be associated with the DarkNet markets and we’ve moved on from the focus of privacy by integrating many more features, functionality and a robust governance system.
DarkCoin did not represent the true essence of our project.
We have re-branded because we have a much broader set of features and we are working towards mass adoption. Dash, or digital cash, better represents the goals that we’re trying to achieve; to be a fast, friendly and scalable online payment system suitable for mainstream adoption.
The Dash organization prides itself on giving unbanked and underbanked people more financial options and better economic solutions.
With several countries entrenched in political and economic turmoil, Dash is helping make people’s lives easier through a valuable, decentralized cryptocurrency.
Partnerships with companies like Cryptobuyer and TigoCTM is helping Dash take more steps towards offering real services to regular people in areas where traditional banking systems and fiat currencies are failing.
Dash has partnered with Shakepay to provide the Dash Shake debit card. This allows people to keep their money in Dash and use their debit card for day to day expenses without the merchant having to accept virtual currencies. It is a great solution for people whose local currency suffers from hyper inflation, are unbanked or just want want to be their own banks. Users can now make the decision to opt-out of their failing financial systems without having to wait for merchants in their location to do so. It also lowers the barrier of entry into the digital currency ecosystem.
Dash will strive to fulfill our vision of making a tangible difference in places where digital currencies can help the most.
The Dash team is disappointed to learn that Apple has asked Jaxx CEO Anthony Di Iorio to remove our cryptocurrency from their software wallet. As the developers and foundation behind one of the most advanced applications of blockchain yet, Dash asks that Apple open up a dialogue with the growing blockchain community to discuss the criteria for approval on Apple devices.
Already one of the most stable, well-maintained, and popular cryptocurrencies globally, Dash has developed perhaps the most advanced governance and incentive system of any blockchain. Prominent businesses and organizations globally are accepting and making use of Dash already, with more alliances to be announced in the weeks to come. Our partnerships aim to bring the advantages of digital currency to consumers and businesses throughout the world, from the most developed nations in Europe and North America to struggling economies like Venezuela. For Apple to stifle an innovation with such broad and wondrous benefits seems counter to their core, progressive mission.
Dash has been working to get its own wallet approved by the App Store for weeks. Apple provided specific guidance on which coins are acceptable on the App Store: only Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ripple, the DAO, Steem, Lisk and Digicash have been OKed. Why only these coins are allowed is confusing, especially when one considers that the DAO tokens are no longer actively maintained. We hope to have an opportunity to speak with Apple to talk about our blockchain and to learn what can be done to support new technological initiatives in the future.
25 – 30% of Dash transactions on Dash use the Instant Send feature.
The cost of using Instant Send is 0.01 Dash, but we find that users are more than willing to pay it, even on small transactions, because people value their time and want payments/transfers to occur immediately.
It has become apparent that people are waiting longer and longer for bitcoin transactions to clear, and a growing number are migrating to Dash.
Bitcoin – despite all its promise and media coverage – has simply failed to gain widespread adoption.
In many ways, this is quite understandable. The mainstream payments business is exceptionally difficult for new entrants to penetrate.
First, consumer payment behaviors are almost generationally slow to change. Despite decades of alternatives, checks and cash still comprise a shockingly high share of payment volume.
Second, when new technologies enter the payments market, they typically face a classic “chicken and egg” dilemma… consumers won’t try new services if there aren’t many places to use it, while merchants won’t accept it unless a large share of consumers prefer it.
But Bitcoin’s main problem is that it’s run by cryptographers and programmers – all of whom lack a basic understanding of the payments industry and the mechanisms through which adoption occurs. This lack of understanding has resulted in a brilliant piece of software that was set to fail from the very beginning, and lacks the mechanisms to change in the necessary ways.
While funds settlement occurs much more quickly for merchants than with credit cards or bank transfers, Bitcoin is hardly “instant” the same way that credit cards appear to the consumer. Bitcoin confirmations take an average of 10 minutes, if network congestion doesn’t cause hours-long delays. This restricts Bitcoin’s usefulness to a subset of online ordering and money transfer use cases, where speed is of little importance.
Bitcoin is also notoriously intimidating to use. New users are confronted with all kinds of foreign concepts such as long cryptographic keys, device-residing “wallets”, and QR codes. Users must first trade fiat for Bitcoin in order to use it. Balances are only available on one device at a time (unless you are using a centralized service or know how to transfer private keys between devices). Needless to say, Bitcoin is much more difficult to use than most other payment methods.
On the surface, Bitcoin’s low fee structure seems to offer a strong “discount” incentive for adoption. But guess who gets the discount… the merchant. In fact, in the weird world of bitcoin, the consumer pays the transaction fees. This is a non-starter in the world of payments… period. Worse, the typical merchant must pay fees regardless to convert the funds to their local currency. There went the value of the “discount”.
It is also hard to argue that Bitcoin’s security model is ideal for the consumer. Bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed (e.g., if a delivery never arrives), stolen Bitcoin cannot be recovered, and if one loses their private keys, all their funds are lost
Bitcoin is great for merchants - they never have to deal with chargebacks, fraudulent transactions, and fraudulent returns again. But these merchant benefits all come at the direct expense of consumer protections.