I couldn't agree more. Well put.

I would contact forum folks carefully, too many trolls with their own coin agendas. I would use the upcoming conference as a way to network some connections. Put it in your talk or something that you are looking for a verified third-party to help confirm the coin's claims.

Again on the marketing stuff, you need to set an agenda for everyone to follow. I think there are way too many voices screaming marketing and what they are really doing is pushing DRK to be "just another coin". This coin will not succeed because there's a dice game.

IMO, these are the core elements that should always be addressed:

1. Why anonymity is important in cryptocurrencies. What are the shortcomings of the current cryptoworld (only in terms of BTC, I think discussing DRK w/ any other coin is counter-productive).

2. How does DRK solve the anonymity issue. To what extent are DRK transactions anonymous? This needs to put proven and put into an understandable diagram. Again, in my mind, this is the biggest priority for DarkSend. If everyone goes off into a tangent working on dice games or other alt-coin "standards" AND DarkSend ends up failing, then the coin will fail with it. I can't put it any more bluntly than that. So if everyone is focusing on shit like dice games and not figuring out how to validate the anonymity factor, all other effort is wasted.

3. If #2 is proven, how does DRK fit into the Crypto-World alongside BTC? Competitor/compliment?

4. Become a (or THE) Crypto-Anonymity spokesman. You get noticed by leading, not following. I think you can solve this by putting some effort into media outreach. The CryptoLife Blog did that nice piece about anonymity that featured some nice coverage of DRK, along with some other coins. So, you should do some basic PR outreach (this is where you could bring in someone from the community to help). Here's what I would do:

- Find someone you know and trust to handle all of your public relations effort. Announce it here and announce a basic PR plan with milestones. This would be something like:

A. Make a list of the top 5-10 crypto bloggers/journalists that have big enough voices in the community that it's worthwhile.
B. Have the marketing person conduct outreach saying that you are available to discuss crypto-anonymity, interviews about DarkSend and/or whatever you're planning on talking about at the conference.
C. If interviews are scheduled, always be there for them or respond promptly (if done via email). Journalists are notoriously self-centered and can take something like a perceived slight and turn it into a negative article.

4. Use your conference appearance to really build some new relationships that can help the coin's future.

-----

Again, I would implore you NOT to be distracted by these alt-clone marketing suggestions. This is the wrong place to put your attention. Develop the coin & conduct outreach to the media and NOT focusing on the crypto coin miners/traders.

Started a Reddit thread that might be a good jumping off point, given the format. http://www.reddit.com/r/DRKCoin/comments/1zzfoz/thoughts_in_marketing_this_coin/

+1

Completely agree.  We need a someone we all trust to hold the coins for the bounties.  It makes sense that eduffield be that person, seeing as he must have a lot of trust from us as we are all counting on his development of the coin.  I would step up myself except I'm having trouble with my wallet (on a mac, it keeps quitting).  If we can get a darkcoinfounation website or simply a bounty page added to http://www.darkcoin.io/ with an darkcoin address controlled by eduffield (or another trusted person) we can all start chipping in to pay for the bounties.  We can propose bounties here in this thread and/or over at https://www.darkcointalk.org/.  Let's do it!

They had a good marketing plan but failed to deliver on the actual coin.  HeavyCoins launch was a complete failure due to horrible developer support.  Take that same marketing with the excellent developer support that DarkCoin has and you have a winner for sure.  However, one issue would be the bounty's.  HeavyCoin was a huge premine so they had a very large quantity of coins to use for bounty's.  They also raised 170+ btc through an IPO which they can use for marketing as well.  

Personally, I don't think DarkSend should ever be open sourced. All it will result in are a ton of junk coins implementing it, and basically a ton of coins piggybacking on the dev's code here. Yes, if adoption was greater, then perhaps it'd make sense to open source. But to me, adoption means something like being able to be used for actual purchases somewhere.

So if DarkCoin turned into Bitcoin, sure, consider open source. But that sort of adoption would take years. Instead, if it was me, perhaps a verified 3rd party could look at the code for safety types of reasons every so often, rather than just release all of the code for free.

If the code is released, I expect the coin to drop in price ... a lot.

Thanks bigrcanada!

As mentioned above I think we should get the mining pools involved to offer an auto-donation to get the foundation funded. I also think we should use a similar rewards structure as heavy, obviously with fewer coins since ours are and will be worth so much more!

eduffield can you put up a donation address for the Foundation and implement the donation option on your pool to that address? If you do it then other mining pool operators can follow suit, up until a fund ceiling of 200,000 DRK or so.

I think most miners would be happy to contribute, especially when it will go directly to the foundation and improving the awareness, development and value of the coin. It's in everyone's best interest!

Hi Eduffield.   Check out what Heavycoin did.  You can check what they are doing with this coin.  

https://cryptocointalk.com/topic/6988-launchedhvc-heavycoin-decentralized-block-reward-votingcpu-only-ultra-secure/


"Bounty details

Thanks to the bounty phase, Heavycoin will start with enough funds to do some serious work in terms of branding, marketing and promotion. Here are some of the projects we will be rewarding early adopters and promoters for.  If you are interested, then please post to the forum and send a PM so we can confirm the details.

30,000 HVC - professional grade commercial art and logos (specific guidelines, logo competition)
50,000 HVC - professional grade promotional video explanation (specific guidelines apply)
100,000 HVC - first substaintial merchant to accept payments with Heavycoin
50,000 HVC - second merchant
40,000 HVC - third merchant
10,000 HVC - fourth merchant
10,000 HVC - fifth merchant
50,000 HVC - first gambling site (specific guidelines apply)
20,000 HVC - first dice site
10,000 HVC - setup and maintenance of a dedicated Heavycoin forum
10,000 HVC - sign-up of the first Heavycoin exchange
30,000 HVC - first block explorer
10,000 HVC - second block explorer
30,000 HVC - first mining pool
10,000 HVC - second mining pool
10,000 HVC - first article published
10,000 HVC - second article published
30,000 HVC - article at CoinDesk, Bitcoin Magazine, Forbes or Money Week

Thousands more to be awarded to promotors on twitter, facebook and online forums.

Completed bounties
These bounties have been pre-allocated ahead of the launch for helpful contributions.

Twitter feed setup - 1,000 HVC awarded to robmillernow
Chinese PRE-ANN translation - 1,000 HVC awarded to xiaocong
Greek PRE-ANN translation - 1,000 HVC awarded to RealMiner
French PRE-ANN translation - 1,000 HVC awarded to kuroman
Spanish PRE-ANN translation - 1,000 HVC awarded to VanBreuk
Dutch PRE-ANN translation - 1,000 HVC awarded to tinus42
First article published - 10,000 HVC awarded to qznc (Block Reward Voting: HeavyCoin)
Polish PRE-ANN translation - 1,000 HVC awarded to Moozg
Russian PRE-ANN translation - 1,000 HVC awarded to -Greed-
Informative blog post - 1,000 HVC awarded to Shuxy (Alt Coins Lookout! #1)
Setup and maintenance of a dedicated Heavycoin forum - 10,000 HVC awarded to cryptomind (heavycoinforum.com)
Italian PRE-ANN translation - 500 HVC awarded to Steve_Sanders

We are still awarding bounties for pre-launch contributions (ex. promotions and translations) so please send us a PM."

This in my opinion is a very well thought out roll out.  We need to set up a bounty found ASAP and I'll donate the first 500 DRK to the fund to start with.  FYI I do not current own or have any holdings in HVC.

Thoughts?

 PS.... I'll be the first merchant to sign up to use DarkCoin! ....and I'll donate any bounty I'd get for that back into the "fund".

There were a few people that came into the forums and said that it wasn't anonymous and could break it, I'll reach out to them and see if they're up for taking a look at it.

EVERYONE ON THIS THREAD NEEDS TO VOTE ON EACH OF THE THREE EXCHANGE VOTES BELOW!!!!

BTC38 : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=501963.0

BTER : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=502363.0

Bitrex.com : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497351.0

Thanks  

I did my due diligence before buying in, saw that the cap was changed, based my buy in price on that. Yes it does matter. This is all about risk. There is an appropriate price for each cap, and they aren't the same.

The dumping on poloniex is just ridiculous to watch. People are selling like idiots once the buy walls dare rise above 10 for fuck's sake.

I really hope c-cex has not been hacked. This would be pretty bad. I had a pretty decent amount on there, not my entire stash. Has anyone heard any recent news from them other than closed for 12-14 hours? If it is true, that they were hacked, I wouldn't keep any funds there. Ever

I don't think "Dark" is about mysterious here. It is about confidence and security. Something reliable, math-confirmed. When you say "mysterious", I hear "hard to use, too complex, one more weird toy for tech-geeks".

I think the logo is just fine...
If you want something more "professional and sophistication of something that is worthy of doing my most trusted and sensitive not only personal but corporate transactions. Transactions such as buying real-estate, equipment to transferring wealth of your families estate type the next generation. " You should change the name as well...(But please...Don't!)

Darkcoin has something mysterious about it...we should play that out...