Interesting.
I was listening to
The Anarchist interview of Amanda and I thought the "joke" from Mr. Jeff Berwick regarding what a pioneer is, was funny, so I searched Google "what is a pioneer arrows in back" and I found
this article by Steve Blank, written in 2010. For me, it was a great read. I'm a blue collar kind of person. Father was a machinist, and I went into construction. So I didn't really study business, and even if I did, I'm sure that I would have been taught the importance of "First mover advantage". The thing is, since coming here to this space, I have always found the Bitcoin war cry of being the first mover, and having that advantage was .... well, BS.
With only my limited knowledge and at the time, only knowledge being that of the "real world" I could see so many examples where first mover was no advantage. The classic "My Space" vs "Facebook", Palm (I still have one) and iphone/blackberry/android, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek vs Google, etc... My 80+ year old mom still uses excite, so in a way, not changing anything might actually be an advantage
Unfortunately, servicing people over 80.... well it's a diminishing population, isn't it? (except my mom, she'll live well into her hundreds, I'm sure!) So within two weeks of my first looking into Bitcoin, Dash was launched. Unlike almost everyone here, I never went through a love affair with Bitcoin. As I was learning about Cryptos, I was learning how dysfunctional Bitcoin was, and this guy named Evan Duffield seemed like he was full of energy and wanted to DO things. I just had a gut feeling, and nothing to lose, so I became a Dash cheerleader. Boy was a right! (how many people can say that? LOL) It was probably just pure luck, but there were signs of serious commitment, the first of which was that Evan used his real name; completely exposing himself. He also said from the start that he wanted to make Dash mainstream, for everyone. Being born with a dislike for authority and over reaching governments, and people who tried to control me (I go rabid when cornered) I knew that if we were ever going to make a positive change in this world, we'd have to do it on the up and up, and later came to realize the importance of staying completely independent, unto ourselves.
Still, I kept hearing about this "impossible" first mover advantage of Bitcoin, and my guts told me that was BS. Obviously it is. Unfortunately, many business students of the 90's still believe it's important and an actual "law" though it's been debunked over and over again. So if you subscribe to Bitcoin having a first mover advantage or worst still, Bitcoin maximalism, you probably should read the above article and other articles related to the subject, and get your head clear of that misconception/bad theory that was debunked by the first professor to propose it himself.
So what about Dash's "first mover advantage" Isn't Dash in the same position? Won't Dash be overtaken by another project doing things better?
Sure! Of course that can happen. But is it likely? Well, lets look at what Dash has:
1. Dash has a "problem solving" mentality. Their goal is to solve USER problems, so as to bring the world to crypto.
2. Dash has proven itself to be nimble. We just had a HUGE major fork. This is something like our 4th fork. (done spork style of course)
3. Dash has funding for the foreseeable future, which, instead of diminishing, increases with success. More success = more value = larger budget
4. Dash's self funding model allows it to remain faithful to the users and not be hijacked by special interest groups. Why? Because Masternodes, the voters, know that their vote needs to be on the side of taking care of the users, both consumers and merchants, to increase adoption, which will increase the value of each Dash more so than any fees you could earn. YET fees are still important, for the future sustainability of the project and to prevent attacks on the network. Properly balancing all these points in the future will always be advantageous to the voting Masternodes, and since Dash is so nimble, quick action will never be something Dash shies away from.
At some point, a second/third etc... mover gains the traction and dominates for long periods of time. Take Microsoft Apple and Linux. They dominate the world's operating systems. Yes, not one over all, but 3. They each do it differently, and actually very well, despite the fact that I curse at my Windows constantly. (Microsoft = software domination, Apple = hardware domination and Linux = freedom domination) Do you think they're the only 3 ever created? You would be woefully wrong if you did. There have been many OSs, most of them have fallen by the wayside. My favorite was WebOS :..(
Anyway, this is my first mover is no advantage post, that I'm going to reference in the future, like my master, toknormal, LOL.
