[ANN][DASH] Dash (dash.org) | First Self-Funding Self-Governing Crypto Currency

[dime]

real world? show me a real world corporation that is 100% marketing with no product? that's called snakeoil and vaporware

Well this may be a bit excessive.

If you guys are feeling pissed because I mentionned Apple. Then I'm sorry. Look at Dogecoin. Litecoin clone. Nothing amazingly technical. But successful marketing and position.

Dogecoin success sits on a ridiculous dog face. This is the power of images and visual communication !
Having the BEST product won't necessarily makes you the winner. In that sense marketing is critical. Yes.

I'm not saying it is bad, or good. Just the truth (seems)

I don't care about the apple thing so feel free to drop it.

I agree dogecoin does have some pretty good marketing, but behind the marketing, they have community. Which we don't have. They successfully created a trend where people use it to actively tip others to inflate transactions, which is what drove up adoption.

Darkcoin does not have that. Our community consists of 750 pages of people arguing over the color of a logo.

I'm not suggesting we parallelize our marketing strategy with dogecoin (jeez, please no). I'm saying we're at the step before the marketing phase. We need to build community.

We need more people to get off this post and use darkcointalk.org, where we have real forums that people can branch out and talk about other things that build community around darkcoin. We need more people to build more sites that accept darkcoins for whatever purposes.

Right now, newcomers will read about darksend then see that it's not ready. The only people who are going to go for this are speculators. What do speculators do? They pump and dump, or even worse, they fall into pump and dump traps, and lose their money. We need to attract people who see darkcoin as a currency. What makes darkcoin viable as a currency? Darksend. There it is.

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[dime]

He has some knowledge of the industry and is trying to help.  There's no need for such negativity.

I'm not being negative. Read my posts, and followup posts.

The "industry" can't help us at our current stage. Read my latest post.

[dime]

I apologize for the phrase above. The way I wrote makes it pretty excessive.

I did not meant that everyone here was stupid. When it comes to marketing strategies, the average man tends to have no idea about how much he is being a patsy. Otherwise there won't be so much people like zombies at the supermarket.

Many of you may know this already. Again apologies for my lack of diplomacy.

There's plenty of lack of diplomacy to go around and then some. Don't apologize. There will be no offense taken. We need more real talk in here.

[thelonecrouton]

haha, just bought another 20 DRK with the BTC I made yesterday fleecing those Quebecqois. 

[CHAOSiTEC]

Kyle (InternetApe) And I will be donating 10% of our pool fee to the bounty fund, we look forward to the rest of the pools following suit! This will most definitely help in promoting a much more mature Darkcoin. 10% of the pool fee currently will be one tenth of one percent and will change with whatever pool fee we have at the moment.
 

Awesome!  I hope to see the other large pools follow suit.

I will donate 10% of future projects earnings to the foundation....

[patrolman]

Ok, I have an alternate idea.  Let's start a Darkcoin foundation.  The goal of the foundation would be to further darkcoin in all aspects (marketing, legal, charity, bounties etc.).  

To further the foundation's goals, let's try to persuade the major pools to voluntarily donate 0.1% of mining output to the foundation (this can come directly out of the fee they charge miners - if they charge a 1% fee, they can either tack on .1% or keep their fee at 1% and pocket 10% less than they do currently).  This would of course be COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY. In exchange the pool will be given special status on the main darkcoin website/subreddit/forum post etc.  Something simple like "Darkcoin Foundation donor" and a special little icon next to the pool name.  If we could get the major pools to agree we could generate some significant bounties for important causes, and most importantly it would be voluntary. Discuss.

That's fine by me, that's actually the same amount of money I proposed above but via donations. That would allow for us to pay for marketing costs, building the foundation, etc. Sounds great.

I'm also fine with that bcs it means a steady stream of coins with which we can do things properly.

As for creating the foundation, I'm also in favor, and have another proposal in terms of its functioning:

I propose to set the foundation, and have its annual and important 'voting' decisions performed in a proof-of-stake manner.
that means that bagholders will send a 0.000001DRK to wallet A or B or C based on their vote.
Each vote can represent a single hand, or a wallet (the amount of DRK it contains).
The script should obviously check that the coins in the wallet are not newly transferred so as to avoid double counting.

That's a neat idea. I think we could implement that for all Darkcoin decisions (why not into the client itself, it could just sign the inputs to prove the stake and post them to a website).

Love it! You're a bold man.

Heavycoin has a really great voting feature built into the client, it would be awesome if we can mimic that.  The proposal by chompyZ would be easy to manipulate (I can create and fund 500 addresses in a few hours)

Some great ideas here! The voluntary payment option is much better than the previously mentioned master node "tax". Maybe it would also be possible to include in the wallet an opt-in checkbox for a donation to the foundation of 0.5 or 1% and perhaps the option to add a custom amount (or maybe not - to avoid overcrowding).

edit: Just to clarify, I meant when sending DRK, not 0.5 or 1% of any balances

[itscrazy]

Ok, I have an alternate idea.  Let's start a Darkcoin foundation.  The goal of the foundation would be to further darkcoin in all aspects (marketing, legal, charity, bounties etc.).  

To further the foundation's goals, let's try to persuade the major pools to voluntarily donate 0.1% of mining output to the foundation (this can come directly out of the fee they charge miners - if they charge a 1% fee, they can either tack on .1% or keep their fee at 1% and pocket 10% less than they do currently).  This would of course be COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY. In exchange the pool will be given special status on the main darkcoin website/subreddit/forum post etc.  Something simple like "Darkcoin Foundation donor" and a special little icon next to the pool name.  If we could get the major pools to agree we could generate some significant bounties for important causes, and most importantly it would be voluntary. Discuss.

That's fine by me, that's actually the same amount of money I proposed above but via donations. That would allow for us to pay for marketing costs, building the foundation, etc. Sounds great.

Evan, maybe you can set up a Darkcoin Foundation wallet address?  Then we can start contacting pool operators.  I would also be great if we can get chaeplin to create a page similar to http://drk.poolhash.org/darksend.html to track the Foundation's wallet.

I've recently taken over Sam's bounty fund wallet and sent the funds to XbvMksW32pWkJi4epVVfGZ3YheoNF9exRw. Until we have an actual foundation I think this address should be used for all donations.

http://explorer.darkcoin.io/address/XbvMksW32pWkJi4epVVfGZ3YheoNF9exRw

Debits and Credits: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UhfA0hjcSekwJwrY0ixDys_3DFRDuR594vI7z6BxCaE/edit#gid=0

I love this idea, however we do not have this foundation at the moment guys. So please donate whatever you can to our bounty wallet so we can get projects such as marketing etc underway. Dogecoins at the top purely because of their generous community, we can make it far beyond them by being generous to our fund wallet and providing a real world monetary privacy solution.

[LimLims]

This voluntary foundation is a great idea.

I believe there are some things Darkcoin needs right now from the marketing world. I think dime is right that we don't need actual marketing just yet, but we do need a professional, informative website. Part of that is design & branding. All of that -- website, branding, design -- are under the marketing umbrella.

Beating a dead horse here, but I strongly suggest caution in taking the advice or work of people who aren't professionals in the biz. Sorry to be blunt, but some of the ideas & mockups being shopped around here are awful. This should be obvious to anyone with a discriminatory eye and some experience with modern design principles. But if it's not obvious, just hire a professional, please.

[itscrazy]

We have a chance to get added to coinpayments.net, everyone should head over there and cast a vote! https://www.coinpayments.net/vote

[jakecrow]

Beating a dead horse here, but I strongly suggest caution in taking the advice or work of people who aren't professionals in the biz. Sorry to be blunt, but some of the ideas & mockups being shopped around here are awful. This should be obvious to anyone with a discriminatory eye and some experience with modern design principles. But if it's not obvious, just hire a professional, please.

So true.

[Kai Proctor]

Not again with the logo !  There was a vote, deal with it.

[mannie]

This voluntary foundation is a great idea.

I believe there are some things Darkcoin needs right now from the marketing world. I think dime is right that we don't need actual marketing just yet, but we do need a professional, informative website. Part of that is design & branding. All of that -- website, branding, design -- are under the marketing umbrella.

Beating a dead horse here, but I strongly suggest caution in taking the advice or work of people who aren't professionals in the biz. Sorry to be blunt, but some of the ideas & mockups being shopped around here are awful. This should be obvious to anyone with a discriminatory eye and some experience with modern design principles. But if it's not obvious, just hire a professional, please.

I agree. Someone should be hired to run the design/marketing. This is all just clogging up the forum and wasting time. It's nice for people to feel ownership over this but not at the expense of a good outcome. When my NBA team play, I like to call out play suggestions at the TV but I don't assume the team should be looking for my opinion. They're professionals after all. I invest in companies on the stock exchange - I get to vote on major decisions but I don't get involved in minute details of marketing. Same should apply here. Voluntary payments can pay for someone to take care of it for us.

[Kai Proctor]

LawBC, here is a quick mockup of what I meant earlier:



I think it looks simpler and friendlier. No headless dude. Minimal scrolling required @ 1920x1080.

edit: looking at it now I would have the eclipse thing up top as the main logo, but with a gold D. However I will wait for the laughter to die down before I dig myself any deeper... 

Don't take it the wrong way, but that design was nice in 1995.

[Simcom]

I'm trying to curate a list of pools, what the fees are and which are donating - let me know if you want to help edit this wiki or if you can help fill in  the blanks http://www.reddit.com/r/DRKCoin/wiki/index .  If you mine at one of these pools and are willing to contact them and convince them to get on the donation train that would be awesome. 

[drkman]

think most here would agree that the technological achievements of Darkcoin are FAR AHEAD of the coin's marketing. I think most will also agree with LimLims that such activity needs a dedicated professional person.
I therefore propose the following - from the next fork, X% of the masternodes proceeds will go into a dedicated multi-sig wallet that will pay a salary to a dedicated full-time professional marketing person.
Hopefully, in time, the price of darkcoin will go up, this fund will be able to employ more than one person, and thus also pay the developers, webmaster, etc.
imho, the time has come to become less bootstrap and more professional.

I love this idea! But I'd like to expand on it, I think it would be better to go into the bounty fund and that fund would be much more generic. For example, we just needed an icon designed, now we need a website, color scheme, etc. As the price grows, the size of things we need to get done grows just as much. Next we'll need to setup a foundation, retain an attorney to help with legal matters, etc.
I propose 1/10 of the masternode payments go toward a bounty fund for generic uses.
- At current market prices this will be $184.03 per day (259 DRK)
If the price goes to $5, that will be $1296 per day, which should be enough for a full marketing budget, the foundation, a retained lawyer and maybe on office for the foundation?

I think it's a bad idea.  If bitcoin had implemented something like this, siphoning off a % of mining profits and putting it into some fund to pay salaries it would have never taken off.  It just comes off as super scammy to most people I suspect. I'm fine donating to a pool to get some of these things done, but I don't think it should be built into the coin.  Besides sounding shady, it would create constant sell pressure and I think a lot of people would abandon ship. I'm a little worried just talking about this will tank the price (like the airdrop talk did).

Disagree.  The key to a coin having the features required to respond to market innovations, facilitate easy mass consumer adoption, and most importantly protect its users and retailers with a safe platform in which to buy and sell goods is to run the coin like a non-profit corporation.  You can't ask 1 or two guys to manage and maintain the payment system forever and just like any startup, there comes a time when the coin will benefit from basic paid representation, development, and marketing.  The key would be to make it lean and cost efficient similar to a condo association.  You don't want corruption to come into play because a person could stand to profit as the fee totals grew along with the coin.  I think an amount similar to 1/50th of the the masternode fees could be enough however and you would want the fee percentage to reduce if the coin grows in value and thus becomes more established on its own.  At $5, 1/50th of the fees would still amount to $3,900/mo.  At $15 you could have the fee move to 1/100th of the masternode fees and that would still be $5,850/mo or $70,200/year.

One of the early important projects would be to hire or pay bounties for a BTC38 exchange listing along with a Mandarin language based road show and marketing plan.  Without an organization to fund these projects then the payment burden should really be on those miners who mined this coin the first day as they are the ones who, from a fairness perspective, should be funding all the early 1st year development of this coin.

[HooDude]

I just want to say that I think the arguing going on in this thread is very unprofessional and is hurting the coin. People interested in Darkcoin come to this thread first, and hop to the last page to see what the scoop is. What they're greeted with is chaos, which in turn gives an uneasy feeling about the coin and turns them away. God knows, when I come on this thread myself and read all the B.S. in the last few pages it makes me question whether i'm doing the right thing by holding my DRK.

Please use the dedicated darkcoin talk forums. Please use the proper sections/threads within those forums. Polluting this thread with arguments is not helping our cause.

[Kai Proctor]

I just want to say that I think the arguing going on in this thread is very unprofessional and is hurting the coin. People interested in Darkcoin come to this thread first, and hop to the last page to see what the scoop is. What they're greeted with is chaos, which in turn gives an uneasy feeling about the coin and turns them away. God knows, when I come on this thread myself and read all the B.S. in the last few pages it makes me question whether i'm doing the right thing by holding my DRK.

Please use the dedicated darkcoin talk forums. Please use the proper sections/threads within those forums. Polluting this thread with arguments is not helping our cause.

  The discussion in the last pages about the foundation is very interesting.
Unlike you I think that it is healthy, the coin is alive and encourages people to share their ideas (some good and some bad).

[HooDude]

I just want to say that I think the arguing going on in this thread is very unprofessional and is hurting the coin. People interested in Darkcoin come to this thread first, and hop to the last page to see what the scoop is. What they're greeted with is chaos, which in turn gives an uneasy feeling about the coin and turns them away. God knows, when I come on this thread myself and read all the B.S. in the last few pages it makes me question whether i'm doing the right thing by holding my DRK.

Please use the dedicated darkcoin talk forums. Please use the proper sections/threads within those forums. Polluting this thread with arguments is not helping our cause.

  The discussion in the last pages about the foundation is very interesting.
Unlike you I think that it is healthy, the coin is alive and encourages people to share their ideas (some good and some bad).

I'm largely referring to all the bickering about the branding.

[susendi]

This is what you premine complainers wanted right?

[falsealarm_bf]

I just want to say that I think the arguing going on in this thread is very unprofessional and is hurting the coin. People interested in Darkcoin come to this thread first, and hop to the last page to see what the scoop is. What they're greeted with is chaos, which in turn gives an uneasy feeling about the coin and turns them away. God knows, when I come on this thread myself and read all the B.S. in the last few pages it makes me question whether i'm doing the right thing by holding my DRK.

Please use the dedicated darkcoin talk forums. Please use the proper sections/threads within those forums. Polluting this thread with arguments is not helping our cause.

  The discussion in the last pages about the foundation is very interesting.
Unlike you I think that it is healthy, the coin is alive and encourages people to share their ideas (some good and some bad).

I'm largely referring to all the bickering about the branding.

Can someone make an executive decision on branding and everything else related so this coin can move beyond that discussion already? I can't believe the developer is allowing this to go on indefinitely. Not all decisions can be left for the general public to make. There are too many cooks in the kitchen, and it's time someone said let's move on. Spend some coins on a professional entity to perform the task if needed. There is great potential with Dark and every minute we waste time on simple decisions that drag on, we are falling behind simpler coins that offer no value to the market.